“This is the sadness which adheres to all mortal life, a sadness, however, which never attains reality, but only serves the everlasting joy of overcoming. Whence, the veil of depression, of heavy-heartedness which is spread out across the whole of the nature, hence the profound, indestructible melancholy of all life.”
Schelling, Treatise on the essence of human freedom (1809)
Duration: 22′
* Arc for Dance 2016,Athens,Greece
* Akropoditi Dance Festival 2016,Syros,Greece
* Internationales Performance Festival 2017,Mainz,Germany
* Our Festival, Rematia’s Open theatre,Athens,Greece
* Masdanza Contemporary Dance Festival 2017, Grand Canaria, Canary Islands
* Masdanza Extension Tenerife, Tenerife, Canary Islands
* Polis Theatre
* Garage of Performing Arts,Corfu,Greece
* International Festival Agitart: Figueres es mou 2018,Figueres,Spain
Concept|Choreography: Margarita Trikka
Performers: Candy Karra,Chara Kotsali|Lia Chamilothori
Dramaturgy: Dimitra Mitropoulou
Original music: Sancho 003
Sound: Vangelis Lappas
Set|Costumes: Artemis Flessa
Lighting Design: Nikos Vlasopoulos
Video|Photos: Μάνος Αρβανιτάκης
George Steiner, in his essay ‘Ten (possible) reasons for the sadness of thought’, takes as a principle that thinking is feeling sad and proves it by mentioning ten paradoxes of human thought that lead to melancholy. So, based on this essay, the group focuses on researching kinetically the operation of thought and presenting the tragicomic of the human mind.
It is about a duet that forms a system, which operates as whole; it is never apart and has a continual, circular and spiral movement, always in the same direction.Τhis trajectory that a body lines out in space and time, which is definitely related to the laws of centripetal and centrifugal, forms the kinetic base of the piece.
We perceive our mind as a microcosm, where if we zoom in, we see two little humans in the hour of duty. Suddenly the landscape changes and the system of thought transforms to a system of two humans, who lie in a situation of agony and enthusiasm. And like this, the intellectual becomes sentimental and human, reminding that whatever spins around our head are us.
The Trajectory: Α tragedy of a victory researches the operation of thought in general and specifically our beliefs, the compulsion of thought, interjections, the thinking clichés, connotations and after all it wonders itself if thinking is feeling sad indeed.
If thinking imprisons or sets free.
The tragedy of a victory
The limit of my language is the limit of my world, Wittgenstein says, and Steiner extends it saying that the limit of my thought is the limit of my world. Language speaks about what it knows but constantly tries to impose itself to thought and it doesn’t make it. My thought is what stands between me and the world. It is what defines me. What am I? A thinking being. Descartes’ Cogito Ergo Sum is an endless tautology. To perceive existence I have to refer to thought and vise versa. To perceive movement I have to refer to the movement itself. I dissolve movement to its component parts and I enjoy the self-refential.
So, where tragedy lies in? In the field of consciousness. I, who thinks, am nothing else but a thinking reed, borrowing Pascal’s definition, which is taken away by the wind. My mind is magnificent. It has endless pοtentials. This victory though is poignant. I can’t stop thinking, no matter how much I want to, obsessions, warped beliefs and linguistic boundaries overcome me, I am incapable to do everything I am thinking of, I am incapable to maintain my memory, I am a pray of my thought.
I think therefore I feel melancholic. Yes, but this awareness is my victory.
