Orpheus

September 11, 1993
Performance Art

About the Program

This performance will riff off the myth of Orpheus. That's actually a suitably ancient screen for the projection of my obsessions. It's recognized as "antiquity." Yet it can be revived, made to walk and talk. Its antiquity is not easily digested and distributed. Premise: old myths of world cultures share the same route/root. There might be variations from nation to nation, and mythic personages may pop up in wildly divergent forms, but what they're on about is a body of tales very old and venerable. The existence of this body lets on about the persistence of the species and their attachment to... Orpheus in the underworld. Orpheus and Eurydice. Male and Female. Another approach to identity. A story from the curse of History: the Loss of the Feminine. Let's say the stage of history is the Individual. (Time periods are named after them: Napoleonic, A.D., B.C., Neo-platonic, Sisyphean.) The loss of the Feminine happens on this particular stage: a swinging cat called Orpheus. Let's scrape off some of the charisma of this thing floating in the waters off Lesbos.

Artist

Warren Arcand

Curator

Archer Pechawis

Credits

Coordination and Publicity: Dana Claxton and Glenn Alteen
Photography: Merle Addison
Videography: Mike MacDonald
Technical Director: Archer Pechawis
Technician: Kenna Fair

Identifier

1993.0911 ORP

Part of the series

Queer City: The Queer Series and The Two Spirit Series

Collection

grunt gallery Programming Archive

Location

Pitt Gallery
317 W. Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6B 1H6
Unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ/selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations

In copyright. For uses beyond Fair Dealing, research requests, corrections, takedown requests, or other inquiries, please contact grunt gallery: archives@grunt.ca