Since the destruction of the Great Lighthouse of Alexandria, in a series of earthquakes during the Middle Ages, many people have searched for its remains in an effort to reconstruct the histories of this lost wonder of the ancient world. In this live documentary, Ellie Ga recounts her own research journey, drawing upon an archive of photographs, video footage, documents, interviews, and artifacts. Eureka, A Lighthouse Play was commissioned in 2014 by EMPAC—The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Ellie Ga is a New York City-born artist and writer. She is a recipient of the 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship in Film and Video. Her narrative based-videos and performances reflect a passion for multidisciplinary knowledge exchange told through everyday conversations, poetic side steps, and obsessive research. Her wide-ranging investigations address pressing social issues—often in unexpected contexts—from the submerged ruins of the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria and the charting of the quotidian in the frozen Arctic Ocean to messages in bottles, both as tools for studying oceans currents and as a metaphor for exile. In her most recent work, Quarries, stories of resistance are extracted from overlooked surfaces. Her work was featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial of American Art and is in numerous public collections including Bard College’s Hessel Museum of Art.