Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below

Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below explores the political dynamics of the body in motion from a simultaneously geological and cultural underground point of departure. Alchemical wanderings from the historical past towards mythology and a post-industrial present culminate in a delirious dance. Inebriation, intoxication, revulsion, euphoria, release, vent, and ascent; a circular path from the body to the ground and back again.

The exhibition’s narrative unfolds through the myths and history of the city of Elefsina and its Mysteries, with dance serving as a means of climax, a sacred ritual, and a method for exploring concepts of death and loss. In Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below, we witness dance and its affinity with the ailing body or even itself as illness and therapy, dance in a state of crisis, as exhaustion that brings pleasure displacing social exhaustion, as escape and counteraction.

Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below focuses on the potential for creating corporeal archives, nonlinear knowledge transmission, and storytelling with unexpected cross-cultural affinities. The ephemeral, physicality, uncertainty, and performativity elements serve as critical starting points and accompany the audience through the viewing and participation process.

Through installations, painting, sculpture, sound, and performance, the exhibition seeks to redefine the boundaries of dance, reflecting on the (collective) body and its absence, memory, and the necessity of movement. It contemplates utopian declarations of dance subcultures, their glorification, thwarting, and commercial exploitation, hovering between desire, disappointment, and expectation. It examines the relationship between dance movements and community formation, as well as demands for social justice, portraying dance as a translinguistic activity for creating a new world: a delirious grammar that is impossible to parse, slippery in mind and unwieldy in the mouth, passing through muscle spasms, chemical compounds, machines and pixels.

Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below coincides with the celebration of “Mesosporitissa” connecting different historical periods of Elefsina while marking the transition into winter.

The opening of the exhibition features a series of performances by Odete & Nkisi and an all-night party with Fofi Tsesmeli, Odete, Amateurboyz, Ayshel & GRΞTA.