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SOPHIE FETOKAKI
things I’m doing, have done, will do
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Artist Portfolio
æ æ / αἰ αί / ay ay: lessons in love and loss
(creative non-fiction & sound art)
Abundance
(album)
Duet for two poets
(performance)
Quad
(series of site-specific performances of a work by Samuel Beckett)
meta/morphē
(interdisciplinary durational performance)
Lunch / Hádegisverður
(collaborative theatre piece )
The Resurrection
(sound art)
Hringflautan
(collaborative, site-specific performance)
Song Cycles
(community art)
The Sky in a Room
(site-specific, durational work by Ragnar Kjartansson, in which I collaborate as musical director and performer)
æ æ / αἰ αί / ay ay: lessons in love and loss
This piece is a work of creative non-fiction and sound art published in
Chicago Review of Books’ online magazine
Arcturus
,
and in print, in
Issue N.4
of Icelandic multilingual literary journal
Ós.
I originally wrote the piece for
a performance at Perdu Poetry Institute
in Amsterdam. The original, full performance can be viewed
here
.
Below you can listen to the sound piece that serves as the coda for the work, entitled “ Epilogue (and Moirológhi for Alkēstis)” (linked to by QR code in the print pubication). It is intended as a funeral lament for Alkēstis, the heroine of Euripides’ eponymous tragedy. In it, I play with the sonic equivalent of erasure, or blackout poetry; the chorus’ lamentations are distorted almost beyond audibility, serving as rhythmic punctuation for an improvised (live) lament. The text of the lament is taken from the syllablic vocalisms that the tragic poets used to indicate grief:AI AI; E E; IO GONAI; IO MOI MOI; OTOTOTOTOTOI.
Sophie Fetokaki
·
Epilogue (and Moirológhi For Alkestis)
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Abundance
In November 2021 I released my cross-genre debut album Abundance, co-produced with ECM artist Fred Thomas and featuring my own songs, folk songs in five languages, and reimaginings of Bach and Schumann. Tracks from Abundance have been released on London label Nonclassical and played on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio Cymru, KEXP Seattle, The Wire Magazine’s radio show, NTS radio, Avopolis Radio (Greece), and many others. BBC presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch called Abundance “one of my all-time favourite albums of 2021,” while Fresh on the Net’s Neil March wrote: “Reimagining classical works and traversing the [needless] boundaries between contemporary classical, folk and experimental music, she has the kind of resolutely individual approach that has made artists as diverse as Anna Meredith, Esperanza Spalding and Polly Harvey so intriguing.”
Instead of physical copies, the album was released digitally along with a
votive beeswax altar candle,
realised through collaboration with researcher Savvas Avraam at CYENS - Thinker Maker Space (3d scan and print) and artist Vasiliki Riala at ÷χρονικό (silicone mould and candle). The candle was created by making a silicone mould from a 3d scan and print of myself, in the pose in which I appear on the album cover. Votive candles are used to aid prayer in many spiritual practices. I imagine them to clarify and illumine the intention of the one who prays, and to act as offerings to the forces that help bring about what is desired. This particular candle is modeled on the Greek Orthodox τάματα (tamata), votive offerings (often in candle form) that are dedicated to a saint, and act as a link between individual human desire and infinite, divine life force. I'm drawn to these objects because of their association for me with the healing power of art.
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Duet for two poets
This piece is a work of performance writing. Two poets, one present in the performance space and the other absent, use Google Docs to compose a duet. The audience watches the performer who is present and the text as it unfolds (through a projection of the performer’s screen). The piece probes the notion of writing as an intimate, solitary act, exposing it not only to improvisatory interaction but also to observation. I am interested in what happens when writing is watched, when it becomes an instrument of performance, and what this might say about the performative nature of others forms and practices of writing.
Duet for two poets at the
Modernism Today Conference
Mia You
performing the duet at
Doorkruising
performing arts series. Photo by
Kasper Vogelzang
.
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Quad
Play by Samuel Beckett. In 2018, I staged repeated performances of this work, using it as a premise to explore public art and the various frames that cause us to perceive an act as “performance.” For the excerpt of my doctoral thesis that addresses this project, see
here
(opens pdf).
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
November 19th, 2018
Coverage on BBC Radio 3
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001m3g
Photos by
Sam Gillies
Series of site-specific performances in Spring, 2018
photos and videos by
Lynette Quek
With: Eleanor Cully, Gaia Blandina, David Pocknee, Rodrigo Constanzo, Johnny Hunter, Fred Thomas, Maurizio Ravalico, Vera Goetzee, James Jean-Luc Wood, Colin Frank, Alex Tod and Thomas Weideman.
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meta/morphē
not the telos of a process, but the augur of an arrival
meta/morphē is performance art, community art, installation, experimental music, durational performance, recycling project and much more. It first took place in June 2018 in Reykjavik, Iceland, when a group of interdisciplinary artists spent two weeks disassembling a grand piano and re-configuring it into a plethora of material and immaterial objects. The artists were present in various configurations throughout the duration of the project, working both independently and in groups. Performances and performative events of various kinds took place around the central activity of the piano disassemblage, relating to and making use of the piano in many and varied ways.
meta/morphē
Facebook page
meta/morphē
: “after the form”, from Greek
meta
(prep.) “after”, “along with”, “beyond”, “among”, “in pursuit of” +
morphē
(noun) “shape”, “form”, “appearance”, “figure”, “outline”, “kind”, “sort”.
meta/morphē is an act of collaboratively transforming a piano into something else. If the piece had a score, it might read: “Carefully disassemble a piano over a period of time with the assistance of fellow artists and the public. Use the disassembled parts to make new things”. Behind the act is a central question: what comes after the form?
meta/morphē is an inverse Argo. Instead of replacing each piece of the ship until it is entirely renewed, without having changed either its name or form, here the ship is gradually taken apart and the pieces are used to create new forms.
What becomes of the name, after the form? How do we relate to the object during and after its transformation? How does the transformation help us to know our relationship to the (former) object?
The form of meta/morphē itself is the combination of the piano and the situation of its disassemblage and transformation. This form constitutes a relationship to the world.
The form of meta/morphē embraces the piano itself, the time of its disassemblage, the social space in which the disassemblage took place, the multiplicity of shoots that sprouted from the work (text, audio, video, photography, performance, interaction, sculpture...), Within this form are sets of relations – between each of the artists; between each individual and the piano; between the various things that are the plethora of the piano; between the piano as it begun and the various artefacts into which it transformed; and so forth.
meta/morphē is performed by a group of individuals who spend long stretches of time together, remaining open to the inclusion of passers-by. It takes as a departure point the notion that “the form of an artwork is a relation to the world,” and that an artist produces “relations between people and the world, by way of aesthetic objects” (Nicolas Bourriaud,
Relational Aesthetics
).
The piano is the ‘aesthetic object’ by way of which we create relations between one another, and between ourselves and the world. It is the axel of our activity, but it is also merely the occasion for it.
The following are recordings from my daily practice of playing songs and improvisations at the piano as it transformed, including the Aria from Bach’s
Goldberg Variations
and Gillian Welch’s “Dear Someone.”
The following film documents the 2018 performance of meta/morphē in Reykjavík.
June 8th - 22nd, 2018
Iðnó
Vonarstræti 3, 101
Reykjavík
Artists:
Sophie Fetokaki (maker/performer)
María Arnardóttir (artist/designer)
Einar Torfi Einarsson (composer/artist)
Kristian Ross (composer/sound artist)
Linus Orri Gunnarsson Cederborg (carpenter/musician)
Rebecca Scott Lord (performer/painter/writer)
Taylor Myers (director/performer/immersive theatre maker)
Thelma Marín Jónsdóttir (artist/musician)
Tinna Þorsteinsdóttir (pianist/artist)
General public and passers-by
Funded by:
August 26th - 31st, 2019
Kaleido Cultural Centre
Piteå, Sweden
Ung Nordisk Musik Festival
unm.se/2019-festival-schedule/
www.pitea.se/kaleido
The following short fillm was shot on location in Piteå, during the festival. The soundtrack consists entirely of sounds generated with or around the transforming piano.
It was just there, it just stood there, in the end. And I can’t play, no one plays, so it just takes up space. We decided we would try to give it away, we asked everyone in the circle of acquaintances ... Somehow one feels respect for this instrument, which has been very central and given us a lot. One doesn't want to just throw it away. But no one wanted to have it, and we thought in the end that we would have to drive it to the dump, we will have to throw it away. But then you heard about it... And then we also thought it feels a little strange that someone should take it apart and it will sort of disappear into pieces, but it was still better. Now it feels good that it was useful.
Leyla, resident of Piteå and (previous) owner of the (former) piano
Participants:
Sophie Fetokaki (maker/performer)
María Arnardóttir (artist/designer)
Kristine Bech Sørensen (artist)
Composers, performers and general public of Ung Nordisk Musik Festival 2019
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Lunch / Hádegisverður
https://northernperformingart.com/
This was an collaborative, interdisciplinary theatre work created during the Northern Creation Residency in Kaukonen, Finland as part of the Northern Network of Performing Arts. I was part of an interdisciplinary group of eight artists that spent one month in Kaukonen, working together to find a meeting point at which we and our many practices could converge. The piece that emerged was an exploration of choreographies of care and nourishment - a performance archive of the month we spent embedded in one another’s daily lives.
Photos and trailer by Christoffer Collina
During the residency and the days prior to the performance, I made this score/object,
“LUNCH FRAGMENTS: An aleatoric digestion game; a performance; a piece of window dressing
.” It is a playful response to the challenges of working in this kind of format. There was so much that I found precious and beautiful about our time together that could not make it into the performance - and so I created this game to hold snippets of ideas, conversation, botanical and taxonomic curiosities. The chance-based procedures reflect the complexities of organisation and authorship inherent to working in such a large group. I could not order the material myself (as much of it did not originate in me) and it would have been impossible to ensure everyone’s agreement on the form - and so I let chance decide.
With: Erlend Auestad Danielsen (dancer, NO), Anni-Kristiina Juuso (actor, Sápmi), Mari Keski-Korsu (postdisciplinary artist and researcher, FI), Emma Langmoen (circus artist, NO), Júlía Mogensen (cellist and artist, IS) Riikka Vuorenmaa (light artist and performer, FI) and director and facilitator Jacob Zimmer (CAN/WHITEHORSE).
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The Resurrection
Created for the eavesdropping
end-of-season playlist,
later released with UK label
nonclassical
, on volume 4 of their lockdown compliation series
I hope this finds you well in these strange times
Holy week on Thassos, an island just south of the Eastern Macedonian mainland. Since congregating is forbidden, religious services are held behind closed doors, delivered by the priest and two cantors and amplified via megaphone speakers mounted on the outer walls of the church.
On Good Friday, the bells perform an exquisite work of durational performance art, pealing out the three tones of a minor triad, one tone every four seconds, for six hours.
On Easter Sunday, a shortened version of the liturgy, roughly one hour long, resounds throughout the village.
On Monday, I go to the hills.
eavesdropping.london
·
Sophie Fetokaki 'The Resurrection'
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Hringflautan
Collaboration with composer
Þráinn Hjálmarsson
and designer
Brynjar Sigurðarson and Veronika Sedlmair.
The performance was built around Brynjar & Veronika’s invention, the ‘circleflute,’ which must be played simultaneously by four flautists. Together we developed a performance around themes of breathing together, attuning to stillness, and exploring the edges of gestural perceivability.
With flautists: Björg Brjánsdóttir, Melkorka Ólafsdóttir, Steinunn Vala Pálsdóttir and Berglind María Tómasdóttir
October 25th, 2018
Gerðarsafn Gallery
Kópavogur
Iceland
Cycle Music and Art Festival
Click here for the Circleflute texts,
which I wrote for the project and which became the basis of Þráinn’s compositions.
A circle, mise-en-scène, an object, a character [teaser/excerpt] - Circle flute opera installation
from
Thrainn Hjalmarsson
on
Vimeo
.
After hearing about the circleflute, Björk included it in her “Cornucopia” tour.
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Song Cycles
During Festival Xarkis 2018 I facilitated a community art project engaged with folk song, folk song transmission, and collective memory. The project had three principal stages:
(1) Gathering: during the first half of the residency I wandered around Koilani asking people to sing for me a song or songs of their choice, which I recorded (with permission) using a handheld recorder. Generally people were happy to oblige, inviting me into their homes for coffee and sweets, curious to hear more about the festival and about my project. Although most of the recording sessions began somewhat timidly, my hosts often began to remember more songs as they went along, each song summoning the next, recollected and performed by an effort involving the whole group. My project was not necessarily invested in the preservation of oral culture; in a way I was taking a snapshot of the village in song, and as such I was prepared to accept any song offered to me by the residents of the village. Nonetheless, the participants tended towards folk song and orally transmitted songs, and the recording sessions were often portraits of intergenerational memory, with adults asking their elderly parents to remember a song from their youth, and the grandchildren around also joining in. My simple question -
would you like to sing me a song?
- revealed just how much song is bound up with memory, the past and group participation.
(2) Learning: during the second half of the residency I learned the songs myself, and put together a document with the lyrics of each song, in preparation for the workshop.
(3) Teaching and performing: during the festival weekend itself, I facilitated a workshop which was open to whomever wanted to participate. I taught the participants the songs I had gathered during the residency, thereby transferring a body of songs from the village residents to those visiting the village. At the end of the workshop we staged a flash mob-style performance at the village kafeneio.
The material presented here contains the original field recordings made during the residency period, and an audio recording of myself singing those same songs. The audio recording was made on the morning of December 21st 2018, among the shrubs and pines in the outskirts of Mathiatis, where my mother lives. Although this last recording is inessential to the project, it felt like a necessary arc of the circle. With this arc, the circle feels complete. Both the field recording and the December recording were exhibited at the Xarkis Festival Exhibition at
Point Centre for Contemporary Art
on December 21st 2018.
This material presented here is a document; the artwork itself took place in August, among and between the people who generously participated in it.
All photography by
Emma Louise Charalambous
Field recordings
Recording December 2018
See
Documentation as ceremony, practice as proliferation
(opens pdf) for the excerpt of my PhD that addresses the following recording and its epistemic status as an artefact.
Residency
Workshop
Performance
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The Sky in a Room
https://inews.co.uk/culture/arts/ragnar-kjartannson-sky-room-national-museum-wales-review-moments-hypnotic-transcendence/
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/feb/02/ragnar-kjartanssons-five-week-marathon-of-music-the-sky-in-a-room-review
photo by Gareth Phillips
Video on Vimeo:
Ragnar Kjartansson
The Sky in a Room, 2018
Performer, organ and the song "Il Cielo in una Stanza" by Gino Paoli (1960)
Commissioned by Artes Mundi for the National Museum in Cardiff
Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik
Recorded during the performance at the National Museum in Cardiff 3. February - 11. March 2018, performance by Sophie Fetokaki and Sam Roberts.
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