Tweet
The Age , Australia
Oct 10 2005
Diamanda Galas
By John Slavin
October 10, 2005
Hamer Hall, October 7
PHILOSOPHER Theodor Adorno once wrote: "After Auschwitz, poetry is no
longer possible." It is a contentious statement for a number of
reasons. Poetry is the paramedic of culture: without poetry, what
will cleanse language through which history, politics and media is
polluted?
The other contention is that there were other genocides before the
Holocaust. Greek-American artist Diamanda Galas confronts these
issues head-on. Hers is a poetic chronicle and angry protest of man's
inhumanity to man pushed up hard against the glass of memory.
The horrors that her extraordinary, over-the-top performance
commemorates are the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the Anatolian
catastrophe of 1923 in which an estimated half a million Greeks lost
their lives and another 1½ million were displaced. "The Defixiones"
of her title are the lead beads left on graves in the Middle East to
warn against the desecration of graves. Her hour-and-a-half sustained
chant for the dead based on poems by the Greeks Ritsos and Seferis
and eyewitnesses to the murders in Armenia and the writings of the
novelist Dido Soteriou, among others, are the chain of a rosary told
for the victims upon which she hangs her performance.
It is one of the weirdest and most intense theatre events I have
seen. Dressed in the dark robes of an Orthodox nun, Galas wails,
rails and rants her anguish. The voice range is four octaves. It
could crack glass at 20 metres, but the strain she imposes on it is
enormous.
As with the KARAS Dance Company's Green, there is a reliance on
hypnotic repetition and the presentation of oblique, introspective
art. This disjunction between text and performance is the central
problem.
Although a minute printout of the poems is provided, the audience
seated in the dark can't possibly understand the details of a recital
delivered in a smattering of Greek, Armenian and Turkish.
The effect is that of the Delphic Oracle at the mouth of her cave,
who warned of disasters yet to come in a psychobabble that none could
untangle.
This is the contradiction of protest art. Galas, like the Beat poets
of the '50s and '60s, with whom she has much in common, takes the
anger and internalises it so that the body and the voice become an
instrument of emotional reaction. The moral anguish is undoubtedly
genuine, but the difficulty is one of communicating a position that
can be shared and acted upon. Portraying the horrors of World War I
proved less effective at the time than the ironic cartoons of Grosz
or Dada artists mocking all assumptions about rationality in
civilisation.
Diving into Galas' performance is like entering someone else's
nightmare. It is intense, incomprehensible and finally tedious. It
did, however, arouse an enthusiastic response from an audience of
ululating Goths who might have identified with Galas' romantic
despair.
Diamanda Galas performs today at 8pm at Hamer Hall
photo: Over the top: Diamanda Galas, on Friday night, dressed in the
robes of an Orthodox nun, during her hour-and-a-half sustained chant
for the dead. Diving into Galas' performance is like entering someone
else's nightmare.
Photo: Wayne Taylor
http://www.theage.com.au/news/reviews/diamanda-galas/2005/10/10/1128796416479.html
Oct 10 2005
Diamanda Galas
By John Slavin
October 10, 2005
Hamer Hall, October 7
PHILOSOPHER Theodor Adorno once wrote: "After Auschwitz, poetry is no
longer possible." It is a contentious statement for a number of
reasons. Poetry is the paramedic of culture: without poetry, what
will cleanse language through which history, politics and media is
polluted?
The other contention is that there were other genocides before the
Holocaust. Greek-American artist Diamanda Galas confronts these
issues head-on. Hers is a poetic chronicle and angry protest of man's
inhumanity to man pushed up hard against the glass of memory.
The horrors that her extraordinary, over-the-top performance
commemorates are the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the Anatolian
catastrophe of 1923 in which an estimated half a million Greeks lost
their lives and another 1½ million were displaced. "The Defixiones"
of her title are the lead beads left on graves in the Middle East to
warn against the desecration of graves. Her hour-and-a-half sustained
chant for the dead based on poems by the Greeks Ritsos and Seferis
and eyewitnesses to the murders in Armenia and the writings of the
novelist Dido Soteriou, among others, are the chain of a rosary told
for the victims upon which she hangs her performance.
It is one of the weirdest and most intense theatre events I have
seen. Dressed in the dark robes of an Orthodox nun, Galas wails,
rails and rants her anguish. The voice range is four octaves. It
could crack glass at 20 metres, but the strain she imposes on it is
enormous.
As with the KARAS Dance Company's Green, there is a reliance on
hypnotic repetition and the presentation of oblique, introspective
art. This disjunction between text and performance is the central
problem.
Although a minute printout of the poems is provided, the audience
seated in the dark can't possibly understand the details of a recital
delivered in a smattering of Greek, Armenian and Turkish.
The effect is that of the Delphic Oracle at the mouth of her cave,
who warned of disasters yet to come in a psychobabble that none could
untangle.
This is the contradiction of protest art. Galas, like the Beat poets
of the '50s and '60s, with whom she has much in common, takes the
anger and internalises it so that the body and the voice become an
instrument of emotional reaction. The moral anguish is undoubtedly
genuine, but the difficulty is one of communicating a position that
can be shared and acted upon. Portraying the horrors of World War I
proved less effective at the time than the ironic cartoons of Grosz
or Dada artists mocking all assumptions about rationality in
civilisation.
Diving into Galas' performance is like entering someone else's
nightmare. It is intense, incomprehensible and finally tedious. It
did, however, arouse an enthusiastic response from an audience of
ululating Goths who might have identified with Galas' romantic
despair.
Diamanda Galas performs today at 8pm at Hamer Hall
photo: Over the top: Diamanda Galas, on Friday night, dressed in the
robes of an Orthodox nun, during her hour-and-a-half sustained chant
for the dead. Diving into Galas' performance is like entering someone
else's nightmare.
Photo: Wayne Taylor
http://www.theage.com.au/news/reviews/diamanda-galas/2005/10/10/1128796416479.html