Answer Me, Pythia
About this Event
Western Front is pleased to present Answer Me, Pythia a performance by artist-in-residence Stina Fors. The work emerges from Fors’s research into the ancient Greek figure of the Pythia, the fabled soothsayer at the Temple of Apollo who delivered cryptic prophecies that compelled seekers to confront their own truths. Seated above the grave of Python, the great serpent for whom she was named, the Pythia became the most consulted voice in the ancient world. While it is debated whether she spoke plainly, in riddles, in a frenzy mediated by priests, or through direct transmission, what is clear is that for two thousand years, her seat at the centre of uncertainty held enormous power.
In Answer Me, Pythia, Fors draws on a line of scholarship suggesting that the Pythia may have been one of the earliest known ventriloquists. When Christianity named the doubled voice as the devil's work, ventriloquists were burned at the stake and the Pythia's lineage as ecstatic, embodied, and oracular was reclassified. The question at the centre of Fors’s work is what happens to a voice when the belief system around it changes?
In the hour-long performance, Fors embodies the Pythia, seated with her ventriloquist dummy—a puppet who can say what she cannot. Working with ventriloquism as both an extended vocal technique and a historical system, Fors questions where the voice comes from who it belongs to, and what bodies it is allowed to pass through. She traces the displaced voice across millennia, following the axis along which it shifts from divine to demonic to pathologized to comedic. Through role-play and choreographic intervention, the authority between performer and puppet remains in flux as they move between the roles their relationship makes possible: child, lover, critic, rival, echo, force
About the Artist
Stina Fors is a performance artist, choreographer, and experimental vocalist based in Vienna, Austria whose practice centres on the voice—its power, its failures, and everything that slips between the two. Working through solo and durational performance, she uses voice, rhythm, and embodiment to explore what happens when speech exceeds intention: as pressure, excess, noise, or unexpected revelation. Her performances are humorous, raw, and risky—built on improvisation, punk energy, and a genuine appetite for the unpredictable. She has presented work internationally, including at the Venice Biennale and the Gwangju Biennale, and is the recipient of the H13 Lower Austria Prize for Performance.
Accessibility
The Grand Luxe Hall is located on the second floor of Western Front, which is accessed by a flight of twenty-six stairs. While plans for a full building upgrade to facilitate access for wheelchair users are still underway, all events in the Grand Luxe Hall are made available virtually via high-quality livestream: https://vimeo.com/event/6032978
The space can become warm during summer months—guests are encouraged to dress in light, comfortable layers.
Alternative formats: ASL interpretation is available upon request by emailing [email protected]
Further details about accessibility at Western Front can be found at https://westernfront.ca/pages/visit#accessibility
Acknowledgements
Presented with the support of the Government of Canada.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
CAD 0.00
