On Tuesday, 28 January 2025, the Department of Sociology's MPhil in Race, Ethnicity and Conflict hosted a thought-provoking lecture performance by artist Lily Abichahine in the Robert Emmet Theatre, Arts Building. Introduced by Professor David Landy (Course Director of the MPhil in Race, Ethnicity and Conflict), the performance, part of the Mare Nostrum project, explored Mediterranean realities and myths, with a new interpretation of the myth of Prometheus.
Secrets of the Infinite Sea was premiered in Theatre Bremen in Germany in November 2022, with the support of the International Coproduction Fund of the Goethe Institute and since then, it has toured Athens, Utrecht, Beirut, and now Dublin. As part of her framework project, Mare Nostrum, Abichahine investigates the myth-like realities of Mediterranean cities and the fundamental expression of their collective unconsciousness.
During the Q&A after the performance, Abichahine was asked why she had chosen Dublin to perform this project – it being so far away from the Mediterranean. Abichahine responded with:
I would say that Ireland is not so far away from the Mediterranean in a contemporary connected world. There is also a shared history with the Irish, in respect to migration and its impact on culture and civilization. The project is also intended to be universal, and I am glad to present it to a new audience; its themes are not restricted to a specific geography. Mythological archetypes connect humanity, even though the Mediterranean space, as the ground of confluence of civilizations and three continents, is the focal subject of the study.
Speaking after the event, Lily Abichahine spoke about the importance of performing in universities such as Trinity College Dublin:
I consider that art's best outreach is outside of strictly artistic circles. As part of my art practice, I want to showcase my art in legal, social and academic settings, such as law offices, NGO premises, and university halls. I am currently ambitioning a staging at a courthouse. I presented Secrets of the Infinite Sea on invitation by Professor David Landy at Trinity College, which was the historical theatre of Samuel Beckett and J.M. Synge, and which bears the legacy of the transmission of arts.
Lily Abichahine is a lawyer, researcher, and artist from Beirut. Her artistic practice includes lecture-performances, installations, and videos, exploring the intersectionality between art and law, as presented in her works: Exquisite Corpse (2021, Frankfurt, Lecture-performance), L'Étreinte (2022, Paris, Lecture), Abjad Hawwaz: How I Was Destroyed By a Mall Thrice (2022, Beirut, Installation), and the ongoing project Mare Nostrum / Our Sea. Her interests revolve around international law, geopolitics, art history, archaeology, and anthropology.
Secrets of the Infinite Sea is the second installment of a larger project called Mare Nostrum, an exploration of Mediterranean realities and myths. In Secrets of the Infinite Sea, and following two residencies in Izmir and Marseille, the lawyer and artist presents a new interpretation of the titan Prometheus while diving into ancient manuscripts and animal livers’ readings, just like a contemporary haruspex - a priestess reading into an animal liver. She furthermore questions her own fears in parallel to migration flows in the Mediterranean Sea from ancient to contemporary times. The show’s duration is 55 min approx.
To learn more about Abichahine’s work, please visit her website at lilyabichahine.carrd.co.
