work in progress, 2019

The work of Panos Sklavenitis, Don Quixote derives from the celebrated novel, which has inspired an alternative 'manliness', that of a sensitive, eccentric anti-hero, whose variety of readings exposed a radical critique of the patriarchal constructions of masculinity and femininity. In Sklavenitis work as it happens in the original Cervantes novel, the reader can hear the different positions of the heroes, thus, one can hear Pantha's donkey's view, or rather the donkey's fantasy of an alter ego; a hybrid that resembles a sort of scientific genetic experiment and of which Sklavenitis draws a digital portrait. This creature is a catalyst in Sklavenitis' version of Don Quixote, as it works sweepingly over the idea of 'alternative' modes of existence.  The alternatives will always be located within the patriarchal canon while the donkey's 'experience' presupposes a blasphemous post-human transcendence in consciousness.

Text by Elpida Karaba

Presentation:
Centre of New Media and Feminist Public Practices
Reading Group Online: Feminist Theories and Practices
Thursday 4 June 2020. Event time: 18.00-21.00
Invited Guests: Panos Sklavenitis - Eva Giannakopoulou

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