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The recent audio-visual installation re-departing/επ-αναχωρηση by Eugenia Raskopoulos brought into new light the often silent presence of women in history. The narrative was based on a true story, equally tragic and universal as well as diachronic: during their resistance against the Ottoman Empire, in 1803, sixty women from Souli- a small town in mainland Greece - decided to end their lives and those of their children in a desperate act of liberty. Dancing their traditional, local dance, for the last time, they threw themselves off a cliff which overlooked their country and the monastery of Zalogo that had housed them during the last days of their resistance.
Although the story is well known in Greece and has been used repeatedly to commemorate the heroism of Greek women in times of political suppression or war Greek school girls dance the Zalogo dance every year on Greek Independence Day-the point is never really made that the decision of the Souli women was a decision based on gender. Had they been men, they would have taken arms against their conquerors and fought until their victory or death. Being women, their ultimate fear was not death: they would have been enslaved and raped or dragged to the Ottoman courts as mistresses and odalisques. The Souli women sacrificed their life for their national freedom, but more essentially for their freedom as women.
Raskopoulos's installation drew on a piece of national history in order to comment on a reality that women have encountered historically throughout the world. Her emphasis on the personal and the intimate, as opposed to the national and the heroic, was communicated through a sequence of physical and emotional experiences. The first