about The Broken Pitcher
←Tracing the effects of financialisation and austerity, the collaborative project The Broken Pitcher by Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Marina Christodoulidou and Peter Eramian attends to a concrete case: A crucial meeting at a bank, negotiating the foreclosure of a family home in Larnaca, Cyprus in 2019. Foreclosures are one of the austerity measures that were imposed on the Cypriot government by the Troika (the EU Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) after the financial crisis in 2012.
The Broken Pitcher looks at the banking system and the potentials for changing the script of interacting with it. The project consists of a one-to-one scale model of the bank room, that functions both as an exhibition space as well as a set which features in a 70 min film that reconstructs the scene. Inspired by Abbas Kiarostami’s film First Case – Second Case (1979, Iran), the reenactment of the bank meeting is then shown to people from various backgrounds who are asked to respond to the question: “In your opinion what should the bank employees do?”. The filmed responses encompass perspectives of people from different interest groups in Cyprus and beyond, including housing rights activists in Barcelona, Berlin and Beirut, persons who are similarly affected by these policies, public figures, lawyers, economists and artists.
One of the project’s main interests is collaboration as a practice of collectivity. Starting in 2020 gatherings and workshops were at the core of its making, in order to find structures and formats of working together, scripting and researching the context of foreclosures in relation to debt, austerity, financialization and coloniality and to counter the isolation and desperation they produce. The meeting at the bank and its space was drafted after memory logs of the affected family and their lawyer. Starting from a workshop at the independent artist-led space Thkio Ppalies in Nicosia, the bank room set and its parts were conceived together with artists who each took on a separate aspect of the set. The items in the room depart from a functional replica and become artworks in their own right, bearing witness to the meeting and offering portals to imagining an otherwise.
The accounts of the affected family were unpacked and reconstructed in workshops with actors who reenacted the dialogue in a filmed improvisation. The selection of respondents to the scene traces personal connections, friendships and expertise shared in and over various communities. Several screenings on public squares in Cyprus and a first presentation at Thkio Ppalies in May 2022, concluded in often extended discussions in local neighborhood communities. Personal testimonies, bonding over shared experiences and ideas for planning and organizing in response to the micro and macro effects of debt were shared and helped to connect and learn from each other.
credits
A project by
Natascha Sadr Haghighian
Marina Christodoulidou
Peter Eramian
Artists
Raissa Angeli
Stelios Kallinikou
Orestis Lazouras
Faysal Mroueh
Nayia Savva
Maria Toumazou
Emiddio Vasquez
Actors
Anna
Eleni
Yiorgos
Filios
Stalo
Christina
Fivos
Directors
Natascha Sadr Haghighian
Marina Christodoulidou
Production
Peter Eramian
Director of photography
Orestis Lambrou
Assistant director
Keti Papadema
Original music
Composition and Production
Panagiotis Mina
at Pyrgatory Studios
Drums
‘The Broken Pitcherz Jam’
Stelios Antoniou
Reenactment director
Athina Kassiou
Reenactment script
Natascha Sadr Haghighian
Keti Papadema
Marina Christodoulidou
Director of somatics
Dimitris Chimonas
Set design
Rumen Tropchev
Peter Eramian
Natascha Sadr Haghighian
Marina Christodoulidou
Faysal Mroueh
Rhea Kyriacou
Production manager
Demetris Taliotis
Sound recordist
Christos Kyriacoullis
Boom man
Andreas Constantinou
Gaffer
Manos Hadjikonstantinou
Assistant camera
Nenad Todorovic
Andreas Charalambous
Electrician
George CJ Spyris
Stylist
Shona Muir
Make-up artist
Sally Zein
Respondents
Christos Poutziouris
Ruth Keshishian
Andreas Vyras
Mertkan Hamit
Lucile Desamory
Nicholas Bußmann
Dr Margarita Tsomou
Mourad Ayyach
Alice Creischer
Maya Athanatou
Andreas Kirlappos
Andrej Holm
Justin Lieberman
Nizar Ghanem
Heike Geißler
Dina Abou Zour
Michalakis Ioannou
Michalis Sarris
Sanabel Abdelrahman
Plataforma de Afectados por la
Hipoteca
Delia Ccerare Paniora
Santi Mas de Xaxàs Faus
Camera operators
(Respondents)
Keti Papadema
Andres Villareal
Alexandra Ivanciu
Elda Ortiz
Mark Khalife
Anja Bentzien
Camera operator
(Flashbacks)
Panayotis Mina
Editors
Natascha Sadr Haghighian
Marina Christodoulidou
Assistant editor
Erfan Aboutalebi
Sound editors
Natascha Sadr Haghighian
Erfan Aboutalebi
Panagiotis Mina
Mastering
Panagiotis Mina
Visual identity
Studio Nikos Stephou
Colour grading
Sebastian Bodirsky
Project manager
Ioulita Toumazi
Research assistant
Andres Villareal
Production coordinator
Tuan Do Duc
Subtitles
Keti Papadema
Ernest Ah
Erfan Aboutalebi
Kante Film Leipzig
Translation
Andry Panayiotou
Yaren Fadiloglulari
Ernest Ah
Mouna Abo Assal
Nicolas Koukoullis
Susan Hassanieh
Roaa Haidari
Louise Bromby
Stephan Glietsch
Coding
Ulrike Uhlig