DENIS MAKSIMOV

THE TRIAL OF ZEUS

performed in the Auditorium at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum,
Copenhagen,
August 2019

Actors:
Prosecution (Avenir Institute),
Defence (Michael Haldrup) &
the Jury (the audience)

Prosecution:

The distinguished Members of the Jury, it is my utmost responsibility to bring before the critical eyes of justice the case atrocious crimes of Zeus, the father to the many from the last known generation of the gods. In the following statements, I will outline some significant episodes from the long list of crimes that he committed over the millennia of domination. It is perhaps impossible to count all of them: I will pay attention to the instances that are documented with the evidence.

I’ll start with the case of abduction, rape and further appropriation of Europa, the Phoenician/Lebanese maiden.

Dear Jury, I stand here before you to make the case against what may well be one of the gravest crimes committed against our common imaginary. Before I proceed, let me take an oath of truthfulness in the eyes of Themis, her great daughter Dike, the goddess of justice, and unforgivable punishing Furies. Shall I overstep the boundaries of truth, let them condemn me to everlasting misery.

Defence:

Dear Members of the Jury! This is a pivotal day for us all.

The accusations brought in here by the reckless servant of Athena and Dionysus are grave and the consequence of your decision can’t be overestimated. For thousands of years we have successfully relied upon our father, in the name of Zeus, for protection, guidance and inspiration in many successes our civilisations enjoyed. We have conquered the land, the sea, the skies and in the last century make our breakthrough towards the conquest of the cosmos. I beg you to remember: none of it would be possible without the norms he provided to us. Thanks to his norms we achieved the impossible.

Dismissal and condemnation are easy but gratitude and respect require the capacity for forgiveness and compassion, for the understanding of the mistakes - and our dear father endured many sacrifices for our sake.  

I also take an oath of truthfulness under the watchful eyes of Themis, Dike and the Furies.

Prosecution:

Allow me to build the case before you for Europa, a fair maiden from Phoenicia, the land that nowadays is known as Lebanon. The accused disguised himself as a bull from the flock of Europa’s father and using the maiden’s trust to the animals led her to climb his back. He then hastily run towards the bay with the frightened and shocked Europa on his back and commenced his swimming route towards the island of Crete. He put on her neck the shackle, marking his owner-ship of the captive, and repeatedly raped her.

Defence:

I protest! Zeus offered her a beautiful necklace, which signified his admiration and love for Europa.

Prosecution:

Shackles often come in a form of precious gifts, and one has a little choice from taking it differently when deprived of all they know and imprisoned in the context of the full dependency.

Further, the accused installed next to Europa the creature called Talos, which was also referred to in further writing about this event as ‘a gift’. This ‘robot’ was circling the island of Crete effectively turning it into Europa’s prison. He obstructed the attempts of Europa’s relatives from the larger Middle East to approach the island, as well as prevent her from having any thoughts about possible escape. The accused also chained the maiden to Laelaps, the dog that had never failed to catch something that it was hunting, and for the guards, he left javelin, the spear that had never missed its target. The abducted Europa spent numerous years in captivity.

Dear Members of the Jury, you are sitting on the top of the aestheticised evidence of this event covered with the black cloth - the mosaic depicting the event.

This episode brought about immeasurable consequences inflicted on what is to become Europe-an imaginary. Just as the maiden over the years spent in prison, the whole continent found itself trapped in the island mentality, subsequently forgetting its cosmopolitan, trans-geographical roots.  

Defence:

The distinguished jury, allow me to plead the case of defence. First of all, Europa, although she had been indeed initially abducted by the father against her immediate will, embraced Zeus later in love and given him beautiful children that later created the concert of the European nations that we know today.

Prosecution:

There is a clear case of “the Stockholm syndrome” in here - the maiden had no choice beyond submission or death.

Defence:

Allow me to continue, please. The father Zeus cared for the maiden’s well-being and made sure she wouldn’t need to be burdened by the worries and uncertainties in the future. He set her up for a great role in the history of humanity. All I want to say, dear members of the jury, is that from what is presented here as crime a great love story emerged that led our continent to creation of the first omnipowerful imaginary of civilisation, that will go on to captivate the peoples of other continents and cultures as soon as they got a chance to experience it, which is true up to this very day.

Prosecution:

The imaginary you are talking about is that of patriarchy and election of what is the best for the woman by the omnipowerful and always ready to ‘mansplan’ usurper, which effectively decapitated any alternative to its oppression. But allow me to continue, as the abduction of the maiden from Phoenicia is just opening the list of the crimes committed by the accused.

Secondly, I want to bring your attention to our great mother - Gaia/Earth, the primordial deity of life that gave us ecology and nature which we depend on for millions of years together with other living things. The erasure from the memory of the true nature of the Omphalos, the navel of Gaia, is another crime the accused strategically committed in his quest of erasure of the potentiality and alternative futures of leadership, effectively usurping the power by setting up ‘there is no alternative’ context.

The famous navel of Gaia had been the place of connection to mother Earth for thousands of years before the accused and his men-followers descended in sacred Delphi with the plan to erase this story from the annals and re-appropriate its history and function in the world. The accused fabricated the works of so-called ‘history’, written by those loyal to his plan, in which navel had been re-appropriated as the stone signifying his domination over the world, at which supposedly the meeting of Zeus’s two eagles which he sent to identify the center of the world (what less!) had happened. This atrocity towards the memory of the great mother created a shameless rupture that had a very particular goal - to write off the non-patriarchal story of power from the face of the world into the oblivion.

Defence:

Dear Members of the Jury, allow me to step in here again against the vicious attack on our glorious father. First of all, the very event of the member of our community being able to criticize our great father here how shows his enormous mercy towards those disrespecting him.

Prosecution:

That shows the progress in our critical thinking, not someone’s divine mercy.

Defence:

Please, I didn’t interrupt. Secondly, dear members of the Jury, the re-writing of the story of the world, especially in its mythical roots, is the event that had been happening since the dawn of times and will continue to happen. That is our nature: the conquest of imaginary is an important step in a world-making of any kind. I don’t think that Prosecution is honestly that naive to ignore the simple truth of how things meant to work in nature.

Our great father performed the power-flip in renaming the navel and appropriating it to the story in order to establish the pathway towards the new, more powerful imaginary for all of us. Without having an idea about the center of the world, as our father established it, how could we move towards discovery of the new continents, new lands, new horizons that allowed us to explore the potentiality and richness of our characters, our capacities, enrich ourselves and our perspectives and share our achievements with the world?

We are indebted to our father for showing us the way of beautiful re-appropriation for the sake of the common good of all humanity, driving us towards progress from the central point that he has identified for us. We’ve learned from this gesture what does it mean to make the world. Without that, I claim, we would not be standing here now and be able to critically analyse him, as the world-builders ourselves.

Prosecution:

Laughable. It is as to say that without a constant whipping one can not have an idea of freedom, without regular rape one can not have an idea of love.

I urge you, the distinguished members of the Jury, not to fall into the trap of talks about destiny, fate and the only possible way of how things could have developed. There are infinite worlds that are possible for us - from the cruelest and destructive to the kindest and heavenly.

Let me carry on to the next crime of the accused, against the true-born right of his two children to challenge the everlasting sovereignty of the usurper. I refer to unconquerable, wide-eyed Athena and life-loving, normality-trembling Dionysus. Let me start with the famous daughter of the tyrant, whose mother was mercilessly murdered by him.

Athena had been born from the head of Zeus, as we know. But that happened as the accused consumed the mother of Athena, the great Titaness of cunning and wisdom - Metis. He later had presented this act of violence as ‘unification’ or sort of ‘a merger’. Imagine, dear Jury, a cannibal who is presenting the consumption of their victim as an agreed act of ‘reunification’. After this outrageous act, the accused gave birth to Athena from his head following the splitting headache which is well-documented by Hesiod. But what is also important here, dear Jury is the motivation of the accused - what qualifies this act as pre-mediated, strategic murder.

Zeus received the prophecy that the child of Metis would become the new lord (or the mistress) of heaven, challenging the definition of justice and power-sharing in the Olympus. In order to prevent that future from happening, the accused was ready to kill both the mother and the child - as he swallowed Metis while she was pregnant with Athena, aiming to kill both the mother and the child. This act was the intention of the accused to cancel our possible futures and institute his domination as eternal and everlasting.

Zeus didn’t anticipate that neither mother nor child she had in her womb to survive. However, Athena marched out of his head in full armor, with a roar trembling the earth and skies. Being terrified that his scheme didn’t work, the accused immediately named her his favorite daughter. The intention of the accused was not fatherly care but a cancellation of the potential of the child whom he couldn’t otherwise immediately defeat.

Defence:

Allow me to respond here - and I simply say that the narrative, presented by the prosecution here, is purely speculative and can’t be backed by any material evidence. Why, I would ask, the supposedly deprived from power Athena was entrusted by her heavenly father with the ability to hold his utmost sacred weapons - thunderbolts - if he didn’t love her unconditionally and believe in their sacred unity? Why did she never opposed her father’s judgment and raised the issue of her mother if the unification of Zeus and Metis had been seen by her as an injustice?

Prosecution:

Entrusting her weaponry was a strategic move of the accused who is well aware that Athena is the promised child capable of challenging his tyranny. This act was a desperate attempt to create the bond of trust and pressurise Athena, a goddess of fairness, not to rebel against him after such deep and profound trust was demonstrated to her. But allow me to continue.

Dionysus’ treatment is another disgrace of the accused. Since he, the queerest being on Olympus to be, was conceived, the principal wife of the accused, Hera, waged a number of attempts of his life. Being reportedly aware of all the attempts to murder him (at least one of which was successful), Zeus covered up his wife’s actions and had never initiated her prosecution. After two cases of murder, first in the unborn from when Hera tricked the mother of Dionysus, Semele, to inflict suicidal action, and in infancy, when she sent the Titans to first kill and then consume the flesh of the child, Hera wasn’t called out. Later on, after Dionysus was resurrected, he was subjected to a memory loss through poisoning by her design.

In here, Zeus is complicit in passive collaboration via inaction with the criminal.

Defence:

Dear Jury, it is perfectly known that Zeus had nurtured and provided utmost care for the child Dionysus on both occasions of his wife’s rage. And her rage was justified. Semele, the mother of the child in question, seduced the father with her female charms and used the kind-heartedness of our father in order to pour scorn on the great institutions of the nuclear family and sacred marriage which was epitomised by the union of Zeus and Hera.

The child Semele has produced was assessed as a dangerous deviation from the norm which has allowed us to build the civilisation. Allow me to remind you, dear Jury, that without the de-fence of the sanctity of this marriage we wouldn’t be sitting in this very room thinking about coming back later to our loving spouses and children. Without the protection of that very union, the institution of the family wouldn’t have been established and we would have lived in the chaos and moral disgrace. Therefore actions of our father were directed by the protection of the overall good, while his outstanding mercy was extended to those posing the danger to it. By saving eventually both the mother and the child while not jeopardising the institution of a family our father achieved seemingly impossible balance and harmony. A truly ingenious compromise!

Semele was made immortal and brought up to the heavens and Dionysus was saved only thanks to our great father’s wisdom, achieving two contradictory things: preservation of the divine order and protection of the lives of those who were disrupting it.

Prosecution:

The claims of Defence are tremendously paternalistic, just in line with the protection of the patriarchy of Zeus at any cost. It doesn’t have anything to do with justice: but solemnly presents the justification of the current state of things in order to prevent changes at any cost.

But let me carry on, for I am to bring still another crime of the accused.

I accuse Zeus of the genocide.

Defence:

Outrageous! Choose your words wisely!

Prosecution:

Truth is hard to face certainly.

Zeus staged the conflict between Achaeans and Amazons in order to make sure that female leadership and power in military and governance exercised differently would never have the ground for opposing the male, which was designed by him to become a default. On numerous occasions, Zeus designed the contexts in which Greeks commenced the attack on Amazons and motivated his male children for various raping excursions - to wage the wars against the state of Amazons, the female-ruled civilisation. The combination of the actions and narratives, produced under the control of Zeus, were made sure to cancel out Amazons from the memory and make their story into myth. I would say, dear Jury, that this is the genocide of the unimaginable proportions that can be compared with the Nazi’s attempt to wipe out the Jews from the face of Earth and historical annals.

Zeus, the architect of the heteronormative male and masculine domination, progressed very effectively in the overall task of the annihilation of the alternative interpretation of structure in society, presented by the non-male dominant state of Amazons.

In this sense, dear Jury, the genocide is not only physical but also ideological. “Naturalisation” of male dominance had become possible after repeatedly recreated structures of male exclusivity and the idea of ‘natural hierarchy’ was instilled in the public’s unconscious for the millennia to come. To unwoven and undo this damage, inflicted on the multiplicity and richness of our thinking and understanding of possible, we will need centuries.

Zeus had damaged all of us, probably beyond repair. For the sake of distant hope for alternatives to come, we are ought to make an effort to try to mitigate the consequences of being trapped behind the walls, imprisoned in cages, exposed to whip lashes - all that we have been and continue receiving as natural. And doing this first of all requires new justice: towards those who had been violated, limited, annihilated, raped, abducted, made perish, forgotten, murdered, - some many times all over again.

Defence:

Dear Members of the Jury, I have to debunk all this prosecution’s nonsense about genocides. What the prosecutor calls ‘genocide’ is an installment of the very natural order in the most humane way by our gracious father. He had never instilled any specific stratagems on humans in devising their wars - but offered them choices and created a platform where they, in the natural struggle, would find the best way to govern themselves, reproduce, protect their offsprings, love and be loved. Amazons lost the war and perished in the memory, as many other cultures before and after them. There is nothing special about their fate. If this is a genocide, then I don’t know what we can call ‘civilisation’ or ‘culture’.

The distinguished members of the Jury - I call to your attention, consciousness, and logic once again. Our great father is not ideal. No one is. But he has, over the millennia of human history, provided us with multiple instances of choice for our own course in deciding the best way of co-existence and achievement of common goals. He showed us what ‘norm’ means and why it is important to build anything at all.

All the prosecution wants is chaos.

Prosecution and Defence together:

It is time for the Jury to cast their votes in the open.
The distinguished members of the Jury, dear citizens, we call upon your judgment to claim the definition of justice, taking it up into your own hands.
The godliness of gods is up to us to be determined.
Please raise your thumbs up if you consider the accused guilty of the charges brought.
Please lower your thumbs down if you consider the accused not guilty of those crimes.  

If found “not guilty” (Defence):

As the accused is cleared up of the charges brought, allow me to announce the restitution of our father in his divine right of the leader of the human order. No one is able to go through life, especially the eternal one, without accusations against them. What is important, however, is that we keep the power on its toes and always remind its principal archetype that we are closely watching and ready to bring the charges forward when we deem that necessary. Thank you all for performing your duty duly and well!

If found “guilty” (Prosecution): 

As the accused is found guilty, we must suspend the references to him and his power-imitating descendants as fatherly figures and authority. The political trial of several millennia of significance allows us to open up the potentiality for different futures. We must admit the necessity to turn the generational page and look for the council and model of justice at the gods that were condemned to eternal youth and inexperience, such as Athena, Dionysus, and other children of Zeus, his sisters, and brothers. It is time for the young to take their turn. The other worlds are possible and to start building it we first need to imagine them. 

QUEERING MUSEUM. Part 3: Medusa

Performed by the mediators and educators for the public at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen on August 15, 2019

There are different ways to interpret Medusa in the written sources of mythology - and one of them (apart of the version where she was a born Gorgon-monster) tells her story as a beautiful priestess of Athena, sometimes as the head priestess of the goddess. Turning her into a monster in the consequence of an affair or a rape by Poseidon in the temple of Athena (is an ideologically charged contested field in interpretation). In both cases, it takes two to dance, however, the one Poseidon is seldom blamed in the interpretations of the classicists. In the aftermath of the event, Athena is told to “curse” Medusa with the power of stoning anyone she glances into the eye. However, can it be looked at as the ultimate power to protect oneself from attempts of a violation, like in the case with Poseidon? Gorgoneion, the protective pendant is worn later by Athena, can demonstrate the level of respect to Medusa’s stature – and therefore represent awe and respect instead of current fear and disgust.
Perseus, who performs the act of beheading Medusa for the sake of acquisition of her powers of stoning is appropriating her powers while forsaking the context in which they were acquired. The misogynistic nature of the story, therefore, emphasised on multiple levels.
What other arguments can we draw in defense of Medusa?
Etymologically, name Medusa - Ancient Greek Μέδουσα (Médousa), from μέδω (médō, “rule over”) means “sovereign female wisdom,” “guardian/protectress,” “the one who knows’ or ‘the one who rules”.  It derives from the same Indo-European root as the Sanskrit Medha and the Greek Metis (the mother of Athena, Titaness of cunning smartness), meaning ‘wisdom’ and ‘intelligence.’
The normalised Greek myth of Medusa offers plenty to be angry about. The monstrous being with snakes instead of the hair starts out as a human woman, who Poseidon rapes in Athena’s temple. The goddess then punishes Medusa by turning her into a Gorgon ‘monster’ and exiling her. Athena here is depicted as an enemy of women, a traitor to her gender, an impression strengthened by the oft-quoted words put into her mouth by the classical playwright Aeschylus: ‘I am exceedingly of the father…’ – and later being picked up by feminist theorist Judith Butler in her critique of Athena’s archetype and character in relation to the cause of women’s rights.

Earlier Medusa myths, ascribed to Homer, Hesiod and Pindar, make no mention of enmity from Athena; nor do authors contemporary with Ovid, including Strabo.
Ovid and Aeschylus (whose prime is contemporary to Athenian Empire ‘Victorian decadence’ period of stagnation and decline) exemplify classic patriarchal strategies that blame the victim, set women against one another, and reframe ancient myths to the detriment of powerful females. Athena, Medusa, and Metis have all been diminished in this way, as has Athena’s mother Metis, who has been removed from the scene of Athena’s birth. In “Theogony” of Hesiod, which is seen as a Bible-like source of the genealogy of gods in Ancient Greek mythology, the moment of Metis destruction is vividly violent: “But Zeus… deceiving Metis although she was full wise… he seized her with his hands and put her in his belly, for fear she might bring forth something stronger than his thunderbolt… but she straightaway conceived Pallas Athene… and she [Metis] remained hidden beneath the inward parts of Zeus…”.

As we can look at Medusa from the perspective of her being empowering character – queenly and wise – radically opposing the normalised narrative of the monster doomed to be killed by another masculinity-propelling hero, we are ought to open the critical portals for the re-interpretation of the archetypal characters in Ancient Greek mythography that lay the foundation of the European political imaginary.

QUEERING MUSEUM. Part 2: Two Women

Performed by the mediators and educators for the public at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen on August 15, 2019

Several sculptures in this room depict Athena. she is the symbol and protectress of asexuality: the goddess never had official spouse or children apart of adopted by her Erechtheus (sprang from the earth after the semen of Hephaestus was shovelled by the goddess from her thigh), the mythical king of Athens. Alongside with bisexuality, asexuality is one of the most ostracised subgroups of the queer sexual identity - being attacked and prosecuted by both strict homosexual (such as gay and lesbian) and heterosexual communities as “the ones who refuse to choose” or “traitors”. It is a fluidity that is constantly being looked at with suspicion as it defies the identitarian character of the sexuality’s politicisation. The extreme ‘otherness’ of Athena and her omnipresence in the cultural and political landscape as an archetype of wisdom, knowledge, defence and protection are the vivid example of superposition of impossible: the illustration of rationality juxtaposed and coexistent with irrationality, a human with the algorithmic.
Athena sports many traditionally ‘male’ attributes of power: spear, physical strength unrivalled by male gods - Ares, Hephaestus and her uncle Poseidon are among men who tried to battle Athena unsuccessfully.
The archetype of Athena transcends the rigid borders of identifying allegiance, identity and gender.

Another woman in the hall is Aphrodite. Her mythology has to be a contested field. The more ancient version, such as Hesiod’s Theogony, present her as an aunt of Zeus instead of later versions ascribing her to be Zeus’ daughter from Dione. The queer aspect of the ancient myth presents her a child of two male beings, the first gods on the verge of cosmos and chaos: Oceanus and Ouranos. She is born out of the foam which arose after the Ouranos was castrated by his son, Zeus’ father, Kronos – in what had become the first generational change in the divine of the Ancient Greek mythography. Ouranos fallen phallus fertilised the ‘body’ of Oceanus – conceiving Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and love. And she is a child of unwanted intercourse between two male deities.
Aphrodite is associated with a rich variety of the types and forms of love and has a male associated deity - Aphroditus - who shares the look of hers and has men’s genitalia. The rites of Aphroditus were celebrated by with a festival of transvestite communities of the ancient world, of which we know very little to the date. It is believed that Aphroditus arrived in Athens from Cyprus - several depictions of them came down to us in form of archaeological finds, one of which is preserved in Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and in the works of writers and historians such as Pausanias, Philostratus and Alicphron.  
The archetype of Aphrodite in all her layers of multiplicity and complexity represents the infinite richness of the concept of love.