Waking up from a Lethargic Confinement

What can a reclining marble sculpture, conceived through a myth in Greek antiquity, tell us today about the fluidity of our gender construction? What has been the role of aesthetic and historical canons in the construction of the female and male genders? Is ‘the sleeping Hermaphrodite’ really asleep? Or has she/he been induced to a long lethargic state, punished and confined by the history of gender normalization?

kyklàda.press is a series of compact books initiated by artist David Bergé and grounded in the Aegean archipelago, the island group marked by Izmir, Athens, and Crete. A publishing experiment in embodied, critical, and material forms of writing, each kyklàda book emerges from an expansion within and beyond one central theme. Five to six contributors from different practices craft each book together, relaying knowledge derived from lived experiences on islands: archaeologies of moods, expressions of desire and grief, affection and pain, constructed landscapes, human geographies, and historical (dis)continuities.

kyklàda.press currently has 10 titles in its catalogue.