Performance, 2023
Duration: 30 min
Creation, video, performed by: VASKOS (Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis)
Texts by: Gustave Flaubert, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Gauguin, VASKOS
Letters From Tioman Island is a performance that interweaves in a critical and queer mode with the Western tradition of Orientalism, and the pictorial tradition of Odalisques in the Arts. It draws material from personal journeys and multicultural sounds, as well as from 19th century letters or the art of haiku. VASKOS recite letters written by major 19th century artists like Gauguin, Rimbaud, or Flaubert, sent from exotic, oriental places. The performance is in constant dialogue with a video shot in Tioman Island, a tropical island in Southeast Asia, showing staged performances in situ by VASKOS. The artistic duo approaches with mocking delight the stereotypical representations of Orientalism as well as contemporary travel narratives of bliss. VASKOS sway drunkenly, lustfully, guiltily and delightfully together. Through queer strategies and methodologies they assume the hybridity of identity.
We are writing you this letter from a distant land. Our half-naked bodies are lying on the sand, under the shade of palm leaves, and a giant lizard is stoically looking at us. Everything here is so exotic and yet so friendly and familiar. We think of you often and talk about you as we run happily through sparkling waters or eat a ripe mangosteen. (VASKOS)
First presented at “Oh, tranquility! Penetrating the very rock, A cicada’s voice”, a two-day performance programme and an exhibition curated by Kika Kyriakakou, in the framework of the 2023 programme of the Ministry of Culture’s All of Greece One Culture institution, 23 – 24 July 2023, Pi, Global Center for Circular Economy and Culture (former Pikionis’ pavilion), Delphi, Greece.
Photographs by Maria Toultsa
VASKOS 