Marianna Simnett’s Leda Was a Swan unfolds as an enmeshment of flesh and feathers, in which an ancient violent myth is unravelled as an embodied story of pleasure. The artwork is newly conceived for Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters, and combines stage and costume design, video, performance, sound and artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on the commonly defined “erotic” fresco of Leda and the Swan retrieved in 2018 in the House of Leda of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. On the occasion of the artist’s Digital Fellowship the artwork is presented online together with a generous collection of backstage photographic documentation unveiling the production stages.
Renowned for her exploration of the body as a site of transformation, Simnett has traced the mythic actions of Jupiter – who notably metamorphosed into a swan to deceive Leda and violate her – disguising herself as both Leda and the swan; and employing a custom AI model to generate an animated sequence accompanied by a flute-based soundtrack, also performed by Simnett and driven by her breath. Both the slow-motion, eerie images and the melancholic soundtrack lure the viewer right into the heart of the classical myth while simultaneously uprooting and twisting it into a new tale. In Simnett’s hands, victim and aggressor wrangle phlegmatically before imploding into one, or perhaps becoming dismembered and stitched back together into a visceral lump (both analogue and digital) made of soft textures and pronounced curves. Complying with feminist reinterpretations of the myth, the swan is defeated in the video, its neck theatrically covered with blood, reclining softly as the spotlight is directed towards Leda’s psychological state. The difference being, in this specific instance, that the monstrous other is Leda herself. Leda Was a Swan seemingly functions as a statement to be read in archetypical terms, abiding by those universal symbols and patterns that exist within the collective unconscious and are expressed through myths and tales across cultures and epochs. Rather than depicting the aggressor as “other”, Simnett integrates the external figure unsettlingly into the self. This allows for the emergence of primordial and potentially morally shocking feelings, letting innate and inherited repressed thoughts find expression while also moving beyond gender-based expectations and societal anxieties linked to centuries of patriarchy that have historically shaped the representations and narratives of ancient myths.
Interestingly, Simnett’s references also include vaudeville techniques such as shadow theatre, puppetry and ventriloquism, where the opposing roles of tamer and tamed are playfully embodied by one single actor. The artist played master and puppeteer within the same production process, operating the swan puppet’s wings with one hand, her other hand becoming its beak and neck. The master-puppeteer dichotomy is further echoed through the use of AI, and the wrestling for control between human and machine. Simnett skirmishes with AI’s tendencies, such as its disregard for narrative chronology, its preference for frontal viewpoints, and its overly sexualised forms of femininity. While embracing AI’s potential for metamorphosis, fusion and psychedelia, Simnett rejected early tests using text prompts, – which produced cliche images of girls and swans, here shown among the behind the scenes images included in the Digital Fellowship – instead training the AI model with entirely self-produced images which were then regurgitated by the machine as an effort to recreate the original myth. Here a zombified femininity, far removed from the highly sexual stereotypes populating AI’s imagery on the internet, delivers a certain elegance with darkly amusing undertones. Frivolousness is often a vital tool within Simnett’s artistic practice, employed as an alluring strategy for dragging the viewer right into the artwork, before psychological intensity kicks in. Halfway through the video, the head of the swan (or hand of Leda) is shown intimately close to her pubic region, theatricalised with a merkin. The allusion to masturbation turns non-consensual penetration into pleasure, employing an irreverence that mocks the sensual, even seductive, dimension which long invested the myth of Leda and the Swan. This is the only moment where the set, carefully designed following the interiors depicted in the Pompeian fresco, shifts to a natural environment, as if opening a portal or an ecstatic experience.
It is not the first time that the artist has employed AI to re-interpret Greek myths: Blue Moon (2022) was dedicated to Athena and her discarded flute, while GORGON (2023) recontextualised the mythological entity into a contemporary fairy tale of love, envy, power and empathy in the age of machine learning. Simnett loves voracious monsters, whose rather natural brutality lies within animality and femininity. The same swan has made previous appearances such as in the chimeric Hyena and Swan in the Midst of Sexual Congress (2019), a large scale sculpture representing an improbable sexual encounter between the two animals, the swan being the dominating figure. In symbolic terms, this creature is a liminal bird, able to live in water and on land, spirit and matter. Its long phallic neck and its rounded, silky body led alchemists to associate this with the union of opposites. The psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung interpreted the swan as a symbol of transcendence, a primordial unity in which male and female are unconsciously conjoined, and thus not consciously differentiated.
Overall, Leda Was a Swan rewrites a myth which, despite its many interpretations, still resonates within contemporary gender ideologies, proving the Archaeological Park of Pompeii as a site of layered and timeless histories, where experimenting with the ethics of overwriting means bequeathing alternative poetics of existence. Simnett hijacks the interpretations of the stories we are told, prompting a renewed imagination that fills in ambiguous gaps whilst maintaining a certain visceral opacity and a muddy digital materiality. The mute characters of the video, as well as the gentle moments of pause within the soundtrack, and the hypnotic quality of the animation, allow for a haunting realisation: Leda has always been the swan, we just didn’t follow our instinct. CA

1. Image

Discovery of the fresco of Leda and the Swan (detail), 2018
photography
Courtesy the Archaeological Park of Pompeii
Photo: Cesare Abbate

2. Video

Marianna Simnett
Leda Was a Swan, 2024
video loop, sound, colour
Courtesy the Artist and Société, Berlin

Home Page Image: Marianna Simnett, Leda Was a Swan (video still), 2024. Courtesy the Artist and Société, Berlin