Myth Gives Rise to Longing: A Listening for what Willfully Remains Unintelligible–Ioanna Gerakidi
Ioanna Gerakidi

Myth Gives Rise to Longing: A Listening for what Willfully Remains Unintelligible consists of fragments of a longer essay that focuses at the notion, semantics and potentialities of the myth as a methodology for subverting established systems of knowledge production. Along with poetry, astrology, tarot and other readings, myths do not impose any singular truth or meaning. They instead allow a fluidity in apprehension; they become a form where responsibility is shared between the storyteller and the listener, the writer and the reader. They rearrange hierarchies, reinvent the nexus(es) of power. They are parables; structures dealing with attention and authority as exchangeable, dynamic and fluid conducts. I look at myths as metaphors, as invitations that explore and stay with the unknown, as promises for thinking about the world sensorially, as expressive modalities for reaching the impossible. How do myths touch otherness, erase dichotomies, undo the mystification of the virtuous or the depreciation of the vicious? Can they operate as vessels to speak about the radically queer?

Ioanna Gerakidi is a writer, curator and educator based in Amsterdam and Athens. She holds a BA in Media and Communication Studies (University of Athens) and an MA in Critical Studies (Sandberg Instituut). She has collaborated with and curated shows/events for Athens Biennale, Athens Digital Arts Festival, Hot Wheels Projects, Subrosa Space Athens, Snehta Residency, and Stoa 42, among others. Her texts, when acting as performative gestures, have been presented at Kunstverein Amsterdam (NL), Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (DE), CAC Vilnius (LT), Haus N Athen (GR), Athens Festival (GR), Performance Biennal (GR) and more. She has contributed to several publications and lectured, initiated and led workshops for several academies and alternative educational programs in Europe, such as Rupert, Athens School of Fine Arts, Noiserr and The Southern Summer School (BAK), among others. She currently works as an independent writer for Collecteurs Magazine of New Museum and runs a weekly Reading Group for Studium Generale Rietveld Academie of Gerrit Rietveld Akademie, Amsterdam.