Onassis
InitiativesOnassis AiRFellowships

Chara Kotsali: IT’S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE (working title)

Shareon Facebook
Shareon Twitter

Photo: L. Junet Photographie

In the aftermath of a technological and social revolution that never happened, “IT’S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE” wants to reflect on the emotional history of the present. It is an attempt to stage a counter-epic narrative about the rush towards the sun and the freefall into the digital universe.

Broadcasting from a land in the South that never sent a rocket into outer space and grew up with slow internet, this is a sketch for a kinetic and sound chronicle about the "slow cancelation of the future,”[1] and the feeling of techno-sadness.

With a focus on the dancing body and using sound and poetry as its material, the work deals with the contested notion of progress. It is an attempt to compose a sonic and dance narrative

about the collective emotion generated by the take-off into outer space and the simultaneous plunge into cyberspace;

about a permanent crash rehearsal that is not being fulfilled;

about the vertigo of digital rabbit holes;

about bodies floating like space debris.

Nevertheless, “IT’S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE” is not yet another eschatology for use, not a nostalgia for an exoticized past, but an acceptance that the experiment has fortunately failed. It’s not the end of the world yet, and certainly not the end of history. The poetics of vertigo emerges as the most tender gesture while we fall.

[1] Franco “Bifo” Berardi [Gary Genosko & Nicholas Thoburn (eds.)], After the Future (2011), AK Press, p. 18.

Photo: Chara Kotsali

Creator's Note

In “IT’S THE END OF THE AMUSEMENT PHASE,” I wanted to think choreographically about the dynamic relationship between hope and disappointment, as it has been inscribed in the individual and the collective body. I was interested in grappling with the much-discussed crisis of futurity, placing the dancing body at the center. The constant sense of a thwarted future, together with a silenced or rendered-invisible past and the inability to conceive of ourselves as part of a historical continuity, are at the core of what concerned me.

The great anxiety

The entrenched sense of defeat

Does the future make you horny? Is it killing your sleep?

The vast fatigue

Her birthday and the fall of the Wall

Spaghetti with minced meat after school, and the Twin Towers falling

Photo: Chara Kotsali

The relationship between microhistories and the grand historical narrative was central to this research. The dialectical relationship of continuity and discontinuity in how History is represented, discussed, and experienced led me to experiment with forms of linear flow (the cinematic long take, the musical drone, the timeline) and with forms of discontinuity (collage, mash-up, medley).

The Macarena, the jitterbug, Bob Fosse, and the cheerleaders

Koula Pratsika and Metaxas

Laban and Goebbels

The dances in the packed stadiums drunk on nationalism

That parade with the face of the “Leader”

Photo: Chara Kotsali

Dance has been a historical witness, has shaped and been shaped by ideas of what constitutes beauty, desire, or even entertainment, and at the same time has placed itself in the service of national and political narratives.

Dancing in line, dancing against all odds

Was I the dancing queen or dancing for the queen?

Photo: Chara Kotsali

The research period was divided between the Onassis AiR program and the residencies I attended within the framework of Réseau Grand Luxe (TROIS C L Luxembourg in Luxembourg, CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva in Porto, Grand Studio in Brussels, and L’Abri in Geneva).

Throughout this period, in parallel with the research on movement, I focused on the dramaturgical design of the project, paying particular attention to sound and writing. I gathered a large number of sounds and dances, creating a repository that would later serve as the sonic and kinetic raw material of the work. By creating a continuum of dance that never stops, even when it has exhausted its physical and emotional strength, I wanted to look back at the history of enthusiasm and disappointment, of entertainment and sorrow that followed the satellitization of everyday life and the collapse of the progress-centered historical narrative.

We’re still not in flying cars, still not in moon colonies, still not teleporting, with your bags on your back, you set off at 07:00 and return at night, and this year again in August, 40 euros left on the card.

Everything is fine. Be creative. Supersonic career acceleration until your ears bleed.

Techno sad, techno disappointed

This is nothing like the Great Depression, nothing great about this sadness, a microdosing of madness.

Photo: Louiza Vradi

On the horizon of this research lies the desire for political hope, the need to redefine what is thinkable for the future and the past of these bodies.

Maybe a new ending is in the making, a new star under the radar, a new undefeatable and liberating crash.

The golden glow of extinction, the golden light of annihilation, the golden saga of thousands of falls.

It is far too good for such depression.

    Image 1 / 3

    Photo: Pinelopi Gerasimou

    Image 2 / 3

    Photo: Pinelopi Gerasimou

    Image 3 / 3

    Photo: Pinelopi Gerasimou

More

More in: