The presentation of the project

Shakherezada. All the nights remained.


Dear ladies and gentlemen, I will start from telling you a paradox. Our creative group chose a fairy tale 1001 nights as a theme but removed all the oriental points from where. Based on the tale of Shakherezada and king Shakhriyar we decided to understand such phenomenon as jealousy. The common idea of all the stories from 1001 nights is story of a man who was betrayed by his favorite woman and who lost a sense of reality after that and considers that all the women are wanton (according to our version). The point is that the man was a king with unlimited power and he began to marry new girl every night and every this girl has been beheaded in the morning as at Shakhriyar’s opinion every woman soon or later   will make a crime which shall be punished with such execution.
The jealousy is covered in world literature not very often. Nevertheless the jealousy is that primitive and eternal tool which can destroy the human’s state of mind and break relationship. Even the people with noble and decent personality can make so unseemly actions. For instance the awful conversion from angel into murderer happened with Otello by Shakespeare). In the beginning of the story Shakhriyar is described as a very noble and merited person with many dignities. Shakherezada is a beautiful lady, knowing scores of tales has sacrificed her in order to save young girls living in her native town, to continue a life but not for taking a queen’s throne. Her wonderful spiritual qualities, her internal beauty, become a guiding star for a king and rescued him from his horrible existence and madness, as for her tales they became our favorite stories.
In the primary source those stories is not the thing which hindered the king from murder of Shakherezada and is not the reason why the king fell in love with her.
We decided to retell this story through decorative arts.
By means of photography – what is the art depicting an idle moments. Our photos is a splendid mixture of photo images, computer graphics, art and poetry that will be inserted into a shot and which will be read by heroes of 1001 nights during their most anxious minutes. The 10 quatrains written in ancient oriental style are monologue of Shakhriyar and read by him throughout all the shots.       
By means of cinema. It will be shot a short movie in the manner of Parajanov. Relationship between heroes will be conveyed through plastic gestures and with help of offscreen commentary. The original music will be written for this show.
These photos and video shall include many erotic scenes for expression of the level of heroes’ openness between each other and spectators. Our erotic vision is contiguous with naturalism and accentuates heroes’ vital and timeless features against background.
By means of literature. We are writing a story where we wish to show all the details of evil covering conscience and the moment then conscience gets rid of the evil. The story will supplement spectators’ feelings obtained during viewing photos and video with our unordinary description of the situation. It will be made an audio version of the story as well.
We consider this multimedia project as a very up-to-date event due to its timeless ability and since human vulnerability is still remain archaic and lead us to those ancient legends of 1001 nights despite so swift technological advance.

So, how to struggle with terrific egoism in order not to limit freedom of another human, not to destroy all the good things between close people and not to give rise to violence.   
We say with help of art.
Best regards.

Eva-Anastasia Kedrovkaya, author of idea, of all the texts in project, artist and model, initiator of international photo and video project – Woman – the deity of unknown origin
photographers - Vladimir Zhirnov and Snezhana Ivaniv
Role of Shakhriyar is played by Vyacheslav Ermak