Poliphilos

The Island Says No

Prologue: The Leftovers

Once. They. Were. Gods!

Now they lived on an abandoned island, because everybody who is somebody migrated to America.

Indeed, in the mid-19th century, as the great steamships churned across the Atlantic carrying empires, fortunes, and the promise of a new dawn and gold, the major deities migrated with them. Zeus was the first to pack his lightning into a steamer trunk (“FINALLY I’ll get that respect!”); Odin traded his ravens for passage on a cargo liner (“Keep an eye, because I sacrificed mine”); and the rest of the pantheons of Rome, Greece, Bulgaria, Egypt, India and whoever, sensing the shifting tides of new beliefs toward the New World, also boarded the waves of migration in search of fresh worshipers and the endless, hungry noise of American progress.

(Want to learn more about this? Read Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods”.)

Those who stayed didn’t buy the hype.

“Well screw that, I’m staying!”, said Anarchyx, the god of obscene graffiti, as she went to Barcelona spray paint more walls with “divine vandalism”.

But then, decades turned into centuries, centuries into silence and the graffiti flaked away.

The people on the islands forgot them.

Then the towns forgot.

Last, the maps stopped marking the sacred groves and the spring-fed wells, labeling them instead as “unimproved land” or “public property.”

And finally, hearing no prayers from anywhere anymore, these old gods retreated to an island off the Albanian coast, small but heavy enough to shift the wind.

They slept in the hollows of trees that had forgotten how to bear fruit. They drank from streams that tasted of rain and regret. Their powers, once mighty enough to command storms or raise mountains, had atrophied into petty quirks.

They could not summon lightning, but they could make a cloud linger over a construction site. They could not stop time, but they could make a clock run ten minutes slow.

They were ghosts of a culture that had sold its soul for a faster horse.

They had become the Poor and Betrayed.

The Acquisition of Nothing

Life continued quietly until one day, Svetlana Klumps arrived.

Carrying her green lacquered crocodile Lady Dior in a black SUV in a tanker of bulldozers and a signed decree from a corrupt minister, she was convinced that her plan to turn “this sacred island” she’d “stumbled upon” last summer into a luxury resort was her destiny. The island—a rugged, forgotten corner of the Albanian coast—was officially a natural reserve, but Svetlana saw it as a future luxury resort “massive in scale that no one has ever seen before”.

ADRIATIC LUXE was the first to report: “Jeff Sterling & Svetlana Klumps Land in Style! Is Illyria the Next Hamptons?” By ‘Chasing the Sun’ “In a move that has the global elite trembling with envy, the power couple has arrived to kickstart their visionary ‘Resort de Klumps’ of ultra luxury retreat for the rich and entitled. Sources say the project will feature ‘biodegradable luxury’ and ‘peasant-free zones’ for the discerning traveler. #IllyriaRising #JefLana #EcoChic”

Secretly, Svetlana’s motivation was twofold: she needed to settle a $200 million debt owed to a certain Gulf sheikh (payment to be made in “influence”), but also to establish her own sovereign micro-state, The Republic of Illyria, “Feminist Luxury State”.

She saw no obstacles, only opportunities to be monetized.

The local newspaper Iliria e Vërtetë saw nothing but obstacles:

“IS THIS THE DEVIL’S RESORT? WHY GOD WILL PUNISH THOSE WHO BUILD ON HOLY GROUND” By Stareqëz “The oligarchs have returned – but now they’re American! They bring their machines and their lies. The old stories warn us: ‘Do not dig where the roots sleep, or the earth will rise up and swallow you whole.’ Klumps call it progress; we call it sacrilege. The Orthodox Family Association of Albania stands against this invasion!”

While the headlines rolled, Svetlana’s husband, Jeff, was placed as her figurehead.

A famous tech bro as he were, he was also a man whose enthusiasm for “saving the planet” was matched only by his naivety. When Svetlana later that day introduced him to the island to cut the ribbon on Project Illyria, Jeff immediately suggested planting trees on the sacred grove. Svetlana indulged him, knowing the trees would distract him from the demolition. Jeff proposed importing them from Sumatra. “Exotic,” he called it. Svetlana smiled. “Perfect,” she thought. The locals would be too busy dealing with the invasive species to notice the bulldozers.

Soon, more cats were out of the bag when THE DAILY GRIND published “CAMEL ATE JEFF’S CONTRACT” By Viral Vibes “Rumors swirl that a certain Sheikh had sent a live camel as a welcome ‘gift’ to Svetlana, and as Jeff tried to pat its humps, the camel ate the island contract from his backpack. Now everyone is arguing about who owns the camel, because… the camel has the only copy of the contract. Also, why is there a hole in her yacht? Chaos seems to ensue wherever #JefLana goes!”

Well, look who’s here

All this happened to coincide while Poliphilos was passing by in his floating studio.

It was a repurposed fishing boat equipped with microphones, a digital audio workstation, loudspeakers and a number of maenads (followers of Dionysus) and local wines picked up from various Greek islands. They were just about to start recording backing harmonies for his new track “The Golden Faces of New York” when a frequency of resistance got recorded, too, and disturbed the sound mix.

Poliphilos instantly knew the source. It was the kind of hum that only comes from a world being bulldozed by fools.

He packed his gear and they set course for the coast. “Girls, let’s go”

As they approached the island, the group of Old Gods were waiting.

There were three of them, and none were impressed.

The first one, a scarred, battle-hardened Beast with a vocabulary that would make a sailor blush hated humans just on principle, especially the kind who wore pantsuits and yacht shoes.

The second was a wiry, old one from Alexandria and had a library-like memory and a grudge like a mountain. He loved to remind everyone of the ways humans had fucked up the world—the Roman plunder of Greece, the colonial looting of Africa, the oil spills of the 21st century. This Librarian had recorded it all and little library fires had nothing on him.

The Annihilist was a sleek, cynical creature who saw humanity as a joke and consumerism as the punchline. He scoffed at everything, especially luxury resorts, digital products, and the concept of private property.

The Beast spat water at Poliphilos as he turned down the engines.

“Well, fuck-a-doodle-doo, what do we have here? The pathetic two-faced land-dweller they call “The P”. You can turn right away. We don’t need your “artistic” bullshit here”.

“Yeah, remember the Venetian Arsenal? Humans turned that into a war machine. Now you want to turn this into a playground for the rich!”, Shouted the Librarian.

The Annihilist went: “Or, or: maybe you’ll Instagram it, turn it into a limited-edition NFT, and sell it to your fans? Except you have two of them and the other one’s your Messenger.”

Well, that’s quite a welcome speech, thought Poliphilos as he leaned over the board.

“I hear your frustration”, he said, “but it’s not what you think. I’m here to investigate a harmonic disturbance I just heard”

The Beast: “OOoooOOOh, another White Saviour Man. Hey, look at me, So enlight! Very refine! WoW!”

The Annihilist: “Want to stick your finger like you did in Karansebes?”

The Librarian: “Last time we trusted a human, a great library was burned.”

The Annihilist: “Yeah, and now you want to tokenize our ocean. What’s next, dolphin-themed cryptocurrency?”

“Dolphcoin! Dolphcoin!”, shouted the others.

“Listen, I’m on your side here”, said Poliphilos. “In fact, I’d like to ask YOU to help ME investigate.

The Librarian: “Hold your horses, shitface, ‘cuz we already know what’s going on”

The Beast: “Yeah, stupid. There’s a pair of two stupids fucking up the island already”

The Annihilist: “Yeah, some Jeff & Svetlana Stupid pair”

“Oh it’s those two whose vibration my equipment caught?”, said Poliphilos. “Well, they usually end up screwing everything up in their so called businesses, indeed.”

The Librarian: “Yeah, well, they’re well on their way already. Trying to build some stupid land-dweller resort for stupid rich people!”

The Beast: “Yeah, we don’t want any of you land-dwellers shitting on our island so you can fuck right off!”

“Listen, my snappy ancient friends”, said Poliphilos. “I happen to know those two and it is in my interest to also get them off this island. What do you say we work together to make them leave?”

“Oh yeah?”, asked The Librarian. “Like how?”

Poliphilos glanced at the maenads. Then he had an idea.

“What do you say about this: Venice Biennale. It’s about to start. We fill it with fake artists. Fake artists creating art “works” in real-time art projects that expose them and their greed to the entire world while the art elite is watching?”

The gods paused.

You could hear their bronze age cogs turning. The idea had merit.

The Beast grinned, its horns twitching: “You’re saying we get to screw with them and make them look like idiots and make art about it?”

The Librarian: “There’s a historical precedent for this kind of thing… the Trojan Horse. But we could inject more satire!”

The Annihilist: (doubtful) “It’s not a total disaster – yet. And: if we’re doing this, we’re doing it right. Recon. Intelligence. Theft. Maybe a little terrorism. And we are damaging their yacht. And we’re doing it The Old God style”

“You can do all that and more”, said Poliphilos. “You can sabotage them so bad that they’ll never get back. Make it a message to the rest of the 1%. Let’s make statements, folks!, said Poliphilos.

As the three gods spun away for a recon round, they relayed the plan to the rest of them.

It’s all downhill from here

The next day, stuff started happening.

First, technical problems.

The bulldozers sputtered, died and then sunk in a hole. Then the site flooded overnight, destroying most materials. Tools started vanishing. Svetlana dismissed it as bad luck—until the her Lady Dior started spawning frogs. Which was just before all water turned red in her hotel showers and taps. While she tried to dry herself, swarms of flies filled all rooms out of nowhere and she run in the corridors in panic.

When Jeff tried to photograph these events, sudden hailstorms pelted his face. When they thought it was all over and they tried to get some sleep, locusts started creeping in their bed at night driving them mad until they fled to their yacht, only to find it covered in not so divine graffiti.

“This is insane!”, shouted Svetlana, as the words “Whore of Babylon” gradually appeared on the windows of her suite.

Next came the legal nightmare.

A 12th-century property deed surfaced from Istanbul, produced by the Byzantine God of Clerks, that proved the land was bound to the “Spirit of the Moss”. Svetlana’s lawyers spent three weeks parsing the archaic Latin, only to conclude it was legally sound. She raged, but the deed held. The construction team, now demoralized and superstitious, refused to work. Svetlana responded by threatening to sue the nation, but the locals—led by a stubborn fisherman and his sharp-tongued wife – replied by pushing her one remaining bulldozer off a cliff.

Jeff, desperate to “fix” the situation, offered the locals 3D prints of themselves as compensation. The offer was met with blank stares, then mockery. A fake press release circulated, announcing Jeff’s “demotion to mascot” for the Republic of Illyria. Public opinion shifted. Svetlana, furious, ordered the demolition of the island’s temple to make way for the resort’s centerpiece: an Infinity Pool.

That neither went nowhere. The explosives failed to detonate. Instead, they emitted a low-frequency hum, and the workers fell asleep standing up, then sunk in a hole that filled with water. Svetlana’s master key card was stolen and replaced with a leaf. When she tried to unlock the site’s gates, she slipped in the mud—mud that had appeared overnight—and landed in the middle of the village square, where the locals and workers had gathered, dancing around her. Somebody sold American Oligarch advent calendars shouting: “Open a window to see a stupid fall out!”

The Venice Biennale

Meanwhile, Poliphilos and the gods moved to phase two.

They started exposing Svetlana’s and Jeff’s plans to the entire world through “real-time art” on the Venice Biennale.

The Beast hanged a 20-foot replica of the Byzantine land deed on Piazza San Marco, while digitally enhanced events from the construction site were live streamed on a massive screen next to it. Meanwhile, audience was invited to decorate the margins of the deeds with their most vandalist graffiti as “A message to the 1%”.

The Librarian edited a music video of Jeff’s and Svetlana’s shortcomings on the island and projected it onto the US Pavilion from where it spread into every social media as viral video. The Chaos Sisters (the maenads) stood at a nearby DJ booth, live-remixing on screen video of the audience’s facial expressions to the various recorded screams of Svetlana.

The Annihilist’s Jackhammer Lullaby played on loop in the sound art section, with Jeff’s and Svetlana’s curses as the sound effects. At the same time, visitors could play various physical and digital versions of Whack’A’Mole where the moles were the spitting image renditions of Svetlana and Jeff together with their closest friends.

On day two, the gods flooded the US Pavilion’s courtyard pool with a neon-green swamp and blue flaking base paint. A continuous performance art, where police kept arresting a biker in slow motion accusing him of sabotaging the pool was enacted around the pavilion. At the other end the water pours endlessly downward into a dark shaft from which the faint sound of Svetlana’s furious hijacked conference calls echoed upward. Every time “natural resort” was mentioned, a single rubber duck floated on the surface.

During the final week, a soprano performed Svetlana’s actual legal threats as a dramatic aria inside a sound installation, accompanied by bulldozer and a single piccolo. Printed programmes contained the lyrics translated into Italian, Albanian, and “corporate.” A footnote thanked Svetlana’s lawyers for the creative material.

The art world was confused, delighted, but also slightly terrified.

While watching all this from the Chinese Pavilion, a melody started repeating in Poliphilos’s head. “Hmmmm….”, he thought. “What if I mix all these to a club track I’ve been writing with the maenads together with the various reactions of Jeff and Svetlana as well as those of the members of the audience? Might it work?”

(You can hear the end result in “Poliphilos’s Party For The Poor And Betrayed” and decide for yourself.)

They Tried To Cross The Rubicon

That evening, the gods, back on the island, rewatched the chaos from their screens donated by Poliphilos.

The Beast: “That’s not bad.”

The Librarian: “A masterclass in asymmetrical warfare.”

The Annihilist: “And the irony? People pay millions to see this crap in a museum.”

The next morning, Svetlana left. She claims the project is “unviable due to geological instability.” Jeff stayed behind for a day, confused, taking selfies with the villagers. Eventually they got tired of him and put him on a bus to nowhere.

The gods flipped their tails, fins, horns and other appendices in approval.

The Librarian: “So. Next target?”

Anarchyx: “There’s always another empire to topple.”

The Beast: (sighing) “God, I hate that I’m starting to like you, P.”

Poliphilos smiled, pocketed the leaf-key, and said: “Ok, but which god are we talking about?”

They nodded together, because they all knew which one.