Introduction
From mid-March 2020, Cyprus entered a lockdown whereby ports were ordered to be evacuated. A logistical crisis we had yet to visualse and experience as that present moment, isolated Cyprus, and by extent the populations occupying its territory from the rest of the human flows. Including our neighboring territories.
In the videos, Lapithi performed readings of her artist’s diary as well as recipes written during the 75 day Covid19 lockdown. While, Shukuroglou made guided interventions as well as analysed the political situation of each territorial administration. A collaboration where the vectors of art and political theory intersect.
Using the safety repatriation flights, organised by the territory’s administration, also known as The Republic of Cyprus, Shukuroglou physically joined Lapithi to present episode ‘Palestine’ and ‘Turkey’, and complete lockdown one together. Their jointly owned dog Ernesto was a part of most projects.
The first series began with Lapithi introducing the series as such:
I believe that after the virus, we in Cyprus will have new power balances within the Middle East, and especially with our nearest neighbors. Neighboring countries with which we have shared histories and mutual interests. These are countries I can easily sail to from Cyprus, in no more than 2 days. With zero footprint.
The two, transformed the art studio into a bar, testing, comparing and competing their mixologist skills.
Territory / Space
With the re-purposing of our studio working territory into a bar, a new normality emerged. The immanence of visualsing the restructured space, or, territory, produced new points of departure for our so-called productive time. Within the same territory our home began anew, and our work-spaces presented themselves as what one would call a ‘social strike’. What we mean by social strike is twofold: on the one hand it was a strike from our social responsibilities. We did not have to behave, perform or even exist as the subjects of our so-called ‘home’ (defined linguistically, culturally, industrially and infrastructurally by the total-territory we define as the Republic of Cyprus), allowing us to re-define our home-axioms, putting everything into crisis. We define crisis as
the dismantlement of all social ties and customs, the uncertainty of any previous certainties, the discouragement of solidarity as well as non-stop cycles of insecurity. This crisis, however, as much as it alienated us from our perceived so-called ‘peoples’ allowed us to redefine our personal borders and relations in terms beyond their physical and spatial dimensions. In other words, territory, for us at least, has managed to project the studio and re-territorialise it, not stagnant in Cyprus anymore, but, Cyprus’ closed ports as points of departure into our digitalised reality. And if anyone is aware of the Cypriot digital landscape, knows that it is laggy and very much so pixelated (we have bad internet infrastructure here).The second dimension of this de-facto social strike is the production of our films that came out of our drinking sessions making us a bit delirious. Collaborative creative labour produced as its effect a ‘work’ that re-defined our understanding of labour, productivity and more precisely liquified our basic conceptions of spaces, or territories in which we structure for the sole purpose of an abstract conceptualisation of what work, and by extent its relation to its presupposed labour is, that inadvertently produced something of value and thus we present it below:
This project in general was sparked by our extensive debates over the brandy sour. Conflicting opinions of its measurement, contents and even form made us wonder with whom would King Farouk side with. Thus, our digital journey began with the quest of printing, framing and interrogating the digitalised portrait-photo of the deceased Egyptian King, who eventually by subsuming itself in our territory, became part of our family. Realising the physical-metric proximity we have to Egypt in conjunction to the momentary European isolation (as we are Europe's most eastern point with no land borders effectively rendering us as sea locked) experienced with the shutting of sea and airports, our digital endeavors continued with a visit to Syria and visit Hunein Massab, in Israel Golda Meir, in Palestine Yasser Arafat, in Turkey Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, in Lebanon Fairouz, and finally in Greece for Melina Mercouri.
To sum up, we wanted each visit to represent our debates which heavily carried within them sarcasm, humor and an underlying notion of cynical-repentance. In other words, we just wanted to have a bit of fun during a moment when we did not know what hit us and how the pandemic would unfold. Within the chaos, we let bygones be bygones and all became drinking buddies sharing cocktails and meze discussing politics, failed struggles and canceled futures whereby pointing to our differences found our similarities. What we mean by this is that all of our so-called ‘peoples’ and all of our so-called ‘land’ depended upon the same structures and presuppositions that when placed next to each other facing an extincting civilisational threat, point to their fallacies, antinomies and more extensively, to our common lies: that we are one, pure and homogenous people.
We begin with:
Episode 1, Egypt
Port Said, Egypt. As previously mentioned, for Egypt we made the traditional Cypriot cocktail called ‘Brandy Sour’. The specific brandy sour that we have concocted was rumored to have been, during the late 1930’s, King Farouk’s (1920-1965) favorite drink during his visits to this island-territory. Where it got super complicated was with the ‘arrival’ of Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970) who joined our happy hour. Memories and flashbacks of Makarios, Tito, Nehru and Castro were invading our conceptual frameworks due to their non-aligned policies and unachievable potentialities. With the offset of these people’s ideas of nationhood and thus ‘home’ provided the basis for the composition of the chaos of an aggregate dispersed amount of individuals, or more precisely noumena.
Episode 2, Syria
Latakia port, Syria. For this episode, we recreated the famous absinthe cocktail called ‘absinth drip’, for Hunein Massab (1928-2014), a professor of epidemiology known for developing the influenza vaccine. The absinthe drip is put on flames and given a test taste. Joined by Steve Jobs (1955-2011), who was conceived in Syria, his biological father from Emesa/ Homs, 162 km from Damaskus. Discussing which Syrian to invite to our lockdown sessions caused a lot of debate within the household/work/bar/studio/home. Would it be Assad? Definitely not. Syria, as territory and population, had gone through enough so we wanted someone who not only is not a genocidal dictator, but on the contrary brought positive change not to ‘just’ Syrians, as we are trying our best to erase any nationalistic language, but to the entirety of the world, or more precisely, to the entirety of the human population. This being Hunein Massab. Ironically the poison of choice for our Syrian night was absinthe.
Episode 3, Israel
Haifa port, Israel. The star of episode three was Golda Meir (1898-1978), fourth prime minister of Israel, born and raised in the USA; is served a Manhattan, one of the most renowned cocktails, garnished with a fresh maraschino cherry. The reason behind choosing Golda Meir is apart from having a ‘lioness’ leadership role, she initiated what would come to be referred as "The Kitchen Cabinet". The Kitchen Cabinet is a descriptive term referring to the collection of senior officials as well as unofficial security council advisers, known as the ‘Inner Security Cabinet’ which functioned parallel to the official ‘Security Cabinet’. These Kitchen talks, were organised with the purpose of formulating various security assessments, of which Israel has an unlimited supply due to its neighborhood relations, a whole new territorial anxiety which as Cypriots we can relate to.
Golda would invite the Kitchen Cabinet on Shabbat evenings, where she would serve fresh cake and discuss and prepare for the full cabinet meeting of the next day. Some claimed to praise the so-called preliminary assessment apparatus, while its opponents claimed that it was overriding official government bodies, and that the decisions taken during unofficial meetings would have a consequential effect the day after. We found this super interesting as we lost count on how many consequential effects our ‘kitchens cabinets’ had, since we spend most of our time in the kitchen.
Episode 4, Palestine
Access Denied, Palestine. For this episode, our guest was Yasser Arafat (1929-2004) and alongside followed Makarios, Tito, Nehru and Casto for the making of a mixer drink: Cuba libre. This episode has as its ‘point of departure’ Mahdi Fleifel’s documentary "A World not Ours" who introduces the highly complex Israel-Palestine problem. We of course will not attempt to provide any solutions in this situation as this is beyond the scope of this series. However, what we focused on was on the concept of a national ‘problem’ by centerting on our stage the 20th century movements of so-called ‘national liberation’. Hence why we were making Cuba libres which were heavy on lemons, adjusting to our tastes, of course. Mehdi began his documentary with Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion statement on the Nakba claiming that "the old will die and the young will forget". This for us, was central in examining a ‘problem’, as in, who’s ‘problem’ is it: the population who experiences a particular event, or, a so-called ‘people’ who are united by this event? The first implies immanence and aid, while the second implies struggle. From the safety of our home we did not attempt to resolve the first, as any humanitarian organisation from the UN to NGOs to bottom up initiatives focused on this event will know and do much more than our 5 minute video. However, the second, a ‘people’s struggle’ was and is much more attainable to examine from our perspective. So, we introduced the cuba libre and accompanied it with the ex-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the ex-Cypriot leader Makarios and ex-Cuban leader Castro, the ex-Yugoslav leader Tito and the ex-Indian leader Nehru, and their ‘problems’ of their so-called national liberations. Our meze while discussing these alive topics with these dead leaders were ripe dates and aloe vera, also known as ‘migratory cactus’ for its traditional medical and healing properties.
Episode 5, Turkey
Izmir Marina, Turkey. For our Turkish guest appearance we invited Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938), and served him a milk punch aka whiskey sour. This was done by using the clarified filtration method (as done with milk and bourbon), however a key difference is that we had replaced milk with homemade Ayran(i). This episode was entirely presented and written by Shukuroglou as he had written his first degree thesis on "the discursive mechanisms that contributed for the creation of the post-Ottoman early-Turkish identity". Bear in mind that Shukuroglou throughout the videos only speaks in Cypriot Greek, as the only difference between a language and a dialect is that a language is a dialect with an army and navy. This was not done to reinstate a Cypriot army and navy, but to embrace the multifaced aspects of a molecular Cypriot becoming within the territorial organism that we have come to identity as ‘our neighborhood’. Mustafa Kemal Pasha Attaturk aka Gezi aka Ata, was our central focus. We examined the difference between the ‘modernisation of the old’ with Ataturk’s whisky obsession and the ‘regression of the new’ with Erdogan’s Aryan endeavors, noting that Erdogan was not invited, even if we had previously let bygones be bygones.
Episode 6, Lebanon
Beirut Marina, Lebanon. The guest appearance for episode six was Nouhad Wadie Haddad, better known as Fairouz (1934-2009) the legendary singer and greatest living Arab diva. Fairouz will be served a gendered cocktail, the Pink Lady, which unites all the ingredients into a smooth palatable experience. The episode begins with a description of the Lebanese democratically (unfunctional) sectarian system. This is very interesting as most of our neighborhood ‘problems’ eventualise out of an ethnic nationalism in which a particular minority, whether it was Greeks and Armenians in Turkey, Palestinians in Israel, Turkish Cypriots in Cyprus, all attempt, in relation to a dominant ethnic nationalism, to separate themselves through cultural-linguistic and historically separate contingencies. However, in the case of Lebanon, at the heart of their sectarian democracy lies the foundation of the ‘principal of coexistence’ to ensure that power was spread equally across religious sects. However, similar to our problems, their point of departure, or, presupposition, is that each sect, or community, or tribe or however you want to call it, we are not producing discourse here, is that each population is inherently and intrinsically homogenous, and thus, different from each other.
Every attempt leaders undertook in composing ‘the people’ whether in race, class, nationalism etc. presupposes and thus determines ethical differences between ‘peoples’ that must, through organisation, be brought closer, ignoring the fact that differences within ‘people(s)’ are always greater. To impose sameness, and thus homogeneity is to tread on nationalist routes. Feiruz for us, broke the ethnic and ethical line that presupposes a differentiation between people and brought all those that considered themselves as intrinsically separate from her, as she was of Syriac Orthodox and Maronite roots, together without even being aware of this ethnic leap forwards. This was represented by the cocktail ‘pink lady’ that amalgamates various flavors and ingredients emulsified together with a raw egg.Episode 7, Greece
Kastellorizo, Greece. Our final guest for episode seven was Melina Mercouri (1920-1994).There is even a cocktail named after her called "Never on Sunday", having ouzo as a base, with Metaxa Brandy, and replacing Champagne with Duc of Nicosie. Lapithi narrated and wrote the text solo for this episode. She remembers being taken by her mother to her fist protest in 1975, merely one year after being made a refugee, when she was just 12, led by Melina Mercouri. This was called "women walk home". In this march, 20,000 women took part and walked three miles from Frenaros and Dherinia, just outside Famagusta. It is extremely important to note that these women challenged the territorial claims of the Turkish occupation of North Cyprus in ways that have up to that point never been done before, and if we are totally honest, have not been done since in such an extent in both qualitative and quantitative ways. Their initial plan was to pass the Turkish checkpoints, which until 2004 were sealed shut, and enter the ghost town of Famagusta, to ‘return home’. ‘Home’ not only in terms of their property, but in terms of a territory that permits a freedom of movement that does not necessitate permission from a ministry of defense. The drink we made for this episode is called ‘never on sunday’, a 1960 romcom that illustrates the so-called degradation of classical Greek culture through the lens of a modern sex-worker performed by Melina Mercuri pointing to a ‘new Greece’, via food, bouzouki and dance. The digitalised travel of our sailing location whereby we drank ‘never on sunday’ cocktails, took place in the island of Kastellorizo. Kastellorizo an island composed of 498 inhabitants with a territory of 9,113 km² has seen more conflict in the past century caught between various giant’s cross fire, just like Cyprus, biting more than they could chew. Nonetheless, we drink today, in hopes that a conflict that is undoubtably build upon layers and layers of historically contingent lies does not emerge, and especially, definitely "never on Sunday".
Farewells
This is the end of the season one, concluding all seven episodes. We wish you all solitude beyond collective identities, develop autonomous personalities and modes of life that are not contingent on your neighborhood, whether so-called ‘within’ or ‘abroad’, and if that is impossible for you, at least find ‘your drink’ and base your personality around that.