Prinz Gholam, My Sweet Country, 2017, performance, Ancient Agora of Athens—Odeion of Agrippa, Athens, documenta 14, photo: Yiannis Hadjiaslanis
Prinz Gholam embark on a method of embedding corporeal constellations which they internalize from paintings, sculptures, and historical photographs, on both the sites of the Temple of Olympian Zeus & Ancient Agora–Odeion of Agrippa. Their performance My Sweet Country withdraws its sources from Delacroix, Michel Butor’s text on Delacroix, Nelly’s pictorial language, and Wilhelm von Plüschow’s ambivalent arcadian codes to name just a few. As a couple, their research is a corporeal activity investing in the reality they encounter on site through a long term practice. Now the embodied source material imposes itself onto the archeological site on which it is presented. Prinz Gholam’s performative commitment enters into an immediate relationship to the omnipresent visible and acoustic surroundings layering over the archeological ruins as a public space in a city, and as a site of cultural incompletion.
