EXIT ATHENA

EXIT ATHENA

Repairwork in the past -

The deconstruction of the patriarchal hierarchy through the final justice

of Athena

Selma Köran

0. The last chapter of Hesiods theogony 1. Introduction 2. Moviesynopsis

3. Athena

3.1 Meeting Athena

3.2 Possibility of visual narration

4. Understanding the past

the exacerbation of the female role within Hesiod’s theogony - From the matriarchy to the rise of patriarchy: A mothertrauma, a rotten uterus and the consequential necessity for the further development of the cosmogenic narrative 4.1 Hesiod’s theogony - first phase of the world myth - from matriarchy to the emancipation of the motherly figure 4.2 Second phase of the world myth - the Zeusian reign - an absolute patriarchy 4.3

5. Conclusion

6. Bibliography

And then it came to pass

that the bright-eyed Athena, Tritogeneia,

By the gentle whispering of wing-footed Hermes at the evening feast,

Drinking deep of Ambrosia and the mind softened by the godly repast,

Learned from him the true nature of her ancestry,

She, the bright-eyed one, thinking herself to have sprung from the godhead

Of the almighty Father, the Lord of gods and of Man,

Only this, without the involvement of Eros, freed of love,

the All-knowing mother Metis having given herself up to this Lord‘s body

And yes, having discovered this, she quit Olympus in rage, in agony,

Down to the earthly realm,

In anger at the lies of her father, of the lies of his own, and those of his father‘s,

Robbing all of their destiny.

Crippled with sense-numbing Pain and torn between two minds at the father‘s doing,

rising awareness of her obscured origin comes to light, the denial of love,

the denied motherhood, a denied wisdom

not only to be a loveless offspring crawling out of a mans head,

born to be the right wing of the father’s empire

In this way she traversed the elds of Lykaon, striding thirstily through the mountain passes of

Arafat, swam through the sea straits of the Ionian islands,

Confused and driven to madness by both nymph and satyr, which plotted with the father

And supported his cause.

In the valley of confusion, made weak in heart and and in body

She, the bright-eyed one armed with the Aegis, addressed the Muses in song,

Before the brightness of her eyes fade into the endless mists,

And the Wind blew with the voice of Dionysos, who appears to the mortals

As Pleasure and Lust,

who divined the obscured realm to her in ecstasy -

the pact of Motherly Wisdom and the Might of the Father running through her veins-

And thus ready for battle she re-entered Olympus, the home of the gods,

with weapon in hand,

Where the lightning-throwing Father of the Gods and the power-wielding ones

Awaited her suspectingly and with slyness.

And in his destiny-fulfilling pomp, hoping to allay his daughter,

Spoke the fateful words.

And thus she challenged him to battle, he allowing her in his self-assurity to choose

condition of mortality of the immortal

And so she challenged the gods to the game of life and death,

One after the other,

First the goddess of love, born of the appendage,

Collapsing in her constituent parts, the unfeminine, the lovelessness

Out of which she once formed, fantasy of a dying man made flesh,

Bound to War in cold love,

To the restless, hate-enslaved Ares,

From the beginning given up to death being overthrown by his sister,

then the daring god of Light, subdued to devotion by his visage,

Whose brightness faded before the coming of dusk,

then the mother of Persephone,

the revenge-seeking and pain-numbed Demeter,

Whose own issue of communion made her choke.

And then the ever Man-subdued, the jealous Hera was to lose,

In the attempt to protect the privileges of her poisonous head

And also the winged Hermes and the virgin Hestia, neither feet or foot

Nor by the stoking of the mighty vestal fires

Could they escape their fate.

In fact bound to the crippled Hephaistos in sympathy,

this one seeing the destruction of his brother and sisters raised his hammer to split the skull

of the challenger,

But met his end in being drawn and quartered, with soft spinal cord as a creeping torso

Drawn up onto the earth as the first fish from the water,

Also the killing of Artemis was made painful by the pact of friendship,

She demasking Eros in single-handed combat,

So that he dissolved into immateriality and turned to vapour in the atmosphere,

Freed from the pain of servitude of the whimsical gods,

So that even in death, Love dwells in him though spread over the world, the sky, and the

underworld.

Now through increased wisdom ready to deal death,

She smothered the Father on his own prosthetic appendage,

He having bitten on more than he could chew,

And now in the underworld as all were united in love,

a bright-eyed Athena took her own life,

In order to secure peace upon the earth, freed from the reigning mastery of the tyrant,

And in accordance with Nature herself, feet on the ground and head in the clouds.

And so it came about that Man was brought to walk upright.

Introduction

Dearest reader, these lyrics describing Athena’s victory over Zeus form the last chapter of

Hesiod’s theogony mark the starting point of the movie called ‘Exit Athena’ which I am

currently working on. Hesiod’s theogony is known to be the oldest written record of the

ancient greek gods genealogy, explaining the coming-into-being of the world and it’s deriving

world order with Zeus subsequently remaining the ruler over all gods and men.

As of now, nobody has red the full version of it, the theogony has until this very moment

been incomplete, it’s last chapter missing with the vast majority of readers even unaware of

its potential existence.

Finally retrieved, this last chapter of the theogony portrays the fulfillment of the last prophecy

mentioned in the writing of Hesiod, before ending almost suspiciously abrupt - Zeus’s final

annihilation by his offspring and the successive end of his reign.

It is the story of Athena, the greek goddess of war and wisdom overcoming her father Zeus,

the very symbol of a manly reign in our western socialised civilization, the absolute precursor

to the fundamental structures of the christian monotheism, its subsequent shift from the

anthropomorphic polytheism into the inerrant masculine depiction of the singular god and its

consequential development to the sacred order of the holy men onto the ultimate present

state’s secularized omnipotent jurisdiction . This act of defying her father’s reign offers a key 1

to an alternate universe, in which there is no more need to tediously fight the symptoms of a

sickly and ever-oppressing system, a governance of power and exploitation of fear, as it

holds the cure to the illness of such regime in its very root.

It can be interpreted as a coming-of-age story, in which Athena, emancipating from her

father as the figure of the right hand supporting this misogynist hierarchical order, learns

about her true heritage (not only being born from her father’s head, but also having a

mother). As a result of this revelation Athena is empowered for the ultimate act of killing off

the godly pantheon, finally disembogueing in the decapitation of her own father and her

proximate suicide.

She not only deconstructs the heavenly order to allow room for thought on what to build

upon the ruins of the fatherly system, but lifts the female figure out of her eternal secondary

position.

1 George S1985chwab. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,

This is achieved through becoming the real goddess of war and wisdom, a merging of the

experience of the matriarchy, in form of acknowledging her heritage from a motherly figure,

Metis, the goddess of wisdom, as well as the deriving knowledge of the battle-indulging

patriarchy into a symbiosis, where those two dualizing schemes the inconciliable principles

of opposed gender within greek mythology, are balanced out into a state of peaceful,

irrevocable equality of sexes and races, where bloodshed for the sake of power is neglected

in accordance to a new formed value system: The equality of everyone and everything freed

from a hierarchical system.

This last chapter has been held under strict disclosure by (christian) religious rulers in order

to maintain the status quo of what can be perceived as the ‘holy reign of the sacred white

men’, as it holds the key for a new and long overdue world narrative and has capability to

function as a retroactive repair work in the past. It’s extrication bears potential to an alternate

universe, an almost seemingly paralleluniverse, in which the gender problems of the here

and now would not even exist in the mere thought, because the past would have been

changed in a crucial way, altering history as well as presence and consequentially our future

in which, what the theogony clearly sketches out as antagonistic principles - matriarchy and

patriarchy - are balanced out to a state of complete equality and harmony, in which

hierarchical and oppressive structures become completely invalid in their selves.

The completion of the cosmogenic narrative deriving from Hesiod’s theogony, which is the

fundament for the world order we live in, still poses an immediate threat to the patriarchal

hierarchy we all find ourselves in. With this dangerous last chapter, dangerous in terms of

being a menace for this contemporary regiment, which utilizes fear and power in order to

manipulate the masses for the sake of the white rich eletist’s minority, the cosmogenic

narrative is finally fulfilled and can mark a starting point for reflection on what could have

been, on what should have been, what is ought to be, thus altering the narrative of our very

presence and our future. It heralds the end of our gender struggle, our classfight, our wars,

as it is - in keen romanticised and childlike believe - the key for ultimate world harmony.

In this thesis, I would like to proceed as follows: First, I would like to provide a short and crisp

synopsis of the movie that I am working on and which, told in a segmented narrative via an

immersive installation will be the subject of my graduation work, before i like to go into depth

of the subject matter via explaining some fixed visual formulas of my interpretation in

reference to my reflection on my first encounter with the figure of Athena in the following

chapter.

In the last chapter - that can be perceived as a in depth research of the theogony focusing

on exacerbation of the female role - I want to demonstrate the immediate urgency for a new

female narrative as well as exemplify the meaning of repair work in the past as a condition to

pacify the outliving antagonistic principles of the female and the male.

Movie Synopsis

Exit Athena is a hero's journey, a satyricon located in the world of the olympic gods. Exit

Athena is an operetta, a baroque musical full of pink clouds, perfume and genitals.

The narrator of Exit Athena is a whistleblower. The story is set in an alternative, present

world, where this young whistleblower finds unknown documents in the secret library of the

vatican. Kept under lock for centuries, the whistleblower reveals an explosive truth. He

begins to read. What follows is a new, forbidden version of the ancient greek myth: A

feministic narrative in the olympic universe.

Protagonist of this coming-of-age-story is the brainchild Athena, who is according to

prophecy dangerously powerful to her father Zeus. At a dinner, while eating nectar and

ambrosia, the messenger Hermes whispers an unknown truth to Athena: That she, against

her own assumptions, had a mother with the name of Metis. This is her call to adventure.

Through her journey she meets characters of the olympic universe. She learns about the

killing of her mother through the hands of her father Zeus. She vows vengeance and travels

back to the mount olympos. She challenges the gods to a fight.

The megalomaniac godfather agrees to Athene’s conditions. A divine ping-pong-tournament

will take place. The losers of each game will be mortalized and lose their divine status.

Athene, the goddess of wisdom, strategy and martial art wins against every olympic god,

including Zeus. The humans are freed of the patriarchal yoke of the olympic gods. Athene

and her friend Artemis commit suicide together.

Finally we see the raped whistleblower, who put his life on stake for the true, anti-patriarchal

version of the greek myths.

(a stroryboard to illustrate the plot can be found in the thesis’s attachment / Picture 3)

(1) 2

Meeting Athena

It all started way, way back in my own ancient days with this very depiction of the goddess

Athena. This depiction can be found in a book called ‘Die schönsten Sagen des klassischen

Altertums’, a compilation of greek mythology and an introduction to the genealogy of the

greek gods - (and) the first book I would ever read and that would enforce an enormous

impact on the development of my own inner reality and realm of thought.

This book was given to me by my mother and before that my late grandfather had passed it

down to her.

That was in first grade, I had just started to read better: be able to make a connection

between the abstract forms of the alphabet and their phonetic value. This also means, being

6 years old, you still rather go through a book, in a quest for discovering appealing pictures,

attractive illustrations and then triggered by an according visual, you start to read, or rather

2 ‘Die schönsten Sagen des klassischen Altertums’

make a semi dyslexic attempt of deciphering the alphabet in order to be able to understand a

narrative revolving around the chosen drawing.

There was this picture, a small ink drawing of Athena surrounded by the other gods of the

greek Pantheon, inscribed as Pallas Athena and there was something very odd about it that

caught my childminded attention immediately. I think it must have been something about her

gaze, the way she looked and still looks right at you (although an ink drawing that size

clearly lacks in ability of expressing such a detailed gaze), standing upright, fully armed, with

her iconic agais, that portrays the head of medusa, her spear and her helmet, just the way

she allegedly emersed out of Zeus’s head, who ostensibly gave birth to her without the

presence of a mother , that made me curious and eager enough to read about this subject 3

matter. Somehow her very upright, almost soldier-esk posture contradicted and still

contradicts her facial expression, it almost seems as if she is in a state of discomfort, as if

she was trapped in an unenjoyable situation, where she is ordered to maintain a certain

grasp of dignity and keep on acting as if she’s alright with what is happening around her as

well as with who is surrounding her.

Of course as a 6 year old, you do not understand this moment of subconscious identification,

you lack an apprehension of why you are drawn to this or that specific character, you

unawarely don't notice the little hints unconscious of what you are, of the sum of things

already forming a steadily growing human, that cause you to identify with a certain type of

persona or personification of a spirit or an animal. Whether this might be a pirate, a

firefighter, a princess, a monkey, satan or (Insert whatever pops up in your brain when you

think of your very own childhood).

As you grow older, those things become more obvious, evidently they start to make sense

whether in the means of a reflective moment, as in understanding the past you and its

former wants and needs or as a starting point of reflecting on what you have become, what

you are and why and how this same exact thing still makes you tick and has influenced a

major part of your inner socialisation and has become an integral part of an own internal

myth and reality.

Being older, getting older, getting close to graduating and finishing my institutional journey, I

once again revisit those memories in order to articulate the practical subject of making a

3 Hesiod, Theogony, Vers: 923, 924

movie about Athena besieging patriarchal hierarchy through executing the whole godly

Pantheon and decapitating Zeus by the means of Ping Pong and to make a connection

between the child in me and the by now more grown up version it. Both girls who do not

understand why they are not allowed or better: supposed to have equal chances in life as

men.

For doing so, I am immersing deep into my own subconscious stir- what started of as a kind

of a lighthearted joke, a quick, yet clear immediate idea that flashed up in my mind, as soon

as I got to hear that we would be traveling to Athens, has become a proof of a long lurking

deep rooted issue - a long awaited and evident imperative to free this figure of my childhood

and by that myself and every other person that feels in a position of getting fucked over by

this patriarchal system on a daily basis.

Think of it, which of us girls hasn’t been run over, silenced down, told to act like this or like

that and then imagine to be a girl, that is loud by nature, that is resistant to obeying every

rule, that is kicking and shouting back at every injustice felt. Throughout my whole

institutional journey, I have been told many things, I have been attacked for my ‘male’

behaviour, I have been discriminated by teachers for my heritage, I have been exhorted to

act according to society’s expectation of the female gender, I have been told I will never ever

achieve anything in this life with an attitude like this, being defiant, insubordinate with my

dirty fingernails and wearing what they deemed ‘indecent’ wardrobe for a girl.

You can project this perception, the intolerant and blind archaic hostility towards a girl

behaving out of what society seemingly defines as norm onto all spheres of life, in which

proclaimed authoritarian figures still claim there right of patronizing, which unfortunately does

not end with completing school, it rather marks another chapter of further systemised

oppression.

Possibility of visual narration

Quite obviously the character of Athena has been a major source of inspiration and

contemplation for me throughout my adolescence in terms of an obsessive fascination with

an additional, fictional narrative that turned me into some kind of a dilettante archeologist,

trying to ‘dig’ for a yet-to-be narration.

It is the continuous and prolonged fantasy of a six year old that in a moment of identification

and solidarity tries to reconstruct and reshape this felt injust reality of fictional history with all

her imaginative power as a reaction to the urgency of freeing this character and by this

ultimately herself. There are certain moments of personal, yet - suggestably - universally

valid identification with the character of Athena, which credit her as a contemporary and

relatable figure of tragedy. Despite being a character originating from the ancient days, her

fictional struggle is still more than present and just as relevant in present times which

eventually deem her as this incredibly appealing and legitimate key figure in terms of our

gender related fight. Her upbringing already bears a crucial gender-related struggle and the

crux of the movie: As she is somewhat brought up as a male by her father, being the ‘right

hand’ of him, fighting wars in his name, in fact though being denied the significant

difference-making ‘royalty’ of a male successor: allegedly being denied to fulfill the prophecy

to finally defeat Zeus. Neither is she allowed to act out her feminine side, which seems to let

her doom her female ‘nature’, leaving her to be subject of conflicted and projected

imagination.

This precondition, the dissatisfaction stemming from this still unsolved childhood trauma of

an unmet desideratum of liberating this character from her everlasting position of a

patronized and purposely kept tinier-than-lifesize figure, allows the plot of the movie to be

translated into a visual narration from the view of a six year olds visual and aesthetic

perception combined with the disillusioned realm of reality of a grown up female in our

society. A conflicting imagery that is emanating from a colourful, yet terrifying fever induced

nightmare of an infant combined with violent and almost bizarre to even morbid and explicit

content, a derivative from the sum of experiences made in the life of a 29 year old of our

present time.

It’s the ultimate extraversion of an inner and outer duality - a metaphysical superorder that

manifests within the general and consistent contradiction of aesthetic narration and diverging

content throughout the complete motion picture. It may be described as somewhat

surrealistic imagery, childlike unaware of being potential subject to any kind of labeling, as

the quality of subconscious innocence seems to occur naturally in every child. Yet those

naive illustrations will be fueled with the toxic derivatives of the psyche of a grown up person,

being a product of our contemporary patriarchal structure. This dualizing scheme, that yet

praises the lightheartedness of the infantile mind and it’s keen imagination, while

simultaneously being painfully aware of domesticated adaption of obtuse adult expectation,

is something already one of the great surrealistic ancestors, André Breton described very

well in his 1924 written Manifesto of surrealism:

<<if one still has maintained his farsightedness, then (s)he can’t help but turn towards their

childhood, as - no matter how botched it may seem by the attempt of his mentors, still strikes

her/ him with a sense full of magic>> 4

This means, if conveyed in the planned way, the final movie could conceivably be described

as a movie with dreamesk, surrealistic pictures - a grotesque, violent visual explosion

evolving into a story that is supposed to shake the rigid perception of the heritage of our

present patriarchal structure and dismantle it in its origins and thus deconstruct all its toxic

derivatives via the means of discrepancy of expected impression and actual expression.

This, for example means there will be a very naive disposition of found and ‘trashy’

materials, such as cardboard in accordance with the childlike imagination, the innocent

infantile fantasy, which does not require ‘professionality’ in the sense of costy materials, it

simply requires determination, imagination and unshakable, convinced radicality, that can

only belong to the mind of a kid. It will be a cascade of bright and neon colours, odd shapes,

unperfect backdrop drawings and bulky costumes all distinctively stemming from the vision

and the corresponding, artisanal skills of a child, while continuously maintaining the

grotesque and dark tonus of the movie’s plot.

As aforementioned this ‘infantile’ visualisation and utilization of primitive symbolism is

intended to contradict with the rather obvious violent content, resonating and reinforcing the

whole ambiguity of the protagonists inner struggle of being the masuclinist ‘right hand’ of her

father’s regime and her actual fate of being the vanquisher of the patriarch to her proximate

suicide, in order to avoid becoming the next ‘worshipped’ successor of her dynasty, as well

4 André Breton, surrealistic Manifesto, Paris 1924

as the outright dualizing antagonistic principles of the female and the male within the olympic

universe.

Another more concretized example of pictorial choice to cinematically reflect on the

dualization of and to fortify the unrelenting, keen hope and pure believe of childhood in

conflict with ‘the grown-up’ rigid perception of power play and its potential element of

disillusion can be found in the juxtaposition of two seemingly alike, yet in their metaphysic

approach oppositional materials. Those utilized materials are already converse in their very

nature: Clay and plastilin. The antithetic property in the final physicality of the materials

already is able to reproduce the tension of conflict as both mediums have a somewhat

similar handling, a resemblance in their superficial textural appearance and their haptical

constitution, yet with a crucial difference: as plastilin surely can be credited as a part of

childlikeness, with the material never drying out, thus never being in a final ‘form’, always in

a state of possible metamorphosis, clay can be accounted metaphorically as it’s mature

‘counterpart’ - a material that eventually will be stuck in an eternal shape, which doesn’t

allow any kind of further alteration.

For me this refers to the duality of ‘growing up’ - a dualizing fear of on the one hand, not

being able to grow up or better to exhaust the full potential of infantil inner, magical

possibility and believe, due to men-made socialisation-bound restrictions. On the other hand

- visualized by the element of clay - the fear of being ‘concretized’ for eternity, not being able

to be adjust or refresh the mind in order to keep on growing steadily. As aforementioned,

both materials have a similar handling, thus allowing an akin way of shaping objects, so that

within the movie an illusion, that is ought to accentuate this aforementioned discrepancy, can

be created, that challenges the visual perception and expectation of the audience, by making

sculptures made out of plastilin seem like clay objects acting accordingly to their textural

property (breaking vs. being elastic, hard vs. soft) and vice versa.

The usage of this material already anticipate their purpose: In order to be able to incorporate

this idea in a meaningful way there will be the element of stop motion animation in some

scenes. This permits immersing into the naive imagination of a kid, allowing to breathe life

into ‘dead’ materia via stop motion animation, a technique even a kid could create without

needing technical versed skills as those required f.E. for computer generated animation. As

those animations of course follow the manifest of diverging content and visualisation, they

are filled with quite graphical and violent content, undermining once more the concept of

duality.

There are several more ‘fixed’ aspects, which I’d rather like to list, as they function as a

visual manifest, a guideline that I will rigidly apply in the eventual filming:

Another (justified) question that might be evoked in the reader’s mind and that is tightly

connected to the concept of the duality of the ‘antagonistic’ principle of childhood and

adulthood is the weapon of choice in this movie: a pingpong bat.

As this selection might come across as rather unfitting for a setting in the olympic universe, it

- thanks to Hesiods vague and undetailed leaving to imagination description - still has a

philosophically justified right to exist as the challenging element within my very personal

interpretation of the writing.

Not only can one go to the archeological museum of Athens and find objects reminiscent of

what could be farfetched interpreted as the first ping pong bats (and which I will surely do in

the ‘documentary’ part of the movie) - that make it eligible as a central element of my movie.

To begin with: table tennis is often in a way belittled as a somewhat nerdy sport, associated

with childhood, rather than something that is considered a serious sport. While the aspect of

the lightheartedness is intentional and omnipresent especially in combination with the whole

kidesk imagery, it - with the premise of turning into a mortal kombat - receives a new

connotation: what actually is furthest away from childhood - death - now becomes a condition

for the ‘play’. Thus reversing the actual easiness into a serious approach under the evident

thread of losing ones life.

As this might be the main point that supports the complete concept of the visual approach of

the movie, it also contains various different aspects that leaves Ping Pong as the most valid

choice in my personal opinion.

First of all, it really is the sport of childhood, a sport that every kid in germany has access to

early on in school, on every schoolyard, playing with mathematics books or even the hand if

there is no pingpong bat around. This sport knows no class, no ‘race’, no gender.

It is one of the only sports, in which the different physis of men and women are not key to

success, it is about the technique, fastness and dexterity.

It levers out the general expectation of inferiority of the female gender in sports.

It is solely because of the social construct, our socialisation that still keeps women from

playing this sport in the same quantity as men. Although this seems to balance out, at least in

Berlin, where you can see more and more people, female as well as male playing due to it’s

easy accessibility (Berlin has an uncountable amount of table tennis plates), still the

reputation of girls in this sport is not a good one. Oddly enough whenever I leave my home

with my pingpong bat (and yes, I do that often), challenging random people when I come

across a pingpong table where people are currently playing the reply is usually a mixture of

disappointment and false ‘gender’-correctness as in a ‘sighing’, followed by a resigned

mumbling of ‘yes, okay, girl, you can play’ - while in honesty rather silently thinking with

rolling eyes ‘oh god.. playing against a girl might be no fun, will be no real challenge..’. Then

the astonishment and disappointment or better disbelieve in the own skills is tremendous,

when I end up kicking their asses. This aspect in itself is reminiscent to the character of

Athena, battling her way through an male dominated world.

Repairwork in the past -

Understanding the exacerbation of the female role within Hesiod’s theogony -

From the matriarchy to the rise of patriarchy: A mothertrauma, a rotten uterus and

the consequential necessity for the further development of the cosmogenic narrative

and it’s impact on the movie’s plot

In this chapter I want to emphasize on the urgency of such a new female narration and

provide a deep comprehension for the immediate and long overdue necessity via profoundly

tracing the history within the theogony focusing on the exacerbation of the female role within

the incomplete narrative that has defined the systemized oppression of the female gender

within the structure of patriarchal hierarchy ever since.

I understand this movie and a major part of my general art practice as a repair work in the

past in order to be able to alter the presence, the past and thus the future aiming to

understand how the potential of imagination could infiltrate reality. To guarantee a deep

understanding of what I mean by this and to demonstrate how the imagined and fictional

written past had a deep impact on our social structure, I would like to take you, dear reader

back to the past and explain in full detail where our system got stuck, where there has been

a dangerous stagnation in the psychological development, providing the fertile soil for

inevitable cultivation of degenerated, pathologic social patterns.

This chapter constitutes the absolute pre-work to my movie, enlightening the understanding

for the imperative of such a new chapter as well as a supplement to undermine why Athena

is the ultimate key to pacify’ this genderwar we live in and all the toxicity derving from it.

Followed by this pure research work of the theogony, I want to end this chapter with

highlighting how the outcome of it has a vast influence on the plot of the movie.

Acknowledging the past is key

Lately, a friend of mine from Italy came to visit me in Berlin. Being deeply involved in the

alternative art project of Milan’s Macao and part of it’s transgender collective, we discussed

a whole evening about topics revolving around the planned narrative of my movie. As we

bespoke my research of the theogonia, she told me something which I found extremely

enlightening. Something so simple in its nature and yet so impactful on the mind, that I want

to share it with you in this paper, as it surely emphasizes on the importance of

acknowledging our past.

A friend of her had recently been to Togo and in a talk with a native she encountered a body

movement, a word accompanying gesture that in our western society could literary not be

more opposite. It is the forward movement of the hand when talking about yesterday. In our

western civilization, whenever we talk about a past day, we usually pull our hand up, as if we

were throwing something behind our shoulders, stating that the past is ‘behind’ us, thus

having the future ‘in front of us’. The reversed case of the african gesture of yesterday was

justified, explained, when asked by the friend as follows:

<<We are aware of our past, we constantly have it in front of us, but

the future, we do not know, so we are not able to see it yet, so how

could it be standing before us?>> 5

I find this to be of vast significance, this simple story had a huge effect on me, it altered a big

part of my perception of our western socialized mind and encouraged me to intensify my

awareness of the past. Indeed it is important to confrontingly ‘see’ the past, to face and

acknowledge our history in order to comprehend the here and now.

To understand the heritage of this mechanism of systematically keeping women down as a

symptom of our sick patriarchal system, deriving from this ancient order of a man’s reign (the

aforementioned secularized state’s omnipotent jurisdiction, that extrapolates from the

5 unknown man from Togo, verbally transmitted by unknown friend of good friend

monotheistic omnipotence of the inerrant god and the sacred order of holy man that

devolves from that ideology, which furthermore derives from the polytheistic orientation of

the anthropomorphic gods of the greek Pantheon, especially the image of almighty Zeus, we

will make a short excourse into greek mythology. To as well elucidate what I label

antagonistic principles throughout the text, that in an undeveloped state of constant duality

possibly prohibit a healthy and natural evolution of the psychological cosmogonia, providing

fundament for our ethical principles and deeply influencing our ‘cultural’ socialisation, we will

now turn towards the past to conceive this pattern of a fragmentary cycle, the incomplete

narrative our present system is hailing from.

And what past would be more senseful than investigating the past, in which the story of

Athena is embedded in?

As there is a problem of a million sources concerning the transcription of the greek

mythology, which all differ in various micro aspects through constant alteration in the shift of

history, I chose to solely base my analysis on the writing that is known to be the first record

of a written genealogy of the greek gods: Hesiod’s Theogony. (Already the multitude of

translations of this one poem in the course of time is problematic and often conflicting

regarding the increased matrix of possible interpretations, an experience made when

comparing german to english translations of the theogony for the research of this paper).

Hesiod’s report of the greek creation myth is remarkable in the sense of easy access to

eligibility of dividing the writing into clear heterogenic chapters. A world myth, that basically

can be divided into two phases, a thought that its supported and emphasized on in Paula

Phillipson’s essay ‘Genealogie als mythische Form’. Hesiod’s Theogony paraphrases the

metaphysical evolution of humanity in a very clear, albeit of course myth-typical metaphorical

way, as a sketch of our earthly cosmogonia, a creation myth of our hierarchy and social

ideology.

Instead of going into detail of this 1000-hexameter-versed genealogy, that states over

approximately 300 names, we will only focus on the for the comprehension of this paper’s

intention relevant parts of the bloodline, stemming from Gaia, the mother earth,

successionaly beaconing to the reign of Zeus while simultaneously apprehending the

bloodline of Chaos as time and sphere providing conditions, as well as perceiving it as

normative principle-giving, which initially enable the formation of the sequential offsprings of

Gaia, the bloodline of the greek gods, in the first place.

Hesiod’s theogony - first phase of the world myth - from matriarchy to the

emancipation of the motherly figure

According to Hesiod, after ‘calling out to the Muses’ for enlightenment (104) everything starts

with Chaos (H 117). It is not explained where exactly it comes from and why it comes into

existence (generally Hesiod is rather frugal with his information, for example he does not

describe how exactly the titans where besieged, just that they were defeated after long battle

with the gods). Chaos is just there and further on described as a ‘yearning void’ (117). Next

to appear on the scene is Gaia (118), the earth, also she just emerges seemingly out of

nowhere and becomes a fixed presence in the framework of the theogony. The third, rather

to be understood as immaterial phenomenon and accounted for as the projecting force is

Eros (120). Yes, this very Eros that most of us, due to the falsification in the alternation of

the greek mythology in the stream of history and it’s depictive take on in our pop culture,

ideate as a cute, coquettish knave with bow and arrow. As soon as this third power comes

into play things start to evolve, thus Eros being the condition for the advancement of this

cosmogonia, the initial spark that expedites the whole genesis of our world in the writing of

Hesiod.

And no, it is not that Gaia and Chaos start to pair, which would appear to be the logical and

analogous expectation - and this is something (i find) vastly important and that gives space

of interpretation to declare EROS as the Love for the self, that is key for the ability to

sequentially love another being: I will call this phenomenon AUTOEROS. From themselves

Gaia as well as Chaos give birth without assistance of another sex, thus generating to

different bloodlines, which dont clash in the course of the theogony, but yet govern each

other. Both of them bear their offsprings without the act of making love, that is required in our

earthly terms and biological comprehension for the physical act of giving birth.

So this circumstance could be interpreted as follows: in order to be able to love another

being, you first have to be able to love yourself. And this guideline shall be mandatory for my

movie as the initiation spark of empowerment for Athena as well. So let us put it in a very

short form:

1. Self-aimed Eros, 2. Towards-another-being-aimed Eros or later, (after fully grasping the

hesiodic theogony) can be defined as follows:

1. Autoeros. 2. MaterEros 3. Generationbound-object-aimed Eros

Like aforementioned Gaia gives birth solely by herself to Ouranos, the heaven, without any

support of a male figure.

Basically this can be easily interpreted as point zero: the primal state, the absolut

matriarchat, the sole importance of the mother - as the only one who is needed for giving life.

‘He (Uranos- the sky) lays upon her (Gaia - the earth)’(126) thus initiating a fruitful pairing

ritual. Odd enough, you have to keep in mind Ouranos and Gaia are son and mother.

Of course during the whole course of the greek mythology, incest is an omnipresent

phenomenon, but usually those sexual acts are performed within one generation, between

siblings, and not cross-generational as it is the case in the pairing of Gaia and Ouranos.

Detecting and acknowledging this fact is key to understanding the further development of the

rise of the patriarchal tendencies if you consent to equalize Hesiod’s theogony with the

psychological ‘coming into being’ development of a child into a ‘grown up’. After all this is a

mother having intercourse with her son. This act generally ‘contradicts the in all cultures

prevailing taboo of carnal union between mother and son’ and is of ‘vast significance in 6

terms of awareness development, for there is no detachment from the mother’ beaconing the

adhesion of the ‘infantile’ in a state of development that can be described as

‘subconsciously-repressed-emotions’’ . This, speaking in psychological terms is prone to 7

lead towards consequential mental issues. Just Think of Ödipus, the well known infamous

story concerning this precarious topic, the act of sexually desiring a parent is bound to

generate conflict with a terrible outcome. (In the tragedy of Ödipus the climax of desiring the

mother lies in the act of killing the father.)

Of course in terms of ontogenetic relevance, we have to understand the underlying

psychoanalytic thesis that perpetuates such conflict.

Every kid is first bound to it’s mother and in a natural development of the psyche, it has to

emancipate from her in order to ensure a healthy psychological progress.

In visual words: 1. The womb has to be left, then the natal chord has to be cut of, 2. It has to

be distanced from the ‘milk-giving’ nipple, otherwise to refer to Freud, it will be stuck in an

‘oral phase’ which will later in life influence / taint the psychological wellbeing and leaves

fertile soil for manifestation of vast psychological issues. 8

Of course, especially for me as a woman, Freud is more than just eligible to be criticized, as

often his, - in my opinion seemingly coke-fueled theories stem from his very own (and by

6Ewald Rumpf, Das Muttertrauma in der griechischen Mythologie, europäische Hochschulschriften, Peter Lang Verlag, FFM, 1985. 7 Ewald Rumpf 8 Sigmund Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag GmBH, FFM, 1980

that) limited projection of his own experience and thus of course is constrained to a very

masculine perception of the world. Nevertheless his theories, in consideration of adjustments

made in the course of time are still of relevance and often valid in its roots.

The third phase, or rather a phase that is in depth psychological terms congruent to the

aforementioned physical act of weaning, (the aforementioned second phase) according to

psychoanalyst Ewald Rumpf in his discourse about the mother trauma in greek mythology, in

which he postulates the thesis of ‘rejection of the female principle in favour of the

emancipation of a patriarchal conscious’ is the psychological disentanglement from the 9

mental reign of the mother, to ‘guarantee an independent, cognitive development’ of the kid.

10

To facilitate this process of detachment, which Rumpf identifies as a continuous ‘traumatic

experience’, that either - in the good case is conquerable or on the contrary is prone to lead

to traumatic disorder, often a ‘defensive attitude towards this bond’ is established as a

coping mechanism. 11

Despite this very sensitive subject of incest, in the very beginning of the theogonia,

concerning only the bloodline descending from Gaia, the female principle can be defined as

the primal state, the sole originator of birth, there is no male principle needed to ‘give’ life,

thus we could consider this as point Zero of the world myth according to Hesiod - the primal

state of a fundamental matriarchy.

The next state, that could be accounted for as the first phase of the world myth illustrated by

Hesiod, the insertion of the patriarchal shift, is instigated by the birth of Ouranos itself, as

Ouranos immediately is being proclaimed the ‘ruler’, without the imperative of immediate

description of this very position (which leads to the suggestion that in the hellenistic cultural it

must have been apriori explicit, that a male character is exclusive heir of regiment). This is

solely emphasized on, when the youngest offspring of this mother-son pairing, Kronos, is

conspiring with Gaia herself against Uranos in order to overthrow the violent and brutal

regiment of his father (Ouranos hides all his children in the ‘deep caves of the earth’, in order

not to be succeeded over/ in order to escape from the prophecy of being defeated by his

offsprings) (153-161).

9 Ewald Rumpf, Das Muttertrauma in der griechischen Mythologie, europäische Hochschulschriften, Peter Lang Verlag, FFM, 1985. 10 Ewald Rumpf 11 Ewald Rumpf

This in itself provides the proof for the slow detachment from the motherly principle, an

arbitrary act neglecting the wellbeing of the mother as the initiation of disentanglement from

the motherly figure and by that consecutively the emancipation from the matriarchy, despite

the fact that motherly figure Gaia not approving such condition as it causes her ‘physical

pain’ (158), which eventually drives her to initiate the plot against Ouranos, who

simultaneously is her son and her spouse.

But she, vast Gaia, groaned within from the strain and planned an evil

crafty trick (160-161)

This marks a deployment of the first generational conflict, stemming from the mother’s

disregard of her spouse/ son’s arbitrary and generation-foiling behaviour as she plots against

him with her kids. It is the revolt of the female versus the male principle, in order not to be

suppressed. However it is not possible for her to conduct this ruse on her own, help from her

offsprings, granted by her youngest son Kronos, is required (164-168). Paramount is the

fight against the male, oppressive ‘brutality, the sprouting of a dangerous, masculine

conscious’ , in which ‘the cooperative of mother-kids is conterminous with a permeation of 12

the kids with a matriarchal conscious’ . Hence this act also introduces the reduction of the 13

omnipotent, autonomous mother figure to a somewhat needy character, which still remains

the driving force behind the plot in this first phase of the greek creation myth.

Quick she made the element of grey adamant, made a great sickle

and advised her sons, speaking encouragingly, while hurt in her heart

(161-163)

Following the mother’s plan, Kronos cuts off the father’s genitals with the sickle the mother

made, (the mother provides the instrument, the tool, while the son exerts it). This act of

defiance, an act based upon the deep rooted male fear of castration, can be regarded as the

ultimate act of disempowerment.

The anxiety of castration in psychoanalytical terms is defined as follows:

‘In Freudian psychoanalysis, castration anxiety (Kastrationsangst) refers to an unconscious

fear of penile loss originating during the phallic stage of psychosexual development and

lasting a lifetime. According to Freud, when the infantile male becomes aware of differences

12 Ewald Rumpf, Das Muttertrauma in der griechischen Mythologie, europäische Hochschulschriften, Peter Lang Verlag, FFM, 1985. 13 Ewald Rumpf

between male and female genitalia he assumes that the female's penis has been removed

and becomes anxious that his penis will be cut off by his rival, the father figure, as

punishment for desiring the mother figure.’ 14

(In this case the rival is not the father figure, it is the son)

Interestingly through the severing of Ourano’s testicles Aphrodite is born, via the falling of

the genitals blood into the futile sea. (188-194) (also hailing from this genital bleeding, falling

onto earth the Eryinns are born, the unsurpassable symbol of female revenge).

The birth of Aphrodite is remarkable in terms of the archetypical connotation of this

character: She is the goddess of femininity, love and beauty. Considering Hesiod’s mimesis

of Aphrodite’s birth, it can be stated that in principle she is solely a product of a generational

power struggle of masculinity, hence a creation out of hatred instead of love hailing from an

all male principle as there is no ‘female’ part in her direct ascendant. This fact becomes

astonishingly sickening, as the prototype of female beauty still existent in our presence,

although subdued to modifications in beauty standards of different epochs directly derives

from the depiction of this goddess, that is, considering the way of her birth, an obvious and

absolute masculine construct, an all male fantasy of powerlust ‘becoming’ flesh. This is

substantiated in the accompanying verse: ‘she, who loves the genitals.’

At this point I want to leave the reader with this food for thought, because this might pose a

revelation to majority, but exceeds the possibilities of this short paper.

Nevertheless it is vital to record, that this occurrence quasi poses as the 2nd successive

episode of the 1st phase, in which the emancipation from the matriarchat is taken to another

level by attaching the almost absurd component of unnecessity of female presence for

‘bearing’ a child and hence promoting calumnation of the motherly principle.

Second phase of the world myth - the Zeusian reign - an absolute patriarchy

What could be constituted as the second phase of Hesiod’s cosmogenic creation myth, that

unfortunately presumably embodies the conclusion of his 1000-versed hexameter-poem, is

the ultimate reign over immortals and mortals by the ‘heavenly father’ Zeus, that once more

is forecasted by a prophecy of success over the father’s sovereignty.

14 Sigmund Freud . The Origins Of Psycho-Analysis: Letters To Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts And Notes: 1887-1902. Edited by Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, Ernst Kris. Translated by Eric Mosbacher and James Strachey. New York: Basic Books, 1954

Zeus, the son of the Titan-siblings Rhea and Kronos, who is also brother to a majority of

gods of the olympian pantheon, Hera, Demeter, Hades, Poseidon, etc., is once more the

youngest child of his generation, just like his father before him: Kronos.

By cunning (the youngest son Zeus is replaced by a stone, which is then devoured by

kronos in his place) (483-486) Zeus can grow up until he is so strong that his father is inferior

to him, whom he finally expels 'from dignity' (492) consequently freeing his brothers and

sisters from the father’s belly.

From here the reign of Zeus as almighty ruler over gods and humans begins. (507).

Through the battle with the Titans, he is able to demonstrate his almighty power and cinch

absolution for his regime. (881-886)

To ensure a lifeline stemming from his blood he befatheres a multitude of women, thus

producing a whole army, that is supposed to support his cause: the preservation of his very

world order.

The first wife, he takes is Metis, goddess of prudence and wisdom, ‘she, who knows most of

all the gods and mortal men’. This fact alone, her being the most intelligent of all beings,

allegedly even exceeding the intelligence Zeus, evokes the threat, taking the prophecies into

consideration in which the women where respectively the one’s to plot against their men.

This is the reason, after Gaia and Ouranos reveal to him, that he will face the same fate as

his father, why he cunningly ‘devours’ her, as soon as she gets pregnant.

‘But when she was about to bear the owl-eyed goddess Athena, then he

deceived her mind with a trick of wily words, and put her down in his belly,

by the advice of Gaia and starry Ouranos. Thus they advised him, so that

no other of the eternal gods would hold the office of king but Zeus.’ (H)

These verses are of high importance as they state that Zeus devours his wife as he got to

know, that she would bear the successor over him, namely Athena. So this basically proves,

that there is a fear of a woman being able to overthrow him, which is somewhat corrected

(and this is fertile soil for speculation if it was added on later (which apparently often

happened to the theogony through the shift of history and seems almost impossible to

differentiate from the original writing) in the following lines, thus neglecting and denying the

actual potential of Athena as the original anxiety inducing cause of swallowing Methis:

For from her wise children were fated to be born: first a daughter,

owl-eyed Tritogeneia, like her father in strength and wise counsel, but

when she was going to bear a son, proud of heart, king of gods and men;

(...)

This once more is something crucially congruent to the aforementioned masculine systematic

minimization of female power in constant fear of the reestablishment of matriarchal

empowerment and should function as a proof for the narrative yet to come. It is a proof of

definite awareness of the femininity as an immediate threat to the male reign.

Regardless of the devouring of Metis, Athena is born - without the presence of her mother,

solely from Zeus’s head:

He himself bore from his head owl-eyed Athena, the awesome,

fight-rousing, army-leading unweary mistress whose delight is din and

wars and battles

These verses highlight the almighty power of Zeus and can even be regarded as a

‘sublimation of procreation’ , as it is a ‘procreation from the head, the intellect’ , in 15 16

comparison to the violence-enforced birth of Aphrodite, thus conclutional another step further

in terms of motherhood denying patriarchal perspective. He, Zeus is the sole life giver to the

as ‘awesome’ described Athena, a figure born so, that she is ‘a goddess of war, supporting

the male cause, justifying murder and warfare’ . She is a product that emerges from directly 17

his head, a child to his thoughts, to his perception of the world, thus seemingly enslaving/

instrumentalizing her for his ideology and by that basically prohibiting her from access to her

motherly heir: the wisdom, that could potentially lead to a success over her father, as Athena

is partly her own mother.

To amplify the omnipotence of Zeus and his absolute finalized patriarchal reign, the battle

won over the matriarchat, another birth myth immediately follows the birth of Athena to

almost ‘ridicule’ the weakness of the opposite sex, illustrating the ultimate and concluded

shift from the primal state of the matriarchy to the patriarchy: The birth of Hephaistos:

15 Ewald Rumpf, S.34.. 16 Ewald Rumpf 17 Gerda Weiler, Der enteignete Mythos, eine feministische Revision der Archetypenlehre C. G. Jung und Erich Neumanns,Die deutsche Bibliothek, Königsstein/ Taunus: Helmer, 1996

but Hera, who was angry and at the odds with her husband, without

love’s union bore famous Hephaistos.

This, which at first glance, seems to be a proof for equality of the female and the male (giving

birth without a sexual act, from her own will power), is in fact the absolute opposite to the

glorious headbirth of Athena through Zeus.

Hephaistos, the god of blacksmithing, is born as a cripple and thrown of the Olymp from his

mother Hera in shame. This means, that from a woman, nothing profound, nothing

outstanding, no ‘complete’, ‘functional’ being (as the goddess Athena) can derive - portraying

Hephaistos somewhat as a foul fruit from a ‘rotten Uterus’.

(Later Zeus gives another sole birth without the presence of a mother: Dionysos, who is still

in embryonal state retrieved from his dying mother to be sued into Zeus’s thigh, that in this

case functions as a Uterus, making woman almost completely unnecessary)

And at this point, besides the many further befatherings, which are often conducted through

cunning and violent force,( which speaks a very clear language in itself: the open and

legitimized oppression of the women, the fulfillment of sexual desire and empowerment

against the will of a female character,) the theogony ends.

There is no more further development, the world order is stuck in this phase which embodies

the absolute patriarchat, denouncing women and violating their sexual integrity.

This is the fundament from which, as aforementioned, our present patriarchal hierarchy

stems. This is not a fully developed psyche, it is still conflicted, not being able to fully

progress from the trauma as it is prone to develop ‘mental illness’, which exalts this new

narrative as an absolute past-due imperative for the liberation of the female role from the

claws of long handed-down male oppression, that incarcerates us in a loop of stagnating and

unfruitful, dividing discussions.

How those findings are elaborated and reflected on in the movie

This chapter outlines more the second layer of the movie, the transcendental condition of a

grown ups’ reflection on the psyche of the plot. It is a transfer work of the past’s gender

problematic merging with the psychological deformations still valid in nowadays oppressive

patriarchal system. If the Athena chapter has sparked light on the ‘aesthetic’ setting,

functioning as an idea of the visual manifest of the movie, then this chapter is bound to

elucidate the importance of processing the frantic excess of the underdeveloped psyche of a

system.

In accordance with focusing on the concept of visually translating the antagonistic principles

of various natures ( female - male/ childhood - adulthood/ past - presence etc. ) highlighted in

the previous chapters to amplify the atmosphere of the protagonists discomfort, another

symptom of ‘adulthood’-intrudes the infantile landscape: the omnipresence of mental illness,

personified by the greek gods in my movie. Psychological phenomenons stemming from

present times.

If in contemporary cinema, gods are turned into people, subtily, quietly attributing behavioural

properties, then this movie is the opposite: a non-subtle, sickening, screaming opera, fueled

of symptoms of an ill system. To concretize and to bring this phenomenon to a boil, there will

be monologues of the gods before each ‘battle’ in which the self-portrayal contradicts the

reality of the psyche, revealed within an inner visual battle during the ping pong tournament,

propelled by very fast cuts.

Think of Zeus as a megalomaniac beast with a dick prosthesis, imagine his wife hera, an all

submissive, all domesticated descriptive pill addicted housewife. Then envision Hestia, the

god of the hearthfire as a backstabbing schizophrenic, some kind of version on eva braun

meets beatrix von storch and so forth and so on.

Also the role of the whistleblower becomes more evident, as it is a phenomenon of our times,

think of snowden or of manning, people that ‘put’ their lives on stake for the sake of truth.

This evokes the tale of prometheus bringing fire to the mortals, for that being punished by the

gods by being tied to a rock with an eagle constantly picking on the liver, leaving to the

conclusion to incorporate the equalization of whistleblower and prometheus. This means,

whenever a narrative gets too hard to visualize, a kind of ‘deus ex machina’ moment in the

form of a tied to a stone omnipotent narrator will take place to ensure no cesur within the tale.

To visualize the aforementioned, I made this little compositional overview:

(Picture 2)

Conclusion

All the aforementioned conclusion in both chapters - ‘Athena’ and the ‘research’ can just

provide a slight impression of where this movie is aiming towards.

To sum it up, there are some point that are crucially valid, which I tried to sketch out before:

The prevalence of antagonistic principles in all forms, starting with the most obvious one

being the battle of the sexes, aka. the principle of matriarchy vs. the principle of patriarchy.

This, combined with the objection of childhood vs. adulthood and/ or past vs. presence

confirms the choice of visual interpretation being settled in the somewhat feverish,

surrealistic nightmare of an infant that is invaded by the world of thought of a product of

society, allowing violent and explicit content to infiltrate the innocent world of phantasy.

There are countless possibilities stemming from this premise, which I want to keep on

exploring in my ongoing art practice.

As I consider this to be something more of a life long project, in the graduation I decided to

split this linear narrative into a segmented tale, shown within two different immersive

installations, in which the viewer will take the role of Athena. For me, this seems to be an

appealing way of showing my work and which I plan to ‘collect’ and shoot within future

residencies, always keeping in mind where I am and how to incorporate this in the scenes

chosen to shoot.

An example for this is our adventure in Athens, where I shot the scene of the audience,

which will be part of the graduation exhibition. Aware of Athens being the birthplace of

‘democracy’, I decided to shoot the scene of the audience watching the ping-pong-game.

It is the only scene, that has been shot outside, underneath a statue of Athena (which one

can’t see though) as this was just beneficial to my own reflection on this topics, but of course

will one day find its way into the trivia section of IMDB, whenever I am done with collecting

the footage and it’s assemblage into one coherent motion picture.

Bibliography

George Schwab, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985 Andrea Brocca, The ‘other’ Olympians before the storm: Athena, Dionysus and Hephaestus (from illustrations for Mythology for Queer Futures), London 2017 Paula Phillipson, Genealogie als mythische Form - Studien zur Theogonie des Hesiod Richard Caldwell, The origin of the gods - a psychoanalytic study of greek theogonic myth, Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford, 1989 Sigmund Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1980 Sigmund Freud . The Origins Of Psycho-Analysis: Letters To Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts And Notes: 1887-1902. Edited by Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, Ernst Kris. Translated by Eric Mosbacher and James Strachey. New York: Basic Books, 1954 Ernest Borneman, Das Patriarchat - Ursprung und Zukunft unseres Gesellschaftssystems, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, FFm, 1983 Gerda Weiler, Der enteignete Mythos, eine feministische Revision der Archetypenlehre C. G. Jung und Erich Neumanns,Die deutsche Bibliothek, Königsstein/ Taunus: Helmer, 1996 Ewald Rumpf, Das Muttertrauma in der griechischen Mythologie - eine psychologische Interpretation der Theogonia von Hesiod, Europäische Hochschulschriften, Verlag Peter Lang GmbH, FFM, 1985 Hesiod - Sämtliche Gedicht, translated by Walter Merg, Artemis Verlag, Zürich/ Stuttgart, 1970 Stephen Scully. Hesiod’ Theogony: from Near Eastern Creation Myths to Paradise Lost. Oxford University Press, 2015 unknown man from Togo, verbally transmitted by unknown friend of good friend André Breton, surrealistic Manifesto, Paris 1924 ‘Die schönsten Sagen des klassischen Altertum’, Gustav Schwab, Heidelberg, 1950

Picture 1 (‘Die schönsten Sagen des klassischen Altertum’, Gustav Schwab, Heidelberg, 1950) Picture 2 (‘Overview of the movie’, Selma Köran) Attachment 1 (Storyboard of Exit Athena) (Attachment for the movie synopsis - The storyboard of ‘Exit Athena’)