Status Quo In Mirage

Cyprus Theatre Organisation (THOC) presents the National Participation of Cyprus in PQ: A large-scale installation by artists Elena Kotasvili and Alexis Vayianos, curated by dramaturg Marina Maleni. As arts writer Maria Petridou notes: Status Quo in Mirage creates a situation in which visitors engage silently (or not) with structures of power, as these are observed by viewers through a distancing glass.

A hefty table reserved for the meetings of those in power acts almost as a centerpiece of the setting, only it is moved by an unending wave whose flux is undefined and whose contourless animation washes against the threshold of operation and authority.

Status Quo in Mirage draws us into a fleeting or reflective moment in which to encounter matters related to participation, democracy, citizenship, the value of choice in an age of crises, but also issues that relate to affectivity, affinity, the environment, other lives that matter, processes of making waves. Decisions are made behind solid doors, where sound is insulated, voices are muffled, bodies are made unviewable. Sight is negotiable and variable depending on your point of view. The inside seems protected, split from whatever and whoever is outside, but the stream of opinion, an unfolding and growing muscle, sees through a distancing glass and seizes the momentum that could upset the structure of the state in which we are. Dense modes of bureaucracy are fluidly layered into captivating visions of nuanced colours, textures of water mass, and tone; flooding over the transitory inhabitants of the installation, the aura affects them, possibly, by bringing them directly into a confrontation with the oppression of the current state. By constructing a social and spatial relationship to this monster in the room, the artists present a condition where the rippling of the order of things or an inevitable dismantling of the purview of the status in quo, is possible.

Country/Region Cyprus

Presenting Organization Cyprus Theatre Organisation

Curator Marina Maleni

Artists Alexis Vayianos, Elena Kotasvili

Team Elena Kotasvili, Alexis Vayianos