Sister Sylvester: Constantinopoliad
Inspired by an abandoned journal (The Constantinopoliad: An Epic) by the young Constantine P. Cavafy, I will work with the Cavafy Αrchive in Αthens on research that will lead to an artist book and a live performance to be showcased during the “Archive of Desire” festival in Νew York in April 2023. My research will focus on Cavafy’s three-year stay in Constantinople (1882-1885) and use that to think about the limits of the archive, censorship and self-censorship, in conversation with experiences of the queer community in contemporary Istanbul, and the destruction of LGBTI books in the USA.
In parallel I will explore the work of a little-known Greek astronomer who was in Constantinople at the same time as Cavafy and developed a 'scale for seeing', for amateur astronomers to record levels of atmospheric interference in their observations. Can this scale for seeing across space also be applied to seeing across time?
Sister Sylvester's Fellowship at Onassis AiR is made possible in collaboration with the Cavafy Archive.
Image 1 / 7
Photo: Jill Steinberg
Image 2 / 7
Photo: Jill Steinberg
Image 3 / 7
Photo: Jill Steinberg
Image 4 / 7
Photo: Jill Steinberg
Image 5 / 7
Photo: Jill Steinberg
Image 6 / 7
Photo: Jill Steinberg
Image 7 / 7
Photo: Jill Steinberg
“Constantinopoliad” is a handmade book, read collectively by the audience inside of a sound installation. A response to the archive of the poet Constantine Cavafy, the work is inspired by the blank and torn out pages in “Constantinopoliad, an Epic”, the journal the teenage Cavafy began when he and his family fled Alexandria. It also draws on lost and missing archives through time and on the ghosts, both erotic and historical, that visit the older Cavafy in his poems.
I spent my time in Athens split between the Onassis AiR and the Cavafy archive, where the amazing archivists guided me through the materials, answered my questions, humored my theories, and sent me hunting in the used bookshops of Athens for out-of-print works. Under their guidance I was able to focus on the document I most wanted to study – the short journal Cavafy kept as a teenager – and then create a spider’s web out from that to other texts and objects.The interactions with other artists at the Onassis AiR program – from formal exchanges and studio visits to informal chats in bars and in our shared apartment – brought new ideas and inspiration for the work. And the work-in-progress showings and feedback sessions with the other artists gave new avenues to explore, and vital notes as we assembled the hand-made book.The performance premiered in April 2023 in New York, as part of the Onassis Foundation’s “Archive of Desire” festival, and returned to the Cavafy Archive in Athens for a week-long run in November 2023.
