Winternights 2019: artistic proposals for vulnerable test audiences
by Fransien van der Putt
[...] Entirely different kinds of techniques are demonstrated by Marialena Marouda. In a room one floor up, a small audience joins in a circle where The Oceanographies Institute invites to reflect on the relationship between humans and the ocean. The performance workshop combines the intimacy of an informal conversation with the performance of different actions, in order to evoke memories and address the ocean’s materiality.
The rereading of notes from previous conversations, with repetition of sentences and frequencies rolling over each other, is reminiscent of the endless accumulation of waves upon waves. For example, the sound of the drawing of an eight on its side, the sign for infinity, is a tiny gesture to bring the thoughts of the guests in the room towards the great sea.
Oscillating between concrete questions and self-imposed rituals, Marouda and her co-performer Elpida Orfanidou bring to light a world of embodied knowledge, of memories and customs. Also misunderstandings and problems of translation, the language of communication being the generic English that prevails in the global art world contribute to a miraculous investigation, in which small bodily gestures, such as taking turns in gently exhaling into a microphone, evoke that very large and old body of the sea. Even though it treasures the most ancient life on earth, the ocean stays an object for most people. A place in which you sometimes paddle your feet or cross at the level of 8000 meters. [...]