Locus Solus is a location-driven and performance-based installation project and is the result of a collaboration between two university schools, research institutes, museums and artists from nine different countries. It aims to form a dialogue of practice-based research with architects, visual and sound artists, dancers, choreographers, actors, stage designers, video artists, researchers, writers and playwrights.
Following its successful presentation at a number of leading European cultural events, will be presented in Athens on 7 November 2009 as part of the international programme on the theme of cities in the 21st century entitled POLIS 21: Citizens, Culture, and Boundaries of the New City.
Based on the proto-Surrealist novel Locus Solus (Solitary or Unique Place, 1914) by Raymond Roussel, in which a scientist and inventor, Martial Canterel, has invited a group of colleagues to visit the park of his country estate near Paris, called 'Locus Solus', the project formulates a framework for thinking about 'ideal' and 'real' space. On account of its form and content, the novel provides the canvas for experimentation on the intersection of different mediums leading to a project that cannot be characterised as theatre nor as an exhibition.
A series of workshops for students will also be organised as part of . These workshops first took place in London in April 2008 and the outcomes of the research will be presented at the Byzantine Museum on 7 November 2009.
The workshops investigate points of intersection (connections, linkages, overlaps) between Roussel's Locus Solus and the public domain of the city and focus on the relationships between 'private/solitary' and 'public' space. They are open to students and researchers from schools of architecture and visual art departments.
