Something Exceedingly Strange is Happening this Spring

Video editing: Kyriacos Kousoulides
Sound composition: Dimitris Savva
Voice narration and singing: Agnese Banti
Curator Sozita Goudouna,
Anya and Andrew Shiva Gallery, New York
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, City University of New York
The Right to Silence?
shivagallery.org

Klitsa Antoniou’s audiovisual work entitled “Something Exceedingly Strange is Happening this Spring" draws from Rosa Luxembourg’s personal letters, written during her three-year imprisonment (1915-1918). These letters, in contrast to her political texts, constitute a psychograph; the psychograph of a person who, in order to overcome the suffering of confinement, seeks an "escape" from it. Thus, from the heterotopia of the prison, the German revolutionary is mentally transported to a utopia: to a botanical garden, where nightingales chirp and colorful flowers bloom. In these personal letters, Luxembourg describes in every detail colors and sounds; that is, those that are absent from her everyday life. In other words, she invents her own imaginary colorful world, which contrasts with the gloom of confinement, as a last act of resistance. Hence, Antoniou through an intermediate approach, draws from the letters of the emblematic activist, creating a short video. The artist, however, intentionally avoids depicting the "garden" of Luxembourg, as it is presented through her written narrative. Antoniou aims at penetrating in a deeply poetic way into the inner world and the mental mood of an emblematic woman during her imprisonment. The work of the Cypriot artist can be seen as an evocative, nonetheless a highly political commentary on the history of any kind of incarceration.

Konstantinos Argianas, Art Historian