On August 20, 21 and 22, 2017, I posted three posts on Minus Plato about the sound piece Medea by Soundwalk Collective. Here they are to refresh your memory:
The first post is just the cover of the book Medea, the second a link to the sound piece (with a video by Vincent Moon), while the third post was an interactive mission for you, the reader of Minus Plato. I invited them/you to visit the Store at the Wexner Center for the Arts and look for the book Medea, and, if you cited Minus Plato to the Store manager, Matt Reber, he would sell you the book with a major discount.
As this mission was never completed, I put the book up for auction to support the work of The Sportula: Microgrants for Classics Students, not only offering the book, but also a copy uniquely annotated by Minus Plato! (Lucky winner, if you are reading this, you will be receiving your copy of Medea soon – send me an email to minusplato@gmail.com so I can arrange shipment!).
While those annotations will be seen by the person who purchased the book to support The Sportula, I wanted to share with all of you the two passages I chose to annotate, as well as the introduction of the book to give those passages some context. These passages were chosen for two reasons. First of all because they represented moments in the narrative of Medea that took me back to Athens and Kassel during the Summer of 2017 and the exhibition documenta 14 where Soundwalk Collective’s work Transmissions, which included Medea, was installed in listening stations designed by the artist Aristide Antonas for the exhibition’s public radio program Every Time a Ear di Soun.
Secondly, they were chosen in anticipation for my meeting with my friend, Classicist Clara Bosak-Schroeder (@thaumatic), tomorrow at the Wexner Center. Since quitting Classics, @thaumatic has been a supportive and inspiring presence in my life, online and off, especially in how she has helped me make sense of my current relationship with my estranged academic discipline. I chose these passages for her, because they not only deal with Classical references (Atlantis and Medea), but also offer us a map to how such references can be reused as part of a different journey than that mapped out by academic Classicists. There are wonders there!
To learn about the brilliant work of @thaumatic, click here.
Introduction
The Black Sea is like any other sea in the world, it repeats the same things many times with waves always beginning again, and yet no one seems to understand it, no one appears to listen to it even.
Stephan Crasneanscki has gathered around him in the Soundwalk Collective, whose founder he is, a team of four sound artists: Kamran Sadeghi, Simone Merli, Jake Harper and Dug Winningham. They climb aboard a twenty-eight meter long schooner and travel for two months along the shore of the Black Sea, from Istanbul to Burgas, through seven countries, coasting. They will etch grooves in that inhabited silence, they will record the sonic squeaks, sailors’ dialogues, the moans of the rigging…all the things that will compose their journey when one closes one’s eyes.
My name is Arthur Larrue, I shall be with them, I am going to write what could be a Journal of the Black Sea if Medea doesn’t become the tutelary figure of that sound journey. For Stephan is convinced that if that sea possesses a language of its own, it is to the magician Medea that the meaning should be asked.
We are in Istanbul, 28 52′ 73 E, the air is extremely peppery.
Tomorrow I shall talk about yesterday.
Odessa E30 44’98.7
A man called Pacha, working at the Odessa harbour, came on board to drink our vodka.
I went into the cosmos (He drinks).
Really?
Yeah, I spent ten years there. It’s not that exciting up there, you know.
And when you came back, what did you do?
I dived under water, very deep, for twenty years. It’s much better than the cosmos…
Why? (He drinks.)
More difficult, more dangerous, and there are fish.
Twenty years, that’s a long time!
We were looking for Atlantis, it was not easy… (He drinks.)
Did you find it?
Yes. (He drinks.) But that was not very interesting either. In fact, the cosmos and Atlantis are made for those with no imagination. The real paradise is here. Where it is cosmic and aquatic. It’s where one flies and dives. (He drinks.) It took me thirty years to understand that witticism, I’m that stupid. Now I know: the real conquest is the people, the encounters, there, on earth… (He drinks)
Do you drink to celebrate that discovery?
No, I drink out of a sense of weather.
Ha? (He drinks)
It’s forty degrees in Odessa, so my blood must be forty degrees too.
Hence the vodka.
Exactly. With wine I would be below the required temperature, with brandy I would be over… (He finishes the bottle.)
Mamaia N43 03’64.8
(Conversation with Titinia.)
Stephan, you’re a musician?
Not exactly, because I play with the music and the voices of others…
Arthur, you’re a writer?
Certainly not. I have only books and no publishers…
Are you famous?
Across the whole of the Black Sea!
Are you leaving today?
Yes, we are leaving now for Bulgaria.
We have to see the Turkish border to loop our loop.
And after, you’re going back home?
We don’t know yet…
Titinia?
Yes?
Can we call you Medea?