New Video Works By Daniel Wetzel, Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra, and More to Be Featured in Week 6 Of ENTER Project
By: Stephi Wild Jun. 01, 2020
The Onassis Foundation presents Week 6 of ENTER, their series of new works commissioned from artists in various parts of the world, created in their homes in 120 hours or less and drawing on experiences through the COVID-19 pandemic and its many transformations of life as we know it.
Week 6 highlights include:
- Director Daniel Wetzel (Rimini Protokoll) reflects on the stories that airplane safety cards hold in a time of stillness (Safety Cards 2.0).
- Prix Marcel Duchamp winner Eric Baudelaire recounts the adventure of an inflated glove-personal protective equipment-in the time of COVID-19 (The Glove).
- Tim Etchells, Jim Fletcher, and Chris Thorpe reflect on power, mortality, and self-illusion (We Are the King of Ventilators).
- ITCHY-O offers of an invocation to the gods on the night when the Moon is at minimum distance from the Earth (Milk Moon Rite).
- Ethan Lipton and his Orchestra transform musical notes into the thoughts of a man during quarantine (Sleep Train).
- The filmmaker Yorgos Zois creates a science-fiction love story in dystopian times (Touch me).
- Director Simos Kakalas ponders on the meaning of a universe where there is no one to observe it (Destination Acropolis).
Works by acclaimed artists worldwide are already available online as part of ENTER. For Week 5 The Chocolate Factory Theater curated Madeline Best & Brian Rogers, Tei Blow, keyon gaskin, Dynasty Handbag, Annie-B Parson. Week 4 of ENTER, engaged artists curated by the Queens Museum including Xin Liu, Samita Sinha, Frisly Soberanis, QUEENSBOUND, and Alina Tenser & Gabo Camnitzer; and Greek artists Lena Kitsopoulou, Maria Papadimitriou, and RootlessRoot. Week 3 included Independent Spirit Award-winning and Golden Globe-nominated actress and writer Isabella Rossellini and Flying Karamazov Brothers member Paul Magid; Ziad Antar; Evi Kalogiropoulou; Kareem Kalokoh; Risa Puno and Avi Dobkin; RootlessRoot; Kostis Stafylakis, Theo Triantafyllidis, and Alexis Fidetzis; and Akira Takayama. Elias Adam, Simos Kakalas, Vasilis Kekatos, Andonis Foniadakis, Emily Johnson, Kathryn Hamilton (Sister Sylvester), RootlessRoot, and Stefanos Tsivopoulos were featured in Week 2. The series launched in Week 1 with works from 600 HIGHWAYMEN, Maria Antelman, Kimberly Bartosik, Annie Dorsen, Radiohole, Dimitris Karantzas, and Efthimis Filippou.
Eric Baudelaire, The Glove
Video | Duration: 8'
A confined rubber glove escapes into the world in a time of pandemic. Its wandering through half-empty streets is set to an original musical score improvised by Alvin Curran. Eric Baudelaire comments: "Sometimes you feel like an inflated prophylactic glove, and you almost want to jump out the window."
Eric Baudelaire (b. 1973) is an artist and filmmaker based in Paris, France. After training as a political scientist, Baudelaire established himself as a visual artist with a research-based practice incorporating photography, printmaking, and video. Since 2010, filmmaking has become central to his work. His feature films "Un Film Dramatique" (2019), "Also Known As Jihadi" (2017), "Letters to Max" (2014), "The Ugly One" (2013), and "The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years Without Images" (2011) have circulated widely in film festivals (including Locarno, Toronto, New York, FID Marseille, and Rotterdam). When shown within exhibitions, Baudelaire's films are part of broad installations that include works on paper, performance, publications and public programs, in projects such as "APRÈS" at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and "The Secession Sessions", which traveled to the Berkeley Art Museum, Bétonsalon in Paris, Bergen Kunsthall and Sharjah Biennial 12. Baudelaire has had monographic exhibitions at the Witte de With, Rotterdam; the Fridericianum, Kassel; the Beirut Art Center; Gasworks, London; and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. He has participated in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, the 2014 Yokohama Triennale, Mediacity Seoul 2014, and the 2012 Taipei Biennial. His work is in the collections of the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, the MACBA in Barcelona, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and M+ in Hong Kong. In 2019 Baudelaire was the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and the Prix Marcel Duchamp.
A film by Eric Baudelaire
Original music by Alvin Curran
Editing: Claire Atherton
People appearing: Jibril Baudelaire
Copyright: Poulet-Malassis Films
Commissioned by Onassis Foundation
Tim Etchells - Jim Fletcher - Chris Thorpe, We are the King of Ventilators
Duration: 9'
"We are the King of Ventilators" is a compelling and prescient performance to camera by Jim Fletcher, directed by Tim Etchells, with text by Chris Thorpe. The work takes a phrase about US ventilator production repeated by US President Donald Trump during the Covid-19 epidemic, and places it in sharp counterpoint with original material to create a comical and unsettling reflection on power, mortality, and delusion.
Tim Etchells is an artist, director, and writer based in the UK whose work shifts between performance, visual art, and fiction. He has worked in a wide variety of contexts, notably as the leader of the world-renowned Sheffield-based performance group Forced Entertainment. Tim's collection of short fiction "Endland" was published by And Other Stories, 2019.
Tim Etchells has collaborated with Onassis Stegi at Fast Forward Festival 3 with his posters project And For The Rest. The installation projected outside Onassis Stegi, titled All we have, is his.
Chris Thorpe is a writer and performer from Manchester. He also works as a playwright, most recently with the Royal Exchange, Unicorn Theatre, and Royal Court, for whom he's currently writing the Methuen Climate Commission. Collaborations include ongoing work with Rachel Chavkin, mala voadora, Third Angel, Yusra Warsama, Hannah Jane Walker, Rachel Bagshaw, and Javaad Alipoor.
Jim Fletcher is a performer and a founding member of New York City Players theater company with Richard Maxwell, with whom he has worked for more than twenty years. He is part of Elevator Repair Service's internationally renowned production of "Gatz," created the monologue "Sight Is the Sense That Dying People Tend to Lose First" with Tim Etchells and is currently performing and making shows with The Wooster Group. Jim Fletcher has performed at Onassis Stegi twice in Richard Maxwell's productions Showcase and The Evening in the context of the festival Made in USA (2016).
Performance: Jim Fletcher
Text: Chris Thorpe
Direction: Tim Etchells
Post-Production video: Hugo Glendinning
Project produced by Forced Entertainment
"We are the King of Ventilators" is a diptych directed by Tim Etchells with text by Chris Thorpe, performed by Jim Fletcher.
Commissioned both as part of the ENTER program by the Onassis Foundation and developed for Forest Fringe TV with the support of Teatro do Bairro Alto (Lisbon), Cambridge Junction and Colchester Arts Centre.
ITCHY-O, Milk Moon Rite
Video | Duration: 13΄35''
The Earth's only natural satellite has orbited our sky as a massive emblem for countless religious worshippers across the eons. Known to the Greeks as Selene, the Hebrew Yarcah, and the Hindu lunar god Chandra, Egyptians also associated the moon with Isis, to name just a few. It personifies the mysteries of life and death, both scientifically and spiritually. With the moon in perigee, the point of its orbit closest to Earth, May 7th, 2020 ITCHY-O executed its own Milk Moon Rite with a call to the gods for balance between opposites; the passion/attachment to cure and the pragmatism to advance effectively.
In this piece, we observe a multidimensional interplay of narrative elements represented by different members of ITCHY-O. A low oscillating synth patch that pulses before mutating, the ever-present specter of antagonist serves as a backdrop, reflecting a pandemic-laden sonic landscape. The shrieks and squeals of distortion mirror humanity's chaotic push-and-pull reaction to such a disruptive force. The two percussive elements represent a focused balance between the passion and power driving a primal response to survive tempered by the surgical precision necessary to deploy efforts efficiently. Explosive elements of fire as symbols of the outbursts of a natural world.
Lauded as one of today's most unique musical-performance groups. With a driving drum corps battery, taiko drummers, an arsenal of electronics including synthesizers, theremin, vocoders, and other custom-made sonic devices, ITCHY-O completely engulfs an audience from every angle in an electric bog of music, ephemera, and spectacle. The group disrupts traditional performance protocols with a form of chaos that unifies spectators and audiences with a powerful and immersive musical experience that features elaborate costumes, large-scale puppets, teams of provocateurs, and SpFX engineers. Drawing inspiration from many cultures - Japanese Taiko drumming to Chinese Lion dancing, Mexican street processions, ancient esoteric symbolism and American drum corps - ITCHY-O offers a transcendental musical experience that dissolves the divide between performer and spectator. ITCHY-O performances awaken the senses, test assumptions, and create an opening for new experiences where identity and boundaries surrender and disband.
Ethan Lipton & his Orchestra, Sleep Train
Song | Duration: 6΄30''
Onassis LA Presents "Sleep Train," a suite by the band Ethan Lipton & his Orchestra. Lipton conceived of the piece in the middle of the night during quarantine, while hanging out with his four-month-old baby, and the music evokes those feelings of delirium, worry, and joy. Lipton and his bandmates Ian Riggs, Vito Dieterle and Eben Levy have been collaborators for 15 years, but this song is their first foray into working together remotely.
Lipton notes: "This suite was created May 2-8, when my partner and I were deep in sleepless delirium with our 4-month-old. I arranged some songlets that were running in my head into a single composition meant to evoke the looping, loopy thoughts people face in a quarantined life. I was interested in how quarantine (and parenthood) keeps asking us to meet the moment, and how each moment calls up its own mantra, which quickly becomes one's entire story, until it gives way to another moment and mantra, which may be much like the one that came before. I sent my vocal arrangement to my bandmates, who responded: Ian Riggs added bass; Vito Dieterle added horns and melodica; Eben Levy added guitar, percussion, keys and production. As a band, we've recorded four studio albums, but our identity is mostly that of a 'live act'. Much of our energy in the past 8 years has gone into making theater pieces that tell a story through music - our version of musicals. 'Sleep Train' is the first time we've recorded something without working on it together in a room, without ever having played it live. We sent a few emails back and forth, but we never spoke about it. It was challenging working on it while apart, not being able to speak or read each other's body language, but that also felt like the opportunity. And after 15 years of playing together, we had to dialogue through the music. The guys went to places I never would have imagined, everyone adding mantras onto one another's mantras, and the piece is exactly what I hoped it would be."
Ethan Lipton is a playwright and songwriter, and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. Since 2005, his New York-based band, Ethan Lipton & his Orchestra, has released four albums and toured venues in the U.S. and Europe, including Grand Performances in LA, Celebrate Brooklyn, the Gate in London, and Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. The band includes Eben Levy (guitar), Ian M. Riggs (standup bass) and Vito Dieterle (sax). Ethan writes the lyrics and melodies, and the quartet arranges the songs together. Their musicals "No Place to Go" (Obie award) and "The Outer Space" (Lortel nom.) were produced in Joe's Pub by The Public Theater and directed by Leigh Silverman. The band is currently working on "The Unlived Life," a musical response to a book of essays by psychoanalyst Adam Phillips. Ethan has been an Alpert Prize Fellow at MacDowell, a member of the Public's Emerging Writers Group, part of Space at Ryder Farm's Working Farm, a Playwrights Realm Page One Fellow, a Joe's Pub New York Voices and NYFA grantee, and he is a longtime Clubbed Thumb associate artist. His plays are published by Samuel French.
Ethan Lipton: lyrics and vocals
Eben Levy: guitar, percussion, keys, production
Ian M. Riggs: bass
Vito Dieterle: saxophones, melodica
Daniel Wetzel (Rimini Protokoll), Safety Cards 2.0
Video | Duration:12'37''
Daniel Wetzel of Rimini Protokoll is an international artist, who used to travel several times a month in numerous destinations in Europe and Asia before the pandemic and the lockdown. As he notes: "In the recent four weeks of immobility I would have taken about 12 flights - from and to Athens. For years, when they announce to fasten the seat belts, I like to grab the safety card and read it like a graphic story. And every time, for years, I take one or two snapshots of them. A collection of cutouts always from the moments right before take off. Now is a good moment to see what they might tell." Going through this unusual collection, the creator reflects on what these images can reveal in a strange period like this one. How could we stand so many flights for so many years? To whom do we send photographs before take off? What stories do airplane cards hold?
Daniel Wetzel is a member of the German-Swiss artists label Rimini Protokoll. Since 2000, they have created more than 120 different works in the fields of performing arts, live art, radio, and installations. Central to their work is the further development of art and performing arts to allow for unconventional views on our reality. Their collaborations with the Onassis Stegi include the hyperrealistic multiplayer video set "Situation Rooms" (2014); the piano piece about a ruin of the future, "Odos Lithis / Road to Oblivion," as part of the "X Apartments" project (2015); "Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf, Vol. 1&2" (2016); the John Cage adaption "Evros Walk Water pt. 1&2" (2015-17); the multiplayer cloud piece for teenagers "Bubble Jam" (2018); and the performance by the grandchildren of Cuban revolutionaries about their grandparents, "Granma: Trombones from Havana" (2019). They have received several awards, including the Silver Lion of the Venice Biennale (theater), the European Theater Prize 'New Realities', the German National Awards for drama (Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis) and theater (Der FAUST, special award). Daniel lives in Athens and Berlin. The Onassis Foundation is currently supporting an illustrated compendium about the 20 years of Rimini Protokoll, edited by Imanuel Schipper.
Concept & direction: Daniel Wetzel
Music: "Win Win Score", Rimini Protokoll
"Win Win Score" composed by Daniel Wetzel and Rimini Protokoll (Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, Daniel Wetzel)
Commissioned by Onassis Foundation
Yorgos Zois, Touch me
Video | Duration: 8'30''
In a distant future world, where water and air are contaminated, and it is prohibited to touch one another, a girl and a boy decide to go to a beach. Yorgos Zois creates a science-fiction love story, reflecting on life and human relations with humor and tenderness. This short film skillfully strikes a balance between dream and nightmare, reality and dystopia, isolation and proximity.
For the film he created for Enter, the director enlists his collaborator cinematographer Konstantina Kotzamani as well as the young and talented dancers Dafin Antoniadou and Alexandros Vardaxoglou, whom we have recently seen choreograph and perform Vanishing Point at the Young Choreographers Festival 7 in February 2020 at the Small Stage. He uses costumes from his film Third Kind, alluding to the post-apocalyptic science-fiction thriller which received its premiere at the International Critics Week of the 71 Cannes Film Festival.
Yorgos Zois (b. 1982) is an Athens-based Greek director. His body of work has been selected at A-list film festivals worldwide (Cannes, Venice, Rotterdam, Telluride, Palm Springs, Clermont Ferrand etc.), has been acknowledged with numerous awards and distinctions worldwide, among them a European Film Academy nomination as best director. He has won a best short film award, and best newcomer feature director award from the Greek Film Academy. His films have also raised highly acclaimed reviews internationally for their meta aesthetics and daring narration. Recently, he has served on the official jury for 'Lion of the Future' at the 74th Venice International Film Festival.
Suitable for viewers over 18; it contains sexually suggestive scenes.
Direction: Yorgos Zois
Script: Yorgos Zois, Konstantina Kotzamani
Starring: Dafne Antoniadou, Alexandros Vardaxoglou
Cinematography: Yannis Kanakis, Yannis Karabatsos
Costumes Design: Christina Lardikou
Sound: Dario Le Bars
Editors: Yannis Chalkiadakis, Leonidas Papafotiou
Production Management: Cleo Milto
VF: Thodoris Zigiris
Special thanks: Mariana Bisti, Nefeli Capon, Sante Agilare, Antigoni Rota, George Alahouzos
Commissioned by: Onassis Foundation
Simos Kakalas, Destination Acropolis
Video | Duration: 3'55''
A creature is walking on the empty Dimitrakopoulou street; a route that extends to the heart of a neighborhood marked by parked cars, rubbish bins, apartment buildings without a trace of life, and birds flying carefree.
In his second film for Enter, Simos Kakalas uses Google translate for texts found on people's "walls" during the quarantine period, seen as metaphors of everyday life; their meaning transforms during this extraordinary situation. An accidental post obtains futuristic nuances; through algorithms, it mistakenly expresses a deformed, dystopian image of the present.
One day the work's character tells himself: "Stop hoping. You opened Pandora's Box and now, at the end, you are waiting for Hope. Do not expect anything. Nothing will change. Go away. Move. Dance. Use your body. Act, do this, make any action as long as you never believe in hope. The house that you built will crash you, simply because it is rotten and it will collapse. It is certain; it is the law of nature. Go away or put it on fire. But stop hoping." He then leaves the city on his horse.
Simos Kakalas (b. Thessaloniki, Greece, 1973) graduated from the National Theater of Northern Greece's (NTNG) School of Drama in 1996, where he worked as an actor and assistant director between 2000-2004. He was a founding member of the theater organization 'Nees Morfes' (New Forms), in 1996, where he worked mainly as an actor. In 2003 he founded and directed the 'Horos' Theater Company; through this company he researched and directed his main projects until 2017. With both companies, he advocated for a physical and 'poor' theater, one that highlights poetic language and interaction. Since 2017, he works as a freelance stage director and has collaborated, amongst other theaters, with the NTNG, the National Theater of Greece in Athens, The Athens & Epidaurus Festival, the Onassis Stegi and the National Opera of Greece. Working with masks, puppets, video projections and live music, he is in constant research of narratives and techniques. As an acting coach since 1995 he has taught in numerous schools and has organized workshops all over Greece.
His work has been presented in festivals internationally, such as Dialog Festival (Wroclaw, Poland), 40th Tampereen Teatterikesa (Finland), 43rd Kontrapunkt International Festival (Poland), Sibiu International Theater Festival (Romania), Heidelbergerstuckemarkt (Germany), Athens & Epidaurus Festival (Greece), New Greek Wave (Theaterbremen, Germany), Europe Speaks Out! (Staatsschauspiel Stuttgart, Germany), and the Festival of UTE.
Directed by Simos Kakalas
Creature created by Martha Foka
Edited by Dora Kalakidou
Camera by Dido Gogou
Performed by Simos Kakalas
Commissioned by Onassis Foundation
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