The Siren Project
Jodi Sharp
2013
Performance, 4 hours
120mm film
Siren is a performance piece that deals with the societal dichotomy placed on men and women. Focusing on the Greek myth of the Sirens, the artist sets out to kill the ancient archetype of the femme fatale.
The legend of the sirens states that all men who sail too close to their island are so enraptured by their song of knowledge that they sail too close and dash their boats on the rocks. But the traditions predict that, as with the Sphinx, they would not survive the first man to resist them. Defeated, they would be seised by a self-destructive force powerful enough to have them commit suicide.
This myth is indicative of a certain societal view of women- woman who exist purely in relation to man, and of woman who's worth is in question when her sexual prowess does not have an effect. These are two archetypes which are still placed on women today. In a desire to kill off this archetype, the artist creates a ritual to dissolve this paradigm.
Building a nest, the artist waits for a male presence, and being resisted, she begin to tie herself up and self torture. Eventually her scene ends in ritualistic death, but it is death with a hope.
According to Plutarch, there is a direct relation between the greek works to die and to be initiated. In most of the Eleusinian mysteries in fact, death was ritually invoked with a miming of the event, inevitably followed by cathartic rebirth. Possessing the secrets of the eternity, the initiated- as Sophocles explains- were freed of al anxiety. Through the destruction of the archetype of Siren, the intent is to see the hope at the end of the ritual that comes from the removal of these damaging ideas of the female gender.
Through this performance, the artist is able to release confining societal views, and emerge from a ritually invoked miming of death into a cathartic rebirth. Following the tradition of the Eleusinian mysteries, the artist is released from death possessing the secrets of eternity, and is freed from all anxiety.
