Our skin, our home.
This performance is talking about new life, new beginnings, in a new land, and the process of creating a new home. In Ray Bradbury's book " The Martian Chronicles", people from earth want to go to Mars. They need to leave everything behind and head for a new promising life. When they arrive, they have nothing but their bodies and memories. No luggage, no money, no food. Just their memories and a body to carry them.
They find land, stones, and dust. They start building walls, protected spaces, just like their ancestors did. A space for their everyday rituals, a temple of life sacrifices. They raise their cups to their new self, to their transformation. After years of growing in their own shell, they embrace their nature. The nature of the unnatural. The normality of the abnormal.
Suddenly they start turning blue. Blue skin. Blue vision. Blue hearing. They have to build their memories all over again. And they start knitting. A new costume that identifies them. They knit their new skin, their new home.
The human struggle of leaving something behind and heading for the unknown was one the most intense concepts I found in Ray Bradbury's book, The Martian Chronicles, which is one of the books I always turn for inspiration.
Why do we want to leave? Why can't we stay no more? Are we sure we want to go? To go now or later? Today or tomorrow? What will I find? Am I going to like it? Is it going to be hard? Today I feel strong enough. I think I'll go. Don't care what's next. I'm sure I can make it. I can make it. Today.
The long path from doubt and ambiguity to the clear decision of change. This small moment of clarity and the things that drive us to our certainty. Those small things, that remind us of who we are, where we come from and what we are looking for.
They are the new land, the new skin.
live performance in Leonidio, 2017
​
Concept/performance/costume design: Eleni Danesi
Music impro: Sehnor Gato Camera: Evi Stamou/ Pietro Radin
Light design: Anthxeio Kollektiv
Video Editing: Eleni Danesi
​
Extract from soundscape "Voices from Mars" Music improvisation: Yota Celenti, Segnor Gato, Charis Baskozos/ Narration: Anastasia Efstratiadi / Concept-Recordings:Evi Stamou / Sound editing: Pietro Radin
Inhabiting
the new skin​