Greek History as Environmental Performance: Iannis Xenakis’ Mycenae Polytopon and Beyond

Abstract

Iannis Xenakis’ Mycenae Polytopon (1978) was a performance work of light, movement, and sound which took place at night, in early September, in a vast open air space of twenty five kilometers in the region of Argolis. This was the last of a series of site specific works, the Polytope that the distinguished composer and architect had presented internationally in the 1960s and 1970s. The Mycenae Polytopon engaged a large number of professional and amateur performers, from musicians and singers to soldiers and shepherds with flocks of sheep. The citadel of Mycenae, the neighboring archaeological sites of Argos and Tiryns, as well as the planes and mountains of Argolis became the site of a popular ceremony in this work, connecting ancient Greece to the technological era. The Mycenae Polytopon has attracted scholarly attentionrecently, in relation to cultural life in Greece in the immediate years following the fall of the 1967 junta, as well as more generally, in the context of research on the Polytope performances (Tsagkarakis 2013: Fayers 2011: Sterken 2007 and 2001: and especially Touloumi 2012 and 2009).1 The purpose of this study is to flesh out the significance of space and performance to Xenakis’ approach to history and national identity and to relate it to earlier and later environmentally sensitive art work in Greece, including the Delphic Festivals of the interwar period, the opening ceremony of the 2004 Olympics, as well as contemporary experimental performance. My study is relevant to recent scholarly attention on the impact of space and performance to the conception of national identity in modern Greece (Ioannidou 2010; Yalouri 2010; Papakonstantinou 2010; Fournaraki 2010; Van Steen 2002; Leontis 2001).