I curse this bloodless world.
I curse the silence
and am silent.
Greek Mythology – the ethereal fluid, not blood, supposed to flow in the veins of the gods.
Pathology – a watery, acrid discharge from certain wounds and sores.
The different interpretations produced over time shape the terrain of this research and the dialogue between the curator and the artists in this project.
Myth deals with the ambiguities of individual and collective experiences of human life and makes perplexed phenomenon tolerable through narration. For this reason, we seek haven in mythology to confront life’s bewilderment or to find resilience with no expectation to find the answer to the obscurity that history brings us.
The tragic story of Daedalus and Icarus has been interpreted in many ways in different cultures through different times: the ascension of human to the spiritual realm, uniting with the divine and being flared by the sun of truth, the consequence of ambition, and even the fall of man. Our intension is not to carry on with the same narrative. Icarus pushed himself to the boundaries trying to achieve the impossible as a modern activist. There has always been a barrier separating mortal beings and powerful gods. Despite such discrimination between Superior gods and inferior beings, we still hear voices from this class that rise against the gods. Regardless of such hierarchy, the battle between the society and the power structure is happening in a different way today.
The act of flying was something only gods and superior creatures ruling the sky were able to conquer. The decision to go beyond the limitations of the human race and the hope for flying high was what provoked gods to descent he who set out on a journey to such hierarchy. In recent years the spectators of a fall reach out for the truth through a more accessible path by the mass media, yet this revelation relentlessly projects them an Icarian fall. Punishment, mourning, amnesia, remembrance, toleration, hopelessness, and desolation are all the ladder of a fall that surround societies extensively.
There is a tie between the hero who decides to fly high, and the spectators who fly in the middle. The society who witness the fall of the hero are participants to the same fall- if not turning their faces away. If they stand still witnessing the incident, even though they survive the fall, they still break. The punishment of the spectators who avoided a fall, is to watch the hero’s fall. This collective trauma potentially recollects a sealed history. It is a history that belongs to the whole humankind, and yet powerful gods appropriate it throughout history.
No matter how mild or severe the incident, we have to keep the memory of those we watched fall alive, because the moment the witnesses’ narration starts to disappear, the history changes it to the benefit of the new narrators.
Yasaman Tamizkar
Curator