Hotel “AntiOedipus”

A Digital Game for Avatars and Solitary Individuals across the Globe

GLOBAL PREMIERE, 3 MARCH 2021, IRCAM/ Centre Georges pompidou

Our world is shifting around us in these times of seclusion and dichotomy. As we are faced
with a common crisis for the first time after WW2, some say we are connected more now than
ever before. How does this affect our understanding of collective consciousness? What is this
emerging global “Agora”? It is time to dive into the self and to connect with the collective. In
Hotel “AntiOedipus”, Deleuze-Guattari’s fluid identity challenges the notion of a new ever
evolving self. Fluid identity (collective and individual) is at the global epicenter.

In the show Hotel “AntiOedipus” face recognition and gaming technologies mixed with live
visuals radically “upgrade” audience experience in digital performance. Avatars and solitary
individuals connect live from the seclusion of their domestic environments across the globe;
meet and have fun in virtual bars; join forces to form a new global “Agora”; through the
keyhole attend psychoanalyst sessions that take place behind doors; move freely from one
hotel room to the other; pip on the most private affairs of Jocasta and Oedipus and challenge
the way we think of ourselves in a total game of identity. Hotel “AntiOedipus” is a challenge
to explore the self.

PRESS HERE TO LISTEN TO AUDIO FILES FROM THE SHOW

Track Title: Let Us Go

Track Τitle: X is Possible

Credits

Concept, art direction & libretto: Elli Papakonstantinou
Original music composition: Julia Kent & Tilemachos Mousas
Music Direction: Julia Kent
Real time cinematic performance & Technical design: Stephanie Sherriff
Scientific advisor: Professor Manos Tsakiris

Performers: Nassia Gofa (Jocasta / Chorus), Elias Husiak (Boy, Young Oedipus, Avatar), Anastasia Katsinavaki (Teiresias / Chorus), Theodora Loukas (Woman), Lito Messini (Oedipus / Chorus),Adrian Frieling

More performers: Bret Woodard,Elisa Ricagni,Katerina Savvoglou,Angela Constantinidou,Marios Nikolaou,Orpheas Georgiou,Monica Ciarcelluti

Recorded musicians: Julia Kent (cello), Misha Piatigorsky (piano), Barbara Nerness (live electronics)

Executive Producer: Elli Papakonstantinou / ODC Ensemble

Assistant to the director:  Gemma Hansson Carbone
Technical Manager: Charikleia Petraki
Technical Assistant: Afroditi Anastopoulou
Production Manager: Korina Kotsiri
Publicist:  Maria Tsolaki
General Manager ODC: Ero Lefa
Photography:  Elias Moraitis, Mariza Kapsabeli
Trailer: Nikos Ziogas, Charikleia Petraki

Tour

Ο.FESTIVAL, Rotterdam (NL) 11.05.2021
FORUM VERTIGO, IRCAM/ Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (FR) 03.03.2021

Within the framework of Ircam’s Forum Vertigo:“New Modalities of Artistic Presence during Covid “

BASED ON Oedipus:Sex with Mum was Blinding

CCRMA – Stanford (USA), 04.04.2019
BAM Theatre, New York (USA),
25-29.09.2019

With the collaboration of
(research collaboration):
CCRMA, Stanford University, USA

Supported by:

With the kind support of the

Videos

Reviews

“Contemporary Anti-Oedipus in zoom”

We are truly proud of Elli Papakonstantinou. We followed her steps abroad a few years ago as an extremely dynamic creator who was leaving due to the crisis. We welcomed her back recently probably as the most prominent representative of her generation internationally.

Review “Contemporary Anti-Oedipus in zoom”, by Grigoris Ioannidis, Theatre Critic, EFSYN National Newspaper

The whole riddle of the Sphinx gets its answer here...

Hotel “AntiOedipus” by Elli Papakonstantinou, a digital identity game for avatars and lonely users throughout the universe, certainly has plenty more substantial reasons for existence than most sterile representations of tragedy (that are presented every summer in Epidaurus. There are exceptions, such as that of Bob Wilson).

The whole riddle of the Sphinx gets its answer here in a more developed version. We are now off the feet. How many legs make a man, four, two or three, and now at the “Hotel AntiOedipus” we can ask, how many genders make a man, how many transformations, how many becomings.

Review on Hotel “AntiOedipus” by Louisa Arkoumanea, Theatre Critic, Dramaturg

Hotel “AntiOedipus” is the epitome of the new theatre, which is a total theatre. It plunges into life, creates a continuity. Life, theatre and the subconsciousness define a never ending line. Art, psychoanalysis and life are interconnected. It’s a new theatre but is also primitive. The art of Elli Papakonstantinou enters into the thing itself, excavates it, reshapes it in the unconscious, replaces representation with a plunge, a dive into its own creation. In the place of the representation of desire it restores desire justifying the whole piece.

Elli Papakonstantinou creates new theatrical forms; at the epicentre, there is the collectiveness. Here, participation is the catharsis. The piece is continued in the audience and the audience goes into the play, as for example in the extraordinary scene of the Chorus of the City. Hotel “AntiOedipus”, creates itself all the philosophy and the anthropology and the science. Because this is the main theme: love and its limits, desire and its limits.

Chloe Kolyri, Psychiatrist – psychoanalyst

The issue at stake is finding escapes, and it is those escapes which Hotel “AntiOedipus” traces.

Elli Papakonstantinou: your work is wondrous, incandescent, transformative — radiant, luminous, with the kind of light that flushes out all darkness […] It was serendipitous to come to your fluidity-of-roles and identities-production.

Paul K. Smith, Playwright

There are some stunning moments, the Tiresias scene etched on my mind. It’s very impressive to make the play so clearly about the body where there aren’t any bodies present!

Michael Walling, Theatre director, Academic and Artistic Director of BorderCrossings, UK

I thoroughly enjoyed Hotel “AntiOedipus”! The interactive parts of the performance were so much fun, and MC Oedipus was fabulous. It is very challenging to do live music over Zoom, so I was impressed that the songs worked really well. […] I especially liked the nod to Teiresias as a figure who blurs binaries of gender as well as of sight/blindness.

Erika L. Weiberg, Assistant Professor of Classical Studies