Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities are in conversation with the Invisible City of the ancient Knossos, in the garden of the Knossos Research Centre of the British School of Athens, in Heraklion, Crete, in a unique sound installation that will be presented on Friday 25 August 2023 at 21.00, under the artistic curatorship of Magda Korpi, organized by the Region of Crete. After her first theatrical staging, transferring Roberto Bolanio's Phylacto to the Cyclades Street Theatre "Lefteris Vogiatzis", Magda Korpi invites us to Crete, with the participation of exceptional artists, to a different experience-listening and with a unique live action the interaction of sound with the garden and its listeners. It is a recorded sound navigation.
With the musical composition of Sofia Kamagianni, the voices of the performers Nikos Kouris, Lilly Meleme, Maria Skoulas, Harris Charalambous-Kazepis, Yannis Haroulis, and with the historic garden as a meeting place, we are invited to make a descent into the hinterland of the in-between, tracing the invisible world that illuminates the path for the experience of the visible.
In 1972 the Italian writer Italo Calvino will write the enigmatic Invisible Cities. He, as his personal friend and author Vassilis Vassilikos will say, "preferred to float and get lost in the stratosphere, rather than land on earth where there is an army and bullets and where he knew them at first hand in his youth. With some of his works, Calvino entered the unexplored spaces of the sky. Where there is no dirt and no blood. Thus, his books become space and the Cities Invisible "*.
In the garden of the British School of Athens, next to the archaeological site of Knossos, the lonely islands of voices will carve invisible sound paths. In some of them, each of us might recognize a city of our own. On August 25, the listener will be able to close his or her eyes and listen to the dream places of the Invisible Cities. With words, sound and music as material, he will hear those disembodied voices that wander in the air as other love poems; love poems for cities, looking for their recipient.
*Vassilis Vassilikos on Italos Calvinos, Vassilikos Vassilikos, Speech, 24.10.2015
RATES:
Author: Italo Calvino
Translation.
Dramatic Editing/Conception by Magda Korpi
The Voices of the Performers are heard: Nikos Kouris, Lilly Meleme, Maria Skoula, Harris Charalambous-Kazepis, Yannis Haroulis
Music Composition/Sound Design: Sofia Kamagianni
Sound Installation/Sound Recording: Nikos Kollias
Lighting design: Panagiotis Tsevrenis
Recording/Mixing Studio: Antart Studios
Contact: Evangelia Skrobola-Katerina Apostolopoulou
External Partners: Dimitra Dermitzaki, Maria Fasouli
Photo: Stelios Papardelas
The musicians participated in the recording: Stavros Parginos (cello), Alexandros Dandoulakis (guitar), Sofia Kamagianni (piano), Nikos Kolias (bass)
The book is published by Kastaniotis.
(LE CITTA INVISIBILI by Italo Calvino. Copyright © 2002, Estate of Italo Calvino, used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited).
FRIDAY 25 AUGUST 2023
KNOSSOS RESEARCH CENTRE (BRITISH SCHOOL OF ATHENS)
VILA ARIADNE KNOSSOS
Duration: 60' minutes
Entrance time to the venue 20:40
Event start time 21:00 strictly
Permissible audience limit of 150 people with controlled provision of free entry passes
Organised by: the Region of Crete
Production Company: Cretanart Productions