"Archive of Desire" | A festival inspired by the poet C. P. Cavafy

“ARCHIVE OF DESIRE” A FESTIVAL INSPIRED BY THE POET

C. P. CAVAFY

Curator Composer Paola Prestini

Creative Director

Afroditi Panagiotakou

Executive Producer

Karen Brooks Hopkins

Festival Producer

Rachel Katwan

ONASSIS FOUNDATION ATHENS

ONASSIS CULTURE

Director of Culture

Afroditi Panagiotakou

Deputy Director of Culture

Dimitris Theodoropoulos

PR Executive

Alexandra Chrysanthakopoulou

ONASSIS CAVAFY ARCHIVE

Executive Director of Athens Branch & Director of Education

Effie Tsiotsiou

Communications and Initiatives Coordinator

Marianna Christofi

Scholarly Research Assistant

Angeliki Mousiou

Educational Project Administrator

Eleanna Semitelou

COMMUNICATION

DEPARTMENT

& CONTENT

Group Communication & Content Manager

Demetres Drivas

Content Leader

Alexandros Roukoutakis

Head of Creative

Christos Sarris

Campaign Manager

Elisavet Pantazi

Publications Manager

Christina Kosmoglou

Media Office

Vasso Vasilatou

Katerina Tamvaki

Nefeli Tsartaklea-Kasselaki

Social Media

Vasilis Bibas

Sylvia Kouveli

Social Media Performance Specialist

Giorgos Athanasiou

Copywriter / Website Editor

Margarita Grammatikou

Creative Studio

Georgia Leontara

Constantinos Chaidalis

Jillian Viglaki

Theodoros Koveos

Audiovisual Coordinator

Smaragda Dogani

ONASSIS FOUNDATION USA

Senior Advisor

Karen Brooks Hopkins

Programs Director

Michael Kendrick

Executive Assistant

Claire Nelson

Programs and Marketing Manager

Olivia Buntaine

Onassis Foundation Interns

Aristea Mamidaki

Sofia Pipa

Social Media Coordinator

Mica Verendi

ONX STUDIO

Director of Creative Partnerships

Vallejo Gantner

Programs Manager

Jazia Hammoudi

Studio Fellows & Technical Directors

John Fitzgerald

Matthew Niederhauser

NATIONAL SAWDUST

House & Hospitality Associate

Alfonso Acatecatl

Associate Producer

Cori Aguilera Matos

Senior Producer & Artistic Administrator

Alexander Barnes

Managing Director

Ana De Archuleta

Senior Director & Head of External Affairs

Kim Chan

Director of Finance and Facility

Kyle Dolan

Director of Development

Sophia Dumaine

Director of Marketing & Design

Zan Emerson

Venue Production & Technical Manager

Marielle Iljazoski

Director of Sound and Tech Design

Garth MacAleavey

Assistant Director, Mentorship Initiatives

Eve O’Donnell

Co-Founder & Kris Sebastian & Alberto Cribiore

Artistic Director Chair for National Sawdust’s Seasons 7 (2021-22) & 8 (2022-23)

Paola Prestini

Editor in Chief, Idea Zone

Lynne Procope

Senior Curator & Creative Producer

LeeAnn Rossi

Audience & Donor Manager

Ami Scherson

Director of Partnerships & Special Events

Sally Scheidt

Venue Operations Manager

Brian Schuh

Community Marketing Coordinator

Alyana Vera

POMEGRANATE ARTS

Founder & Director

Linda Brumbach

Managing Director/Creative

Alisa Regas

General Manager

Rachel Katwan

Director of Production

Jeremy Lydic

Production Associate

Jake Stepansky

CAUSE LAB

Founder & Managing Director

Jessica Toledano

Associate Director

Trent Bullion

Art Director

Hailey Walsh

Design & Marketing Associate

Aashi Jhaveri

BLAKE ZIDELL & ASSOCIATES

Publicist

Blake Zidell

Publicist

Nora Lyons

NEW MUSEUM

Chief of Staff and VP, Partnerships

Regan Grusy

Director of Marketing and Digital Strategy

Sarah Bailey Hogarty

Assistant Operations Specialist, Education and Public Engagement

Austin D Bowes

Special Events Producer

Brittney Feinzig

Assistant Director of Education

Ginny Huo

Director of Communications

Sarah Morris

Toby Devan Lewis Director

Lisa Phillips

Keith Haring Director of Education and Public Engagement

Alethea Rockwell

Director of Visitor Experience

Dan Thiem

Senior Production Manager

Derek Wright

ALL ARTS

Senior Artistic Director

James King

Executive Producer

Joe Farrell

Executive Producer

Kristy Geslain

Vice President & General Manager, WLIW21/ WLIW-FM Co-Executive in Charge ALL-ARTS

Diane Mascaile

MCNALLY JACKSON

Founder

Sarah McNally

Director of Programming

Mikaela Dery

Director of Marketing

Madeline Kiss

Creative Directors

J & M Harring

ROCKEFELLER CENTER

Programming & Partnership Coordinator

Anna DeJesus

Marketing Manager

Cristina Tsanas

LESLIE-LOHMAN MUSEUM OF ART

Director of Engagement and Inclusion

J. Soto

Chief Curator / Director of Exhibitions and Collections

Stamatina Gregory

Executive Director

Alyssa Nitchun

Director of External Affairs

Aimée Chan-Lindquist

THE POETRY PROJECT

Executive Director

Kyle Dacuyan

Creative Communications Coordinator

Ivanna Baranova

Event Production Coordinator

Anna Cataldo

Executive Director

Kyle Dacuyan

Communications Manager

Will Farris

Media & Publications Coordinator

Kay Gabriel

Program Director

Laura Henriksen

Associate Director of Operations

Roberto Montes

Deputy Director & Grants Manager

Nicole Wallace

DEATH OF CLASSICAL

General & Artistic Director

Andrew Ousley

Director of Publicity

Mackenzie Horne

Publicity & Marketing Coordinator

Vicki Nguyen

Artistic Administrator

Maddie Gunter

Artistic Administrator

Daniel Rosenberg

Sound Designer

Dan Bora

Sound Engineer

Mike Amancio

Lighting Designer

Abby Hoke-Brady

Production Consultant

Jeremy Lydic

LUMAHAI PRODUCTIONS

President & Founder

Elena Park

Producer

Nicole Potter

Assistant Producer

Avery Leigh Draut

Post-production Mixing

Robert Huott

Creative Advisor

Jocelyn Clarke

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF HELLENIC STUDIES

Director of the Program in Hellenic Studies, Department of Classics

Stathis Gourgouris

Program Coordinator, Hellenic Studies & SNFPHI, Department of Classics

Eleni Gizas

A FESTIVAL INSPIRED BY THE POET C. P. CAVAFY

“ARCHIVE OF DESIRE”

On the 160th anniversary of the birth of C. P. Cavafy, the Onassis Foundation in New York presents a week-long festival that traces the influential character of the Alexandrian poet and the impact of his work on a global scale.

C. P. Cavafy travels to New York through “Archive of Desire,” a festival that involves a multitude of actions inspired by the life and work of the Alexandrian poet, seeking to turn the spotlight on his poems through an array of contemporary artistic endeavors that extend across the city. From April 28 to May 6, the interdisciplinary festival’s program includes a series of performances, digital art presentations, short film screenings, poetry readings, literary discussions, a visual rave, and many more live events curated by composer Paola Prestini, Artistic Director of National Sawdust, a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of contemporary music, and under the creative direction of Afroditi Panagiotakou, Onassis Foundation’s Director of Culture.

Summoning the creative talents of internationally established artists, such as Nick Cave, Bob Faust, Julianne Moore, Laurie Anderson, Rufus Wainwright, Robin Coste Lewis, Julie Mehretu, Vijay Iyer and Jeffrey Zeigler, Sister Sylvester, Nadah El Shazly, Juliana Huxtable, and many others, the festival focuses on Cavafy the poet, as well as the man.

The Festival takes its name from a new work by acclaimed poet Robin Coste Lewis, written for this occasion and inspired by her experience viewing the Cavafy Archive in Athens.

National Sawdust and ONX Studio, the accelerator created by the Onassis Foundation and the New Museum of New York for digital technologies and artistic creation, will be the festival’s primary hubs, while The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, McNally Jackson Booksellers, Rockefeller Center, and Columbia University, among others, will host festival activities.

As leading artists across the world re-approach Cavafy's words, we experience his poetry anew, refracted into a kaleidoscope of contemporary relevance: political, sensual, and profound.

ANTHONY S. PAPADIMITRIOU President of the Onassis Foundation

Waiting for the barbarians

Are we waiting for any barbarians, or have they arrived already? And what defines a barbarian? These questions were posed many times over the last few millennia by civilizations in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas, Australia, and any other continent. Most likely the answers were twice as many as the times the question was posed, given that the questioners and the respondents, by definition, gave separate and totally conflicting answers.

New York and Alexandria (of Egypt), as well as more and more other cities, sit at the fault zone of this matter. The latter for a few more centuries than the former. As Greek was the lingua franca of the East European and Mediterranean world for about 1,000 years, so English (or should I say American) is today’s lingua franca. New York (as was Alexandria at that time) is witness to the social upheavals rocking not only the US but the whole world, the moral requirement of accepting diversity in all its aspects, new philosophical and religious movements, and technological achievements that raise even more societal and moral issues.

To a large extent though, New York is in the process of losing its status as the place to be. Other cities, from Berlin and Barcelona to Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, Johannesburg, Cairo, and yes, Athens, Greece, etc. etc., are vying for the eyes, ears, and minds of a growing population that communicates instantly.

A world that is so far, yet so close, to what Cavafy, with his so few poems, was living. The gentleman “at a slight angle to the universe” (E.M. Forster) has not changed his position. The universe has. Cavafy’s “angle” had a lot to do with his personal life. He was clearly open to his homosexuality, which was common knowledge to the Alexandrians. His angle had even more to do with his culture and his philosophy. In late 19th century Ottoman Constantinople, in English public schools, in early 20th century colonial Alexandria, he was able to witness “barbarians” and “not-barbarians” in real time. He was not living in an exotic and romantic paradise but in a world conflicted, hard, between two world wars. Yet his poetry transcends all that and intellectually appeals to people as diverse as E.M. Forster, Lawrence Durrell, David Hockney, Jackie Kennedy-Onassis, Maya Angelou, Bertolt Brecht, André Aciman, and many more.

Would Cavafy have found a home in the city of the Great Gatsby? I believe so. They were contemporary and shared more than a few common traits.

The “Archive of Desire” is a multifaceted experiment bringing Cavafy to today or proving that Cavafy is of today. The original idea of the project was born in the daily interactions of the Culture Pillar of the Onassis Foundation in Athens. As usual, when a good idea happens, a lot of people thereafter claimed its paternity, or maternity in this case. Afroditi Panagiotakou as Director of Culture of the Onassis Foundation, Karen Brooks Hopkins as Senior Advisor of the Onassis Foundation, and the Cavafy Archive of the Onassis Foundation took the leadership in a project which was not and will not be limited to New York. It has to be an event that reaches across time and across time zones. From New York to Athens, home of our new Cavafy Museum, to Alexandria itself where we have renovated Cavafy’s home at Rue Lepsius, and onwards to Elsewhere, wherever that may be.

We owe our thanks to all the contributors and artists who joined in our effort. I name Afroditi Panagiotakou, Karen Brooks Hopkins, Effie Tsiotsiou, Paola Prestini, Marianna Christofi, and Aggeliki Moussiou, as well as Prof. Stathis Gourgouris. I wish to add our special thanks to Nick Cave, Bob Faust, Laurie Anderson, Rufus Wainwright, Evi Kalogiropoulou, and many more. Our special thanks go to our Academic Advisors (namely Michalis Chryssanthopoulos, Christina Dounia, Karen Emmerich, Vicente Fernández González, Stathis Gourgouris, Hala Halim, Peter Jeffreys, Louisa Karapidakis, Takis Kayalis, Alexander Kazamias, Amalia Pappa, Diomides Spinellis, Gonda Van Steen) who ensure the Festival, the Cavafy Museum in Athens, the Cavafy House in Alexandria, our educational programs, and all our other endeavors do not stray from the paths of the science of literature.

I am sure Cavafy himself would have been (mildly) impressed by the caliber of our contributors, participating artists and academic advisors, and the fact itself of having such a Festival in New York, in his honor.

Athens, April 1st, 2023

PAOLA PRESTINI

Composer

Festival Curator

National Sawdust Co-Founder

When presented with the opportunity to curate a festival based on the work of the poet, Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933), I could not say no. Poetry has been a constant in my life since I was a child. My good friends know that most of my poetry books are deeply worn with notes tracing moments of my life that intersect with the words on the page. Poetry has saved me many times, it has helped me dream the abstract, and it has become an integral part of the music that I write.

And so, as Curator of the Festival, I began a deep dive into the treasure trove of the Onassis Foundation’s Cavafy Αrchive (which is organized with significant care) to create a festival program that reflects and illuminates the poetry of a deliberate, thoughtful, and passionate man, one who was measured in his creations and how they reached the world, and whose most famous poems run even deeper into the crevices of the mind and spirit, as his secrets and whispers encourage his audience to open both their ears and hearts with each reading.

The idea of the Onassis Foundation pouring such intent and resource into preserving Cavafy’s poetry and, simultaneously, commissioning a new canon in service of further discovery of this singular artist is unique. The time is right for this festival: Poets are in fact true leaders in times of crisis, helping to articulate both the past and the future.

And so, as I stitched the quilt of voices and partners together to bring Cavafy to life, I meditated on many things; his queerness, the lack of binary in his life, his otherness and how this relates to current political themes, his sense of sensuality and how its hot fragrance persists across the decades and still quickens the pulse. How the artists in the festival illuminate Cavafy is yet to be seen as this is all newly commissioned work. What I do know is that an autonomous artist like Cavafy foreshadowed the current state of an independent sector of artists, including the very creative minds we are working with in our Festival who are all also fiercely brilliant, inspired and unfettered by convention.

Our Festival, “Archive of Desire,” will share Cavafy’s poetry and newly commissioned work in intimate settings that mirror the relationship between a reader and the page. We invite you in.

AFRODITI PANAGIOTAKOU

Festival Creative Director

Director of Culture, Onassis Foundation

Cavafy Singular

atypical and erotic, direct and obscure./ an honest witness to guiltless pleasure./ a contemporary citizen of ancient cities./ neither Greek nor western./ a man of his own invention graced with a language of his own invention./ is this reason enough to bring Cavafy to New York?/ I don’t know…/ what I do know is that Cavafy is a poet for those who don’t like poetry./ and he’s coming to New York for those who don’t already know him./ and he’ll be walking the streets, observing the crowds and disappearing among them./ in times when we think we need the eyes of others in order to be somebody, he quietly suggests the following:

Even if you cannot make your life the way you want, try this, at least, as best you can: do not demean it by too much contact with the crowd, by too much movement and idle talk.

Do not demean it by dragging it along, by wandering all the time and exposing it to the daily foolishness of social relations and encounters, until it becomes an importunate stranger.

as much as we can./

C. P. Cavafy, “As best as you can,” translated by Evangelos Sachperoglou

KAREN BROOKS HOPKINS

Festival Executive Producer

Senior Advisor, Onassis USA

Board Member, Onassis Foundation

As a lifelong arts administrator and devoted fan of every art form, I have always found poetry to be one of the most difficult disciplines to grasp. The deep emotional connection found in listening to great opera, the geometry and dexterity of dance, the profound storytelling that draws you into the heart of brilliant theatrical productions, and the comfort and heartfelt connection one feels hearing different styles of music, have always been artistic experiences I have gravitated towards most naturally.

Therefore, poetry to me seems more elusive – with the meaning and depth of the poet’s words always just a bit out of my reach. Then, through the Onassis Foundation’s Cavafy Archive, I discovered the poet, Constantine P. Cavafy, and, honestly, I couldn’t get enough! His words are both accessible and adventurous, powered by a life force that draws you in like a great novel. Erotic and aspirational, Cavafy communicates pure feeling with no verbal overdrive. He writes, it seems, for the undiluted joy of self-expression, and generously shares that with his readers.

I hope our “Archive of Desire” audiences will enjoy the events we have planned and, in doing so, will find their own way to the heart and pen of this talented writer. The contemporary artists and poets featured in the festival have studied and embraced Cavafy’s poems and have added their own sensibilities to his work, thereby amplifying his voice and their own.

The range of poets, composers, musicians, theater-makers, and writers participating in our Festival is amazing. Paola Prestini, our festival curator, has brought together a robust range of great performances and readings. Elena Park has created a wonderful series of short films, entitled Visual Cavafy. The Onassis Foundation, led by Anthony S. Papadimitriou, our President; Afroditi Panagiotakou, Director of Culture; Effie Tsiotsiou, Executive Director and Director of Education; Marianna Christofi, Communications and Initiatives Coordinator, and Cavafy Archive Academic Committee member; Professor Stathis Gourgouris have, through their artistic partnership and leadership, made it possible for us to share Cavafy’s work with our New York audiences on an unprecedented scale.

I hope you will join us for many of the events at National Sawdust, our partner venues, online, and on television, through our extensive media partnership with WNET’s All Arts and The Onassis Channel.

P.S. Here is my favorite –

Che fece .... il gran rifiuto

For some people the day comes when they have to declare the great Yes or the great No. It’s clear at once who has the Yes ready within him; and saying it, he goes forward in honor and self-assurance. He who refuses does not repent. Asked again, he would still say no. Yet that no – the right no –undermines him all his life.

Perfect don’t you think?

STATHIS GOURGOURIS

Professor of Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University

Member of the Cavafy Archive Academic Committee

Days of 2023: Cavafy as 21st-Century Artist

Cavafy is uniquely relevant to our time via a set of paradoxical characteristics. He is world famous while never publishing a book in his lifetime, refusing the market of literature by self-publishing a series of pamphlets, each one being a unique work of art. He is the most translated poet in history, even though he writes in Greek – like no other Greek – a sensual language that is instantly mutable and transferrable. Even when he speaks of the past, he is speaking of now. Even when he speaks in peculiar detail, he sketches an instantly recognizable world. Cavafy belongs to the world, even though he inhabited a specific time and space in the colonial world of empires. His understanding of Alexandria as a node of historical time across the ages lends his poetry a kind of suspension and translatability. The city is always there, no matter the time period, the people who inhabit it, or the language they speak. I’m not suggesting he is universal; rather, the opposite. He is so particular and unique that he is disconnected from the specific regimes of time and space. For this reason, he is endlessly rediscoverable – now a New York City poet in the 21st century.

ONASSIS FOUNDATION

The mission of the Onassis Foundation, founded by Aristotle Onassis in 1975, will always be human-centric; to create the conditions, explore the ideas, and spark the discussions that lead to a better society.

The Foundation works to promote the rich contributions of contemporary Greek culture throughout the world. The Onassis Foundation's work is based in Athens but spans the globe, focusing on culture, healthcare, and education. It has awarded more than 7,500 scholarships to young people worldwide since the late ʼ70s and presents countless cultural events each year. By building the Onassis National Transplant Center until 2024, following the Onassis Cardiac Center in Athens, it creates the conditions to provide health to all, offering the Greek society a hospital for the transplant of solid organs, as well as a center for research and innovation in the field of organ transplantation.

In the US, the Onassis Foundation offers generous support for and curation of cultural programming across various art forms and creative endeavors. Onassis USA, based in New York, includes ONX Studio for Extended Reality, a joint initiative between Onassis USA and New Museumʼs NEW INC; an accelerator, a subsidized workspace, and an exhibition gallery located in the Onassis Gallery of Olympic Tower in Manhattan.

Through Onassis AiR, a program built on the continuous support of artistic research and practice, aiming to foster a space where the artists set the conditions themselves for the development of their work, the Onassis Foundation supports the members of its broader ecosystem and its existing partnerships with the local and international artistic community. And when it comes to culture, itʼs not just art; it’s a way of living. At Onassis Culture, with the Onassis Stegi as its hub, the Foundation encourages the talent and energy of local and international artists to thrive and starts conversations that aim to shake and shape society. Onassis Stegi is a center of global contemporary culture that, through a series of initiatives and works, promotes dialogue about democracy, social and environmental justice, racial and gender equality, and LGBTQIA+ rights.

Movement Radio is Onassis Stegiʼs international web radio, thus a cultural platform that focuses on new music productions, speaking through sounds and ideas, tracing current political and critical thought, and crossing an imaginary archipelago for the bolstering of dialogue that goes beyond borders and dates.

The Onassis YouTube Channel is constantly evolving and growing bigger by adding new productions, digital concerts, documentaries, online discussions, and unique content, bringing our common digital future into focus.

PARTNERS

ONX Studio is a hybrid production and exhibition space with a global community of members who create interactive and immersive XR works. Located in the Onassis Gallery in Midtown Manhattan, it was founded in partnership by the Onassis Foundation and New Museum’s NEW INC.

National Sawdust is a state-of-the-art home for music innovation and performance based in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY, cofounded and led by composer Paola Prestini and attorney Kevin Dolan. National Sawdust believes that artistic expression empowers us all to create a more joyful and just world. Its mission is to curate, commission, and produce music and artistic works rooted in curiosity, experimentation, innovation, and inclusivity by engaging communities of artists and audiences at its Williamsburg home and on its digital stage.

ALL ARTS is breaking new ground as the premier destination for inspiration, creativity and art of all forms. This New York Emmy-winning arts and culture hub is created by The WNET Group, the community-supported home of New York’s PBS stations.

McNally Jackson, founded in 2004, is a New York City-based Independent Bookstore with five locations across Manhattan and Brooklyn, as well as LaGuardia Airport and The Shed, offering a unique selection of books from around the world, as well as in-person and virtual events programming featuring award-winning authors.

The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (LLMA) is the only art museum in the world dedicated to artistic exploration through multi-faceted queer perspectives. With a collection that includes over 25,000 objects spanning three centuries of queer art, LLMA embraces the power of the arts to inspire, explore, and foster understanding of the rich diversity of LGBTQIA+ experiences.

Death of Classical is committed to bringing new life to the performing arts by creating unique and unexpected concert experiences, reaching new and broader audiences, and giving a voice to underrepresented composers and performers.

Columbia University is one of the worldʼs most important centers of research and, at the same time, a distinctive and distinguished learning environment for undergraduates and graduate students in many scholarly and professional fields. The University recognizes the importance of its location in New York City and seeks to link its research and teaching to the vast resources of a great metropolis. It seeks to attract a diverse and international faculty, staff, and student body, to support research and teaching on global issues, and to create academic relationships with many countries and regions. It expects all areas of the University to advance knowledge and learning at the highest level and to convey the products of its efforts to the world.

Through its live programming, workshops, publications, website, and special events, The Poetry Project promotes, fosters, and inspires the reading and writing of contemporary poetry by (a) presenting contemporary poetry to diverse audiences; (b) increasing public recognition, awareness and appreciation of poetry and other arts; (c) providing a community setting in which poets and artists can exchange ideas and information, and (d) encouraging the participation and development of new poets from a broad range of styles.

The New Museum is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to contemporary art. Founded in 1977, the New Museum is a center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists from around the world. From its beginnings as a one-room office on Hudson Street to the inauguration of its first freestanding building on the Bowery designed by SANAA in 2007, the New Museum continues to be a place of experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas.

Lumahai Productions seeks to spotlight and support a range of remarkable artists through live and virtual programs, created for institutional heavyweights but also for smaller, nimble outfits with an appetite for risk-taking, exploring ideas, and making connections among the worlds of arts, culture, media, technology, and current affairs.

For over twenty years, Pomegranate Arts has worked in close collaboration with a small group of contemporary artists and arts institutions to bring bold and ambitious artistic ideas to fruition. Founder and director Linda Brumbach, along with managing director Alisa E. Regas produced the Olivier Award-winning revival of Einstein on the Beach, the multi-award winning production of Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music and the Drama Desk Award-winning production of Charlie Victor Romeo. Since its inception, Pomegranate Arts has produced over 30 major new performing arts productions and tours for Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Lucinda Childs, Dan Zanes, London’s Improbable, Sankai Juku, Batsheva Dance Company, Robin Frohardt, and Bassem Youssef and collaborated on new productions with the Kronos Quartet, Leonard Cohen, Robert Wilson, and Frank Gehry. Pomegranate strives to create a community of institutions and individuals that are inspired by artists who bring beauty and truth into the world, ask important questions, and take bold risks.

From its planning to its inception right down to the present day, Rockefeller Center has been a place that makes history, and where history is made. Filled with interesting characters, incredible moments, and defining events, getting a historical perspective and understanding of Rockefeller Center is always rewarding. John D. Rockefeller Jr’s vision was for Rockefeller Center to be a place where New Yorkers could come and surround themselves with art and motifs that celebrated the best of the human spirit. Today, his vision has been spectacularly realized, giving visitors the opportunity to discover and be inspired by it all, from outdoor art installations to historic public art. Rockefeller Center is a masterpiece of composition. The varied public art collection of murals, reliefs, sculptures, carving, architectural styles, and modern-day installations provides endless opportunities to explore, stop and reflect, and appreciate the beauty and creativity that surrounds you.

C. P. Cavafy, 1863—1933

Constantine P. Cavafy was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1863 to Greek parents who hailed from Constantinople. He spent the greater part of his life in Alexandria, a city of many religions and different languages, in a cosmopolitan and fluid intercultural environment that had a significant influence on his writings. His work quite often captures the vivacity and tensions between the worlds that co-mingled outside his doorstep.

Cavafy’s poetry is characterized by a pervasive sense of liminality. His language might appear idiosyncratic, playful, and modern; however, it is equally nostalgic. Cavafy pays particular attention to rhythm, melody, and harmony. Similarly, while his poetry bears frequent references to Greek history and mythology, he remains a monumental figure of modernity and his works contain perspectives that transcend their era and resonate today. Poetry served as a haven for Cavafy to explore his own queer identity – in his poetry, homoeroticism is often described in the same language reserved by the society of his era. Conversely, Cavafy seems to ascribe his artistic conception to his homoerotic desire, and his homoeroticism as such is conveyed as a poetical expression.

Cavafy did not comply with becoming a segment of the publishing market, both in Greek and English languages, despite numerous attempts at times by important literary figures from various countries to persuade him of the need to promote his work more widely; however, he archived and commented on everything, as if he was already expecting the most open-minded amongst his future readers. He insisted on the practice of self-publishing, creating pamphlets with his work that he later distributed to selected recipients, whom he listed meticulously, devising as such a network of contacts between his contemporaries and peers. Therefore, the optimal way to contact his work was directly through him, while this unusual publishing tactic rendered his poetry hard to find and sought-after.

His work is published posthumously, translated from early on,and continues to be translated into many languages today. The translation phenomenon that is Cavafy’s poetry – one that is not anchored to a particular style of writing – is interpreted by W. H. Auden as such: “What, then, is it in Cavafyʼs poems that survives translation and excites? Something I can only call, most inadequately, a tone of voice, a personal speech. I have read translations of Cavafy made by many different hands, but every one of them was immediately recognizable as a poem by Cavafy; nobody else could possibly have written it.”

The impact of his work is due to the fact that Cavafy, so special and unique, seems to break free from the conditions of each time and place, and therefore can be addressed, again and again, to everybody.

C. P. Cavafy, an internationally acclaimed poet, collected and archived his work on a systematic basis, hence creating a unique literary and personal archive. The Cavafy Archive consists of manuscripts of poems, handcompiled printed editions, prose literary works, articles, studies, and notes by the poet, along with C. P. Cavafy’s personal archive rich in correspondence, texts, and photographs.

The Cavafy archive was acquired by the Onassis Foundation at the end of 2012. This acquisition safeguarded the archive’s continued presence in Greece and prevented a potential fragmentation.

The Onassis Foundation’s vision for the Cavafy archive centers on promoting the work of C. P. Cavafy in broader audiences, as well as on providing free and open access to its materials, and on bolstering education through archival resources. Under this scope, the Onassis Foundation proceeded with digitizing, classifying, and fully documenting the entity of the Cavafy archive contents, in Greek and in English, and in March 2019 the digital collection of the archive was published, rendering the archive accessible to all.

Following the online publication, the Onassis Foundation is stepping up once more to meet the challenges of disseminating and granting open access to the archival materials. By investing in the creation of a tailor-made space for the Cavafy Archive in Athens, the Onassis Foundation provides local residents, researchers, and visitors with yet another international cultural heritage attraction. The Cavafy Archive will be opening its doors in the historic heart of Athens in 2023. This new space will house both the archive and library of C. P. Cavafy, as well as a collection of personal items, and works of art with references to the poet.

With a view to propelling the legacy of the poet, the Onassis Foundation undertook in 2022 the restoration of Cavafy’s House in Alexandria, Egypt. The place where C. P. Cavafy lived for the better part of his life is to be restored, giving prominence to what it looked like during the years it served as Cavafy’s residence, thus, offering a glimpse into the past and into the milestones of the poet’s life. The restoration project of Cavafy’s House is being undertaken in partnership with the Hellenic Foundation for Culture.

Through the festival “Archive of Desire,” the Cavafy archive has set up an open dialogue with current artists, thinkers, and visionaries to revisit the work of C. P. Cavafy and to introduce it afresh to the New York audience.

cavafy.onassis.org

April 2023

→ McNally Jackson’s bookstores & Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art

McNally Jackson Speaker Series

To celebrate C. P. Cavafyʼs impact on modern poetry, his intellectual legacy, and his queer and diasporic identity as a man who deftly danced between the ancient world and the modern metropolis, McNally Jackson bookstores will be transformed into living invitations for passersby to discover or reconsider Cavafy and his canon.

Each of McNally Jackson’s seven city-wide locations, from SoHo to Downtown Brooklyn, will house artfully made “tiny poetry libraries” dedicated to the poet and his work. A limited number of tote bags and commemorative bookmarks will be available for free.

Additionally, McNally Jackson has curated a series of three literary talks for the Festival with writers and intellectuals who will deeply consider Cavafy’s work, identity, and artistic footprint: In honor of the Festival and aligned with National Poetry Month, McNally Jackson will be highlighting the Complete Poems of C. P. Cavafy translated by Daniel Mendelsohn, as its April 2023 book-of-the-month selection.

A series of conversations exploring C. P. Cavafy’s impact on modern poetry, and “tiny poetry libraries” in citywide bookstore locations

Wed, April 19 7:00pm

Cavafy as Queer Poet

→ Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art

by Stamatina Gregory, Adam Ashraf Elsayigh, Jason Wee & Richie Hofmann

This conversation, curated in partnership with the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, a historically queer space, welcomes playwright Adam Ashraf Elsayigh, artist and writer Jason Wee, poet Richie Hofmann and the LLMA’s Director of Curatorial Programs Stamatina Gregory to explore Cavafy’s identity as a gay writer, and his influence on generations of LGBTQIA+ writers, artists, and thinkers.

Thu, April 27 7:00pm

Cavafy as World Poet

→ McNally Jackson South Street Seaport

by Daniel Mendelsohn & Jana Prikryl

Celebrated Cavafy scholar and a noted translator of his work Daniel Mendelsohn will engage in conversation with acclaimed poet Jana Prikryl on Cavafy’s stature as a “poet of the world,” which will consider the poet’s biography, the global influences on his work, as well as the art of translation, and the process of bringing his work into another place and time.

Sat, May 6 5:00pm

Why Read Cavafy?

→ McNally Jackson— South Street Seaport

by André Aciman & Paul Holdengräber

A spirited conversation between raconteur Paul Holdengräber and André Aciman – another Alexandria-born writer – will give insight into their yearslong fascination with Cavafy, and why so many artists share this passionate interest in his work.

McNally Jackson Speaker Series

Stamatina Gregory is a curator and art historian. They have taught art history, critical theory, and writing at the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, Parsons/The New School, the School of Visual Arts, and Sotheby’s Institute, and have organized exhibitions for institutions including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, the Santa Monica Museum of Art/ICA LA, The Cooper Union, Austrian Cultural Forum, and the 55th Venice Biennale. They are the Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art.

Adam Ashraf Elsayigh was born in Cairo, Egypt to parents who were reluctantly doctors. When soon thereafter, Adam’s parents relocated the family to Dubai, Adam grew up in a religious Muslim household with American cable television, going to a British school in a Gulf state where over 90% of the population were migrant workers. This upbringing at the cross-section of cultures is at the core of the artist Adam is. Today, Adam is a writer, theatermaker, and dramaturg who writes and develops plays that interrogate the intersections of queerness, immigration, and colonialism. Adam’s plays (including Drowning in Cairo, Revelation, Memorial, and Jamestown/Williamsburg) have been developed and seen at New York Theatre Workshop, The Lark, The Tisch School of the Arts, The LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, and Golden Thread Productions. Adam is a fellow at Georgetown University’s, Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics and an Alliance/Kendeda Award Finalist. He holds a BA in Theater with an emphasis in Playwriting and Dramaturgy from NYU Abu Dhabi and is an MFA Candidate in Playwriting at Brooklyn College.

Jason Wee is an artist and writer. Recent projects use a choral libretto as an invitation to consider the design of a general assembly (for the Singapore Biennale 2019), queer secrecies in public spaces and shipping lanes (for the 1st Asia Society Triennial), and the history of “undesirable literatures” (for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022). His art practice searches for polyphony and powerlessness in the figurations of Asia and Southeast Asia. His works move restlessly between art, design histories, poetry, publishing, geopolitics, sculpture, and photography. He is the co-editor of SOFTBLOW Poetry Journal. He founded and runs Grey Projects, an artists’ library and residency. He is the author of two chapbooks and three poetry collections, including An Epic of Durable Departures (Math Paper Press, 2018), a finalist for the Singapore Literature Prize. His most recent, In Short, Future Now (Sternberg Press, 2020) was the Gaudy Boy Poetry Prize finalist.

Richie Hofmann is the author of Second Empire (2015) and A Hundred Lovers (2022). His poetry has appeared recently in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The Yale Review He teaches at Stanford University and lives in Chicago and San Francisco.

Daniel Mendelsohn is an award-winning memoirist, critic, essayist, and translator. A longtime contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, he has also been a columnist on books, film, TV, and culture for BBC Culture, New York and Harper’s magazines, and The New York Times Book Review. His books include the memoirs An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic (2017); the internationally bestselling Holocaust family saga The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (2006); a translation, with commentary, of the Modern Greek poet C. P. Cavafy, and three collections of essays, most recently Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones (2019). His tenth book, Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate, published in September 2020, was named a Kirkus Best Book of the Year and won the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book Prize) in France. Mr. Mendelsohn is the Editor-at-Large of The New York Review of Books and the Director of the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, a charitable trust that supports nonfiction writing. He teaches literature at Bard College.

McNally Jackson Speaker Series

Jana Prikryl was born in the Czech Republic and moved to Canada at the age of six. She is the author of three books of poems, Midwood, The After Party, and No Matter. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, and an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Prikryl lives in Brooklyn and is an editor at The New York Review of Books.

André Aciman was born in Alexandria, Egypt and is an American memoirist, essayist, novelist, and scholar. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name and Find Me as well as of Out of Egypt and other novels, essay collections, and audible novellas. Aciman is the director of The Writers’ Institute and is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center, CUNY. He has written for The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other magazines and newspapers.

Paul Holdengräber is an interviewer and curator. He was the Founding Executive Director of Onassis Los Angeles (OLA). Previously, and for 14 years, he was Founder and Director of The New York Public Library’s LIVE from the NYPL cultural series where he interviewed and hosted over 600 events, holding conversations with everyone from Patti Smith to Zadie Smith, Ricky Jay to Jay-Z, Errol Morris to Jan Morris, Wes Anderson to Helen Mirren, Werner Herzog to Mike Tyson.Before his tenure at the Library, Holdengräber was the Founder and Director of “The Institute for Art & Cultures” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and a Fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. He has a PhD in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and has taught at Princeton University, Williams College, and Claremont Graduate University, among others. In 2003, the French Government named Holdengräber Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, and then promoted him in 2012 to the rank of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. In 2010, The President of Austria awarded him the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art.

Sarah McNally is the founder of McNally Jackson Books, Goods for the Study, and McNally Editions.

April 3—May 6

Mon—Sun 10:00am—7:00pm

Hildegard Commission

→ Rockefeller Center

The cornerstone of National Sawdust’s mentorship program, the Hildegard Commission is its program for emerging composers who are women or of other traditionally marginalized genders. This year’s cohort of composers –Andrea Guterres, Hannah Ishizaki, Yaz Lancaster, DM R, Kelley Sheehan, and Foteini Tryferopoulou – were given the works of the poet C. P. Cavafy to use as a source of inspiration for their commissions, and the resulting works will be available as a sonic installation from April 3-May 6, 2023 in a space at the Rink Level of Rockefeller Center. The soundscape features recordings of the newly commissioned works played by the National Sawdust Ensemble.

Hildegard Composers: Andrea Guterres (composer/sound artist), Hannah Ishizaki (composer), Yaz Lancaster (composer/transdisciplinary artist), DMR(composer), Kelley Sheehan (composer/computer musician), Foteini Tryferopoulou (composer/sound artist/musician) / National Sawdust Ensemble members: Yiannis Palamidas (voice), Lucy Dhegrae (mezzo-soprano), Jennifer Grim (flute), Erin Rogers (alto & baritone saxophones), Rebekah Heller (bassoon), Lev ʽLjovaʼ Zhurbin (viola), Blair McMillen (piano), Erika Dohi (piano), Jeffrey Zeigler (cello), Sae Hashimoto (percussion), Sean Ritenauer (percussion), Stergios Tsirliagos (electronics)

New works by six emerging composers that use the works of the poet C. P. Cavafy as a source of inspiration

April 3—May 6

Mon—Sun 10:00am—7:00pm

→ Rockefeller Center

Andrea Guterres is a composer and sound artist from Sydney, Australia. With a specialization in electroacoustic music and ambisonic soundscapes, her work can be heard in a variety of contexts, including performances, sound installations, and multimedia artworks. Andrea often takes an interdisciplinary approach to composition, frequently working closely with performers, theater-makers, visual artists, and dancers. Andrea’s work has been featured in contemporary art and music festivals throughout Australia, Europe, Asia, and the US. In 2020, she received her Master of Music from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and continues to work with revered venues in The Netherlands, such as Oude Kerk, Het Orgelpark, Korzo Theater, and Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ. Andrea has also worked with Nieuw Ensemble (NL), Ensemble Mise-En (US), Ensemble Offspring (AUS), Block4 (UK), Ensemble Black Pencil (NL), and the Blink Quartet (NL), amongst others. She has been a fellow of AiR Niederösterreich, Künstlerhaus Lukas, and Künstlerhof Schreyahn, and her work has received funding from Kunstmeile Krems, Kultur Stadt Bern, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, and Amarte Fonds. Inspired by Cavafy’s poems “Desires,” “In despair,” and “The windows”.

Hannah Ishizaki is a composer based in New York City. Her music seeks to foster connections between musicians and the audience through the explorations of the physicality of music performance. Hannah finds inspiration in the process of composition, leading her to experiment with a wide range of instruments and sound-generating methods – from acoustic instruments to digital sensors to rocks and zippers. Hannah is passionate about collaboration and has worked with dancers, actors, filmmakers, and visual artists, to connect the seemingly unconnected and create innovative and multidisciplinary projects. In 2017, Hannah became the youngest woman to have a world premiere with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Her work has been performed internationally by ensembles including Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Moritzburg Festival, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and the Juilliard Orchestra. She recently completed a residency in the Henriquez Studio at the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity and is currently the 2022 artist-in-residence for the Stiftung für Kunst und Musik, Dresden, Germany. Hannah currently studies composition with Andrew Norman and previously studied with Dr. Robert Beaser at the Juilliard School’s graduate program, where she is the first composer to receive the prestigious Kovner Fellowship. Inspired by Cavafy’s poem “The sculptor of Tyana.”

Yaz Lancaster is a Black transdisciplinary artist most interested in relational aesthetics and the everyday; fragments and collage; and liberatory politics. Yaz performs as a violinist, vocalist, and steel pannist in a wide variety of settings from DIY and popular music to contemporary chamber ensembles; and their work is presented in many different mediums and collaborative projects. Yaz has had the privilege and opportunity to create with artists like A Far Cry, BAKUDI SCREAM, Beth Morrison Projects, ContaQt (with Evan Ziporyn), Contemporaneous, JACK Quartet, Leilehua Lanzilotti, and Miss Grit. They are in post-genre duo laydøwn with guitarist-producer Andrew Noseworthy; and work with Luna Composition Lab, ICIYL, and Peach Mag. Yaz holds degrees in violin and poetry from New York University and they live in Lenapehoking (NYC) with their little dog Nori. They enjoy chess, horror, and jalapeños. Inspired by Cavafy’s poems "Monotony” and “Outside the house.”

A native of Bogota, DM R is an electroacoustic music composer based in New York City. Having its footholds in post spectral, ambient, pop culture, Colombian folk, and Rock en Español, her music has been presented by artists such as the International Contemporary Ensemble, Yarn Wire, Alarm Will Sound, ECCE Ensemble, counter)induction, Boston Musica Viva, Berrow Duo, Eric Drescher, and Josh Modney at venues like the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity, the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, the Goethe Institut in Boston, Americas Society, University of North Colorado, the Coral Gables Museum, Boston Conservatory, and the New England Conservatory. Her recent projects include a septet commissioned by the Goethe Institut for Sound Icon and Winsor Music for their Beethoven Goes Modern project, and an evening-length work for the New York-based trio Sputter Box commissioned by the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, as well as a multimedia piece for TAK ensemble and Joy Guidry, and a string duo for andPlay. DM R is a dissertation fellow at Columbia University, and currently, she stands in as a teaching assistant at NYU and teaches composition at Kaufman Center’s Face the Music. Inspired by Cavafy’s poem “Desires” and a selection of the poet’s unpublished works.

Kelley Sheehan is a composer and computer musician moving between acoustic, electronic, electro-acoustic, and performance artworks. In any medium, her work focuses on constructing environments meant to merge electronic and acoustic forces into one composite organism, dependent on this merging to become more than just an extension of itself. Her work has been described as “Full of discovery, collaboration, and unpredictability” (Iannotta, Kyriakides, & Stäbler) with Woozy Electronics (LA-Weekly). Named prize winner of the Gaudeamus Award 2019 and awarded first place for the 2020 ASCAP/SEAMUS commissioning competition, among others. When not composing, she’s an avid improviser on self-made DIY electronics, no-input mixer, her AI-electric guitar hybrid called ‘other machines,’ and/or modular. Having performed at such venues as the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum. Her research has led her to study with composers of various interests such as Sivan Cohen Elias, Marcos Balter, and Fredrick Gifford. She’s a PhD Candidate in Composition at Harvard University studying with Chaya Czernowin and Hans Tutschku. Inspired by Cavafy’s poems “Wise men,” “The rest I will tell to those down in Hades,” and “As best as you can.”

Foteini Tryferopoulou is a sound artist, composer, and musician born in Athens, Greece in 1995. Foteini’s music often combines found objects, soundscapes, synthesized sounds, and acoustic instruments. She is interested in the exploration of the sonic possibilities of acoustic instruments and the relationships between sound and urban environments, music and language, the meeting of sonic and visual stimuli, sound as a form of protest in a visual world, spatial audio, and 3D sound, and, music and the expanding field of its performance. Foteini studied Music at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, with a specialization in Ethnomusicology and Cultural Anthropology. Her undergraduate thesis focuses on the relationships between Music, Film, and Gender. During her time at the University of Athens, Foteini began composing electroacoustic music and worked with Anastasia Georgaki and Orestis Karamanlis. She was a member of the electronic/electroacoustic improv ensemble L.E.M.E. [live electronic music ensemble] and performed in festivals in Athens and the island of Tinos. In 2018 she started studying Electronic Music at Athens Conservatoire and the Contemporary Music Research Center (KSYME), with composers Charis Xanthoudakis and Angelos Mitsios. She completed an MPhil in Music and Media Technologies at Trinity College Dublin in 2020, where she studied under the supervision of composers Ann Cleare and Enda Bates among others. In 2020 she became a member of the Hellenic Electroacoustic Music Composers Association (HELMCA). Inspired by Cavafy’s poem “The city.”

At the Onassis Foundation’s ONX Studio, Cavafy’s work looks to the future with new commissions from ONX artists. How can poetry empower us as humans to engage with the products of artificial intelligence more fully?

Fri, April 28—Sat, May 6

12:00pm— 6:00pm

(closed May 1 & 2)

Opening Reception: Thu, April 27

6:00pm 8:00pm

Through the Walls

Extended reality artworks inspired by the poetry of C. P. Cavafy are creating an immersive universe at ONX Studio. The exhibition Through the Walls presents two newly commissioned pieces that use Cavafy’s original poetry as both material and inspiration. Walls by Ali Santana and Ekphrasis by Matthew Niederhauser & Marc Da Costa are both novel explorations of how poetry can shape what we feel and imagine.

Curated by ONX Studio

Walls

Ali Santana’s Walls is an interactive, audiovisual installation that reimagines C. P. Cavafy's poem of the same title as an immersive, experimental hip-hop experience. In this installation, participants must work together to solve an interactive rhythm poem. By activating a sequence of beats, rhythms, and stanzas that combine key elements of Cavafy’s original poem, participants transform the installation into a wholly unique and expansive fractal world. ONX member Matthew McCorkle has created original atmospheric audio of the experience. New York Emcee ELUCID lends his distinctive voice to Cavafy’s original text and engages the Greek poet in a call-and-response across time.

Director & Lead Artist: Ali Santana / Sound Artist & Lead Collaborator: Matt McCorkle / Producer: Jazia Hammoudi / Experiential Interface Designer: Ariel Nevarez / Emcee: ELUCID / Creative Technologist & Immersive Game Design Partners: Yuan Peng, Kate Stevenson

Ekphrasis

Ekphrasis is a machine-learning video work and artistic research project devised by Matthew Niederhauser and Marc Da Costa. It explores how poetry can illuminate the algorithmic systems that form the backdrop of our lives and, increasingly, shape what we feel and imagine. In the work, C. P. Cavafy’s poetry becomes a filter and a prompt to interrogate the visuality of today’s machine-learning tools. These technologies are the magic sorcerers of the moment, spooking and exciting us, yet drawing their material not from a supernatural world beyond, but instead from the zeitgeist of images and text that live online.

C. P. Cavafy’s poetic corpus can provide a glimpse into how artificially intelligent systems attempt to construe and interpret the more subjective edges of language. Edges that can both inspire and confound. Our results will be cataloged into a printed compendium which will also act as a codex to an installation that will cycle through machine learning responses to his work, including AI-driven readings and other visual renderings of select poems.

Artists: Marc Da Costa, Matthew Niederhauser marcdacosta.com / matthewniederhauser.com

Fri, April 28—Sat, May 6

12:00pm— 6:00pm

(closed May 1 & 2)

Opening Reception: Thu, April 27

6:00pm 8:00pm

→ ONX Studio (645 Fifth Avenue, Lower Level)

Ali Santana is a multidisciplinary artist from Brooklyn, NYC, inspired by community, nature, ritual, ancient technology, and hip-hop culture. Ali experiments with rhythmic storytelling via time-based mediums, combining sound, video, beat-making, and emerging technologies. He creates moving images, live performances, installations, and immersive experiences that explore personal identity, multi-sensory memory, Black abstract improvisational traditions, and urban ingenuity. Ali has most recently exhibited at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam’s (IDFA) DocLab and is a member of ONX Studio and the Santana Project. Santana is an award-winning educator and adjunct professor at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications and Interactive Media Arts Programs (ITP/IMA), recognized for collaborations with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Apple Inc.

alisantana.com

Marc Da Costa is an artist and anthropologist whose work explores the relationship between emerging technology and lived experience. Da Costa’s artistic research and interactive installations examine how data and technical infrastructures focus our attention on the world in particular ways and, in so doing, shape the structures of experience available to us. Da Costa’s anthropological scholarship has explored these themes through studies of placemaking practices in the Anthropocene, with particular focus on Antarctic research expeditions and critical cartography. Da Costa’s work has been exhibited widely in the US and Europe and his writing on the intersection of data and society has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Vice, and elsewhere.

Matthew Niederhauser is an artist and educator. His work pushes the limits of emerging interactive and immersive technologies within a wide range of mediums. He studied anthropology at Columbia University before earning his MFA in Art Practice from SVA while acting as a Visiting Artist at the MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology (CAST) and member of NEW INC. At NEW INC he co-founded “Sensorium,” an experiential studio working at the forefront of immersive storytelling. When not focusing on projects that have premiered at Sundance New Frontier, Tribeca Storyscapes, and IDFA DocLab, he also teaches at NYU Tisch and Tandon. Most recently, Matthew became a Studio Fellow and Technical Director at ONX Studio in New York.

Through the Walls

Fri, April 28 7:00pm

Constantinopoliad

→ National Sawdust

National Sawdust will officially open “Archive of Desire”: A Festival Inspired by the Poet C. P. Cavafy with the premiere of a performance by artist Sister Sylvester and musical artist Nadah El Shazly. The audience will read from books hand-made by Sister Sylvester, inside of a live score by El Shazly. The work 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 archives through time; and by the ghosts, both erotic and historical, that visit the older Cavafy in his poems.

Writer, Director, Book Co-Designer: Sister Sylvester / Composer & Performer: Nadah El Shazly / Video Designer: Tei Blow / Dramaturgy: Andrew Kircher / Illustrator and Book Co-Designer: efrîn nowar / Lighting Designer: Bruce Steinberg / Sound Designer: Garth MacAleavey

Sister Sylvester makes performances and film/new media work, and is based in New York and Istanbul. She is a current resident at ONX Studio; a 2019 MacDowell Fellow; an alumnus of the Public Theater New Works program and the CPH:DOX lab. Her most recent film, Our Ark, co-directed with Deniz Tortum, explores the relationship between computational thinking and the climate crisis. It premiered at IDFA ’21 and has screened at festivals internationally, winning Best Short Film at the Istanbul International Film Festival. With efrîn nowar she creates books that become performances, spatial narratives that play with spoken and written text to create communal reading experiences. She is currently developing a series of works that uses low-tech means to explore the stakes of new technologies, including synthetic biology and VR. She teaches a bio-art class, “The School of Genetically Modified Theater,” at Colorado College, and has also taught and lectured at MIT, Princeton, UCCS, Columbia University, Bogazici Istanbul.

Nadah El Shazly is known for her fresh and fearless performances and is a prominent and captivating voice in the electronic music underworld of her hometown, Cairo. Her debut album Ahwar both radically reinvents the popular music of her homeland and explores new sonic and harmonic frontiers, landing her on the cover of the Wire magazine as the voice of Cairo’s New Wave. Using voice, field recordings, and instruments, she creates haunting sound pieces and song forms that hijack your perception of time. Backing up her release with extensive worldwide touring, Nadah has been featured in many local and international festivals. Nadah is currently working on her second music album and continues to compose for film and moving image.

Opening: Sat, April 29 7:30pm

→ National Sawdust

Lit, 2023: A Facility Artwork by Nick Cave and Bob Faust

“Later, in a more perfect society, someone else made just like me is certain to appear and act freely.”

An excerpt from the C. P. Cavafy poem “Hidden Things” serves as the landscape for Lit, 2023, a newly commissioned mural co-created by Nick Cave & Bob Faust for an exterior wall of Brooklyn’s National Sawdust. The quote resonated with Cave & Faust as a visceral connection to human insecurities as well as the potential for human progress and communal empowerment. A billboard-scale expression of radical joy intended to refuel us on our way toward that more perfect society, the mural will make use of the cumulative powers of its visual components: Cavafy’s prescient words, an image of a Nick Cave soundsuit, and the facade of National Sawdust itself. Cave originally developed his now famous soundsuits to create a camouflage for the wearer’s shape, creating a second skin that hides gender, race, and class, and compelling the audience to observe without judgment, operating less as an armor and more as a key to unlock one’s own full expression. Faust worked with Cave to select an image of a soundsuit from 2003 for use in this large-scale public artwork to integrate as an anthropomorphic representation of how an individual body may be bound to a certain time and place, but that with perseverance and hard work, will eventually be released from the walls which contain it.

Artists: Bob Faust and Nick Cave / Source photo: James Prinz / Paint: Collosal

Nick Cave is an artist, educator, and foremost a messenger, working between the visual and performing arts through a wide range of mediums, including sculpture, installation, video, sound, and performance. Cave is well known for his Soundsuits, sculptural forms based on the scale of his body, initially created in direct response to the police beating of Rodney King in 1991. Soundsuits camouflage the body, masking and creating a second skin that conceals race, gender, and class, forcing the viewer to look without judgment. They serve as a visual embodiment of social justice that represents both brutality and empowerment.

Bob Faust, described as “part artist, part designer, and part mediator,” is the principal and creative director for Faust, a Chicago-based art and design studio focused on cultural articulation. With typography at its core and viscerality on its surface, Faust makes work to inform, empower and/ or instigate in the service of the celebration of human difference. NewCity magazine honored Faust as Best Breakthrough Design Artist in 2017 and followed up in 2020 naming him and partner Nick Cave Designers of the Moment. Most recently, both were awarded the Mayor’s Medal of Honor for their community-based work in Chicago.

Together, Cave and Faust founded the dynamic, multi-use creative space called Facility. As an entity, “it believes that art and design can create peace, build power, and change the world...that by fostering an environment and community built from your dreams, you will wake up daily within your destiny.”

Artwork by Nick Cave and Bob Faust

Later, in a more perfect society, someone else made just like me is certain to appear and act freely.

Excerpt from the C. P. Cavafy poem “Hidden Things”

Sun, April 30 2:00pm—7:00pm

of the neighborhood that I behold: a Cavafy Marathon

A five-hour event, titled after a line of text in the poem “In The Same Space,” will include readings by notable poets, writers, actors, activists, civic and community leaders, and performances featuring music, dance, and other interpretations.

Celebrating the breadth of Cavafy’s work – his complex questions and reflections on diaspora, queerness, time, history, and memory through his exploration of the City in contrast to the State – this marathon format will serve as a many-voiced tapestry, weaving together narrative and civic identity; considering what we do within evolving communities through our inherited and shifting mythologies; and questioning what modes and methods of authorship shape our sense of place, origin, and future.

Each hour will be curated around one theme or idea prevalent in Cavafy’s work and will include ten readings or reflections on a Cavafy poem(s) for a total of 50 unique Cavafy moments.

Mon, May 1

Daytime symposium

9:30am 3:00pm (with lunch break)

Evening concert

7:00pm

Days of 2023

→ Columbia University, Heyman Center Common Room

→ Miller Theater at Columbia University

A symposium for poets from New York, Egypt, and Greece will be held at Columbia University and led by professors Stathis Gourgouris (Columbia) and Karen Emmerich (Princeton), both members of the Cavafy Academic Committee that advised on the digitization of Cavafy’s archive. The title, Days of 2023, references Cavafy’s many works named “Days of,” with the year of their writing, or a date of reflection.

The Columbia Hellenic Studies department will host a two-part event on May 1, 2023. A daylong workshop, co-sponsored by the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University, features invited poets Orfeas Apergis, Yiannis Doukas, Phoebe Giannisi, Katerina Iliopoulou (Greece); Haytham El Wardany, Iman Mersal (Egypt); Janlori Goldman, Robin Coste Lewis, Brenda Shaughnessy (US), as well as translators Susan Bernofsky, and Karen Emmerich, who will conduct roundtable conversations on the multiple ramifications of C. P. Cavafy as a 21st-century phenomenon. The titles of the roundtables are: “History and Politics of the Interstitial”; “Translation as a Poetic Act”; “Erotics and Poetics of the Undisclosed.”

In the Miller Theater at Columbia University, that same day, a free event will feature the poets performing either Cavafy poems in Greek and/or Arabic or new writings prepared for the occasion, paired with music by Sofía Avramidou, Marcos Balter, Zosha di Castri, Stylianos Dimou, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Lena Platonos, and Georgios Poniridis, which will be performed by the National Sawdust Ensemble under the music direction of Jeffrey Zeigler, with Greek guest musicians Yiannis Palamidas (voice) and Stergios Tsirliagos (synths).

Organizers: Karen Emmerich, Stathis Gourgouris / Summit Poets NY: Janlori Goldman, Robin Coste Lewis, Brenda Shaughnessy, Lynne Procope; Greece: Orfeas Apergis, Yiannis Doukas, Phoebe Giannisi, Katerina Iliopoulou; Egypt: Haytham El Wardany, Iman Mersal; / Summit Translators: Susan Bernofsky, Karen Emmerich / Music: National Sawdust Ensemble; Jeffrey Zeigler-Music Director, Stergios Tsirliagos, Yiannis Palamidas / Playing works by Sofía Avramidou, Marcos Balter, Zosha di Castri, Georgios Poniridis, Lena Platonos, Dimitri Mitropoulos, and Stylianos Dimou

Days of 2023

Karen Emmerich is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University and a translator of modern Greek poetry and prose. She received her PhD from Columbia University in 2010, after previously earning an MA in Comparative Literature from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her fields of specialization are modern Greek literature, translation studies, and textual scholarship. Her monograph “Literary Translation and the Making of Originals” was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2017; her translations include books by Christos Ikonomou, Amanda Michalopoulou, Yannis Ritsos, Miltos Sachtouris, Ersi Sotiropoulou, Eleni Vakalo and others.

Stathis Gourgouris is a poet, essayist, translator, sound artist, and Professor of Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University. He has written several books and articles on ancient and modern philosophy, political theory, theater, poetics, film, contemporary music, and psychoanalysis. He comments regularly on international public media on matters of politics and culture. His work has been translated in several languages, and his poetry, music, and visual art collaborations have been performed in various festivals and installations. He served as director of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society and the Hellenic Studies Program at Columbia, as well as President of the Modern Greek Studies Association. In 2023, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for his new project on listening. An extensive interview covering the full range of his work can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books: Part I “Dream Nation and the Phantasm of Europe”; Part II “Poetics and the Political World.”

National Sawdust Ensemble, led by cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, is made up of highly acclaimed artists who are or have been members of the Da Capo Chamber Players, New York New Music Ensemble, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Imani Winds, Flutronix, and the Kronos Quartet. The players include Brandon Patrick George (flute), Eric Umble (clarinet), Blair McMillen (piano), Miranda Cuckson (violin), Jeffrey Zeigler (cello), Sae Hashimoto (percussion), Lucy Dhegrae (mezzosoprano) and Jazmine Saunders (soprano). This instrumentally flexible group is an integral part of National Sawdust’s Mentorship Initiatives: playing, teaching, and collaborating with emerging and professional composers from the Blueprint Bridge Fellowship with The Juilliard School, as well as the internationally renowned Hildegard Commission. The mission of the ensemble is to give composers and artists access to the high caliber of musicianship that is native to National Sawdust.

Paola Prestini

Afroditi Panagiotakou

Jeffrey Zeigler

Nadah El Shazly

Sister Sylvester

Julie Mehretu

Nick Cave

Bob Faust

Julianne Moore

Laurie Anderson

Rufus Wainwright

Ali Santana

Daniel Bernard Roumain

Charlotte Brathwaite

Carl Hancock Rux

Daniel Mendelsohn

Taylor Mac

André Aciman

Bruce Steinberg

Andrew Ousley

Eleni Calenos

Elena Park

Jana Prikryl

Jad Abumrad

Marc Da Costa

Mac Premo

Helga Davis

Matthew Niederhauser

Bora Yoon

Nathan Thatcher

Missy Mazzoli

Paul Holdengräber

Nico Muhly

Richie Hofmann

Pete Scalzitti

Nicole Potter

Robin Coste Lewis

Sarah McNally

Stamatina Gregory

Juliana Huxtable & Tongue in Mind

SHYBOI

Vijay Iyer

Justin Ervin

Evi Kalogiropoulou

Steven E. Mallorca

Laura Jane Grace

Christos Sarris

Adam Ashraf Elsayigh

Jason Wee

DM R

Robert Huott

Andrea Guterres

Foteini Tryferopoulou

Yaz Lancaster

Garth MacAleavey

Kelley Sheehan

Heather Lea Poole

Caroline Shaw

Jocelyn Clarke

The Knights

Dan Bora

Brooklyn Youth Chorus

Dimitris Papadimitriou

Petros Klampanis

Alexander MacSween

Tue, May 2

7:30pm

→ Death of Classical at St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue

Waiting for the Barbarians

A sprawling, one-night-only exploration of love, loss, lust, and longing centered around the poetry of C. P. Cavafy. Produced by Death of Classical, Waiting for the Barbarians, named after one of the Greek poet’s most famous works, is a program of entirely new musical compositions that will take listeners on a journey across genres and sonic worlds.

Seated amidst the towering Gothic arches of Saint Thomas Church at Fifth Avenue, the program features world-premiere performances of new works by Laurie Anderson, Helga Davis & Petros Klampanis, Nico Muhly (arranged by Nathan Thatcher), Dimitris Papadimitriou, Paola Prestini, and Rufus Wainwright (arranged by Missy Mazzoli). New York orchestral collective The Knights and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus will perform throughout, accompanying Wainwright, Anderson, Davis & Klampanis, and soprano Eleni Calenos.

Composers/Songwriters: Laurie Anderson, Helga Davis, Petros Klampanis, Nico Muhly (arr. Nathan Thatcher), Dimitris Papadimitriou (arr. Nathan Thatcher), Paola Prestini, Rufus Wainwright (arr. Missy Mazzoli) / Performers: The Knights – Artistic Directors: Eric Jacobsen & Colin Jacobsen, Brooklyn Youth Chorus – Director: Dianne Berkun Menaker, Eleni Calenos / Director: Andrew Ousley

Tue, May 2 7:30pm

→ Death of Classical at St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue

Laurie Anderson, a two-time Grammy award winner, has created groundbreaking works that span art, theater, experimental music, and technology. Her recording career, launched by Big Science in 1981, includes the soundtrack to her feature film Home of the Brave and Life on a String. Anderson’s live shows range from simple spoken word to elaborate multi-media stage performances. In 2002, Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA, culminating in her 2004 touring solo performance The End of the Moon. In 2010, a retrospective of her visuals and installation work opened in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her largest exhibition to date has been shown at The Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum of Modern Art in 2022.

Helga Davis is a vocalist and performance artist with feet planted on the most prestigious international stages and with firm roots in the realities and concerns of her local community. Her work draws out insights that illuminate how artistic leaps for an individual can offer connection among audiences.

Declared a “bass ace” by Bass Player magazine, acclaimed bassist, composer, and producer Petros Klampanis grew up in Greece, surrounded by the confluence of Mediterranean and Balkan folk music. Now living between New York and Athens, Greece, he is curious in his approach, always seeking unique ways to integrate elements from multiple genres, ranging from classical music to pop. His varied musical life journey marries aggressive melodicism, beautiful intonation, and uniquely personal sound on all the projects he leads or produces.

Nico Muhly, born in 1981, is an American composer who writes orchestral music, works for the stage, chamber music, and sacred music. He has received commissions from The Metropolitan Opera (Two Boys, 2011, and Marnie, 2018), Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Australian Chamber Orchestra, The Tallis Scholars, and King’s College, Cambridge, among others. He is a collaborative partner at the San Francisco Symphony and has been featured at the Barbican and the Philharmonie de Paris as a composer, performer, and curator.

Hailing from Alexandria, Dimitris Papadimitriou studied during his musical education, among others, next to Yannis Ioannidis in Athens and Henri Dutilleux, John Williams, and Steve Reich at Boston Symphony’s Tanglewood summer courses, in composition, while also was taught classical guitar, piano, and violin. Since 1979 he has written musical compositions for 30 theater performances including ancient drama, musicals, contemporary and classical works of international and Greek repertoire; for cinema, in 30 films, for which he has been honored with 15 Greek and international film music awards; for television, including 12 TV series or, at times, themes for TV channels (ERT 2, Mega Channel), for which he was honored with numerous screen awards; for radio, including the current theme of the ERT Third Program, the ERT Second Program, etc. He has composed, recorded, and presented about 500 songs of different genres, collaborating with eminent Greek poets, lyricists, and singers; for many of these songs he has been honored with awards, as well as platinum or gold records. He has presented and recorded symphonic works, oratorios, symphonic poems, symphonic orchestral suites, two concerts for piano, as well as chamber music works and small choral works in collaboration with the most important Greek orchestras, such as the Athens State Orchestra, the Athens Camerata, the ERT National Symphony Orchestra. His works have been presented at Musikverein Wien by violinist Jannis Georgiadis and pianist Doris Adam; Lincoln Center (Alice Tully Hall) by Rolando Villazón; UNESCO in Paris; the United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York; Seiji Ozawa Hall (Tanglewood); cities across Germany; the Library of Alexandria; Cairo, etc. For a decade, he has served as the Director of the ERT Third Program and Director General of Radio, while

he is now a member of the ERT Board of Directors. He has also served as President of the Greek National School of Dance. He is the founder and artistic director of “The Hellenic Project,” a non-profit organization supporting relatively unknown or emerging aspects of Greek music. His main works presented during 2021-22: Concerto for piano and orchestra no. 1, a worldwide release in December 2021 in Europe, USA, Canada, and Australia by the German classical music record label MDG, on CD and super audio CD; Moby Dick, The Musical, with his own libretto and music score; The Great Provocateur, a collection of 30 “heretical” songs selected from the body of world poetry, the third part of which is already available on YouTube.

Composer Paola Prestini has collaborated with poets, filmmakers, and scientists in large-scale multimedia works that chart her interest in extra-musical themes ranging from the cosmos to the environment. She has created, written, and produced large-scale projects such as the world’s largest and first communal VR opera, The Hubble Cantata, and the eco-documentary currently on PBS, The Colorado. Her current work Sensorium Ex dives deeply into community impact, opera, and AI –bridging her love of collaboration with system building. Her work has been performed by the New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Opera, Los Angeles Opera, San Diego Opera, The Barbican Centre, Bellas Artes, and at the Festival Dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. She has been a resident at MASS MoCA, the Park Avenue Armory, the American Academy in Rome, and Sundance. Prestini is a co-founder of VisionIntoArt, a non-profit new music and interdisciplinary arts production company in New York City, and is the co-founder/artistic director of the non-profit music organization National Sawdust.

Praised by The New York Times for his “genuine originality,” Rufus Wainwright has established himself as one of the great male vocalists and songwriters of his generation. The New York-born, Montreal-raised singer and songwriter has released seven studio albums, three DVDs, and three live albums, including the fantastic Grammy-nominated Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall, which captured his celebrated Judy Garland tribute performance in 2006, and the album Release The Stars which went Gold in Canada and the UK.

Recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (The New York Times) and “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out New York), Missy Mazzoli has had her music performed by the Kronos Quartet, LA Opera, eighth blackbird, the BBC Symphony, Scottish Opera, and many others. In 2018 she became one of the first two women, along with Jeanine Tesori, to receive a main stage commission from the Metropolitan Opera and was nominated for a Grammy award. She is composer-in-residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, while between 2012-2015 was composer-in-residence with Opera Philadelphia. Upcoming commissions include works for Opera Philadelphia, the National Ballet of Canada, Chicago Lyric Opera, and Norwegian National Opera. Her works are published by G. Schirmer.

Nathan Thatcher is a composer, performer, arranger, and author based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He has received commissions from numerous soloists and ensembles, including yMusic, Attacca Quartet, Emblems Quintet, the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, the Center for Latterday Saint Arts, and Room 1078. His work Orogenesis was performed by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at the recent festival “Look Around, Cincinnati,” of which he was a co-creator.

Tue, May 2 7:30pm

→ Death of Classical at St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue

Greek soprano Eleni Calenos is capturing admiration from critics and audiences for the clarity, warmth, and beauty of her voice, and for her dignified characterizations. Of her performance as Tosca, Opera News said, “Eleni Calenos gave a performance for the ages, both vocally and dramatically,” while The Wall Street Journal noted: “The real standout, however, was soprano Eleni Calenos’ searing performance as Tosca – passionate, mercurial, heart-on-the-sleeve, with all the necessary vocal range, stamina and fire.” In Madama Butterfly, the Houston Press said: “The phenomenon was the Cio-Cio San of Greek soprano Eleni Calenos, whose nuanced characterization was a true wonder to hear. She sailed through her dramatic arias as if buoyed by the stirring music.”

Brooklyn Youth Chorus’s Grammy award-winning ensemble, led by founder & artistic director Dianne Berkun Menaker, has collaborated with a range of organizations and artists including the New York Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, Joe Hisaishi, The National, David Byrne, Wye Oak, Bon Iver, Shara Nova, London Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Barbra Streisand, Arcade Fire, Sir Elton John, and Grizzly Bear. Founded in 1992, Brooklyn Youth Chorus has served nearly 10,000 students in its after-school and public-school programs. The Chorus’s faculty teach a range of repertoire and styles using founding artistic director Dianne Berkun Menaker’s Cross-Choral Training® method, emphasizing healthy and versatile vocal technique, music theory, sight-singing, and ear training.

The Knights are a collective of adventurous musicians dedicated to transforming the orchestral experience and eliminating barriers between audiences and music. Driven by an open-minded spirit of camaraderie and exploration, they inspire listeners with vibrant programs rooted in the classical tradition and passion for artistic discovery. The Knights evolved from late-night chamber music reading parties with friends at the home of violinist Colin Jacobsen and cellist Eric Jacobsen. The Jacobsen brothers together serve as artistic directors of The Knights, with Eric Jacobsen as conductor. Proud to be known as “one of Brooklyn’s sterling cultural products...known far beyond the borough for their relaxed virtuosity and expansive repertory” (The New Yorker), the orchestra has toured extensively across the United States and Europe since its founding in 2007. The Knights are celebrated globally, appearing across the world’s most prestigious stages, including those at Tanglewood Music Center, Ravinia Music Festival, the Kennedy Center, the Vienna Musikverein, and Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. The orchestra has collaborated with many renowned soloists including Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, Béla Fleck, and Gil Shaham.

Andrew Ousley is an entrepreneur and impresario committed to creating a better story around classical music. Ousley is the founder and president of Unison Media, one of the leading PR and marketing agencies for classical music and the performing arts, working with clients like Gustavo Dudamel, Wynton Marsalis, Joshua Bell, Hélène Grimaud, The Emerson Quartet, Warner Classics, J’Nai Bridges, Conrad Tao, PROTOTYPE Festival, and more. Unison has been awarded an American Prize for Marketing and was honored as the #1 US agency in Norman Lebrecht’s “Least Worst Classical PRs.” As the founder and artistic director of Death of Classical (DoC), Ousley curates and creatively directs a series of classical music and opera concerts in a Crypt, Catacomb, and Cemetery around NYC, and has presented leading artists and ensembles like the New York Philharmonic, Lawrence Brownlee, Gil Shaham, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Avi Avita, Alexandre Tharaud, Simone Dinnerstein, and many more. DoC performances have been selected to The New York Times Top Performances of the Year, WQXR’s Best Concerts of the Year, and received the prestigious “Classical:NEXT” Innovation Award. Vogue magazine’s culture editor summarized DoC best, calling it “one of the most riveting and unusual chamber music performances of my lifetime.”

Wed, May 3 & Thu, May 4 7:00pm

Archive of Desire

→ National Sawdust

An exaltation of desire, Robin Coste Lewis, Julie Mehretu, Vijay Iyer, Jeffrey Zeigler, and Charlotte Brathwaite meditate collaboratively on the sensuality of Cavafy, diaspora, and the liminal spaces present everywhere in his work. The evening draws inspiration from Cavafy’s archive, processing the sonic, visual, and cultural tones found in his poetry through recitation, live music, electronics, and new visual work.

Poet: Robin Coste Lewis / Visual Artist: Julie Mehretu / Composer & Pianist: Vijay Iyer / Co-Composer & Cellist: Jeffrey Zeigler / Director & Creative Advisor: Charlotte Brathwaite /

Filmmaker: Trevor Tweeten / Lighting & Projection Designer: Hao Bai / Sound Designer: Garth

MacAleavey / Creative Producer: Ras Dia

Robin Coste Lewis is the former Poet Laureate of Los Angeles. Her debut collection, Voyage of the Sable Venus (Knopf, 2015), won the National Book Award in 2015. She earned her MFA in poetry from NYU, another master’s degree from Harvard in Sanskrit and theology; as well as a PhD in poetry and visual studies from the University of Southern California. Lewis is the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Southern California’s PhD Program in Creative Writing and a Ford Foundation Scholarin-Residence this year at the Museum of Modern Art. Her latest book, To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness (Knopf, 2022), was just published this winter. Born in Compton, her family is from New Orleans.

Vijay Iyer is described by The New York Times as a “social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway.” Composer and pianist, he is one of the leading music-makers of his generation. His honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, and the Alpert Award in the Arts. His most recent album, a trio session with drummer Tyshawn Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh, titled Uneasy (ECM Records, 2021), was named Best New Music in Pitchfork and was hailed by The New Yorker as “a triumph of small-group interplay and fertile invention.”

Julie Mehretu is a world-renowned painter who lives and works in New York City. In exploring palimpsests of history, from geological time to a modern-day phenomenology of the social, Julie Mehretu’s paintings, prints, and drawings engage us in a dynamic visual articulation of contemporary experience, a depiction of social behavior, and the psychogeography of space. She is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship (2005) and the US Department of State Medal of Arts Award (2015). Mehretu’s work has been exhibited extensively in museums and biennials and is represented in collections worldwide. A mid-career survey of Mehretu’s work recently toured at LACMA (Los Angeles), High Museum (Atlanta), The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), and The Walker Museum of Art (Minneapolis) from 2019 to 2022. Mehretu is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and The National Academy of Design. Her global representative is Marian Goodman Gallery.

Jeffrey Zeigler has released dozens of albums on Nonesuch Records, Deutsche Grammophon, Cantaloupe, and Smithsonian Folkways and has appeared with Norah Jones on her album Not Too Late on Blue Note Records. Zeigler’s multifaceted career has led to collaborations with a wide array of artists from Yo-Yo Ma and Tanya Tagaq to Philip Glass and John Zorn and from Laurie Anderson to Siddhartha Mukherjee. While serving as the cellist of the internationally renowned Kronos Quartet for eight seasons, Zeigler was the recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize, the Polar Music Prize, the President’s Merit Award from the Grammys, and The Asia Society’s Cultural Achievement Award. Jeffrey Zeigler was recently appointed Assistant Professor of Chamber Music and Innovation at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami.

Creator and director Charlotte Brathwaite’s genre-defying work illuminates the realities and dreams of marginalized people; people whose stories have been silenced, disappeared, and ignored. Dealing with subject matter from the historical past to the distant future, she brings to light issues of justice, race, power, and the complexities of the human condition. A director of classical texts, multimedia, site-specific work, dance, opera, concert, film, and installations presented in North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia – Brathwaite’s work lives in the deep time of aural/ oral history and creates an immersive experience for audience and performer alike. Awards: Creative Capital, United States Artist, Map Fund, Princess Grace, and others. MFA: Yale. charlottebrathwaite.com

Thu, May 4

6:30—8:00pm

Fri & Sat, May 5 & 6 11:00am 6:00pm

Visual Cavafy

C. P. Cavafy continues to speak to us individually, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a roar. The Onassis Foundation has commissioned a series of short films entitled Visual Cavafy, exploring the cinematic power of the poet’s language.

The visual poems, conceived and produced in New York by Elena Park/ Lumahai Productions, and in Greece by Onassis Culture, will be shown in a public screening at the New Museum, during a marathon reading of Cavafy’s poems at The Poetry Project, and available online. Featured artists will include Taylor Mac; Julianne Moore; Carl Hancock Rux with Daniel Bernard Roumain, Bora Yoon, and Jeffrey Zeigler. Visual Cavafy showcases the work of directors Evi Kalogiropoulou, Elena Park, and Christos Sarris in collaboration with incarcerated individuals in Greece; creators Jad Abumrad and Mac Premo; and filmmakers/editors such as Justin Ervin, Steven E. Mallorca, and Pete Scalzitti.

FIlms in NYC produced by: Lumahai Productions / Creative Director & Executive Producer: Elena Park / Creative Advisor & Cavafy Festival Curator: Composer Paola Prestini / Creative Advisor: Jocelyn Clarke / Producer: Nicole Potter

Thu, May 4

6:30—8:00pm

Fri & Sat, May 5 & 6 11:00am 6:00pm

Far Away & Morning Sea

Though images of the Mediterranean Sea must have often filled Cavafy’s view, it was not often mentioned in his poetry. The arresting voice of Julianne Moore is set to dreamy colorful visuals and sounds, bringing to life two of his quiet gems. “Far Away” (1914) draws us into faded recollections from days long past and the ineffable play of memory, while “Morning Sea” (1915) beckons us to pause and take in his musings and evocative imagery.

Moore commented, “What’s interesting to me about these poems is that Cavafy posits an idea about memory, and then kind of quickly focuses it into a reality in both of them. He allows himself to sink into an experience and then also pull out further to frame it as not a reality, which I think is really compelling.” About the Cavafy Festival, she adds, “It’s always interesting when different disciplines and practices – visual and musical and literary –come together. It’s wonderful to participate in this because this is not the kind of work that I generally do, but it’s great to be involved with other artists and to have an opportunity to pull something apart and investigate it.”

Reader: Julianne Moore / Director: Elena Park / Editor & Compositor: Pete Scalzitti

Far Away Visual Artist: Heather Lea Poole / Sound Designer: Robert Huott

Morning Sea Composer & Vocals: Caroline Shaw / Sound Mixer: Dan Bora / Sound Recordist: Adina Istrate / Field Producer: Paris Palmer

The Footsteps

“The Footsteps” (1909) taps the alchemy of four powerhouse performers: Carl Hancock Rux joined by Daniel Bernard Roumain, Bora Yoon, and Jeffrey Zeigler. In their first-ever joint collaboration, the ensemble finds inspiration in Cavafy’s richly dramatic poem, which moves from quiet languor to eerie danger. Created in partnership with National Sawdust, where the poem was filmed, the short film features dynamic camerawork and cinematic editing.

Rux first became acquainted with Cavafy while studying comparative literature at the American University of Paris. “He belonged to something I understood within myself – something lonely and beautiful and destined to live unexplainable and full of mysteries,” Rux explained. He continued, “I chose ‘The Footsteps’ by Cavafy because initially, upon reading it, it reminded me of something I wanted. It reminded me of everything that this country had been through in the last few years,” referencing the Trump administration and Black Lives Matter. “And so something about this poem, when I first read it, was a reminder that things end because they’re supposed to, and that there is an awareness that we can all have of the ending of a thing, if we choose to see beyond the place that we are in.”

“As a composer, I live in a world of rhythm and space,” said Daniel Bernard Roumain. “And I think this particular poet, and these particular words, occupy a very special rhythm and encompass a very special space.” Bora Yoon (also a composer) added, “There’s so much sonic imagery and a lot of sensory phrases and things that evoke memory and association. Painting the poem’s trajectory became about contour: Ηow do we support Carl’s words and cadence, and the imagery as it’s being painted?” Jeffrey Zeigler, who will also perform in live festival events, said, “My relationship with Cavafy has been evolving quite a lot, and with each collaboration, it’s like opening up another layer into this world. I’m learning more about the person and the various dimensions that he embodied.”

Performer: Carl Hancock Rux / Violin: Daniel Bernard Roumain / Voice & Electroacoustic Soundscapes: Bora Yoon / Cello: Jeffrey Zeigler / Director: Elena Park / Editor: Steven E. Mallorca / Cinematographer: Justin Ervin / Recording/Mixing Engineer & Sound Designer: Garth MacAleavey / Lighting Designer: Bruce Steinberg

Thu, May 4

6:30—8:00pm

Fri & Sat, May 5 & 6 11:00am 6:00pm

Ithaca & Waiting for the Barbarians

It’s easy to imagine a kinship between the Greek poet and protean artist Taylor Mac, whose work never fails to challenge, delight, and provoke. For Visual Cavafy, this riveting performer delivers two of Cavafy’s immortal poems, “Ithaca” (1911) and “Waiting for the Barbarians” (1904), filmed at Clearlight Performance Space in New York City. “Getting this book of poems by Cavafy was like getting a Pushkin or Whitman for the first time,” said Mac. “It’s like when somebody shows up with somebody who should have been hanging out in your life from childhood, and they’re new to you; it both feels tragic and like the greatest wonder – like discovering the ocean or a whole new country with a whole new language.”

His initial knowledge of “Ithaca” was as a poem recited during graduation speeches. “This is something that you’re telling young people to teach them how to be in the world,” he recalled. “Then I thought of being in the dressing room during A 24-Decade History, when I was about to do this big, long, twenty-four-hour performance. And I thought, oh, I wish I had this poem at that time to just say, ‘you’re good, slow down, that getting to the end is not the thing. The actual hours and the hours and the hours of this takes, that’s the thing.’” As he prepared to film Barbarians, contemporary resonances grew over time: “When I first started, I wasn’t really thinking of the barbarians as the January 6th insurrectionists. I was thinking of it more as that thing that we tell people to be afraid of, like immigrants or something – we’ve got to change all of our laws, we’ve got to protect ourselves. I was interpreting it kind of cynically, but then as I kept doing it, I was like, ‘oh, no, this is actually about the insurrectionists as well.’ It’s very expansive – it’s a metaphor for all of the ways in which we fool ourselves.”

Performer: Taylor Mac / Director: Elena Park / Cinematographer & Editor: Pete Scalzitti / Composer (Waiting for the Barbarians): Alexander MacSween / Sound Recordist: Jeff Edrich / Field Producer: Molly McBride

Α film inspired by the urban environment of modern Alexandria and the omnipresence of C. P. Cavafy by the award-winning director at Cannes Film Festival, Evi Kalogiropoulou. Filmed in various city locations, from the Greek Union at Shatby, hosting the Greek schools in the city, to the famous Alexandrian Corniche, and the shipyards at the Bahary area. People of the city perform traditional songs such as “Visit Me Once Every Year” by the Egyptian singer and composer Sayed Darwish. Darwish was a contemporary to Cavafy; his song “Visit Me Once Every Year” is reminiscent of the poem “Come back” by C. P. Cavafy, while it also alludes to the original score produced by the Greek rap singer, Negros tou Moria, combining the lyrics of the poems “As best as you can,” “The first step,” and “The city.” A poetic attempt to recreate a city long lost – and to many only as a melancholic memory – yet still existing in poems’ verses and music.

Directed by Evi Kalogiropoulou / Featuring: Shady El Gendy Hendan, Sherok El Zoghby, Nermin

Zien, Fatma Ibrahiem, Ali Amir / Original Music: Negros tou Moria (“The City of Morris”) / Production Manager (Alexandria): Mahmoud Karika / Line Producer (Alexandria): Ahmed Zayan / Executive Producer (Alexandria): Sameh Gamal / Production Supervisor (Alexandria): Mark Lofty / Production Services (Alexandria): Fig Leaf Studios / Assistant Director: Abanoub Nabil /

Costumes: Osama El Hawary / Set Sound: Sameh Nabil Farag / Production Coordinator: Marianna Christofi / Video Subtitles: Khaled Raouf / Editor: Nikos Pastras / Cinematographer: Mina Nabil / Executive Producer: Neda Film / Producer: Amanda Livanou

Thu, May 4 6:30—8:00pm

Fri & Sat, May 5 & 6 11:00am 6:00pm

Voices

Longtime Cavafy admirer Laurie Anderson reads “Voices” (1904, after the original “Sweet Voices” in 1894), the haunting early work by Cavafy. Playing with memory and the nature of time, the poem provides fertile ground for the deeply personal audio and visual styles of musician-composerstoryteller Jad Abumrad and artist-filmmaker Mac Premo, and includes materials from the Cavafy archive.

Abumrad reflected, “I’m very interested in the ways in which we, singular human beings living singular lives, are actually living a continuum. I’ve thought about my grandfather and this moment in Lebanon where he had to bury his mother on the side of the road as they were marching sixty miles over a mountain. That experience shaped him in a way that caused him to demand certain things of himself and then of his kids, and then his kids of me. So there’s some way in which his ghost is always with me. So that line…‘Sometimes, within our dreams, they speak’…I connect to that.

Also, there’s this: Recently, there’s something oppressive to me about narrative. It takes the utter chaos of experience, and like a tyrant, organizes it into a beginning and middle and end. So for me, this project is part of me trying to find new ways to define storytelling.”

Reader: Laurie Anderson / Music & Sound Composition: Jad Abumrad / Visuals: Mac Premo

Walls

A camera in a prison. The inmate. An everyday discussion with the outside world. Why did I end up in prison?

Prison, a prison and the only thing you crave is freedom and you didn’t realize when you became a man when the only thing you wanted was to remain a child and you didn’t realize when exactly you believed that you are invincible but in reality you were losing looking at the wall and thinking that the fist is stronger and this wall was growing stronger and higher with dreams money seas and unattainable love built on it.

A film about dreams hope – about this bloody life.

A discussion with my family.

Am I still a human being or a scum of society? Can words mean anything to me now?

The film is accompanied by a musical adaptation of Cavafy’s poem “The Walls” by solo musician and front person of the American punk rock band Against Me!, as well as writer Laura Jane Grace.

Christos Sarris created the film Walls after pre-scheduled visits to the prison of Nigrita, Greece and as an educational program for the inmates. Following a series of workshops, he provided guidelines and taught inmates the basic steps for the creation of a film both on a theoretical and practical level.

Directed by Christos Sarris / Music written and arranged by Laura Jane Grace / Camera: Christos Sarris, Dimitris Zivopoulos / Assistant Directors: Smaragda Dogani, Dimitris Zivopoulos

/ Editor: Marios Kleftakis / Executive Producer: Marina Danezi (Laika Productions) / VFX: Aias

Kokkalis / Sound Mixer: Dimitris Miyakis / Sound Designer: Giorgos Chanos / Color Correction: Manthos Sardis / Translation from Turkish: Yannis Panourgias / Production Coordinator: Elena Choremi / Production Assistants: Stelios Doulgeridis, Angeliki Avgeri / Production Manager: Tasos Koronakis / Featuring: Bankin Ahmado, Fikret Oz, Anxhelo Pambuku, Saimir Kaceku, Adnane Sengad, Giorgos Vidakis, Vassilis Grammenidis, Spiros Drosakis, Kostas Barkoulis, Christina Koutsandrea / Thanks to: Georgios Economou, Director of Nigrita Penitentiary; Konstantinos Papathanasiou, Secretary General for Anti-Crime Policy, Civil Protection Ministry / An Onassis Culture production / This artwork was created in the context of “Archive of Desire” by the Onassis Foundation, April 2023, New York

Jad Abumrad is a composer, musician, and the host and creator of several podcasts (Radiolab, More Perfect, Dolly Parton’s America, Unerased) that collectively are downloaded over 130 million times a year. He’s been hailed for his unique ability to combine cutting edge sound-design, cinematic storytelling, and a personal approach to explaining complex topics, from the stochasticity of tumor cells to the legal foundations of the war on terror. Jad studied creative writing and music composition at Oberlin College in Ohio. He composed much of the music for Radiolab, and in the past has composed music for film, theater, and dance. Radiolab has received three Peabody Awards, the highest honor in broadcasting. And in 2011 Jad received the prestigious MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.

Laurie Anderson, a two-time Grammy Award winner, has created groundbreaking works that span art, theater, experimental music, and technology. Her recording career, launched by Big Science in 1981, includes the soundtrack to her feature film Home of the Brave and Life on a String. Anderson’s live shows range from simple spoken word to elaborate multi-media stage performances. In 2002, Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA, culminating in her 2004 touring solo performance The End of the Moon. In 2010, a retrospective of her visuals and installation work opened in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her largest exhibition to date has been shown at The Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum of Modern Art in 2022.

Dan Bora is a designer, producer, and engineer for albums, film scores, and live sound. He has worked with Marina Abramović, Anohni, Philip Glass, The Magnetic Fields, Nico Muhly, Michael Nyman, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and many others. His credits include the Academy Award-winning Fog of War, as well as the revival of Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach.

Jocelyn Clarke is a dramaturg and writer for stage and screen. He is Senior Dramaturg at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. He was Theatre Advisor to the Arts Council of Ireland for ten years, and Literary Manager of the Abbey, Ireland’s national theatre. He is an Associate Artist with Theatre Mitu and with The Civilians. As a dramaturg, Clarke has worked with writers such as Katori Hall, Taylor Mac, Lydia Diamond, Abhishek Majumdar, Eduardo Machado, Charles Randolph Wright, Lisa Kron, Seamus Heaney, Tazewell Thompson, Craig Lucas, Carl Hancock Rux, Kenneth Lin, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Tanya Saracho, Aaron Posner, and Karen Zacarias. He was executive story editor on all three seasons of the BBC/ RTÉ TV series Young Offenders, and he is a writer-producer on the second season of P-Valley, Katori Hall’s acclaimed TV series for Starz. His new adaptation of Elizabeth Swados’ musical Beautiful Lady will be directed by Anne Bogart at La Mama Theatre in New York in May 2023.

Justin Ervin is an award-winning writer, director, and cinematographer of both scripted and nonscripted work. His work has appeared on notable platforms, including Netflix, PBS, HBO, and Hulu, most recently serving as cinematographer on the 2022 Netflix original documentary Is That Black Enough for You?!? as well as the 2022 narrative feature film Rittenhouse Square. His cinematography has been nominated multiple times for the Webby Award, which he recently won. As a cinematographer, Justin continues to operate at the vanguard, creating at the intersection of documentary and narrative cinematography aesthetics. As a photographer, his work has graced the cover of Harper’s Bazaar with spreads in Harper’s Bazaar, Elle magazine, and others. Justin earned his MFA in social documentary filmmaking from SVA in NYC and has completed master courses at the prestigious American Society of Cinematographers. As a writer and director, he has won multiple awards including Best Documentary at Garden State Film Festival and The Audience Award at New Filmmakers LA. Justin is currently expanding his work as a director into television and feature films.

Laura Jane Grace is an Emmy Award-nominated American artist and activist. As the founding member of the punk band Against Me!, they have recorded and released 7 studio albums since 2001, with an additional 3 solo albums. In 2016, Hachette books published their memoir, Tranny: Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout. They have toured the world far and wide, playing over 2,000 shows in the past two decades, sharing the stage with everyone from Green Day, Joan Jett, to the Foo Fighters and Miley Cyrus. Laura Jane Grace currently lives in Chicago, Illinois with their thirteen-year-old daughter.

Robert Huott is a professional sound engineer, sound designer, musician, and maker. A graduate of SUNY Fredonia's Sound Recording Technology program under Dave Moulton, he has wide-ranging experience in audio for music, radio, video production, and post-production, and is the recipient of two Grammy awards with the Metropolitan Opera. He is an avid maker, designing and creating custom human interface devices and experimental musical instruments.

Evi Kalogiropoulou is a visual artist and filmmaker working in Athens. Evi has studied at the Athens University of Economics and Business and the Athens School of Fine Arts, while she holds a Master’s degree in Moving Image from the Royal College of Art. Evi’s video art had various screenings in spaces such as the BFI, the Chisenhale Gallery, and the Whitechapel Gallery in London. She has been artistin-residence in Somerset House Studios. She participated in the exhibition “The Same River Twice” organized by the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art. Evi had her solo show with sculptures and video work in Kunstverein Dresden (2020). Her short film Motorway 65 (2020) was selected for the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival. Her next short film, On Xerxes’ Throne (2022), produced by Onassis Culture, won the CANAL+ Award at the 61st edition of La Semaine de La Critique, Cannes Film Festival. She is currently working on her debut feature Cora, which received the Eurimages development prize in CineMart 2021 (Rotterdam Film Festival) and the ARTE/YouTube prize at the Atelier Cinéfondation of the Cannes Film Festival in 2021. The project is an international co-production between Greece, France, and the Netherlands and is supported by Onassis Culture.

Taylor Mac is the first American to receive the International Ibsen Award, is a MacArthur Fellow, a Pulitzer Prize Finalist, a Tony nominee for Best Play, and the recipient of the Kennedy Prize (with Matt Ray), the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Guggenheim, the Herb Alpert Award, a Drama League Award, the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, the Booth, two Helpmann Awards, a NY Drama Critics Circle Award, two Obie’s, two Bessies, and an Ethyl Eichelberger. An alumnus of New Dramatists, judy is the author of The Hang (with composer Matt Ray); Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus; A 24-Decade History of Popular Music; Prosperous Fools; The Fre; Hir; The Walk Across America for Mother Earth; The Lily’s Revenge; The Young Ladies Of; Red Tide Blooming; The Be(A)st of Taylor Mac; and the revues Comparison is Violence; Holiday Sauce; and The Last Two People on Earth: an Apocalyptic Vaudeville (created with Mandy Patinkin and Susan Stroman).

Thu, May 4

6:30—8:00pm

Fri & Sat, May 5 & 6 11:00am 6:00pm

Cutting his teeth on the NYC new-music scene since 2008, Garth MacAleavey is a leader in high fidelity new music sound design and live classical instrument amplification. He specializes in immersive surround sound, spatial audio mixing/system design, and transparent reinforcement and recording. Garth is the Director of Sound and Technical Design of Brooklyn’s National Sawdust. In partnership with Meyer Sound, he is an expert in Constellation and Spacemap systems and continues to move the art of spatial sound forward daily. Recent sound-design credits include A God of Her Own Making by Jojo Abot and Esperanza Spalding, Black Lodge by David T. Little, Song of Songs by David Lang, In Our Daughter’s Eyes by Du Yun, Spatial...No Problem by Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Mouse on Mars, Grammynominated Soldier Songs by David T. Little and Opera Philadelphia, Ellen Reid’s Pulitzer Prize–winning p r i s m, NYPhil’s Sound ON: Leading Voices, Ted Hearne’s Dorothea, Michael Gordon’s Aquanetta, Nick Cave’s The Let Go at Park Avenue Armory, and David T. Little’s groundbreaking Dog Days.

Alexander MacSween is a composer, musician, and sound designer who has traversed several musical genres and participated in numerous dance, theater, and film projects. Notable stage collaborations include productions by Marie Brassard, Brigitte Haentjens, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Robert Lepage, Wajdi Mouawad, and The Stratford Festival, as well as a previous production with François Girard, Zebrina (Underneath The Lintel). Upcoming projects include a new work by Marie Brassard for The National Arts Centre of Canada, and Eine Kleine Frau, a new piece by choreographer Neshama Nashman for the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf Duisburg. Alexander is active as a drummer and multi-instrumentalist playing rock, electronic, and improvised music. Notable groups include Bionic, Detention, Foodsoon, and The Nils. His solo performances and sound installations have been heard at MUTEK, Le Mois-Multi, CitySonic, and The Montreal International Jazz Festival. He was a finalist for the 2018 Siminovitch Prize in Canadian Theatre, and he teaches sound design at l’Université de Québec in Montreal.

Steven E. Mallorca is an award-winning filmmaker and musician who graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. As a director, editor, and director of photography, he has produced a large body of work that spans across narrative, documentary, commercial, and music video film fronts. Steve codirected, edited, and shot A Peloton of One which won the 2020 Greenwich International Film Festival’s Audience Award and was released in February 2022 with Laemmle Theaters, and available on-demand on most streaming platforms in March 2022. Steve also served as the director of photography and editor of the 2015 ESPN documentary, The Lost Trophy. Steve edited the feature length documentary Hope Road, which was released by PBS in 2022. His directorial feature debut, Slow Jam King, was hailed by the The New York Times as “Do it yourself filmmaking at its purest…with spirited characters and high levels of comic energy” and won Asian CineVision’s Emerging Director Award. Steve is also the series editor for San Francisco Opera’s 2022 Webby Award-winning documentary series, In Song, as well as Cleveland Orchestra’s online performance and documentary series, In Focus. He is also an independent musician, and in December 2022, he released his third album under the moniker Sulu and Excelsior, So Ends the Honeymoon, to critical acclaim. In the fall of 2022, Steve began production on a new feature-length documentary, Play It in Woo, which will be shooting throughout 2023.

Elena Park, creative director and executive producer of Visual Cavafy, directs five poems in the film series. She is president and founder of Lumahai Productions, an independent production company that moves freely across a range of artistic initiatives. Her short films and music projects have featured Vietnamese musician Vân-Ánh Võ, the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Alan Gilbert and Jane Glover, and mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke along with violinist Ben Beilman and the St. Lawrence String Quartet. Elena’s award-winning In Song video portraits, created with San Francisco Opera, have showcased opera singers such as Jamie Barton (with Béla Fleck), J’Nai Bridges, and Pretty Yende. Her National Sawdust+ series has presented artists such as Marina Abramović, Laurie Anderson, Jad Abumrad, Ava DuVernay, Gandini Juggling, Yo-Yo Ma, Nico Muhly, Patti Smith, Esperanza Spalding, and Carrie Mae Weems. Select credits: Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD and radio shows, Kennedy Center programming, San Francisco Opera’s Instigators, Bel Canto (feature film), and Amazon’s Mozart in the Jungle.

Heather Lea Poole was an interdisciplinary artist whose abiding love of the natural world as a source of inspiration was evident in her images and paintings that shared Earth’s lavish beauty. Her award-winning art has been featured in private collections, exhibited in solo and group exhibitions, and commissioned for personal spaces. It can also be seen in film, on book jackets, and in handcrafted artist folios. She worked with national and international clients and collaboratively with architects and designers.

Nicole Potter is an Emmy Award-winning producer specializing in creative content for film and television, commercials, documentary features, televised concerts, experiential and live events. Nicole’s work has premiered at Sundance, Tribeca, Toronto, and Berlin, and has garnered many awards including an Emmy for Outstanding Nonfiction Series, several Emmy nominations, and a Producers Guild Award nomination. Select productions include In Song documentary series (Lumahai Productions/San Francisco Opera), Sing Your Song about world-renowned singer/actor/activist Harry Belafonte (HBO), Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (PBS), Free to Rock (Grammy Museum L.A. Live); multiple series for Travel Channel/Discovery and episodes for PBS’ American Masters; televised concerts for PBS; experiential and live events for Verizon (Super Bowl XLVIII), HPE, and SAP; and many others.

Mac Premo makes art, commercials, and short films. Born in Washington DC in 1973, Mac graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1995 and moved to New York that same year. His films and art have been exhibited worldwide, including the Ringling Museum, PS1 MoMA, and The Brooklyn Museum. Mac has won 13 New York Emmy Awards for his video and animation work, including awards for best commercial, photography, set design, and best PSA. Sometimes he writes and performs one-man plays. Mac is a NYFA Fellow and lives in Brooklyn with his tremendous wife and two totally radical kids. And also, their dog, Philomena.

Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) is a prolific and endlessly collaborative composer, performer, educator, and social entrepreneur. “About as omnivorous as a contemporary artist gets” (The New York Times), DBR has worked with artists from Philip Glass to Bill T. Jones to Lady Gaga, as well as institutions including Brooklyn Academy of Music, Kennedy Center, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Sydney Opera House. Known for his signature violin sounds infused with myriad electronic, urban, and African-American music influences, DBR is a composer of solo, chamber, orchestral, and operatic works, and has composed an array of film, theater, and dance scores. He has composed music for the acclaimed film Ailey (Sundance official selection); released and appeared on 30 album recordings; and has published over 300 works. DBR earned his doctorate in Music Composition from the University of Michigan and is currently a tenured Institute Professor at Arizona State University.

Carl Hancock Rux is an American poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, recording artist, journalist, curator, and conceptual installation artist working in text, dance, ritualized performance, audio, video, and photography. Described in The New York Times as “a breathlessly inventive multimedia artist” focused on “art, race, memory, and power,” Rux is the author of several books including the Village Voice Literary Prize-winning collection of poetry, Pagan Operetta; the novel, Asphalt; the Obie Awardwinning play, Talk, and five albums. He appears as a frequent collaborating artist, most notably on Gerald Clayton’s album Life Forum (Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Instrumental Album) and as co-author of the staged incarnation of Steel Hammer by Julia Wolfe, the 2010 Pulitzer Prize-nominated work, created with Anne Bogart. Rux is the author/performer of the Lincoln Center commissioned experimental short poetic film The Baptism, a tribute to civil rights activists John Lewis and C. T. Vivian, directed by Carrie Mae Weems (an official selection in the 2022 Segal Center Film Festival on Theater and Performance).

Christos Sarris works at the Onassis Foundation as Head of Creative and is responsible for the Foundation’s digital stage for the past four years. For twenty-five years, he has built a significant track record as a photographer on a worldwide level, working in Miami and Paris among others, while in the last fourteen years he has been also engaged in the making of documentary films. For a certain period, he served as a volunteer in the Public Relations team of the Médecins du Monde – Greece (Doctors of the World), based in Perama. He remained in the area for ten months and it was there that he filmed his first documentary based on the stories of the visitors at the MdM’s polyclinic. As a photographer and director, he has collaborated with BBC World and actively with VICE Greece. Music plays a vital role in his overall work. The series of filmed live performances Stages A/Live, produced by the Onassis Foundation and available on its YouTube channel, is conceived and executed by him. Among his other musical collaborations, it is worth noting the film direction of Jeff Mills’ mesmerizing performance at the archaeological site of Delos island, set against the backdrop of the UNESCO world cultural heritage monument, and his recent first stage direction for the musical performance entitled Beyond the Sea, with contemporary rearrangements of songs of the eminent composer Yannis Markopoulos by Pavlos Pavlidis.

Pete Scalzitti (Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, Tonight Show Film Festival ’21, SXSW Film Fest ’10) is a filmmaker, VFX animator, cinematographer, and former busker-turned-accordion teacher based in Manhattan. He is currently the lead editor/videographer for the Metropolitan Opera, where he shoots and edits short featurettes for the Met’s Live in HD theatrical broadcasts. His half-animated/ half-live-action music video Amy by Brontosorus had its world premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2010, and more recently he taught Dan Radcliffe to play accordion for the film Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several Grammy awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She has worked with a range of artists including Rosalía, Renée Fleming, and Yo-Yo Ma, and she has contributed music to films and TV series including Fleishman Is in Trouble, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, and Beyonce’s Homecoming. Her favorite color is yellow, and her favorite smell is rosemary.

Bora Yoon is a Korean-American composer, vocalist, and sound artist who conjures audiovisual soundscapes using digital devices, voice, and instruments from a variety of cultures and historical centuries to formulate a storytelling through music, movement, and sound. Featured on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, Wire magazine, TED, and the National Endowment for the Arts podcast for her use of unusual instruments and everyday found objects as music, she evokes what George Lewis describes as “a kind of sonic memory garden” – using voice, viola, Tibetan singing bowls, vocoder, Bible pages, bike bells, turntable, walkie-talkies, chimes, water, and electronics. Yoon has presented her work at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, BAM, Visiones Sonoras (Mexico), Festival of World Cultures (Poland), PROTOTYPE Opera Theater Now Festival; and provided the live score for Haruki Murakami’s Wind Up Bird Chronicle, an interdisciplinary theater adaptation, co-commissioned by Asia Society, Baryshnikov Art Center, Edinburgh International Arts Festival, and Singapore Arts Festival, in addition to original music within Apple TV+’s Pachinko, based on The New York Times bestselling novel by Min Jin Lee. borayoon.com

Jeffrey Zeigler has released dozens of albums on Nonesuch Records, Deutsche Grammophon, Cantaloupe, and Smithsonian Folkways and has appeared with Norah Jones on her album Not Too Late on Blue Note Records. Zeigler’s multifaceted career has led to collaborations with a wide array of artists from Yo-Yo Ma and Tanya Tagaq to Philip Glass and John Zorn and from Laurie Anderson to Siddhartha Mukherjee. While serving as the cellist of the internationally renowned Kronos Quartet for eight seasons, Zeigler was the recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize, the Polar Music Prize, the President’s Merit Award from the Grammys, and The Asia Society’s Cultural Achievement Award. Jeffrey Zeigler was recently appointed Assistant Professor of Chamber Music and Innovation at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami.

Sat, May 6 20:00

Ionic

→ National Sawdust

Inspired by C. P. Cavafy’s poem “Ionic,” multidisciplinary genius Juliana Huxtable concludes the festival at National Sawdust with a “visual rave” in collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Joe Heffernan and her band Tongue in the Mind. Music, spoken word, visuals, and a nod to Greek legendary composer Lena Platonos will create a perfect paean to the performative nature of Cavafy’s work, and what is known as his “in-between” quality and essence. The evening will crescendo into a dance-party led by the Jamaican sonic disruptor DJ SHYBOI who recently sold out shows at MoMA PS1 and the Guggenheim.

Performer & Director: Juliana Huxtable / Performer: Tongue in Mind / DJ: SHYBOI / Featured Music: Lena Platonos

Juliana Huxtable is an artist, poet, writer, and musician living and working between New York City and Berlin. She has exhibited and performed at MoMA, Guggenheim, Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, and the New Museum, among many others.

Tongue in the Mind evolved heedfully from almost a decade of creative back-and-forth between multimedia artist, DJ, and writer Juliana Huxtable and multi-instrumentalist composer Joe Rinaldo Heffernan, aka Jealous Orgasm. Starting life in New York City as free-flowing improvisational performance art, the project shifted as Huxtable and Heffernan’s confidence in each other swelled and their collaboration became more compositional and ostentatious. Hailing from Arkansas, Heffernan administers a long-held obsession with metal and punk into his classically conditioned arrangements, while Huxtable – who currently lives between New York and Berlin – imparts creative knowledge from her years of experience as a groundbreaking DJ and vernacular-bending poet. The duo’s music is impossible to confine within strict genre boundaries, mutating pointillistically as it vibrates through rock, jazz, and experimental forms, adducing Huxtable and Heffernan’s creative past without threatening to duplicate it. It’s an energy that’s already landed them on some of the world’s most prestigious stages, including Performa 15 at MoMA, Primavera Sound in Barcelona, and The Netherlands’ Rewire Festival in 2018.

SHYBOI is a Jamaican-born, New York-based multidisciplinary artist. SHYBOI is the moniker she uses to cause sonic disruption. As a creative positioned between Caribbean and American cultures, she uses sound to interrogate ideas of identity, notions of power, perceived histories, and the entanglements that happen within these topics. She is also member of the queer artist collective #KUNQ, whose ethos is centered around the production of multidimensional work through sound, visual, and performance art, while expanding the discourse surrounding the subcultures and genres that have become diluted or obscured in the name of hybridity. SHYBOI has three Boiler Room sets under her ever-widening belt, as well as two performances at MoMA PS1 and a sold-out show at the Guggenheim. Recent sounds have been featured in Fact magazine, Thump, Rinse FM, Mixmag, Resident Advisor, and The Fader.

Photos credits: André Aciman photo by Christopher Ferguson / Laurie Anderson photo by Ebru Yildiz / Charlotte Brathwaite photo by Barbara Anastacio / Eleni Calenos photo by Christos

Dimitriou / Nick Cave photo by Sandro / Marc Da Costa photo by Lauren Duque / Helga Davis

photo by Steven Pisano / Nadah El Shazly photo by Alan Chies / Justin Ervin photo by Clifton

Prescod / Bob Faust photo by Sandro / Laura Jane Grace photo by Bella Peterson / Stamatina

Gregory photo by Steven Menendez / Andrea Guterres photo by Celia Swart / Kathryn Hamilton photo by Maria Baranova / Richie Hoffman photo by Marcus Jackson / Paul Holdengräber

photo by Jori Klein / Juliana Huxtable & Tongue in Mind photo by Emily Dodd / Vijay Iyer

photo by Ebru Yildiz / Petros Klampanis photo by Yannis Bournias / The Knights photo by Shervin Lainez / Yaz Lancaster photo by Felix Walworth / Steven E. Mallorca photo by Steven E. Mallorca / Missy Mazzoli photo by Caroline Tompkins / Sarah McNally photo by Yvonne Brooks / Julie Mehretu photo by Josefina Santos / Daniel Mendelsohn photo by Matt Mendelsohn / Nico Muhly photo by Heidi Solander / Matthew Niederhauser photo by Matthew Niederhauser

/ Andrew Ousley photo by David White / Afroditi Panagiotakou photo by Yiorgos Kaplanidis / Dimitris Papadimitriou photo by Nicholas Mastoras / Elena Park photo by Brigitte Lacombe / Mac Premo photo by Bill Wadman / Paola Prestini photo by Caroline Tompkins / Jana Prikryl

photo by Willamain Somma / Daniel Bernard Roumain photo by Christine Turner / Carl Hancock

Rux photo by Felicia Megginson / Ali Santana photo by RaFia Santana / Christos Sarris photo by Andreas Simopoulos / Nathan Thatcher photo by Mark Orton / Rufus Wainwright photo by Tony Hauser / Bora Yoon photo by Ryan Lash

Text Editing – Proofreading: Vassilis Douvitsas

Print Management: Yiannis Alexandropoulos