04/03/2017 - 05/03/2017

In the framework of the project Blast from the Past: A retrospective to the future. Curated by Blast collective.
Heroe's square monument.

In this newly proposed version of Arianna's Economou work IN A DARK TIME (2002), she presents a durational dance performance on some of the alchemical symbolism and stages of the journey of the soul toward the Self (Calcinatio, Mortificatio, Solutio).

Through the deconstruction of the already existing material (poetry, visual installation and sound), the performance carries a ritualistic character where the audience is free to come and go and witness the artist’s process.

The performer in this process -with axis the thinking body and its movement- opens this dialogue toward the Self and the audience, trying a new practice that relies on the sharing of the creative process and the dynamics of the ongoing shifts between unconscious and conscious, visible and invisible.

- Kiriakos Spirou:

Dance Throughout the Year

In the basement of Heroesʼ Square monument, dancer and choreographer Arianna Economou staged an installation with texts, materials, video and sound relating to her older piece In a Dark Time from 2002. Fifteen years later, the choreographer revisited the piece as part of the project Blast from the Past, and exposed the materials and elements of that older piece in the form of a long-durational inhabitation of the installation space and through the iteration of gestures, tasks and texts. As we entered the space, Arianna Economou informed us that with this project she is asking “if thereʼs such a thing as a natural body”, and whether she could dance without performing. Arianna Economouʼs process was definitely worth its duration, not only because of the inspiring material contained within, but also because it was an exploration into the vast and tacit experience and embodied knowledge of an older dancer. People like Arianna Economou are living treasure troves of experience, from which younger artists have a lot to learn and inherit. Arianna Economouʼs presentation revealed many things about knowledge, experience and presence. It showed that revisiting the past betrays that the past is always present in the body. By asking “if thereʼs such a thing as a natural body”, the artist also reveals how our bodies are extended through devices of knowledge, such as books, videos and drawings: through this installation, we saw Arianna all over the room, scattered in her writings, her fabrics, her books, her sounds. It is then when I realised that knowledge is something you can store and archive but at the same time it emerges in the moment, fluid and fragile. Arianna Economouʼs blast from the past was in fact not immediate like an explosion, but slow and patient like a dripping cave, where stalagmites of knowledge accumulate over long periods of time. We are never the same, yet a sameness is always with us.