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WHERE THE SUN NEVER SETS, 2024
Residency + 12hour performance, Curatorial proposition
Funded by the Startup Forum Award by the Aerowaves Network

Sessions, a series of queer happenings, presented the award-winning performance Fatigue by choreographer Viktor Szeri as part of Where the Sun Never Sets, a curatorial proposal by Dimitris Chimonas. This project culminated in a twelve-hour event in the Cypriot countryside on July 20, 2024, where fourteen artists, following a short residency program and a series of workshops, accompanied Szeri’s piece with improvised performances and gestures.

The title Where the Sun Never Sets draws from Margarita Karapanou's surreal crime novel The Sleepwalker, where a quiet island becomes an apocalyptic place where the sun never sets—remaining still, slowing everything down, and signaling both destruction and liberation. In Szeri’s solo, this slowing down reflects a frustrated, tired generation searching for a new narrative. During a summer marking fifty years since the events that divided the island, artists, activists, writers, and queers from both sides of the green line sought refuge in slowness as an act of resistance. Not because slowness is inherently good, but for what it allows: the unexpected, the undefinable, and the invaluable. Are we prepared to confront and respond to the bigotry surrounding us, or are we doomed to the slothfulness of an endless summer?

The project was completed with the screenings of three video-work commissions at Queer Wave: Cyprus LGBTQIA+ Film Festival 2024.

Read more about the project on the interviews by Stella Mastorosteriou:
- Interview 1, July 19th 2024
- Interview 2, September 24th, 2024
- Interview 3, October 28th, 2024

Participating Artists:
Kris Adem, Seta Astreou Karides, George Bizios, Hayal Gezer, Gervaise Alexis Savvias & Irini Khenkin, Khaled Khalifa, Nayia T. Karacosta, Panos Malactos, WanderWonder (Marilena Mantilou), András Molnar, Loizos Olympios, Demetris Shammas, Viktor Szeri, Emiddio Vasquez.

Artistic Direction: Dimitris Chimonas
Technical Manager: Lex Gregoriou
Production Manager: Nicola Mitropoulou

With the support of Nea Kinisi, Queer Wave: Cyprus LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, and Limassol Dance House, and partial funding through the Startup Forum Award of the Aerowaves Network.

Curatorial Text

“In Cyprus the greatest loneliness is felt in the blazing heat of July” is heard in the documentary ‘Tongue’ by Panayiotis Achniotis and Andreas Anastasiades in 2019, and it’s as if Hungarian choreographer, Viktor Szeri, created a work about it. In the work “fatigue” he stands alone in the middle of the stage, covered in orange lights and fire projections, indulging in a slow-motion dance, tricking you into a loop like an instagram boomerang video. It’s so slow that he makes me want to scream. Not to scream against him, but with him. I wonder what it is that connects me with this work beyond the post apocalyptic aesthetics that our doomed, social media influenced generation of millennials thrives in. Is it our age? Is it the music that we like? Is it growing up with the rise of the internet? Is it the disillusionment we both went through as kids who grew up with the promises before 9/11? Is it that we are both victims of  late-capitalist, fascist regimes controlling our bodies, our thoughts, our behaviors, our time, our space? In ‘fatigue’, Viktor stretches time and the blasting music by Andras Molnar gives me space to hear my thoughts loud and clear.

This performance became the central point of an invitation extended to 13 artists based all over Cyprus to participate in a series of workshops, field trips and experiments to create this 12-hour happening. The title WHERE THE SUN NEVER SETS is borrowed from the surreal crime novel "The Sleepwalker" by Margarita Karapanou, where a quiet island is transformed into an apocalyptic place where the sun never sets. It stands still, slowing everything down, signaling both destruction and liberation. In Szeri's solo, through slowing down, a frustrated, tired generation in search of a new narrative is suggested. While this hot summer half of the island will be commemorating fifty years since the events that led to its division, artists, activists, writers and queers from both sides of the green line are invited to seek refuge in slowness as an act of resistance. Not because slowness is good in itself, but for what it makes room for: the unexpected, the undefinable and the invaluable. Are we prepared to manage and respond to the bigotry that surrounds us? Or are we doomed to the slothfulness of an eternal summer? With the burnout as a starting point, we wonder ‘what do we want  to happen on the 20th of July in 2024 in Cyprus?’ As the schools are closed in July, we did not get to experience the nationalistic necro-spectacles of remembrance and commemorations in our school yard dedicated to this date. With no spectacles and theatrical re-enactments we don’t know what is exactly the thing we should “Not Forget/Δέν Ξεχνώ”. ‘What would this commemoration look like? What would it look like in our own school? One that runs based on collaboration, solidarity, respect, experimentation for the trodden, the queers, the punks, ‘the others’ who have no interest in being anything else but ‘the others’. 

But what is this happening? 

If we try to answer this question in a capitalist manner in which the event is a “product”, the audience are the “buyers”, and the artists are the “sellers”, we will probably miss the point.  What we attempt here eludes a fixed description by definition, or at least we aim to remain unfixed. The question is not “what” but rather “when” and “where”. The matrix of definition, plot and rehearsal is abandoned for the equally complex matrix of incident and event. Away from the rigidity of identification, a messy collage of ideas is assembled for something far more revelatory to emerge.

On the 20th of July 2024 at the Rock of Chasamboulion, Kris Adem, Seta Astreou Karides, George Bizios, Hayal Gezer, Gervaise Alexis Savvias & Irini Khenkin, Khaled Khalifa, Nayia T. Karacosta, Panos Malactos, WanderWonder (Marilena Mantilou), András Molnar, Loizos Olympios, Demetris Shammas, Viktor Szeri, and Emiddio Vasquez meet for this exchange.  This legendary rock is connected to the first known gang of Cyprus from 1880, when the Ottoman Hassan Boullis and his brothers became infamous for their crimes, including murders, abductions, and rapes. They became known in mainstream culture through the 1974 film "Τα Χασαμπούλια / Οι Εκδικητές της Κύπρου" (Chasamboulia / The Avengers of Cyprus), directed by Andreas Demetriou and produced by the Greek production house, Finos Films. The film tells the story of the Ottoman gang and was made entirely by Greeks and Greek-speaking Cypriot actors who speak in a mainland Greek accent. It was rated 18+ for its explicit sex scenes. This highly deaftone film makes it into the Cypriot history of spectatorship by holding the record for the most tickets sold at a local cinema, reaching 400,000. 

Here we embrace an organic connection between art and the environment, and abandon ‘traditional’ spectatorship. Instead we partake wholly in the nature of life. We engage in conversation, listen deeply, make attempts at building and destroying together in an organic way, just like the plants and insects do in this wild location.  Here, like in political theatre, the term ‘spectator’ is a bad word. We aim to snap out of it, even if it is a rough and sudden act, where we might feel "dirty". Dirt, we might begin to realize, is also organic and fertile, and everything, all of us included, can grow a little through such play. This ‘play’ includes the play of ideas, the play of free experimentation, the play of free association and the play of paradigm shifting. It is an invitation to participate in reality and simultaneously be distanced from it. Play (both as a noun and a verb) is here to foster critical thinking, multi-sensory engagement, and radical empathy. 

We should no longer passively consume, but co-create with our bodies. The propaganda commemorations should have their curtain call, and we should remain silent in the auditorium. Slow down our breathing so we can hear it better, and enjoy it as breathing is the last thing we can do when there's nothing left. And maybe it’s time to realise that maybe not much is left, apart from the sun that shines, spinning the earth, day in day out, with us on it for as long as we can breathe.