Performative Workshop Series

by Filippo Riniolo

Curated by Ilayda Tunca

Videographers: Murat Kahya, Aykut Guler, Selcuk Uzanır

Sound design: Can Gürses

This is the last of three relational workshops prepared for the Palimpsest Festival in Istanbul.

Tiresias, Cassandra, Chalcante and many clairvoyants in the Iliad and Odyssey. But who are the clairvoyants today? They are scientists. The prophets of that time announced destruction but the people in power did not want to believe them. Powerful people preferred to ignore or kill the clairvoyants rather than change their attitudes and heed the prophecies. This is happening today with scientists and climate change. You don’t need to be wizards and witches to understand the future, science says so. It just needs to change our way of life.

This is the first of the three relational workshops released for the Mahalla Festival in Istanbul. We wrote together and sang to Calliope, the muse of poetry, about the stories of the sorceress Circe, a feminist witch. In a world where power belongs to males and women are mothers or wives. Circe is an autonomous and independent woman. Who rules her island not with weapons but with seductive magic.