Constantinopoliad

sister sylvester - creator, writer, co-book designer

Artwork Description:

Constantinopoliad is a collective reading and audio work. A response to the archive of the poet Constantine Cavafy, the story is inspired by the blank and torn out pages in “Constantinopoliad, an epic”, the journal the teenage Cavafy began when he and his family fled Alexandria; by lost and missing queer archives through time; and by the ghosts, both erotic and historical, that visit the older Cavafy in his poems. The work invites audiences into an immersive sound and light installation, to share the reading of a hand-made art book. With subtle use of technology to create and control the interactive sound and light, the audience are guided through a collective experience of the archive. Constantinopoliad uses Cavafy's poems to think about how we can see, and hear, through time. Drawing on astronomical scales in use in Constantinople during Cavafy's time, and research by composer Nadah El Shazly into the Cairo Congress that created notation systems for Arab music, the work considers the impossibility of recrossing technological divides. How do technological innovations change our sensory experience, and once they have been made, are they irrevocable? How do we see, and hear, through time? Constantinopoliad invites the audience into a collective experience that conjures the ghosts of history through a multi-sensory and tactile engagement with the past.

Project Collaborators:

Score by Nadah El Shazly Illustration and book co-design by efrîn ozyetis Lighting by Cosette (Ettie) Pin Slides Jeremy Kadetsky based on a design by Tei Blow Dramaturgy by Andrew Kircher Co-Produced by Onassis ONX Project managed by Marin Day Executive Produced by Sister Sylvester