2015 University of Arts Helsinki & Aalto University - Antigone Reloaded

Seminars

The ”ANCIENT DRAMA: INFLUENCES AND CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES” program is about founding an institution with a unique artistic and educational character, and falls in line with the general program of the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation for the promotion of Ancient Drama research and study. Following three years of successful collaboration with the Stanford, Leeds and Jerusalem universities, comes the program’s 4th year of organization, which takes place from June 1-14 2015, in collaboration with the internationally acclaimed University of the Arts Helsinki/ Theatre Academy and the Aalto University/ School of Arts, Design and Architecture.

 

Alongside the performance, in the context of the 4th organization of the Program “ANCIENT DRAMA: INFLUENCES AND CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES”, the visiting academic institutions will oversee a series of workshops, for a total of 12 hours, as well as a seminar by Dr Miika Luoto, Philosophy Lecturer, Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, who will expand on the topic of “The invention of Ancient Greece”, on the basis of theories by Hölderlin and Nietzsche. The workshops deal with the topics of the theatre stage as a musical instrument, the ancient comedy, and analyzing the Chorus in ancient drama. Administering the workshops, which -as in all the years of the program- students or graduates of drama schools and university theatre departments, or/ and other schools with objects relative to the performing arts, as well as schools for the Classics or education departments are free to attend, will be Dr. Markus Fagerudd, Dr. Liisa Ikonen, Dr. Tomi Humalisto and Anne Limell.

Monday, June 8, 2015, 19.00-21.30

Title: The invention of Ancient Greece

Administrator: Dr Miika Luoto, Philosophy Lecturer, Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki

 

How can we attain what is peculiar to Ancient Greece?

How can we approach through art and poetry something that lies at the origin of Western culture?

 

What is originally Greek is not simply a matter of knowledge concerning historical facts and not even something to be reached by transferring ourselves into a world of art and beauty forever gone. According to two great philosopher-poets of the 19th century, Hölderlin and Nietzsche, Ancient Greece is not something already present to us. Rather, “Greece” must necessarily be invented, that is, it must be cast forth in a creative act. For both Hölderlin and Nietzsche, Greek art manifests a discordance between light and darkness, form and power, measure and excess, and it is this energetic discordance that determines the very essence of Greece as origin. For both of them, our relation to Ancient Greece is a matter of creative translation that thoroughly effects our experience, language and thought. Hence, to have access to something original in Greek art means not merely to return to something gone but, rather, to be open to what arrives to us, originally, today. Therefore, Ancient Greek art may teach us, precisely in its strangeness, what is proper to us as modern Westerners.