SEBASTIAN / VANITAS

Nova Melancholia presents a performance diptych consisting of the performances SEBASTIAN and VANITAS. These are two distinct parts that complement each other with common references to art history and movie stars. Two shows with a “camp” mood that play with death.

This play is performed in Greek.

SEBASTIAN

The performance is the totality of its cultural references. Reflecting on the tradition of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, as it is reformulated through the dense figurative representation in Western art from the early Renaissance onwards, we focus on concepts / sensations / symbols that touch our own sensibility and imagination. Sebastian is a polyprismatic archetype, a kaleidoscope, an avatar of desires and moods. We read poems, reenact paintings, act, pose, sing, dance, get inspired by the tradition of an eccentric, experimental cinema. We are interested in the co-emotional and embodied practices through which we today can relate to such a symbol.

Sebastian is associated with youth, beauty, sports, archery, carnal pain, hideousness, homoeroticism, martyrdom. A primary co-signification around Saint Sebastian (since the Middle Ages) is the Plague, the Black Death. We associate the tradition of homoeroticism around the figure of Sebastian, with the AIDS disease that was considered in the 80’s and 90’s a kind of “gay plague”. Like people at the dawn of European modernity, we too today resort to Saint Sebastian as an apocalyptic symbol of evil. The show is dedicated to those who take the risk to go from vision to experience, from representation to performance, risking the misunderstanding of existence.

VANITAS

The performance of the group Nova Melancholia is a stage meditation around the concept of vanitas. The performance is articulated through the (counter)juxtaposition of the emotionally charged sound of the electric guitar and Andy Warhol’s cynical and often funny speech. The performance VANITAS wants to become an ephemeral mirror of our “vanity”, its illusory shine. At the same time it works like a seductive baroque painting: it exorcises the fatigue of the days and restores faith in the beauty of life!

In art history, vanitas is the symbolic work of art that shows the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death; these concepts are presented by the juxtaposition of a skull with symbols of wealth, affluence, and luxury. The Latin noun vanitas comes from the adjective vanus (void) and refers to the phrase from Ecclesiastes “vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas” (vanity of vanities, all things vanity). Vanitas still lifes, a popular genre in 16th- and 17th-century Western Europe, often depict luxurious vessels on rich fabrics, musical instruments, books, scientific instruments, smoking paraphernalia—everything that can bring joy and pleasure to man—together with hourglasses, fragile glass objects, skulls. All this suggests the futility of wealth, the passing of beauty, the inevitability of time. These paintings call for contemplation, they act as a memento mori (reminder of death). However, the flip side of vanitas could be carpe diem (seize the day). A celebration of the ephemeral and the senses, an affirmation of the uncertainty of existence, a memento vitae (reminder of life).