Installation piece commissioned by Lena Theodoropoulou and Create an Accident, an open ongoing platform about the performing and visual arts and theoretical research, based in Athens, Greece. Part of Thesis, an international group exhibition about impossible actions, the notion of destruction, and the construction of a new social contract. March 27 to April 18, 2013, Metamatic:Taf (5 Normanou str. 10555 Athens, Greece).

Love me tender explores narratives on the theme of love and its neurotic manifestations in popular culture, under the prism of Ovid’s myth of Echo and Narcissus. Engaging with reflections, the piece involves the audience in a situation of play and disturbance with respect to one’s self image, socially acceptable patterns, stereotypes and behaviors associated with love, and the various mutations and transformations that the object of love undergoes.

Via a public invitation, open to all, I have asked people to sing a song that they associate with a relationship, or a person they are currently in love with or have been in love with in the past. Recordings were sent to my email. As a rule (and as a challenge to me as a composer), I have used all the material sent to me, regardless of style, 'quality' of performance, language or content, in an effort to construct a personal narrative.

The outcome of this effort, took the form of an installation that traces a double movement, one that leads from the private to the social, as the lover abolishes part of the singularity of her love by singing the words of others, and, a second movement leading from the public to the personal. Through this second movement is constructed an instance of the lover's discourse by way of echo-ing, repetition and miming, much like Echo, who, in Ovid's myth, communicates her love to Narcissus by repeating the end of his phrases. The work explores the above conceptual diagram through a play of reflections, both aural and visual. It consists of two parts, Echo and Narcissus and Dedication.

MORE IMAGES, AUDIO AND OTHER DOCUMENTATION MATERIALS COMING UP SOON.

Read more about Thesis



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Yiannis Christofides experiments with the failure of Echo and Narcissus to engage with the object of their desire, as they both remain trapped either in the image of the Other, or of the Self. Creating a game of reflections, projections and repetitions, Love me Tender becomes disturbingly familiar. The uniqueness of the loved object is destroyed and revealed as an outcome of an externally imposed social narrative. But yet, having disconnected the expression of love from its original connotations, the mystic character of the installation calls the visitor to re-create a personal experience through the collective expression of love.

Lena Theodoropoulou (curator), Notes on Love me Tender




Promotional video for Thesis exhibition. Audio: Yiannis Christofides

Site-specific sound piece composed for "Odas," the main reception room of the house of the dragoman Hadjigeorgakis Kornesios (1750 - 1809) in Nicosia. Commissioned by research and curatorial team Re Aphrodite (Chrystalleni Loizidou and Evanthia Tselika) and the Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre (NiMAC), in order to be included in the exhibition [At Maroudia's] (Ethnological Museum – House of Hadjigeorgakis Kornesios, July 4-December 30, 2012, Nicosia, Cyprus).

[at Maroudia's] was conceived as an open-ended museum intervention that activates the space of the museum through a series of performances, educational workshops, and academic round tables, as well as a number of later additions to the exhibition. The exhibition was part of the contemporary art program TERRA MEDITERRANEA / IN CRISIS, organized by the Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre and the Pierides Foundation under the auspices of the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the EU. Read more





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"Yiannis Christofides manages to once again bring life to the ancient room. The sound places the audience member in a state of inquiry and anticipation"

Margarita Paraskevaidou, Reference to the Hostess, Phileleftheros, Sunday, August 19, 2012

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The “Oda” is the main reception room of the Dragoman’s home, and the only one restored to be suggestive of Ottoman luxury. It is a lavishly decorated space, designed to demonstrate to the guests the elite status of its owner. It combines stylistic elements from across the board: previously a colonial-style living room, then renovated to an Ottoman aesthetic using contemporary materials, and now a strictly controlled museum space, only to be looked at. As the site of formal meetings, conversations, but also leisure activities, and called the “Aspastikon” (the place of kissing one’s guests in greeting), the room must have functioned as an oddly intimate space. Yiannis Christofides’ two-channel audio installation, composed for this room, considers these contradictions. “The large widows that surround the room bring the outside – the light, the air and the sounds of the city – inside. The low positioning of the windows and the raised floor of the room afford privileged views of the courtyard and the rest of the house, rendering the room a unique surveillance point.” Christofides’ intervention takes advantage of the sensual and engaging qualities of sound, to provide an experience of the space that is powerfully transformative.

Re Aphrodite, [at Maroudia's], Terra Mediterranea / In Crisis, exhibition catalogue, NiMAC, 2012, p. 140.




View of the house from the courtyard, as seen on the evening of the opening of [at Maroudia's] exhibition

Electroacoustic miniature pieces in memory of composer Conlon Nancarrow. Composed exclusively from recorded samples of one of Nancarrow's player pianos, the four miniatures were presented as part of a London Sinfonietta concert at Southbank Centre's Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, on April 21, 2012. As an introduction to the concert, a metaphorical countdown of new pre-recorded miniatures or "stings," selected among contributions from composers from around the world, was reproduced so as to lead directly up to the first notes of Nancarrow's "Canon X" (Study No.21), performed by members of the London Sinfonietta and arranged by Dominic Murcott. The concert was part of the festival "Impossible Brilliance: the music of Conlon Nancarrow," presented by the London Sinfonietta, Southbank Centre and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.

The player piano samples used in these pieces were recorded at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, where the complete archive of Conlon Nancarrow and the two player pianos that he used for the majority of his work are currently located. The recordings were provided by the organizers of the festival.

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The machine on which Conlon Nancarrow created his player piano rolls.
Photo by Carol Law, 1977
Collection: C Amirkhanian

Audio work commissioned by artist Michael Kontopoulos for his installation piece Water Rites. The piece was composed specifically for headphone listening.





Water Rites explores the growing threat of water scarcity in California and the cultural practices that develop around it. The video follows two characters performing a series of fictitious rituals. The artifacts used in the rituals are displayed next to the two screens. Read more





The piece was presented at L A C E (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), in Hollywood, California, as part of Speculative, a group exhibition curated by Christopher O’Leary and Zach Blas. Read more

His last voyage is a homage to artist Bas Jan Ader (1942–1975).

"In 1975 Ader embarked on what he called “a very long sailing trip.” The voyage was to be the middle part of a triptych called “In Search of the Miraculous,” a daring attempt to cross the Atlantic in a 12½ foot sailboat. He claimed it would take him 60 days to make the trip, or 90 if he chose not to use the sail. Six months after his departure, his boat was found, half-submerged off the coast of Ireland, but Bas Jan had vanished." [from basjanader.com]





The piece consists of a single sonic gesture. A dense wall of sound gradually covers the whole frequency spectrum in a continuously descending movement. From this undulating harmony emerge different timbres, blurring the boundaries between that which is aurally present and the imagined, the foreground and the background. His last voyage was composed in 2009 at the Electroacoustic Music Studios at City University London.



Sonogram detail


A version of the piece, commissioned by artist Theodoulos Gregoriou was presented at the international festival Cité internationale de la tapisserie et de l'art tissé in Aubusson, France in 2011.