The Xarkis 2018 festival invites all to leave behind our consumeristic nature, individual worries and social media platforms for a weekend. In place of all these things, the festival will put on workshops and live performances to expand knowledge, get creative juices flowing and to get people together to enjoy a different experience.
The festival, in Koilani village in Limassol, will offer the chance to take part in unique events for free. These events include eight educational workshops, five performances, three spatial installations, an exhibition, a concert with five musical performances, and an experimental fiesta inspired by the Cypriot ziafettin, with the participation of five musicians.
Workshops will help us revisit the concepts of education, culture and entertainment through academic and practical sessions with the aim of creating communal identities. The rural area of Koilani village will play a great part in this, particularly in the workshops under the name Retaining Walls Restoration with Socrates Socratous running on August 18 from 8am until 11am and 5pm until 7pm, and then again on Sunday from 8am until 11am and Revisiting Place with Nicos Philippou on August 18 from 10am until 11.30am and August 19 from 11am until 1pm.
Socratous will show participants how to use stones to restore a retaining wall, a process that has been around for thousands of years to protect fertile soil from erosion, create level surfaces on inclined landscapes for easier cultivation of crops and to add to the architectural aesthetics of an area.
While Socratous teaches about dry stone walling, Philippou will overview topographic-photographic representations of Cyprus and will show how these have come to symbolise cultural orientation in the Cypriot landscape. During the workshop participants will have the chance to explore the Koilani landscape.
Another local resident, Marilena Zackheos, will give a poetry writing workshop on August 18 from 4.30pm until 7.30pm, which will have participants immerse themselves in their surrounding space, read and discuss published poems in English about space and ask how place is imagined and constructed therein. Then participants will take part in writing exercises, which will draw on personal experience.
Sara Ortolani from Italy will run the Natural and Human Distoration workshop on August 18 from 12pm until 3pm. According to Ortolani “we will analyse human and natural heritage, to broaden research of memory from a personal (or natural) memory towards a collective one. We will then study how the symbiosis of nature and human heritage can interact with memories of the place.”
The music performances will take plce on August 18 at the fooball field from 8pm. The night will include performances from Vassilis Philippou and the Marlia Project, from the local scene, and Lebanese-Palestinian musician Zeyn Mroueh, the trio Elektro Guzzi from Austria and DJ Kineza, who originates from Cyprus.
Other performances will include Negotiating Space with My Johansson from Sweden on August 19 at 4pm and The World’s Hardest Job with Demetra Kallitsa on August 19 at 4.30pm. Negotiating Space will explore the space that exists symbiotically in the movement between the mover, the floor, its surroundings and spectator.
Talking about her performance, Kallitsi said “I will explore the mediums of performance and improvisation (repetition and duration) as a performative and meditative element, but also as a means of reinterpreting artistic practices and crafts which are traditionally feminised.”
For full information about the events at the festival and times, go to http://freepdfhosting.com/a5ea5ee6b9.pdf.
Xarkis 2018 festival
Two-day festival with workshops and live performances. August 18-19. Koilani village, Limassol. Different times. Free. Tel: 97-676011
