Tag: MONOMYTHS Stage 10

Canada
www.serenalee.com

Serena Lee is an artist and researcher from Toronto. Layering forms, she maps power, perception, and belonging through polyphonic models. Serena practises, presents, facilitates, and collaborates internationally; she works in education and holds an MFA from the Piet Zwart Institute in the Netherlands and an Associate Diploma in Piano Performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music.

MONOMYTHS is conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.
Presented by FADO Performance Art Centre, in association with The Theatre Centre.

MONOMYTHS invites a diverse collection of artists, scholars, and activists to revise Joseph Campbell’s conception of the hero’s journey through performance art, lectures, workshops, and other offerings. This new assemblage of non-linear un-narratives proposes a cultural, political and social feminist re-visioning of the world. The MONOMYTHS perception of the universal journey dispels the notion of the lone patriarchal figure on a conquest to vanquish his demons—both inner and outer—in consideration of community, collectivity, and collaboration.

MONOMYTHS Stage 10: The Road Back
Rise and Fall by Serena Lee

Rise and Fall is a performance and collective exercise on the desire for inevitability, on how the return is narrated. A mutant reading group: we will create a model by weighing things–thoughts, images, and otherwise.

The first part is called Exposition.
Here, the key idea is introduced, the character established, giving us the main melodic line, the voice to follow. We set out along the path of its making.

The second part is called Development.
Here, we find ourselves getting lost, having followed the voice, the key idea, as it veers off into unpredictable territory: shadowy undergrowth, tangled density, change to a minor key, etc. A narrative device to create tension and interest, verging on dissolution.

The third part is called Recapitulation.
Here, we have regained our orientation and found our footing in the familiar. The compounded tension yields the reward of resolution, now that we have cleared the unknown and are following the path that, we expect, will take us home.

Some things to consider:

• Because it feels good to know where you’re going or, at least, to look like you know.
• Conventional models of societal collapse include the runaway train, the house of cards, the dinosaur. 
• With circular narratives we expect to be familiar with the unexpected, we expect to come home. How does desire arrange history?
• Referring to paths, wayfaring, weaving: Lines: A Brief History (Tim Ingold, Routledge: 2007).
• Hannibal used vinegar to break through rocks, traverse the Alps and take on Rome.
• To dress a table or a body – let’s say, with a heavy polyester banquet table linen or a sheet of  silk – you must be familiar with how fabric works in relation to the forces acting upon it, how it was made, how it reacts. You must anticipate how it falls, how it feels.

We will not call it progress. How to describe the movement?

Conceived and curated by Jess Dobkin and Shannon Cochrane

MONOMYTHS invites a diverse collection of artists, scholars, and activists to revise Joseph Campbell’s conception of the hero’s journey through performance art, lectures, workshops, and other offerings. This new assemblage of non-linear un-narratives proposes a cultural, political and social feminist re-visioning of the world. The MONOMYTHS perception of the universal journey dispels the notion of the lone patriarchal figure on a conquest to vanquish his demons–both inner and outer–in consideration of community, collectivity, and collaboration.

Joseph Campbell’s influential book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) prescribes a common pattern to all of the world’s mythic narratives. According to this fundamental structure, the archetypal hero is challenged to embark on a monumental quest. Over the course of the hero’s journey, trials and obstacles must be overcome until a victory is won and the hero returns home with new knowledge about himself and the world. Campbell’s concept of the monomyth (‘one myth’) is a recognizable motif in both ancient mythology and contemporary culture, including film, music, literature, sports, and advertising. A current trend in popular visual culture replaces the male character with a female one, in spite of the fact that our heroine–from the get-go–would make different choices if the conditions, and conditioning, allowed. While each MONOMYTHS stage stands alone, the work of each presenting artist is interdependent and connected. These independent visions, when stitched together through the audience’s collective presence, form an exquisite corpse of a larger experimental narrative.

The year-long MONOMYTHS project is presented in three sections starting in February 2016 and concluding in February 2017.

Part 1 (February 3–7, 2016)
Stage 1: The Ordinary World/Call to Adventure
Stage 2: Refusal of the Call
Stage 3: Meeting of the Mentor
Stage 4: Crossing the Threshold
Stage 5: Belly of the Whale

Part 2 (May 2016–January 2017)
Stage 6: Tests, Allies, Enemies
Stage 7: Ordeals
Stage 8: Atonement with the Father/State
Stage 9: Apotheosis/Journey to the Inmost Cave

Part 3 (February 15–19, 2017)
Stage 10: The Road Back
Stage 11: Refusal of the Return
Stage 12: Mistress of Two Worlds
Stage 13: Freedom to Live
Stage 14: The Return Home