“Searching for the Oracle – Python’s Gaze”. A short film by Helle Siljeholm

The premiere of Searching for the Oracle – Python’s Gaze by Helle Siljeholm will take place on October 4, 2025, at the Lais Open-Air Cinema of the Greek Film Archive in Athens.

In Searching for the Oracle – Python’s Gaze, the mythological serpent Python – guardian of Gaia’s oracles at Delphi before being slain by Apollo – “returns” to contemporary Greece, sliding through its landscapes. Based on recent research into Delphi’s geomythological archive and situated at the intersection of choreography, visual arts, and speculative fiction, the 23-minute film reflects on one of the foundational myths of Western culture. While Apollo’s oracles were inscribed in stone to remain alive in the memory of future generations, Gaia’s oracles remain unwritten and forgotten.

In an era of climate and ecological crisis, Searching for the Oracle – Python’s Gaze unfolds as a choreographic and cinematic meditation on an anthropocentric landscape – revealed, at moments, as fragment and ruin. The original music and sound design are by internationally acclaimed sound artist ILIOS.

The film partly continues the research and performance of the same title, presented at Pi, the former Pikionis Pavilion in Delphi, on April 25, 2024, curated by Poka-Yio and Kika Kyriakakou. The film’s premiere is curated by Poka-Yio, with Melina Davia as project manager.

The screening is organized in collaboration with PCAI (Polygreen Culture & Art Initiative) and with the support of the Norwegian Embassy in Athens. A reception hosted by the Norwegian Embassy will follow.

Searching for the Oracle – Python’s Gaze forms part of Siljeholm’s doctoral artistic research, which explores mountains and geological formations as interwoven, more-than-human entities through the prisms of geological temporality and spatiality.

“Large earth formations, like mountains, have fed the imagination of our predecessors. Where we see Earth, they saw Titans and Giants fighting to shape the Cosmos. Now these Cosmological gods have fallen into oblivion, they lay silent and unsung. Forgotten. That connection with Earth is long lost”.

Coming across Helle Siljeholm’s The Mountain Body has been an experience with a profound effect on me. The scale of humans, hanging, crawling, and caressing the rocks awoke a long-lost ritual. The Mountain Body addresses mountains, and rocks as living entities, with curiosity, awe, respect, and affection. Today more than ever, we are in need of reconnecting with nature, recalibrating our values according to nature, decelerating our frenetic pace, and listening to its low frequency, its humming sounds and whispers, which command a less arrogant, less self-destructive way of life.

The invocation of the mountain gods, the spirit of the earth, is not yet another New Age escapist refuge. It is a metaphor and a powerful message for an active approach to nature. Currently, the landscape of so many territories has been ravaged and scarred by wildfires, floods, exploitation, and lack of respect. Connecting the Mountain Bodies through the Mountain range is like giving an electric pulse to the spine of Earth. Awakening the chthonic dragon, our collective conscience.”

Poka- Yio, artist and curator, co-founder of the Athens Biennale, about his experience as a spectator of The Mountain Body by Helle Siljeholm.

Script, Direction & Production: Helle Siljeholm
Co-direction, Editing, Color Grading & Design: Espen Haslene / Tundra*
Director of Photography: Fred Arne Wergeland
Music Composition / Sound Design: ILIOS

Performers – Co-creators:
Marianne Kjærsund
Pernille Holden

Site Curation & Research Advisors:
Poka-Yio
Dr. Kika Kyriakakou
Dimitris Karyofyllis

Script Advisors:
Amal Issa
Øyvind Paasche
Bojana Cvejić
Marwa Arsanios

Costume Design: Poka-Yio

With the Support of:
Fond for lyd og bilde, Arts Council Norway, Program for Artistic Research, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norwegian Embassy in Athens