Aunt BMCHRFAM in the face of Eve of destruction | WOMAN CASE | ATHENS 2023

About This Project

THE FACT: Aunt BMCHRFAM in the face of Eve of destruction – THE REASON Continuing the narrative – POETRY: A requiem for two perished women

Individually designed multilevel action (lecture performance, installation in space with sound and objects) which was presented in the group exhibition/event/action/workshop WOMAN CASE, conceived, curated and mainly exhibited works by architect and visual artist Eleni Tzirtzilaki.

The event-exhibition-workshop is about femininities, highlighting the diversity of women, feminism and ecology in art. Guests are: Roula Kouvara, Peggy Zali, Anthi Kosma, Mary Zygouri, Dora and Elina Theodoropoulou, Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Yiota Ioannidou, Maria Theodorou, Aspasia Kouzoupi, Danae Manolesou, Bia Papadopoulou, Vana Tentokali and Anna Tsouloufi-Lagiou. Duration: 20-30 June 2023.

For the action I used: photographic and video archival material, lyrics from songs and interviews by Wendy O’ Williams, excerpts from the texts of Hélène Cixous (The laugh of the Medusa) and Toni Morrison (Interview to Anne Koennen 1980); pieces of electrical appliances (TV-set, foot bath for pedicure, electric brush for curls; E. Broom, massage machine), mirror, bags, 50 pairs of shoes, life-size theater doll, clothes,  garments, 5 kilow of salt, 6 hard-boiled eggs, etc.

What can Aunt BMCHRFAM have in common with Wendy Ο’ Williams; Two for sure: they are both dead women who despised a lot in their surroundings, but loved and cared very much for their own people and/or animals, the planet. And they certainly didn’t live their whole lives waiting for death to come. But both lived in a state of anticipation towards another earthly life. And while each sought it out in their own unique way, probably none of them found it. They did not develop their personal narrative as they would have liked. Aunt BMCHRFAM certainly did not do this. She remained enclosed in the warmth of the “dollhouse”, kitchen, totally dependent on an absent-present husband and two children, without personal income, with a very weak body, hoping all her life that she would change her life, that he would manage to emancipate herself, until he died slowly, not too old. While Wendy did exactly the opposite, completely liberated and emancipated, but also, completely “going crazy”. She did absolutely everything she could to break stereotypical taboos, who “killed” and kill every day Women and womanhood, even at this moment, until the moment when she could not stand the simple everyday life, and found it right to put a bag on her head, and feeding squirrels in her nearby forest, blowing her brains with a gun.

We may find all the diametrical differences between them. Certainly though, they remain two dead women. What would have happened if these two spent time together? What would be their lyric myth?

What I had in mind for this project and planned for it, was a naïve, visual theatrical action, a performative act, on an imaginary dialogue between two dead women. A dialogue between a-before-and-an-after, creating a transitional space of “verbal play” with objects, an installation in space with sound, seeking the here-and-now, between the private and the public, the inside and the outside, the phenomenon and the becoming. Thiw dialogue comes to re-activate, illuminate and perhaps change the narrative of the lives of these two dead women (and/or perhaps, of those women who can change their point of attention). Through their words and writings either left or didn’t leave behind, but we imagine these two perished women could and can build into my fictional story. This dialogue may help us understand some key traumas, who have led the female population for so many centuries to the misery of oppression, the disdain and forgetfulness of man’s true wildness: shame, taboos, separation, the tree of knowledge, and the veil of virginity, trauma, and more.