Peter Greenaway FLYING OVER WATER THE ICARUS ADVENTURE

 

Flying over water. The Icarus adventure is a large exhibition-installation containing a mythological narrative in thirty different sequences: the history of Icarus, analysed and viewed from various angles but always with a contemporary perspective.
Icarus, the first airman and the first air crash, is here the nexus of a duality: water and air, sky and sea, flight or suffocation, ambition or failure. The story of Icarus is imbued throughout with uncertainty and question marks.
In Flying over water. The Icarus adventure we find some of the characteristic features of films, such as the actors who will perform the role of Icarus, the set, apparatus, changes of rhythm, and ambivalence between reality and fiction, but all
occurring simultaneously and with the possibility of the viewer taking part, which does not happen in films. The exhibition can be summarised as an exploration of the myth of Icarus in thirty sequences that examine both the candidates for the role
of Icarus and the feathers that will enable them to fly, the substance of the air, the meteorological conditions, the weight of his body, the water into which he fell and the impact of the crash.

Viewers are invited to compare, confront and consider all the parts that together make up an installation that could be both the preparation for a film and an exhibition reconstructing a historical event.

Exhibition organized and produced by the Joan Miro Foundation, Barcelona, in conjunction with the British Council.