THE RECORD REPLAY REACT SHOW - RESCULPTING FREEDOM

In The Record Replay React Show-Re-sculpting Freedom,Haraki reacts to the sculptural studies for the Liberty Monument in Nicosia, exhibited in the space (in NiMAC). These plaster models by Greek sculptor Ioannis Notaras, were retrieved by Yiannis Toumazis in Larnaca several years ago, and ignited a creative process between the artist and

the curator. This process resulted in an ongoing project by Haraki and Toumazis dealing with the performative energy of spaces of history, memory and trauma. The project attempts to energise healing processes as well as mechanisms of forgiveness through a critical reflection of the recent history [of Cyprus] both from a performative and theoretical approach. Through participatory practices and critical engagement of the public, the project seeks to re-enact socially and politically haunted spaces and transform them into tools of reconciliation and rapprochement rather than apparatuses of nationalism and intolerance.

In The Record Replay React Show, the artist composes the piece live on stage, by producing and recording sound with the support of live loop recording. Once the first layer of the structure is recorded, it gets replayed, and the performer reacts to the already existing layer, thus creating more layers while navigating herself from order to chaos. The first version of the piece was a solo performance Haraki made with the help of sound artist Christos Hadjichristou at the Rialto Theatre in Limassol. The piece was presented again in different versions by keeping the performance method while changing the form by reacting to new sceneries and landscapes.

The Record Replay React Show –Re-sculpting Freedom, was produced after Yiannis Toumazi’s invitation to work with the sculpture figures. Haraki converses with the plaster figures as a child, a woman, and sometimes as Liberty herself. With humour intensity, anxiety, wonder, awe and respect, the artist, in full energy, synthesises/composes a personal narrative, a narrative, which accelerates as it escalates; a narrative which becomes utterly universal, and at the same time, it shatters into pieces any submissive nationalisms and oppression dialectics.

Credits

Concept, Choreography, Dramaturgy, Text, Performance, Costume, Sound Composition: Lia Haraki

Commissioned by: Yiannis Toumazis

Production Management: Yiangos Hadjiyiannis

Production: NiMAC [Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre, Associated with the Pierides Foundation]

Performances 

Premiere: 25 November 2014, Treasure Island Exhibition, curated by Yiannis

Toumazis, Louli Michaelidou, Anber Onar, Despo Pasia, Kyriakos Pachoulides, Elena Stylianou, NiMAC [Nicosia MunicipalArts Centre, Associated with the Pierides Foundation]

25 November 2017, The RRR Show-Re- Sculpting Freedom, Terra Mediterranea Exhibition: In Action-Parallel Events, NiMAC [Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre, Associated with the Pierides Foundation], Theatro Polis OPAP, Nicosia, Cyprus