ANTI-ANTIGONE END TIME

For the first time in Barcelona, acclaimed British artist Tai Shani, will present a new performance specially commissioned by the FRAC Nord Pas de Calais for LOOP 2011.

Anti-Antigone End Time evolves around Antigone’s death. The end of the classic tragedy, first written by Sophocles in the fifth Century BC (followed by countless subsequent versions), is the centre premise for this new piece.

Tai Shani proposes a fractured science fiction adaptation of the play that ends where it begins, and takes place in the impossible and expanded time of Antigone’s self-annihilation. It will propose Antigone both as true, a character within the play, and as a self-aware meta-character which deconstructs itself.

Caught in kaleidoscopic temporality, and in the cinematic interiors of her tragedy, Antigone’s constructed identity dissolves through encounters with different versions of herself from various historical adaptations (Jean Cocteau, Sophocles, Jean Anouilh, and Schlöndorff). In this adaptation, the narrative is told entirely through Antigone’s subjectivity with all the other protagonists, such as her unburied brother Polyneices, appearing as anthropomorphic manifestations of abstract notions such as time, love, etc.

Anti-Antigone End Time combines a film in which Antigone’s memory is replayed, with a live performance and incorporates by an original score by David J. Smith. The heroine is delivered into a‘time machine’ which also operates as a ‘tragedy vessel’ suspended in time. A space that is activated by Antigone’s actions and where she remains forever held in the moment of her destruction.