In development with Vitalstatistix and Performance & Art Development Agency
“My king, something has been created that no one has created before.” Enheduanna, The Exultations of Innana
In 1927, British archaeologist and spy Sir Leonard Wooley found the now-famous Enheduanna calcite disc in his excavations whilst stationed in Southern Iraq conducting archeological research and monitoring the construction of a German railway system. This was to be one of the most important discoveries in the history of writing and art; the work of Enheduanna, the earliest known poet and composer in human history. Living between 2285-2250 BCE, Enheduanna was the High Priestess of the Sumerian city-state of Ur in what is now Southern Iraq.
Enheduanna is a multimedia work by Daniel Von Jenatsch which combines ancient history with speculative fiction to imagine a scenario in which a future archaeologist discovers the ruins of an ancient martian colony established in the late 2050’s and along with it, transcriptions of the worlds earliest known poet, Enheduanna in the video diaries of Astronaut X.
Your spacecraft of lamentations has landed on an inimical land. Your soil is red and laced with poison. There I will die while singing the holy song. Your restored wall is massive and shelters me from radiation. These walls have become my prison. My shrine of entrapment. I am inside the place where the sun rises. Princess of Silence, only you made it beautiful.
Written and Directed by Daniel Von Jenatsch
Featuring VR design by Alan Nguyen, with actors Steph Jack and Debra Batton.
Music by Daniel Von Jenatsch
Nexus Arts, corner of North Tce and Morphett St, Adelaide
Image credit: Daniel Von Jenatsch
