Polyxene Kasda :Project Myth/Network (1991- )

the Secret of the Chrysalis

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We looked for Polyxene Kasda with the intention to talk to her about her essay ‘The Conscious Eye’, published in 1986, still amazingly contemporary now. We found her preparing her new project, which will express, as she says, the very essence of the Olympic Games. It is a world installation of constructions in the form of cups which are derived from the mathematical structure of the greek word Xρυσαλλίς; the chrysalis, the symbol of transformation of a mortal to an immortal.

This installation will close her long experimental project Myth/Network,which was initiated in 1991, when, through a performance, she declared “being absorbed in the morphic fields of the word Chrysalis”  While realizing this experiment, she has traced a unique, revolutionary path through the arts and the sciences. We were amazed at the amount of work accumulated during these years, work which remains in a large part unknown.  

“Myth/Network was an hermetic experiment. I was myself the object of my experimentation The participants, in each of my presentations were naturally attracted by the special conditions of the event in question. I was dealing with forces of the collective unconscious; my very theme required the dissolution of my persona; far from any system of image making’’.

Here we present some extracts from her interview to our magazine Tyflomyga, an interview which closes with a description of her new planetary installation .

 Polyxene Kasda’s interview to  Tyflomyga, in September’ 03

…Irresistibly attracted by the hidden source of my nostalgia, I threw myself in the chaotic vortex of the word Chrysalis, in 1991, via a performance entitled Persephone. The event took place in the bottom of the lake of Mornos, which had surfaced because of the drought, uncovering ghost houses, black trees covered with oysters, ancient mosaics and remnants of an old city which were emersed for decades deep under the water of the lake. Symbolically, this plunge signalled my entrance in the other side of the mirror; in the mythical hypostasis of our existence. At the same time, it signalled the beginning of my main project Myth/Network, an experiment in mythical thinking, in which I could formulate and share my findings and experiences in the ‘underworld’ through visual arts and literary media.

During this performance I created with the mud, zoomorphic, vortex like, archetypal figurines, called Chrysalii.

In the following years, hundreds of my small Chrysalii sculptures were ‘planted’ by other artists in different countries of the earth, which was shrinking in my eyes to the familiar dimensions of an art room.

Many cultural events were triggered in those sites by the presence of these small vortex like sculptures. The Chrysalis was demonstrating the ‘phenomenon of the butterfly”; in which a small event happening in the right place and time can trigger huge changes in distant locations. I believe that this performance was induced by the Spirit of the Time, because we are actually revolving in the ‘morphic field of resonance’ of the Chrysalis this powerful symbol of transformation, heading for a new level of consciousness...

Those mud sculptures melted in the first rain, but the experience of synergy, of travel, the feeling of the planetary dimension and, mostly, the concept of metamorphosis engrailed in the word Chrysalis remained

Project Myth/ Network was evolving and changing through the years, as multiform as its chrysalidic content. Each presentation was a recapitulation and a reconstruction of all the previous events.Each presentation was complete in itself, carrying within it characteristics of its future state, something analogous to the image of the butterfly which is already engrailed in the cells of the natural chrysalis, dynamically waiting for the critical moment of its fulfillment.

M/N was a matrix of archetypal ideas which seemed to attract events in their morphic field, in order to be realized. One thing was leading to another. Mythical threads were glittering in the most insignificant objects.I was just following the silent signs of the unexpected, the subtle clues of the undiscovered. In the autonomous, insightful space, with which I was tuned, answers were preceding  questions, defying you to formulate the right questions..

I have a small collection of ‘objects- that- found- me‘, defying the laws of probability, like the small red glass mermaid, which a wave of the libyan ocean threw in my hands, while sailing, during a performance, in 1994, in the South of Crete. It was only three months later, in Arcadia, while following the traces of Artemis, that I met the name of Evrynome, the mermaid who, according to Pausanias,.dances on the foam of the waves waiting for the land to appear..

In the mythical game you have to be open to the miracle like a child. The child in the core of your being, recognizes and opens the symbols nurturing itself with their core. As it grows, you diminish. As you diminish, it grows, until you become it, until you come out of yourself as the Child....

Pieces of the mythical mosaic are seeded in the geomorphology of sacred sites, in their names and tradition, mapping altogether a ‘dispersive structure’, full of meaning, that seems to corresonate with our deepest psychosomatic structure. Gradually, I was mapping an ever new space of extended present, superimposed on our common time bound reality. At the same time, I was stepping on a forgotten homeland.

The maps I was sketching during that period, 1994-1996, were covered with signs, symbols, drawings and instructions. They looked like those ancient maps of the hunt of the hidden treasure; a game that seduces children and grown-ups alike, because it corresponds to our deepest  mysterious  structure.Those maps were my main art-work during that period.

Crete, Icaria, Samothrace, Arcadia, each site was an ontological enigma, a topology of my consciousness itself. Each sacred location, I was concentrating upon, was projecting to me a dynamic mosaic of informations nesting in each other, in ever deeper structures. I was letting myself be drifted by the information waves, in order to touch the meaning of the situation. This subliminal net was soon unfolding into a physical field of action in which I could test myself, for a certain time, then it would collapse again in the uncertain.

This experiment was keeping me in a body readiness and mental alertness; a state of availiability, in order not to miss those openings in the texture of time, openings through which I could get glimpses of the secret source of my nostalgia; a Sleeping Beauty who uncovers and simultaneously covers herself in the folds of mystery, seducing you in a painful, but exciting game of hide and seek, in which, you gradually learn to accept the joy of grace and the pain of withdrawal.

The mythical paidema (παίδεμα) is an exercise in the capacity of tolerance of the uncertain, a lethal erotic hunt for the impossible but absolutely necessary.

Thus, trapped in the erotic web of the Chrysalis, I was continuing, through the years, my experiment, ‘hoping for the unhoped’, longing for the undiscovered.

A frog could starve to death in a field of dead flies because its limited receptors can detect only a certain motion. Likewise, we die from life starvation in the midst of life. One of our latent detectors of higher dimensions could be the pineal gland, known as the ‘third eye’, described by Cartesius as ‘the seat of the soul’. It is directly connected to our central biological clock and it secretes a chemical substance similar to that secreted by hallucinogenic mushrooms. In the well known relief of Thessaly, Demetra and Persephone are depicted holding mushrooms. Could the prolonged entunement with mythical hyperplace provoke dependence symptoms? A ‘transcendental censorship΄as Lucian Blaga puts it, intervenes to prevent transgressions; mythical realms cannot be penetrated without divine condenscension 

Thus, I was swinging between the hallucinations provoked by mythical,mental acceleration and the hypnotic state induced by the low distractive vibrations of common reality, trying to keep the middle way; the Golden Section.

Myth is indeed a fairy tale with infinite variations; a diachronic, ever virgin tale, which  remains unchanged, but makes us change, revealing parcels of truth through its deceiptful games

Myths are laughed at as naive folk tales by those who are deeply caught in their chimeric grip, unable to be conscious of those archetypal forces that rule their behavior

Probably, this ridicule is part of our quest, for truth has ways to protect itself from invadors, in order to be conquered (always partly) only by heroic acts of self transcendance.

For Socrates,”Truth (Aλήθεια) is the fishing of the divine (θεία άλη) and at the end of the quest is the name”

Words (λέξεις) are ‘strange attractors’(έλξεις); they attract events in their morphic field of resonance, to realize themselves in empirical reality

Sacred names are wrapped in the foldings of conceptual labyrinths. By the time you reach the name in the centre, you must have already assimilated the characteristics of this name, in which you finally recognize yourself; you become the object of your quest; you become the name; you grow out of yourself as the name, you are the incarnated Word.

‘The logos of the soul grows out of itself’, according to Heracleitus.This recursive, cumulative process of self-increase is mathematically represented by the Golden Series of Pythagoras, known as the Fibonacci Scale. To proceed according to the Golden Section, means to be aware, each moment, of the logos (fraction) of your being.that differentiates you from no being. The knowledge of your logos (to be/ not to be) delivers you from useless aspirations. The freedom, you gain, from the knowledge of your limitations, allows you to recognize and to accept the logos (reason of being) of the other, in other words, it allows you to love. I gradually understood that the rules of the mythical game are ethical in nature.

My next planetary installation, Fugue (1997-1999) consisted of monumental variations on the Golden Series, situated in different parts of the world These curves and spirals served as stage designs for my performance entitled Pai (child). They were kind of left behind as points of reference to this event.

The theme of the performance was the birth of the Child/Logos through the body of the Kore. This performance provided the theme for my poetic essay Pai, Toi et Moi, written in french and published in 1997, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Fugue in the University of Lucian Blaga in Sibiu Romania

Parallel to the installation of Fugue, during that period, I was painting human faces on old ceramic tiles, faces depicting this mystical process of autogenesis: each face has characteristics of mother, kore and child, coming out of each other. I completed them, with superimposed layers during a period of four years, 1996-2000 This series was titled Small Arcti, Small Bears, after the name of the small virgins who were dedicated to Artemis until the age of marriage. Small Arctos is the human face of the Chrysalis, she is the divine nymph; the virgin, timeless, twin in our psychosomatic makeup who carries the promise of eternal life..

The name Chrysalis in which I was hybernating all these years, was uncovering to me the continuation of old rituals inside contemporary life; always, the same constant, the same obsessive presence of the divine, that wants to Be you, that requires your self-abnegation, the death of your persona and your resurrection as It, the Androgyne. Artemin which derives from the name Artemis means I Am.

In the name of the Chrysalis, I was thus discovering parts of myself and of the world. I was travelling, studying, writing books and articles, creating art works, inaugurating monuments on a planetary scale, learning, living, communicating unuttered insightful experiences, redefining space/ time. M/N was a fascinating way of thinking, a way of life, a surreal, or metareal state of mind. All this was happening to me, in the name of the Chrysalis! What was so special about this name?

“The name springs from the invisible and it is a physical law” says Heracleitus. For the ancient greeks the letters of the alphabet were numbers. Numbers were considered by the pythagoreans to be the wisest of entities and the name-maker followed in wisdom.It is interesting to note that the sum of the letters/numbers constituting the greek word for language, or tongue, happens to be 1234; the first consecutive numbers of the decadic system! H Γλώσσα= 1234.Could this be the secret of the tongue of the Medusa with the petrifying glance?

According to Democritus “the name is a speaking statue “This quotation led me to experiment and play with the numerical values of the letters of the word Chrysalis.

XPYΣAΛΛIΣ- X=600, P=100, Y=400, Σ=200, A=1, Λ=30, Λ=30, I=10, Σ=200-

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By projecting these scales in space, a Word-Sculpture, an Onomatoglypton, as I call it, was created, which had the form of the Holy Grail, the legendary object of the knights’ quest for immortality. And isn’t the body of the natural chrysalis, the intermediary vessel through which the creeping worm becomes a butterfly?‘Psyche’ was the name for the butterfly for the ancient greeks and amazingly the greek word ψυχή has the shape of a butterfly.

The sculpture Chrysalis / Grail could also be seen as the Cup, symbol of victory in athletic games.The first athletic games were rituals of renaissance, celebrating the victory of life over death, in which, the winner, by surpassing the possibilities within his limits, was transformed from a mortal human being to an Immortal Son of God.

This is where my current project comes in.

I propose the installation of the word sculpture Chrysallis/Cup 2004 in different parts of the world as a messenger of transformation, rejuvenation and peace all over the world. The project will be launched in the Municipal Center Of Palaion Faliron, Athens in the spring of 2004 and will close in the Olympic Games of China in 2008, opening for the participants a creative experimental field of synergy and communication. 

Now, concerning my personal quest, it seems that the Chrysalis, in the name of which, I underwent this adventure, was an aspect of the archetype of the Holy Grail. It was there all the way but I had to remake it, from scratch, in order to see it. It was an object of time and yet timeless and unaltered in itself and by definition undiscovered..

The Chrysalis gave me an important answer, will I ever manage to formulate the right question to this answer?

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Small Arctos, is the virgin element dormant in our core. She is the human face of the Chrysalis.

The word Psyche inside the word Chrysalis

Drawing for a monument by Poly Kasda and Anna Sitra.

Like the Knights I was engaged in a one wayquest for the Grail .The very name Chrysalis in which I had walled myself all these years had the shape of the Holy Grail.

For participation in the planetary installation Chrysalis/Cup 2004 contact Tyflomyga

e-mail: tflmg@yahoo.com   or Τ.Θ. 31747, Αθήνας 47,  10035 ΑΘΗΝΑ

Biographical Note

Polyxene Kasda was born in Alexandria, Egypt. She studied visual arts, physics and psychology, Her first poetic book ‘Zone of Silence’ [Περιοχή Σιωπής] was published in Athens, in 1978  (Voyatzis)

In 1986 she wrote the documentary the ‘Adventures of the Eye’ [Περιπέτειες του Ματιού] for the greek national television

Her greek interdisciplinary essay the ‘Conscious Eye, art-perception-informatics’ [Το Συνειδητό Μάτι] was published In 1988 (Aigokeros,)

During 1988-1989 she worked for the cultural magazine ‘Trito Vema’ in the Third Program of the national greek radio.

Her second  essay ‘Pyrisporos, arts-science-mythology’ [Πυρίσπορος] was published in 1994 (Aigokeros)

Her last poetic essay ‘Pai, toi et Moi’ was written in French, translated in Finish by Eugene Van Itterbeek and in Romanian by Mircae Ivanescu.( ed. Seven Sleepers  co ed. University Press of Lucian Blaga Sibiu, Romania, 1997). The greek edition was  published by Tyflomyga Press in Athens, along with her poetry collection the ‘Room of the Sea’.

Parallel to her writer’s activity, she has had many art exhibitions and happenings.

In 1991, she initiated her main interdisciplinary project Myth/ Network, in the Meeting of the Artists of the Worlds.in Joensu, Finland.

Myth/Network is a multimedia, biomatic experiment in mythical thinking and planetary dimension which is still going on, opening for her, a powerful field of research and action, that allows her to try out her possibilities in artistic _expression and communication, tracing her own, personal, multiform path through the arts and the sciences.

Her latest world-scale installation is titled ‘Fugue’ and it consists of monumental curves and spirals installed in distant locations of the earth, like the Castro di Piovera in Italy (Biennale di Poesia di Alessandria‘96), the University of Lucian Blaga of Sibiu in Romania (Monument to Emil Cioran ‘97), the Fountain Crabova, on the way to Mount Lykaion, in Arcadia (Monument to Eugenia Derechane ‘97) and the Aegean Foundation in Paros ( the Fountain of Paros ‘98)..

Each construction stands as an independent sculpture, while all the variations, together, form one single ever- expanding art work of planetary dimension.

In 2001 she installed her Monument to Small Arktos,272X168 cm, in the courtyard of Gallery Epistrophe in Athens

The universal quality of her work springs from her Alexandrian (Egypt) multicultural upbringing, the archetypal nature of her mythical themes and the local/ universal spirit of our times.

She is a member of the Chamber of Visual Arts of Greece and of the International Poetry and Arts Network in Italy..