A Day in the Country

Performance, 2022
Duration: 20 min
Creation, performance by: VASKOS (Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis)
Text by: VASKOS, based on dialogues from “Partie de campagne” (1936) film by Jean Renoir

A Day in the Country is a performance that poetically and playfully comments on our ambivalent relationship with the countryside. Inspired by the tenderness and irony at Jean Renoir’s unfinished film “Partie de campagne” (1936), the performance is an uncanny attempt to return to the first innocence. VASKOS use camp and queer methodologies to represent cliché images of the double (mother-daughter, male rivalry, or male companionship), and bring as stage props prints from the photographic series “déjà vu” and prints on textile from the drawing series “Late August Afternoon”. 

Do you like the countryside? The ravines? The springs? Which trees do you like? The willows? The pine trees? The lilac? Do you pick roses? Do you pick petals off the daisy? Do you love me? Do you love me not? (VASKOS)

Presented at “Sheltered Gardens Parallel Programme”, a series of live performances, readings and workshops curated by Kika Kyriakakou and VASKOS (Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis), 22 – 24 September 2023, Diomedes Botanic Garden, Athens, Greece.

Photographs by Maria Toultsa