Leaf 7
The Dance of Fate
[Wael Shawky, “I am Hymns of The New Temple,” at The Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe]
Alexandria-born artist Wael Shawky’s intricate dissection of Greek Myth into primal episodes of love dislodged by hate makes for an unforgettable film experience. Incorporating dance, chorus, theater, puppetry, masquerade, music, he presents an historical and psychological deconstruction of the nefarious scheming going on above and below Mount Olympus.
Set strikingly amid the preserved archaeological ruins of Pompeii— think beautifully resurrected masonry with clinging red paint—this vivid performance - piece allows the destroyed city to rise once more from the volcanic ash. [The video, made in the summer of 2022, was originally commissioned by the Pompeii Archaeological Park as a dedicated commitment to conservation.]
Shawky fashions an immersive, mixed- media experience from child actors, walking objects [ fish amphora and Pandora’s pithos] mysterious sculptural costumes [crafted by the workshops of the Teatro di San Carlo], papier -mache and ceramic masks [constructed by Pierre Architta], San Leucio vintage fabrics, grotesque and realistic marionettes daubed with emotion-enhancing makeup.
The cinematic conjuring begins at the Beginning, with silent black Nothingness giving way to the emergence of the Titans, giants born of Gaia, the elemental Earth. The scenes unfurl in a choreography of tableaux vivants unleashing, over a sweep of time, in the lusts of Zeus, the rise of the intermediary fire-stealing demi-god, Prometheus, to end in the decline and fall of humankind in a universal deluge.
The swift, abrupt shifts in mood and tone encapsulate epic encounters set in motion by the patriarchal--alternatingly mischievous, malevolent, or benevolent—head of the Greek Pantheon and his squabbling family of deities. [These perpetually -conflicted lesser divinities are comically shown in one shot sliding up or down Pompeii’s Olympian amphitheater to indicate agreement or disagreement with one of Zeus’ commands.]
Significantly, figurative Intermezzos are repeated throughout and are central to pausing the narrative action. This nocturnal fantasy is visual, not verbal. An impish, white-garbed babe cavorts as Fate atop a vertical column. Engaged in ritual oneirocriticism, this dream-like avatar of Zeus and symbol of the capriciousness of the gods, rings in change, instability, chance. While insouciantly dancing, he proffers, or tosses in the air a platter filled with glittering crystals –jewels against the void-- revealing portents, visions, and divinations foretelling a future before which even gods and goddesses quail.
Was Zeus, one wonders, ever “crippled by a sense of longing?” The lengthiest, and to my eye, most engrossing sequence in the film involves his tormenting and unrelenting infatuation with Io. This Argive princess, only one among his countless mortal conquests, was transformed into a heifer so he could both ravish her while unseen by his wife, and protect her from Hera’s vindictive jealousy. Guarded by Argus, the hundred -eyed watchman, she was hidden in an olive grove. But Zeus sent Hermes to lull him to sleep with soft music, then decapitate him, thus freeing the prisoner.
At this critical juncture, Shawky begins the film’s moment by moment depiction of her desperate flight. A hounded Io is ceaselessly goaded to run, pursued by pitiless Hera’s biting gadfly. Shawky embodies her suffering [still as a heifer] chased without mercy from the Caucasus to Arabia to the crocodile -and hippopotamus-infested waters of the Nile. Along the way, he cinematically paints sensuous riverine landscapes, pyramidal mountains, reed boats sailing under sunny or purple skies glinting with falling stars. Egypt offers no zone of peace. While Io’s wretched wandering ceases and she is re-transformed into a woman, Zeus, at last, has his long, longed-for way.