Homeward | A Monstrous Utopia (2019 – 2023)

Homeward is the first part of \As Above So Below/, an ongoing trilogy of interdisciplinary performance works by Fanis Sakellariou. Through mythic narratives, ritual structures, and immersive environments, the trilogy investigates how humans construct meaning in the face of mortality, and how these systems of meaning are transformed, challenged, and destroyed. At its core lies the relationship between the sacred and violence.

Homeward investigates the boundaries of the human, exploring how the figure of the Other is constructed and how these distinctions shape our understanding of identity, belonging, and coexistence. It explores apocalypse not as an ending, but as a threshold of transformation, asking what forms of life—and what forms of ethics—might emerge beyond the human.

In a nightmarish landscape where all life has been reduced to black dust, a funeral for humanity begins. Within the Tamer’s strange ceremony, the Beast is drawn towards the Human, their encounter unfolding as a dark rite of passage. In this uncanny ritual, punishment becomes mourning, destruction becomes transformation, and the collapse of one world gives rise to another.

Drawing from funerary ceremonies and archetypal ritual structures, Homeward explores the boundaries through which humanity defines itself. It asks who is recognised as human, who is cast into the place of the Other, and how these distinctions shape our relationships with one another. In this ritual of mourning, apocalypse is not the end of the world, but the burial of the identities through which the world has been understood.

What remains when humanity disappears?
What lies beyond the human?
Can we exist without creating an Other?

Combining visual performance, installation art, theatre, and live sound composition, Homeward constructs an immersive ritual where body, sound, objects, and space function as equal dramaturgical forces. Developed through collective research and experimentation, the performance unfolds as a funeral rite of transformation, inviting audiences to inhabit a liminal territory where familiar distinctions—human and beast, self and other, life and death—gradually lose their certainty.

Homeward premiered in Athens, at Michael Cacoyiannis Foundation in February – March 2023
It was also shown as a work in progress at Our Festival 7, Evripideio Theatro Rematias (2021) and was partially developed at UAL: Central Saint Martins (2019-2020).