PERFORMANCE:Eleni Kamma,RE-M-OMMEGANG (Re-M-Parade)
The Head of Megera is an enigmatic medieval sculpture in the M Collection of MLeuven, Belgium. This giantess was part of the famous medieval processions in Leuven. For Playground, she is being activated by a museum selfie-junkie during a curated walk, speculating on the perspective of Megera. Both characters will dialogue with the old pieces in the collection and with actual and virtual visitors. With this the show addresses two types of audiences, the virtual and the actual.
“Re-M-Ommegang (Re-M-Parade)” explores the relationships between the senses, spectatorship and old art today and then and between surface and critique, based on medieval folk heroes, satire, and caricature.
“Through this disruption, museum selfie takers assert their physical bodies and online personae as curated objects equally deserving of a viewer’s interest and focus”. E.B Hunter
Gallery A
On the couch. Lying down.
Do I speak? Yes? Can you hear me?
Hello, my name is … I am very happy to be here with you. I am thrilled to announce that I am the first presenter of an experimental/ pilot program here in Museum-M,
slowly coming up, turning around to show the collection, stop.
which under the title Re-M-Ommegang invites Museum selfie-junkies like myself
bring the phone closer to myself
to select an object of their choice, replicate it and use it to guide the audience through the Museum. Of course, I am just one among many museum selfie-junkies in the world and even in this museum. I would just like to say that we have a mission, which is to spread museum context to the world. I chose to replicate this female Giant’s head
taking the head, shooting from above. Then slowly walking backwards to the rose wall, for the first time looking at the real audience while I speak:
because in addition to her powerful and enigmatic expression I found her story captivating, but also emblematic of this collection.
Research, concept and direction: Eleni Kamma; performance and script developed in collaboration with Shila Anaraki; performer Shila Anaraki) Thanks to: Jelle Sprut; Sahra Huby. Production Playground Festival (STUK, & M – Museum). The work of Eleni Kamma’s practice is generously supported by the Mondriaan Fonds. Photo: Robin Zenner
CV: Eleni Kamma (Athens, 1973) is a visual artist and a PhD candidate at PhDArts, Leiden University, University of the Arts, The Hague. Her viewpoint continually moves between the positions of artist and researcher. Kamma’s practice moves along a Moebius strip schema, that keeps circulating from her as individual artist (through drawings and objects), to dialectic collaborations (films, performative events, a journal) and back again, by writing about it and working on it with others.
Her projects are characterized by long periods of research (from the specific to the general) and the collection of information material in images and text. Eleni Kamma’s art practice is determined by the gaps, blind spots and contradictions within existing cultural stories and structures. These gaps, blind spots and contradictions concern issues such as memory, authenticity and identity. They often take shape in tangible objects or in stories that, stripped of their actual history, are made into a stereotype.
She lives and works in Brussels and Maastricht.
