The last of Sessions at SPEL

Sessions, the series of queer happenings that has taken over the State Gallery of Contemporary Art – SPEL in Nicosia over the past year, will open its doors for the last time on Saturday. For the closure of the series, a film will be screened and the book/catalogue of Sessions will be launched, while an open discussion will be held at 6pm to take stock of the project.

The book/catalogue attempts to document with photos and texts what happened in SPEL from June to December 2023, day by day. With an introductory note by Peter Eramian, accompanying texts, descriptions, information and photographs of all the happenings from behind the scenes to the stage, the book will be available for sale in a limited special edition.

In continuation, the event will also include a screening of a film that was created last December with footage captured by the audience during Sessions x SPEL, and with music recorded in an open improvisation. It will be screened once during the event, starting at 12am and finishing at 8pm.

In between that, performer and academic Stavros Karayiannis, Ellada Evangelou, curator Ioulita Toumazi, writer and artist Marina Ashioti and art historian-curator Gabriel Koureas will take stock of what has been achieved, possibilities for future events, and will discuss some of the criticisms of the events and the concept, in the framework of an open discussion.

Commenting on this Taking Stock part of the event, set to place at 6pm, the organisers say: “During the last six months the space of SPEL, still part of an institutional transition, has been transformed and given a different spatial identity. Sessions, through multiple performances and interventions, opened our consciousness to the queerness of time and space, the power of bodies that don’t belong, and the thrill and excitement of intimacies that openly activate our sexed/gendered identifications in the realm of the visual arts. Queering in this instance provided an opening of all identifications and meanings to relational exchanges. Sessions instigated a ‘queer commons’, a critique of liberal values, establishing as political the very terms through which identity is articulated, thus challenging the highly entrenched heteronormativity of Cypriot society.”

Sessions x SPEL

The last event of the queer happenings include a film, an open discussion and a book launch. January 27. State Gallery of Contemporary Art – SPEL, Nicosia. 12pm-8pm. Tel: 22-479600, [email protected].  www.facebook.com/sesssssions