Attempt of A Poem

Attempt of A Poem

Performative Workshop Series by Filippo Riniolo, a work of rewriting the Iliad and the other Homeric poems collectively. With a queer, feminist and ecologist point of view.

Author
Filippo Riniolo
Technique
Performative Workshop Series
curated by
jlayda Tunca
Exibition
Mahalla Festival Palimpsest, Istanbul
Official parallel event of 17th Istanbul Biennial
Produced by
Magic Carpets programm
Videographer
Murat Kahya, Aykut Guler, Selcuk Uzanır
Audiomaker
Can Gürses
Location
Kurtuluş, Kurtuluş Greek School


The Italian artist Filippo Riniolo is participating into the Mahalla Festival with an interactive performance/installation with the title The Attempt of a Poem in the frame of a residency program by  MagiC Carpets. MagiC Carpets is a Creative Europe platform uniting 16 European cultural organisations that create opportunities for emerging artists to embark on journeys to unknown lands and to create, together with local artists and local communities, new works that highlight local specificities. Latitudo Art Projects in Rome is a partner of the network and nominated Riniolo to participate in the Mahalla Festival. The emerging curators Ilayda Tunca in Istanbul and Paola Farfaglio in Rome manage the implementation of Filippo’s art project for the Festival.

Within the scope of the Mahalla Festival, Riniolo is offering an interactive workshop series that is inspired by an epic genre called "Nostos". "Nostos" refers to the narratives of heroes from ancient Greek literature. Best-known examples of the genre are Homer’s Iliad, Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid.

Riniolo invites the public to active participate into the process of creating an art work.

RThe aim of the workshop is to reinvent an alternative appearance of the Trojan Horse, The workshop will realized three sessions in total, and is devoted to organizing a 'queer nostos’. A new narrative, a joint poem to perform  a chorus with the participants through contempo-queer art communities in Kurtuluş.

R At the end of the workshop, the written text was destroyed and only the audio recording of the work remain.

Session #1: Kirke, 3rd of September

This is the first of the three relational workshops realised for the Mahallafestival in Istanbul. We wrote together and sang to Calliope, the muse of poetry, about the stories of the sorceress Circe, a feminist witch. In a world where power belongs to males and women are mothers or wives. Circe is an autonomous and independent woman. Who rules her island not with weapons but with seductive magic.

Session #2: The horse, 5th of September

Who decided that the Trojan horse was a horse? The participants of the second workshop did not believe it and decided that the Trojan horse was a unicorn. In fact, Odysseus did not use the unicorn to destroy the city but to build peace between peoples and bring an end to 10 years of bloody warfare. The only way to end a war is to stop fighting. And what better than a Trojan unicorn?

Session #3: Story of the End: 7th of September

Tiresias, Cassandra, Chalcante and many clairvoyants in the Iliad and Odyssey. But who are the clairvoyants today? They are scientists. The prophets of that time announced destruction but the people in power did not want to believe them. Powerful people preferred to ignore or kill the clairvoyants rather than change their attitudes and heed the prophecies. This is happening today with scientists and climate change. You don't need to be wizards and witches to understand the future, science says so. It just needs to change our way of life.

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ttempf of the poem, Performance Attempf of the poem, Performance

ttempf of the poem, Performance Attempf of the poem, Performance

ttempf of the poem, Performance Attempf of the poem, Performance

ttempf of the poem, Performance Attempf of the poem, Performance

ttempf of the poem, Performance Attempf of the poem, Performance

ttempf of the poem, Performance Attempf of the poem, Performance

ttempf of the poem, Performance Attempf of the poem, Performance