Performance, 2023
Duration: 30 min
Creation, video, props by: VASKOS (Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis)
Texts by: VASKOS, based on the script of Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) film by Toshio Matsumoto
Performed by: Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis, and lyrical singer and performer Lito Messini
Parade of Roses is a musical performance with elements of camp aesthetics, video karaoke and pop references, that is proposed as a set of cultural survival strategies for queers. VASKOS use dialogues and extracts from the queer film “Funeral Parade of Roses” (1969) by Toshio Matsumoto, make reference to queer artist Derek Jarman’s failed rose garden, perform Spanish, French, or Greek pop songs full of clichés about love, use their ceramic artworks from the series “Six plateaux de plaisir” as props. The performers are in constant dialogue with a hybrid video projection, made-up with film extracts by Matsumoto or Jarman, as well as with video performances by VASKOS.
May roses are the most beautiful! Nevertheless even before the weather gets hot, no matter how beautiful they are, they start to wither. Roses are the secret symbols of homoeroticism. Before they wither, roses sing, dance, dress up, shout out. Parody is their strategy, pose is their form, they adore grandeur and the ridiculous. They learn how to survive.
Presented at “Revolution is not a one time event”, a public program curated by Maria Thalia Carras & Foteini Salvaridi, 24 June 2023, TAVROS, Athens, Greece.
Photographs by Nefeli Papaioannou
VASKOS 