Today, the Greek island of Mykonos is one of Europeās top beach destinations, while Delos, its tiny neighbor to the southwest, is an island of ruins. But long before Mykonosāor Europe for that matterāeven existed, Delos held a magical, mythical, world-changing significance across the ancient world. A major trade hub and the mythological birthplace of the sun god Apollo, the island of Delos was the site of what might have been the first cross-cultural festival in human historyāthe Deliaāa quadrennial celebration in honor of Apollo that drew diverse travelers from across the ancient world for singing, dancing, feasting, and collective celebration.
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Itās this history that served as the jumping-off point for Further Mykonos: The Eternal Festival, which brought the South African festival artist Daniel Popper to Mykonos to construct a large-scale figurative sculptural installation that reinterprets the story of Apolloās birth, building a metaphorical bridge between the Scorpios peninsula and ancient Delos. To mark the sculptureās unveiling, a three-day music and arts gathering celebrated the legacy of the Delia at a time when festival culture is once again ascendant, from contemporary gatherings like Burning Man and Primavera Sound, to the resurgence of more traditional festivals, like the world sacred music gatherings in Fez and Rajistan.
āFor me, itās the future,ā said the French-Iranian opera singer and Further Ā resident Ariana Vafadari, who sets Zoroastrian mantras called Gathas, sung Ā in the old Persian language, to new music of her own composition that she plays at festivals around the world. āWhat you guys are doing hereāitās really where we all are going,ā said Vafadari. āIām a mixture of cultures. I love electronic Ā music. I love dancing. I love opera. I love going to a city hall with very classical music, but in September I was singing at Burning Man.ā
With the island of Delos behind her across the sea and Popperās sculpture four-meter rattan-and-wicker sculpture, āLeto,ā hovering beside her, Vafadari performed a set of Gathas at Scorpios, following an original dance piece by the Berlin-based Syrian dance collective Dabkesim and a performance by Quieter Than Silence, a musical project by the Vienna-based Iranian musician and researcher Mehdi Aminian and Syrian oud player Mohammed Zatari. All of these artists are thriving and evolving within the new festival landscape, Ā breathing new life into traditional art form sand bridging east and west, the past and the present, the sacred and the secular.
āI build on top of whatās in the past,ā said Aminian, who in 2013 founded Roots Revival, an organization that brings together musicians across different cultures to find commonalities between musical styles, traditions, and instruments.
āI think thatās a healthy way of looking at traditional music,ā he added. Ā āYou should make it evolve. Traditional music is not a static thing.ā
The idea of festivals as sites for unexpected synthesis and laboratories for new ideas propelled a far-reaching conversation between Daniel Popper, Marcus Fairs, the founder of the influential design and architecture magazine Dezeen, and the French architect Arthur Mamou-Mani. Festivals, said Mamou-Mani, have become āan architectural playground of experimentation. āA trailblazer Ā of a new breed of pop-up, digital-fabrication-led architecture, he is probably best known for creating an immense, spiraling 3D-printed wooden temple at Burning Man. ā[Itās] a place where we as architects can free ourselves from Ā normal conditions,ā added the architect and professor, who has been bringing his architecture students from the University of Westminster to Burning Man for years. In that sense, itās not just a laboratory but a classroom, as well.
For Popper, who began his career creating large-scale immersive installations for festivals like AfrikaBurn, festivals are an ideal venue for people to experience his art. āTheyāre in an environment where theyāre very open,ā he said. āThereās music. Thereās dancing, and thereās a sense of accessibility and freedom. Itās totally different to the white walls of a gallery,ā he added. āItās a whole new way of experiencing and accessing artwork.
āIn creating the installation for Further Mykonos, Popper looked to the mythological story of Leto the Titaness, the mother of Apollo and his twin sister Artemis, who according to myth, had to flee the mainland after she was impregnated by Zeus to escape his jealous wife Hera. No island would take her in until she eventually found a free-floating rock that accepted her. Once Apollo was born, he filled the sky with sunlight and anchored the rockāDelosāto the sea.
āItās a really beautiful story,ā said Stelios Brigos, the vice governor and head of culture for the South Aegean who came to attend Further Mykonos. āThe name of Delos in Greek means the place thatās declared,ā he added. āItās like a declaration of existence, the declaration of life that was born there.ā In fact, the entire island chain of the Cyclades, said Brigos, was conceptualized around Delos. āCyclades in Greek means a small circle⦠Delos is exactly in the center of this island complex. Itās a circle around Delos.
āYet the great importance of Delos had largely been forgotten, said Brigos. āMykonos is one of the most important touristic places in the world,ā but many peopleāeven localsādonāt know how it first became known. āDelos was the reason,ā said Brigos, ābecause these people, the first tourists, came in the decades of the 1920s and 1930s, just to know Delos, just to see with their eyes the beautiful monuments.āborn, he filled the sky with sunlight and anchored the rockāDelosāto the sea.
But recently, a new generation is rediscovering the tiny ancient island, though projects like Further Mykonos and āSight,ā a site-specific exhibition by the British artist Antony Gormley in collaboration with Greeceās pre-eminent contemporary arts organization, Neon, and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades running until October on the archaeological site and the Museum of Delos Island. The British sculptor has created 29 iron ābody formsā, several cast from his own body, that are the first artworks to be installed on Delos since it was inhabited more than 5,000 years ago.
When you walk through the ruins of Delos today, you see not only classical ancient Greek architecture but depictions of Syrian deities, a temple to the Egyptian goddess Isis, the ruins of a synagogue, Phoenician, Italian, and Palestinian artifactsāindicative of Delosā time as a cultural melting pot. So it was important that The Eternal Festival bring together artists from across the worldālike the celebrated Turkish DJ, musician, and composer, Mercan Dede, whose music blends elements of Sufi music and dance with electronic music to create an utterly contemporary, unique musical style that has been embraced across the global festival circuit. He closed The Eternal Festival with a stunning sunset performance accompanied by a whirling dervish dancer.
āWe have so many people on this island, and we have to provoke them to go to Delos,ā said Brigos. With Further Mykonos, he continued, āpeople will come. They will hear this story. We will have artists from around the world. This is magnificent. Because one beautiful festival gives us the opportunity to think about where everything started.ā He added: āWithout our past, we cannot construct our future.ā
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The preceding article is excerpted from Further, an initiative by Design Hotelsā¢
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