Twelve

Elli Papadopoulou, Twelve, 2024, narrative performance, 4 minutes

In “Twelve”, Elli Papadopoulou composes a ritual of memory and resistance against gender-based violence and patriarchy. On the floor of the performance space are dry plane leaves, a blue wooden stool with a glass bowl placed upon it, containing a ring. Nearby is a low seat from which the performer, dressed in black clothes and a blue coat, acts. Through the economy of gesture and the presence of symbolic objects, the performer activates a silent yet dense space, where the personal is experienced as collective memory.

Her voice narrates an intergenerational story of women who remain silent, endure, yet remember. Here, the walk does not constitute an outward movement but an act of introspection; an inner journey through memories, experiences and silences. This journey is not about space but time, the transition from silence to awareness. In the calm repetition of voice and movement, presence becomes an act of remembrance, while silence takes on the rhythm of an inner awakening.

12

Ellie Papadopoulou narrates:

Perhaps Frosini… was braver. With strength, with fervour, she endured till the end, she held on. Was she not afraid of the freezing waters, not afraid to imagine the fish circling round,  nibbling at her beautiful hands?

Those hands her beloved once placed upon his chest and kissed tenderly? And love.

Why should she have feared? Is this life such a beautiful thing?

Better at 12.

That’s what my mother used to say when I was little.

And her mother, too, silent, that’s how I remember her, like a rock through the centuries—sometimes I wanted to go and shake her where she sat, to see if she was fastened somehow to the ground. And every now and then she would murmur 

“Hush, may people never find out about us”.

“I’ll leave and abandon you, I’ll go to 12,” my mother would say and scare us.

And the years went by, and the two of them lingered on, haunting their own lives, quietly, though not imperceptibly,  like the marble couple of the castle. Any parallel, perhaps, is merely a matter of perspective.

“We have the children. We have the daughters, and we have the child.” With these terms, children were raised. But even today, they are raised the same way. The “child” lurks insidiously in our words and emerges when it wishes to measure its strength, its power.

Perhaps Frosini had spirit, defending what I now cowardly avoid.

She had children and I, a daughter. And my own end came for me too.. Who does not long for joy, who would refuse a caress?

The gaze was absolute and the shape of the lips exquisite when uttered my name. The body remembers through the fingers; people do not die when their movements are imprinted.

A ray of sunlight within the mist that consumes us, and there is warmth, joy. Who understands, who feels. 

Perhaps Frosini truly loved and sacrificed everything without a second thought.

No, she trembled that last night when all the men around her were comfortable. She wore her lover’s ring with pride, she would take it with her. 

I, who have nothing but this Indian bracelet you made for me. She showed hers with pride, I hide mine so no one may see it. 

The bracelet with wooden beads. And every time it broke and the beads fell on the floor, I tenderly picked them up one by one.

But now I’m throwing it away, and myself with it, in 12.

For all have betrayed me and now only the lake remains, the eternal embrace of women.

That’s how they raised us, with stories.

And someone always falls

into the cliff,

into the river, 

into the well 

into 12.

Exhibition section: From Nature
…colors, scents, and sounds stir the senses and fragile emotions

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