Antigone: where is democracy today? is an online event that presents a theatre performance together with a panel discussion. The event will explore new ways of encouraging our community to participate online.
The event takes place in UP Projects’ digital participation space The Hall, which experiments with the potential of the digital sphere as a space for debate and collaboration.
The event will engage the community with a contemporary version of the Ancient Greek play Antigone by Sophocles presented by theatre company Out of Chaos. Framed as a play of resistance in which the conflict between the private and the public sphere is represented by the characters Antigone and Creon. Antigone asks us; what happens when our responsibilities as citizens clash with our values as individuals? This 20 minute long adapted version of the play, commissioned especially for this event, will be broadcasted live. The actors featured in this event are Tim Delap, Tabatha Gayle, Paul O'Mahony and Natasha Magigi.
The play will be followed by a panel discussion with Emeritus A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at University of Cambridge Paul Cartledge, and artist and lecturer Dr. Harold Offeh, chaired by UP Projects’ Curator (Learning & Live Research) Elisabeth Del Prete. The event will draw a parallel between ancient Greek theatre and socially engaged art and explore how culture can enable democratic decision-making processes. What was the relationship between ancient Greek theatre and democracy? And what can be learnt from ancient Greek, highly politicised plays that is relevant to contemporary, socially engaged art?
During the event, participants will be encouraged to contribute through the use of polling, brainstorming and Q&A tools.
A learning resource will be generated from the event and made available as a free download from UP Projects’ website.
This 20 minute long adapted version of the play, commissioned especially for this event was translated by Paul Woodruff, courtesy of Hackett Publishing Company and will be broadcasted live.
Accessibility
We strive to make UP Projects' events accessible and inclusive to all, if you have a particular access request please email info@upprojects.com prior to the event and a member of the team will assist you. Live captioning will be available at this event. We will provide a recording with closed captions available on our YouTube following the event, and can also provide transcripts upon request.
About Elisabeth Del Prete
Elisabeth Del Prete (b. 1986) is a London based curator whose work explores issues of socio-political significance through collaborative art practices and alternative learning methodologies. As Curator (Learning and Live Research) at UP Projects in London, Elisabeth oversees all learning and public programme activities and leads on Constellations and Assembly, UP's annual development programmes for socially engaged artists and public art curators, respectively. In 2019 Elisabeth was co-curator of the 12th Kaunas Biennial in Lithuania, and her curatorial projects have appeared in institutions and galleries including Barbican, Flat Time House, ICA, Art Night, Emalin Gallery, Christie’s, South London Gallery, Cubitt, and Royal College of Art (RCA). Elisabeth holds a BA in History of Art from Goldsmiths (2008) and an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from RCA (2017).
About Paul Cartledge
Professor Paul Cartledge is A.G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College Cambridge and President of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of some 30 books, the most recent being Democracy: A Life (OUP 2018) and Thebes: the forgotten city of ancient Greece (Picador, 2020). He has been awarded the Gold Cross of the Order of Honour (Greece) and is an honorary citizen of (modern) Sparta.
About Dr. Harold Offeh
Dr. Harold Offeh is an artist working in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. Offeh is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of histories. He employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally including Tate Britain and Tate Modern, South London Gallery, Turf Projects, London, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, Wysing Art Centre, Studio Museum Harlem, New York, MAC VAL, France, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark and Art Tower Mito, Japan.
He studied Critical Fine Art Practice at The University of Brighton, MA Fine Art Photography at the Royal College of Art and recently completed a PhD by practice exploring the activation of Black Album covers through durational performance. He lives in Cambridge and works in London and Leeds, UK where he is currently a Reader in Fine Art at Leeds Beckett University and a tutor in Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art, London.
Upcoming projects include a new video commission exploring the redemptive power of joy through social dance for the Wellcome Collection's (London) season Joy and Tranquillity. Offeh, will be exhibiting as part of 'Untitled, Art on the Conditions of Our Time' a major group exhibition of British artists of African descent at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, UK. Hail the New Prophets, will see Offeh realise his first major public sculpture as part of the Bold Tendencies exhibition in Peckham, London.
About Out of Chaos
Out of Chaos make work which is exciting, challenging and generous - with a belief in the joy of storytelling in creative and surprising forms. During lockdown we created Reading Greek Tragedy Online, working with the Center for Hellenic Studies to stage every extant Greek tragedy online in the space of 9 months, bringing together the talents of more than 120 artists from around the world.