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Mind Split = Siamese Twins - Nicolina Stylianou

Mind Split = Siamese Twins

Mind Split = Siamese Twins is a steampunk-surrealistic performance about the myth surrounding Friedrich Nietzsche’s life incidence in Turin (January 1889). The performance is an hour-long Happening consisting of four body sculptures (Hydra, Chorus, Serpent and Lily, Dithyramb). Each body sculpture holds a mythical character developed from Nietzsche’s biography and Greek mythology, and directly relate with each other. The characters develop forms of communications that embody sound and movement, and the multi-dimensional environment through derealised eyes. Mind Split = Siamese Twins imagines Nietzsche’s breakdown and creates a narrative where Nietzsche (the audience) visits his mental breakdown once again under an indeterminate derealised state, a state of mind where reality ruptures (Steinberg, 1993 according to Coons 1996; Pinto, Neville, et. al 2017, 1231-1237; Trueman 1984, 91; American Psychiatric Association [1987] according to Coons 1996, 293). Through Nietzsche’s imagined breakdown, the four body-sculptures emerge and take agency in his mind and body. The performance begins with a dream-trip of a derealised state while the audience witnesses the state where objects are not identified in a simultaneous co-existence with an other world; on the one hand, the past entertains the moment before “self-abandonment” and “loss of memory”, and on the other hand, the audience witnesses the present where the performance seduces the suffering within the characters themselves. Through Nietzsche’s correspondences to Cosima Wagner which were signed in the name of “Dionysos” the surreal inNietzsche’s life, takes form. Nietzsche’s correspondences and breakdown become essential, and take one back to Nietzsche’s early philosophical thought related to the Greek mythological gods, Apollo and Dionysos. Mind Split = Siamese Twins encourages the audience to lose their sense of self in noise, and seize the blurriness between perception and representation, reality and fiction, subject and object, anatomy and topography. The aesthetics of the Happening, are an impulse from a particular moment in history, the Happenings in the 1960s. Through Happenings, the performance considers “indeterminacy” that allow one formulate and perceive the multiplicity of the environment, where two (or more) simultaneous environments emerge in space.

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direction, dramaturgy and performance with Dithyramb
Nicolina Stylianou (Live Art and Performance Studies, MA thesis artistic project)

performance dramaturgy as MC Friedrich 
Louna-Tuuli Luukka (EDma)

sound design and performance
Jouni Ilari Tapio (Äma)

movement performance with Hydra
Suvi Tuominen (LAPS)

performance with Serpent and Lily and Dithyramb
Riikka Talvitie (DocMus)

production manager
Maria Kaihovirta

stage manager
Heli Litmanen

light design
Aleksi Karjalainen

costume development
Anne Lehto

captured by
Julius Töyrylä

supervisors
Tero Nauha
George Themistokleous
Gregoire Rousseau

supported by
Theatre Academy – University of the Arts Helsinki
Kone Foundation
Taiteen edistämiskeskus (Taike)

https://vimeo.com/392646900


Special thanks to Elena Stylianou, Constantinos Stylianou, Myria Stylianou, Constantinos Groutides, Maria Georgiou, Marios Messios, Annita Haliou, Andrea Hnicola, Aphrodite Koupepidou Dagmar I. Glausnitzer-Smith, Gilivanka Kedzior, Christina Georgiou, Hanna Käyhkö, Heikki Laakso, Marja Zilcher, Vesa Rämä, Lauri Lyllylahti, Jyrki Oksaharju, Krisjanis Rijnieks, Soufïa Bensaïd, Jani-Petteri Olkkonen, Eero – Tapio Vuori, Angeliki Chaido Tsoli, Karoliina Loimaala, Taru Aho, Tuomas Laitinen, Ivana Momčilović, and Karolina Kucia.