Digenis and the Drone

About the event

What happens when a medieval hero meets a modern drone? This four-day project, part art and part research, starts from the legend of Digenis Akritas and recent events around the British military base at Akrotiri, and asks how the stories we inherit shape our ideas of heroes, monsters, borders and conflict. It opens at 5.30pm with a public symposium in which researchers, artists, journalists and environmental specialists discuss myth, memory and Akrotiri before throwing the floor open to three questions: what is the Monster, who or what is the Hero, and what might this story mean today, while the artist Denis Constantinou illustrates the conversation live. The next two days, from 10am to 4pm, are given over to creative workshops that turn those ideas into images, objects, characters and stories; no artistic experience is needed, but registration is required and now open. On Saturday at 6pm it all comes to life in a shared shadow theatre performance drawing on Cypriot carnival, kantada and satire. The symposium and the performance are free.