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ACT II - 2023
XIV Eleusis
Socio-ecological challenges: safeguarding our seas and shores.
Oxen of the Sun CHORUS, Brave New World Producties

City Rationale

The Oxen of the Sun episode focuses on the sacredness of birth, on purity. Eleusis was the site of the Eleusinian Mysteries; these mysteries revolved around a belief in life after death and within the introduction ceremony the hopeful initiates were shown the seed of life in a stalk of grain. It was also the chief seat of worship for Demeter and Persephone and is regarded as the most sacred of all Grecian mysteries. The contemporary city is the site of the largest oil refinery in Greece. Eleusis is the 2023 European Capital of Culture.

Ulysses Episode

Bloom visits the maternity hospital where Mina Purefoy is giving birth, and finally meets Stephen, who has been drinking with his medical student friends and is awaiting the promised arrival of Buck Mulligan. As the only father in the group of men, Bloom is concerned about Mina Purefoy in her labour. He starts thinking about his wife and the births of his two children. He also thinks about the loss of his only ‘heir’, Rudy. The young men become boisterous, and even start talking about topics such as fertility, contraception and abortion. There is also a suggestion that Milly, Bloom’s daughter, is in a relationship with one of the young men, Bannon. They continue on to a pub to continue drinking, following the successful birth of a son to Mina Purefoy. This chapter is remarkable for Joyce’s wordplay, which, among other things, recapitulates the entire history of the English language. After a short incantation, the episode starts with latinate prose, Anglo-Saxon alliteration, and moves on through parodies of, among others, Malory, the King James Bible, Bunyan, Pepys, Defoe, Sterne, Walpole, Gibbon, Dickens, and Carlyle, before concluding in a haze of nearly incomprehensible slang. The development of the English language in the episode is believed to be aligned with the nine-month gestation period of the foetus in the womb.

Homer Odyssey Chapter

Book 12: Odysseus next comes to Thrinacia, the island of the Sun. He wants to avoid it entirely, but the outspoken Eurylochus persuades him to let his beleaguered crew rest there. A storm keeps them beached for a month, and at first the crew is content to survive on its provisions in the ship. When these run out, however, Eurylochus persuades the other crew members to disobey Odysseus and slaughter the cattle of the Sun. They do so one afternoon as Odysseus sleeps; when the Sun finds out, he asks Zeus to punish Odysseus and his men. Shortly after the Achaeans set sail from Thrinacia, Zeus kicks up another storm, which destroys the ship and sends the entire crew to its death beneath the waves. As had been predicted, only Odysseus survives, and he just barely. The storm sweeps him all the way back to Charybdis, which he narrowly escapes for the second time. Afloat on the broken timbers of his ship, he eventually reaches Ogygia, Calypso’s island.

Public Events

Public Symposium

Artists’ Exchange

This project strand offered short residency opportunities in partner cities for 30 emerging artists as part of the legacy of this pan-European project.

Each city partner sent two artists on a residency to another partner’s city of a different art form, thereby seeking to enrich their professional practice through inter-disciplinary residencies. Artists were chosen on the basis of having demonstrated an interest in the hosting city’s Arts & Society contemporary European theme. They had to also practice a different art form from that of the hosting city’s public event. The project offered the emerging artists the opportunity to travel without the pressure to produce work and ideally to experience UEO’s public events.

Book

What is the age of the soul of man?

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Partner description

CHORUS is a non-profit organisation founded to bridge arts, education and social challenges. It was established in 2016 in Eleusis, Greece, by active citizens working in culture, arts and education. Its mission is to promote humanitarian principles and values, to trigger public debate and mobilise the public on important social issues and human rights, through contemporary artistic creation, education and cultural activities. Eleusis is the largest industrial centre of Greece. The signs of industrialisation and environmental degradation are visible on the city’s urban fabric. Within UEO, CHORUS will present an artistic project that foregrounds environmental and ecological challenges. The project is presented in collaboration with 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture and Brave New World Producties.

Brave New World Producties was founded in January 2019 by two former colleagues from Leeuwarden-Friesland European Cultural Capital 2018 – Claudia Woolgar (Artistic Director) and Jan van Erve (Commercial Director). BNWP’s mission is to programme international projects with a strong ties to young and new artists in the region, and always in a unique location to reach as broad a public as possible. International connections within a local context. In 2019 BNWP presented Fuerza Bruta in a tent, with local artists in a steel factory next door creating a side programme inspired by this Argentinian company. In 2022 BNWP produced CARGO Shanghai – Friesland, working with Rimini Protokoll and a young team from the Friesland region.

Those who have passed on, who have gone before, are happy too as they as they gaze down and smile upon the happy scene.
Partners
ACT II - 2023
XV Oulu
Highlighting mental well-being in Europe today
Circe Lumo Light Festival, Flow Productions