The term dramaturgy derives from the Greek words drama (action) and ergon (work). In its most basic sense, dramaturgy is concerned not with what a story tells, but with how action is organized, how meaning is produced, and under which
conditions a narrative becomes intelligible. From this perspective, dramaturgy is not a tool for stabilizing stories, but a practice for examining how they are constructed, repeated, and made durable over time.
This is why a dramaturgical approach has been used for Well of Love. The legend of Omar and Fatima has circulated for centuries as a concise and emotionally resonant story. Through repetition, it has acquired the density of a myth. Yet this
same repetition has also simplified the narrative, smoothing over tensions, exclusions, and silences embedded within it. Dramaturgy enters here not to reinterpret the legend symbolically, but to ask a more fundamental question: how does
this story come to be told in this way, and at what cost?
Rather than treating the legend as a single narrative to be revised or corrected, the exhibition approaches it through the concept of diffraction, inspired by philosopher and physicist Karen Barad. Diffraction describes a physical
phenomenon in which waves encounter obstacles or openings and produce patterns of interference. Unlike reflection, which reproduces the same image, diffraction emphasizes difference, deviation, and overlap. Applied dramaturgically,
diffraction allows the legend to be approached not as a stable source with multiple representations, but as a field that changes shape through each intervention.
In Well of Love, the artworks function as diffractive readings. Each work does not illustrate the story from a different angle; instead, it interferes with the narrative, producing shifts, distortions, and new relations that alter how the
legend can be perceived.
One such interference appears in Ooze. Fatima occupies a central position in the legend, yet she is never recognized as an agent within it. The work does not attempt to restore her voice retrospectively. Instead, it exposes the
structural conditions that prevented her from ever speaking within the narrative. Breath, fragmented words, sound, and light circulate through the space without forming a complete utterance. What emerges is not a recovered voice, but a
sustained disruption in the story’s flow.
A different diffraction occurs in Echoes, where the romantic narrative is interrupted by sound. The repetitive strikes of pickaxes recall the physical labor that the legend renders invisible. Omar’s singular devotion is unsettled by the
presence of unnamed workers and the brutal reality of digging under conditions of war. Sound here operates not as illustration, but as pressure—forcing another layer of the story to surface without resolving it.
Palimpsest introduces a temporal diffraction. The past does not appear as something concluded, but as something that fails to settle. Holographic images hover between presence and disappearance, while fragmented sounds refuse narrative
continuity. Rather than revealing a hidden truth beneath the legend, the work stages the persistence of unresolved traces—histories that were overwritten but never fully erased.
Under the heading Ground, the legend is diffracted through acts of subtraction. Instructions for a Love Story dismantles the narrative architecture of the legend itself, revealing it as a sequence assembled through formulas, corrections,
and systems of instruction. The story appears not as inherited truth, but as a constructed structure stabilized through repetition and authority. Kopec, by contrast, removes the castle literally. By erasing the monument from postcard
images, the work displaces the human-centered anchor of the story and redirects attention to geological time. What remains is the hill—an indifferent substrate that predates and will outlast the legend itself.
The exhibition’s sixth work, Rewrite the Well, extends this dramaturgical logic into a participatory field. Here, collective authorship does not produce harmony or consensus. It produces interference. As visitors rewrite the well, the
story fractures into overlapping and uneven versions. Participation does not unify the narrative; it keeps it unstable. History emerges not as a shared agreement, but as a contested and ongoing process of narration.
Through these diffractive operations, Well of Love does not seek to replace one version of the legend with another. Instead, it treats dramaturgy as a method of keeping the story open—a practice that resists closure, coherence, and singular
meaning. The legend is not retold; it is unsettled. What remains is not a new myth, but a field of interferences in which the conditions of storytelling themselves become visible.
