medea in the gardens of the hesperides

Medea in the Gardens of the Hesperides is a digital diptych commissioned by the Ukho agency.

out of fire – container

out of hot noise – cold signal1 

do children and lovers tend towards stones?2

out of forest – a garden

out of gardens – remainders3

that remember the noising, the noise-maker, & green fur4

Objects are, as one person said, constellations in a tension of boundless embraces5. 

The 2016 performance, with the stones on the dancers' heads, who slowly advanced towards the performers and the audience, and Medea's meat dress, pieces of which kept falling off, might have seemed self-contained. But it was already haunted by its own future version, a version amidst new violence, with the dead animals and plants of Kinburn.

Which consists of: 

A map with two layered sets of open data: the geolocations of fires recorded on the Kinburn Peninsula since the beginning of the full-scale invasion and the geolocations of observations of flora and fauna made by users of the iNaturalist app in the same area. Fire data was acquired through remote sensing and provided by the “Sviatoslav's Biloberezhzhia” National Park Research Department. 

A place of remembrance: a virtual garden that serves as a forever home for former Kinburn residents (as informed by the map) and as a meditation space for visitors.

In gardening Kinburn’s victims, it seems I am creating a new order, a promise of restoration. I have tried to be diligent, but these rows and arrangements, I know, are vibrating with a tension of their own undoing. Medea, mistress of subversion, must have known something of this too, when she placed what remained of her children in the gardens of the Hesperides. Gardens are where remainders begin to rattle. 

1 http://xenopraxis.net/readings/ireland_noise.pdf

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea_hypothesis

3 Sue Edney, “Phantoms, fantasy and uncanny flowers” 

4 Stepan Kylymnyk, Calendar Year in Ukrainian Folklore: Vol II (p. 80)  5 https://transversal.at/transversal/0606/steyerl/en