Christodoulos Panayiotou
Cyprus-based artist, Christodoulos Panayiotou completed a three-week residency with Bellas Artes Projects. A Philippine premier of his infamous lecture-performance Dying On Stage was held at the Cultural Center of the Philippines which was succeeded by a mentorship session that focused on conceptual-driven practice.
While in Bataan, Panayiotou research into the history of the Philippines and found inspiration from the Las Casas workshops. From the cement tile workshops, he experimented on the materials of terrazzo production by mixing chips of resin with the different colors with cement. Another process that interested the artist was casting. He played around with cement reliefs (from the wood carvers’ precasts) and abstractified the designs as he intended to isolate the oceanic designs. These works-in-progress and are currently situated at the Las Casas workshops.
On November 18, in partnership with the Cultural Center of the Philippines, BAP presented Dying On Stage, which had it’s Philippine premier with over a hundred attendees present to witness the 2 hours lecture-performance. He concocted Dying On Stage based on his growing archive of videos sourced online on the topic of death. He initially shared his collection with close friends which gradually grew into a presentation that he would annually perform on his birthday. He presents his personal – and ever-expanding – archive on the way fiction has the potential to escape mortality and finitude: from French songstress Dalida’s accurate reproduction of poses in her most tragic songs, to Amy Winehouse's reluctance to perform (unbeknownst to her) one last time, or filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini's metaphorical idea of a society “dying on stage”. The 2 hour and 15 minutes lecture-performance combines the precision of a lecture with the digression of a night spent surfing the web.
The following day, on November 19, 10 participants ranging from choreographers to visual artists took part in a full day mentorship with Panayiotou. The programme opened with a round table discussion about Dying On Stage where questions from the artist’s process to cultural sensibility were brought up. For the remainder of the day, participants presented their works ranging from choreography to video/animation art.
Thank you for everyone who went and participated in Dying on Stage and Mentorship with Christodoulos! We hope to see you on our upcoming events! ☺︎