Alternative Imaginaries of Cyprus: Space and Narrative Re/construction in Local Music Video Production

The article offers a close reading of music videos created in the Republic of Cyprus during the past two decades, focusing specifically on the ways the audiovisual texts represent space and (re)construct narratives in/of the Greek Cypriot context. Building on existing work in the area of lens-based media studies, namely cinema and photography, the article firstly examines how music videos co-exist and converse with other types of audiovisual representations of the island of Cyprus. Secondly, it presents a classification of local music videos, based on how such creative outputs represent Cyprus as a locale. In doing so, it highlights the ways in which alternative visual treatments might, consciously or otherwise, speak back to and rewrite narratives associated with specific places. The videos are also examined in relation to the lyrical content of the songs and the music genres they belong to. Our work contributes to the expanding body of research on the popular music scape of the island, particularly concentrating on the transgressive dynamic of strands of the Greek Cypriot independent music scene. This is the first study that offers a close examination of local music video production, which we place in the growing scholarly debates about how recent artistic expression in the Republic of Cyprus destabilises dominant representations of space and identity and produces new aesthetics of the Cypriot experience.