Psychoulis works

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2012-02-12T00:40:00.000-08:00

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Alexandros-Psychoulis/21652034432

ΤΑ ΝΥΧΙΑ ΤΟΥ ΘΕΟΥ

2012-02-12T00:36:00.000-08:00

Video tour de la exposición El intervalo luminoso

2011-05-22T23:28:00.000-07:00

2011-04-04T01:32:00.000-07:00

<em>The Luminous Interval</em>: Artists' Talk: "Artists participating in The Luminous Interval: The D.Daskalopoulos Collection talk about their works on view in the exhibition."

2011-03-24T09:53:00.001-07:00

AILANTUS ALTISSIMA

2010-10-25T23:45:00.000-07:00

Gallery Zina Athanassiadou
Thessaloniki, P.P.Germanou 5
Opening 19 November 2010
http://www.zinaathanassiadou.com/

PARAMETRIC BERG

2010-05-10T07:22:00.000-07:00

Stylography in paper

Η ΓΥΝΑΙΚΑ ΤΗΣ ΖΑΚΥΝΘΟΣ / ΚΕΦΑΛΑΙΟΝ 11

2009-10-16T02:08:00.000-07:00

9. Και αυτή η δεύτερη φωνή ήτανε ενού γέρου που απέθανε και είχα γνωρίσει. Και εθαύμαξα γιατί ήταν η πρώτη φορά που άκουσα την ψυχή του ανθρώπου να τραυλίζει. Και άκουσα ένα τρίτο μουρμουρητό που εφαινότουνα μία φυσηματιά μες στον καλαμιώνα, όμως δεν άκουσα λόγια.
10 Και εκοίταξα ανάερα για να ξανοίξω πούθεν εβγαίνανε αυτές οι φωνές, και δεν είδα παρά τους δύο χοντρούς και μακρίους πέρονους που εβγαίνανε από τον τοίχο, στους οποίους ακουμπούσε ο καθρέφτης δεμένος από τη μέση.
11. Και αναστενάζοντας βαθιά, καθώς κάνει ο ανθρωπος οπού βρίσκεται γερασμένος, αγρίκησα μυρωδία από λείψανο.

REMAP 2

2009-07-05T14:45:00.000-07:00

ΕΜΣΤ Διευρυμένες Οικολογίες 2009

2009-07-05T14:37:00.000-07:00

ΤΟ ΔΩΜΑΤΙΟ (Fragility makes me special)

2009-03-15T10:20:00.000-07:00

Επιμέλεια: Θάνος Σταθόπουλος

a.antonopoulou.art 11/3-11/4 २००९।Διαστάσεις:5,३०म्क्ष१२म। Υλικό: 30km πλαστικό κορδόνι, μέταλο, ήχος

Οι συγκυρίες πέφτουν πάνω μου. Ή εγώ;

Ένα κύμα εισβάλλει στο δωμάτιο.

Ένα μαύρο οικόσιτο κύμα.

Η θεωρία του μοναχικού κύματοςΗ μόνιμη πλευρική μετατόπιση ενός στερεού ορίου κατά ένα πεπερασμένο διάστημα προκαλεί μια ύβωση της ελεύθερης επιφάνειας και τη διαμόρφωση ενός μοναχικού κύματος με θεωρητικά άπειρο μήκος. Στη φύση δύσκολα εμφανίζονται καθαρά μοναχικά κύματα (συνήθως τα μοναχικά κύματα ακολουθούνται από συρμούς κυματισμών μεγαλύτερης συχνότητας που ακολουθούν τον κύριο παλμό (λόγω διασποράς).Οι κυματισμοίΟι κυματισμοί έχουν τυχαία (στοχαστική) μορφή που μπορεί να περιγραφεί σαν άθροιση αρμονικών συνιστωσών (των οποίων όμως η εξέλιξη στο χώρο και το χρόνο είναι μη γραμμική και εξαρτάται από μεταξύ τους μη γραμμικές αλληλεπιδράσεις). Σαν στοχαστικά μεγέθη ακολουθούν συγκεκριμένους πιθανολογικούς νόμους κατανομής και καθορίζονται με την περιγραφή βασικών μεγεθών.Χριστόφορος Κουτίτας Εισαγωγή στην Παράκτια τεχνική και ταλιμενικά έργα, 1994

«Ό,τι διαβαίνει, παρά την εκτυφλωτική του κοινοτοπία, συνιστά αίνιγμα»
Βαίνω
Απο-βαίνω
Παρα-βαίνω
Δια-βαίνω
Επι-βαίνω

Στα σανσκριτικά το ρήμα μένω στην προστακτική είναι άμαμαν και σημαίνει μένω ακίνητος. Τι μένει ακίνητο; Πριν απ’ όλα, το σπίτι. Ως εκ τούτου, η διαμονή προσέλαβε χαρακτηριστική σημασία και πάνω της πλέχτηκαν όλα τα γνωστά παράγωγα:
Δια-μένωΠαρα-μένωΑνα-μένωΑπο-μένωΕπι-μένωΕμ-μένω
Κωστής Παπαγιώργης Περί μνήμης, 2008

Απεναντίας η διάρκεια,
Απ’ τη μεριά της, επιθυμεί την παύση κάθε αμφιταλάντευσης
Του κύματος
Ευγένιος Αρανίτσης Η θάλασσα, 1998

Δεν ξέρω αν είδα κάποιο όνειρο ή μάλλον δεν θυμάμαι κάτι ιδιαιτέρως, αλλά όταν ξύπνησα μύριζε σήψη, σαν κάποιο ζώο να ’χει ψοφήσει στο δωμάτιο ή σαν ψάρι. Άνοιξα το παράθυρο: η αμυγδαλιά είχε βγάλει άνθη. Είδα τη γάτα να τρίβεται πάνω στο χαλί και ησύχασα. Ανέβηκα στη σοφίτα - εκτός από σκόνη δεν είχε τίποτε άλλο· (παρεμπιπτόντως βρήκα ένα βιβλίο που έψαχνα μετά μανίας και ήταν αδύνατον να το ανακαλύψω). Κατέβηκα τη σκάλα χωρίς να καταλαβαίνω τι συμβαίνει. Ανακατεύτηκα και μπήκα γρήγορα στο μπάνιο. Όταν βγήκα, ο ταχυδρόμος άφηνε την αλληλογραφία στο κουτί. Με χαιρέτισε ανύποπτος για ό,τι συνέβαινε στο σπίτι· η μόνη παρατήρηση που έκανε ήταν ότι έχω μαυρίσει, αλλά απ’ όσο ήξερε εγώ δεν πήγαινα ποτέ στη θάλασσα, χάρηκε πάντως που μετέβαλα, είπε.
Playback, 2003

Οι συμπτώσεις μόνο μπορούν να σε διδάξουν
Επιχειρείς λοιπόν να κατασκευάσεις μια σύμπτωση και καταλήγεις να κατασκευάζεις ένα αίνιγμα.

Τζέιμς Τάρελ
Πέρασε ο καιρός που εύρισκα τους τeλειομανείς δυσκοίλιους και αργούς.
Επισκέφθηκα ένα υπόσκαφο μουσείο σε κάποιο νησί της Ιαπωνίας, φτιαγμένο από τον Ταντάο Άντο. Ένα μουσείο για τρεις μόνο καλλιτέχνες. Αν και υπόσκαφο είχε αποκλειστικά φυσικό φωτισμό. Άνοιγε την αυγή και έκλεινε με τη δύση του ήλιου. Μπήκα -κυριολεκτικά- μέσα σε ένα έργο του Τζέιμς Τάρελ. Εγώ, με δύο άλλους επισκέπτες. Έχασα την αίσθηση του χώρου και του χρόνου, σα να έζησα έναν υπέροχο θάνατο σε μπλε φως. Και οι τρεις είχαμε μια παρόμοια παραίσθηση. Μπορεί τίποτε να μη συνέβαινε αν δεν υπήρχε το πριν και το μετά. Θυμάμαι αποσπασματικά το πριν και το μετά. Διέσχισα έναν ιμπρεσιονιστικό κήπο, έβγαλα τα παπούτσια μου στο ημίφως, τα τοποθέτησα κάτω από έναν ξύλινο πάγκο, ένιωσα το κρύο δάπεδο, μια νεαρή λευκοφορεμένη Γιαπωνέζα υποκλίθηκε και μου έδειξε το δρόμο. Κοίταξα ένα κομμάτι ουρανού μέσα από ένα τετράγωνο άνοιγμα.

Η δική μου μνήμη
Προσπαθώ να θυμηθώ ένα θεόρατο κύμα που σκάει στην αποβάθρα. Η εικόνα ανασύρεται στη μνήμη μου, στο παρόν δηλαδή, όμως είναι ακίνητη χωρίς να μου προσφέρει τη δυνατότητα περίοπτης παρατήρησης. Τη βλέπω από την οπτική γωνία που κάποτε μου είχε προσφερθεί στην αποβάθρα του Βόλου.

Την εικόνα του κύματος δεν την είχα δει ποτέ έτσι. Ο αμφιβληστροειδής μου δεν έπαιξε σπουδαίο ρόλο στην συγκεκριμένη περίπτωση.
Κάποια πειράματα σε εικονικό περιβάλλον στάθηκαν σημαντικά.
Η τελική εικόνα γεννήθηκε στο σκοτάδι. Από βέκτορες και από λογικά συμπεράσματα. Σαν την εικόνα ενός ονείρου που προσπαθούμε να ανασυντάξουμε όταν ξυπνάμε.

Το δωμάτιο και η τετράγωνη λογική
Τυχαίνουν νύχτες που η κόρη μου κάνει ανήσυχο ύπνο. Ξυπνώ και την βρίσκω να κλαίει σιγανά, όρθια πάνω από το κεφάλι μου. «Υπάρχει κάτι στο δωμάτιό μου, μπαμπά» λέει κι εγώ της απαντώ πως δεν υπάρχει τίποτα, πως μάλλον είδε ένα άσχημο όνειρο και πως πρέπει να επιστρέψει στο κρεβάτι της και να κοιμηθεί. Ποτέ δεν σηκώθηκα να πάω να διαπιστώσω ο ίδιος την ορθότητα των λόγων μου. Σκέφτομαι πως αν πραγματικά υπήρχε κάτι θα ερχόταν και στο δικό μου δωμάτιο.

δωμάτιο, το [δomátio]: καθένας από τους κύριους χώρους στους οποίους είναι χωρισμένο ένα σπίτι, ένα διαμέρισμα ή γενικά ένα κτίριο όπου εργάζονται ή κατοικούν άνθρωποι.

Η μνήμη των υλικών
Υπάρχουν υλικά ή στοιχεία που διαθέτουν μορφική μνήμη και άλλα που δεν διαθέτουν καθόλου, όπως το νερό για παράδειγμα. Το βάζεις σ’ ένα ποτήρι και το νερό μοιάζει εντελώς με το εσωτερικό του ποτηριού. Το αδειάζεις στο τραπέζι και το νερό ξεχνάει αμέσως ότι πριν λίγο έμοιαζε με το εσωτερικό του ποτηριού.

3D
Αναπαριστώ το κύμα στις τρεις διαστάσεις με έναν ανορθόδοξο τρόπο. Το πλέκω, εκατοστό το εκατοστό, με πλαστικό κορδόνι και το αναπτύσσω στους τρεις άξονες της χωρικής μου πραγματικότητας. Αυτό παίρνει πολύ χρόνο, αλλά έτσι κι αλλιώς χρειάζεσαι πολύ χρόνο για να καταλάβεις ένα κύμα που σκάει στην αποβάθρα.

Κάποιοι μιλούν με δέος για την καταστροφική δύναμη των κυμάτων· όχι οι σέρφερ, φυσικά. Αν όλοι ήμαστε σέρφερ δεν θα άκουγες κουβέντα για την καταστροφική δύναμη των κυμάτων.

Η Ιστορία της μουσικής
Ήμουν σε μία παραλία. Το μόνο που μπορώ να θυμηθώ είναι πως χιόνιζε· γιατί δεν έβλεπα καθόλου τα νερά.

επανάληψη, η [epanálipsi]: η ενέργεια ή το αποτέλεσμα του επαναλαμβάνω ~ μιας λέξης / μιας φράσης / μιας πράξης ~ του ίδιου λάθους.

Η επανάληψη λαμβάνει χώρα στο νερό. Το κύμα γνωρίζει τους αστερισμούς και τη σελήνη. Την περιοδικότητα των φαινομένων. Την ευσπλαχνία της άρσης. (Refresh.) Την ωστική δύναμη. Το παγόβουνο του δωματίου. Η επανάληψη λαμβάνει χώρα στο δωμάτιο. Το δωμάτιο υπομένει. Συστέλλεται και διαστέλλεται. Συμπτύσσει τους νόμους. Αποστρέφεται την αφορμή. Υποσκάπτει το αίνιγμα. Μετακομίζει σε άλλο δωμάτιο.

Η Ιστορία της μουσικής
Αυτός που κατεβαίνει το δρόμο είμαι εγώ, από μια άποψη. Τι, μέσα στην τύχη της μέρας; σκέφτομαι. Ωστόσο, σε λίγο απαριθμώ: γυναίκα, πόδια, μια τσάντα, η θάλασσα. (Θα φταίει ο μετεωρισμός μου ασφαλώς ή ο συμπιεσμένος χρόνος.) Αλλά, πιο κάτω: η γάτα είναι γάτα. Το επαληθεύω: γάτα, πλανόδιος, μπαλκόνι, ένα δέντρο. Τύχη σαν όνειρο, λέω· λέω: ονειρεύομαι την τύχη: γάτες, μπαλκόνια, η θάλασσα, δέντρα.

Η αγωνία της σταθερής δομής
Το πέρασμα μίας τυχαίας μονάδας εντός ενός προδιαγεγραμμένου χώρου εγκαθιδρύει μία νέα δομή, ρευστή, πλην συμπαγή, ένα μνημείο της τύχης: βάλλει εναντίον-

Βάλλω
Επι-βάλλω
Υπο-βάλλω
Ανα-βάλλω
Δια-βάλλω

«Βγάλε με από ‘δω· αισθάνομαι σα να με πλάκωσε όλο το δωμάτιο».
Ήταν το πιο γεμάτο δωμάτιο. Πόσες χιλιάδες σπίτια είχαν χυθεί εκεί πέρα; Τραπέζια και καρέκλες σε μια ξύλινη πλημμύρα.
Ντίλαν Τόμας Περιπέτειες στο εμπόριο δέρματος, 1953

Ένα κύμα που πλέκεται είναι ένα κύμα που πλέκεται και κυκλώνει.

Κυματισμοί, πραγματικοί κυματισμοί, πραγματικοί κυματισμοί και ένα ήσυχο χρώμα. Προσεκτικοί και κυκλικοί, πήζουν και σοβαρεύουν, όλοι οι λογαριασμοί και η ανάμειξη, για όλα μία υπόθεση είναι δικαιολογημένη, αν γίνει κλήση θα υφίσταται φωνή.
Γερτρούδη Στάιν «Δωμάτια», Τρυφερά κουμπιά, 1914

Σηκώθηκε απότομα από την καρέκλα, χωρίς να ξέρει ακριβώς γιατί. Απ’ το παράθυρο είδε τα ξεραμένα φύλλα του χειμώνα. Μπήκε στο δωμάτιο:

Αλέξανδρος Ψυχούλης - Θάνος Σταθόπουλος

Territual PAOU

2008-08-19T11:55:00.000-07:00

Συμμετέχουν:
Μαρία Παπαδημητρίου, Ζάφος Ξαγοράρης, Θάνος Σταθόπουλος, Ζήσης Κοτιώνης, Φοίβη Γιαννίση, Νάντια Καλαρά, Μαίρη Ζυγούρη, Μαρία Χατζηνικολάου, Σταυρούλα Παπαδάκη, Ανδρέας Πλατής, Αλκυόνη Μπουχαλάκη, Σοφία Ντόνα, Τζελίνα Πάλλα, Ηλέκτρα Μπάδα
Επιμέλεια:
Αλέξανδρος Ψυχούλης

http://territualpaou.blogspot.com/
http://www.monipaou.gr/

2008-02-06T04:11:00.001-08:00

mermaidFINDER

2008-01-30T10:04:00.000-08:00

το καθημερινό χρηστικό αντικείμενο, ερμηνεία και χρήση

Μεχρι 29 Φεβρουαρίου 2007
ΖΕΟΝ
Σαχτούρη 8-10 Πλατεία Κουμουνδούρου

EXTRANYMIA

2007-12-06T02:29:00.001-08:00

EXTRANYMIA is a participatory platform for the creation of new place-names and legends, which could be developed in any part of the planet. EXTRANYMIA #1 focuses on the wider area of Volos and Pelion. I asked some friends who know the area to pinpoint a place that has a particular importance for them. I asked them to give the place a name, to write a few words about it, and to specify –even inadequately– its geographical location.

Points define an area and offer a new reading of the landscape. Conventional borders have no significance here.
Alexandros Psychoulis

From a starting point of family and natural surroundings, Alexandros Psychoulis creates works of a strongly autobiographic character. They are frequently personal narratives, contrived stories, confidential desires and unspeakable repressions, with the intention of himself becoming the viewer of his life and of redefining his identity. The work ΕXΤRΑΝΥΜΙΑ#1 is a map presenting people’s personal narratives, revolving in the broader Volos and Pelion Area. The choice of location is not accidental. The artist’s close ties with the place, as well as the “painful dislodgement”*, as he himself calls his leaving Volos at an early age have constituted the subject of a number of his art works. Herein, the ‘dislodged’ artist attempts a re-familiarization with the area and concocts a fresh bond that leads him to a different viewpoint of the place of his one-time experience.

The map he creates does not entertain the traveller – as a tourist guide would – pointing out idyllic spots and historical monuments, nor does it sterilize the sites by abstraction of every personal trace. Psychoulis, on the contrary, collects the stories of people who have an experiential relation to the place, with the objective of re-mapping the area through human readings and memories. The narratives evolve on the borderline of real sites and mythical constructs, drawing the framework for an alternative approach to the area. Passing through abandoned factories, ruined industrial works and installations for animal feed, we are guided to secret hiding-holes, far-off clearings and personal ‘refuges’, traversing a place as real as it is at the same time imaginary.

The place-names each narrator is called upon to invent lends these spots a self-existent life all of their own. This record does not however ensure the places’ preservation, but ‘protects’ them and immortalizes them, at least in the human psyche. ΕXΤRΑΝΥΜΙΑ#1 constitutes a notional map, a psychogram extrapolating the places’ stories to a sentimental route, wherein the known meets the unknown, the evident the concealed and the real the metaphysical. The work is brought into action outside the exhibition, at the moment when the candidate traveller will accomplish this ‘heretical’ sort of tour.

Daphne Vitali

* Alexandros Psychoulis, tags: key words, Futura Editions, Athens 2007, p. 12.

ΕΜΣΤ

Με σημείο αφετηρίας το οικογενειακό και το φυσικό περιβάλλον του, ο Αλέξανδρος Ψυχούλης δημιουργεί έργα με έντονο αυτοβιογραφικό χαρακτήρα. Τα έργα του είναι συχνά προσωπικές εξιστορήσεις, επινοημένες ιστορίες, εκμυστηρεύσεις επιθυμιών και ανομολόγητα απωθημένα με σκοπό να γίνει ο ίδιος θεατής της ζωής του και να επαναπροσδιορίσει την ταυτότητά του. Το έργο ΕΞΤΡΑΝΥΜΙΑ #1 είναι ένας χάρτης που παρουσιάζει προσωπικές διηγήσεις ανθρώπων, οι οποίες αφορούν την ευρύτερη περιοχή του Βόλου και του Πηλίου. Η επιλογή της περιοχής δεν είναι τυχαία. Η στενή σχέση του καλλιτέχνη με τον τόπο αλλά και ο «επώδυνος εκτοπισμός»*, όπως αναφέρει ο ίδιος, που υπέστη εγκαταλείποντας τον Βόλο σε νεαρή ηλικία, έχουν αποτελέσει το θέμα πολλών εικαστικών του έργων. Στο έργο αυτό ο «εκτοπισμένος» καλλιτέχνης επιχειρεί την επανοικείωση της περιοχής και επινοεί ένα νέο δεσμό που τον οδηγεί σε μια διαφορετική θέαση του βιωμένου τόπου.

Ο χάρτης που δημιουργεί δεν ψυχαγωγεί τον ταξιδιώτη –όπως θα έκανε ένας τουριστικός οδηγός– επισημαίνοντας ειδυλλιακά μέρη και ιστορικά μνημεία ούτε αποστειρώνει τις τοποθεσίες αφαιρώντας κάθε προσωπικό ίχνος. Αντίθετα, ο Ψυχούλης συλλέγει ιστορίες ανθρώπων που έχουν μια βιωματική σχέση με τον τόπο, αποσκοπώντας στην επαναχαρτογράφηση της περιοχής μέσα από ανθρώπινες αναγνώσεις και μνήμες. Οι αφηγήσεις κινούνται στα όρια καταγραφής πραγματικών τοποθεσιών και μυθοπλαστικής κατασκευής χαράσσοντας το πλαίσιο μιας εναλλακτικής προσέγγισης της περιοχής. Περνώντας από εγκαταλειμμένες βιομηχανίες, ερειπωμένα εργοστάσια και εγκαταστάσεις τροφοδοσίας ζώων, οδηγούμαστε σε μυστικές κρύπτες, απόμακρα ξέφωτα και προσωπικά «καταφύγια», διασχίζοντας έναν τόπο τόσο πραγματικό όσο και φανταστικό ταυτόχρονα.

Η ονοματοδοσία των τόπων που καλείται να πραγματοποιήσει ο κάθε αφηγητής προσδίδει στα σημεία αυτά αυθύπαρκτη ζωή. Ωστόσο η καταγραφή αυτή δεν διασφαλίζει τη διατήρηση των τόπων αλλά τους «προστατεύει» και τους καθιστά αθάνατους τουλάχιστον στην ανθρώπινη ψυχή. Το ΕΞΤΡΑΝΥΜΙΑ #1 αποτελεί ένα νοητικό χάρτη, ένα ψυχογράφημα που ανάγει τις ιστορίες των τόπων σε μια συναισθηματική διαδρομή, όπου το γνωστό συναντάει το άγνωστο· το παρελθόν, το παρόν· το φανερό, το κρυφό· και το πραγματικό, το μεταφυσικό. Το έργο ενεργοποιείται έξω από την έκθεση, τη στιγμή που ο υποψήφιος περιηγητής θα πραγματοποιήσει αυτή την «αιρετικού τύπου» περιήγηση.

Δάφνη Βιτάλη

* Αλέξανδρος Ψυχούλης, tags: λέξεις κλειδιά, Futura, Αθήνα 2007, σ.12.

Κείμενο από τον κατάλογο της έκθεσης «Σε ενεστώτα χρόνο. Νέοι Έλληνες Καλλιτέχνες», ΕΜΣΤ

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Amphitheatro Virginia 2007

2007-09-28T05:20:00.000-07:00

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2007-09-05T04:39:00.001-07:00

CHRISTOPHER MARINOS: Your work abounds in autobiographical elements. We could therefore start by mentioning these elements: your childhood, your family, Volos, the sea, your relationship with nature, your friends, and displacements in general.

ALEXANDROS PSYCHOULIS: When I’m asked about such things I start to think which part of my life would be interesting to others, and this is really terrible. I don’t know whether it has to do with the problems posed by the interview discourse itself, or whether I have the neurosis of wanting to say or do things that are of interest to others as well.

You could narrate it succinctly, in the manner of “Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes”. Barthes has said that childhood is the royal road by which we know a country best. Well, for one thing, this applies fully to your case. Which is the “country” of your childhood?

I grew up in a family that had an involvement with the arts. My father was an oenologist, and he also had a gallery in Volos, which was paneled with particle board. Dampness gave an insufferable smell to the particle boards. If you stayed there for a few minutes the smell would clung to you. So it was comforting when the gallery filled and the smell of oil paint overpowered that nasty stale smell. When I came to Athens to study at the School of Fine Arts, I went to visit the studio of an undergraduate in his final year who painted like Titian. The floor and walls were spattered with paint, and you were captivated by the smell of worked oil paint, which was prevalent here, compared to the smell of the artworks in the gallery. When I got some money I took a big apartment with a roommate on Koumoundourou Square, and I used the living room as a studio. I filled the room with canvases and I painted feverishly. I didn’t care about what I was painting –just to give you an idea, I even turned out the lights sometimes–, but I was looking for the proper mixture of paint, linseed oil, turpentine, and drier, so that the blend would give off a sweet painting smell, similar to the smell of baking buns. I often piled the canvases, trying to see whether the room had acquired the coveted smell. When my roommate started having respiratory problems, I quit painting and worked on other things.

Were you studying Graphic Arts at the Technological Institute (TEI) at the time?

No, I had abandoned those studies, and I was studying painting under Tetsis. I have to say that my relationship with art never was disinterested. My family hobnobbed with painters who recognized that I had a talent in painting. And thank heavens for that, because I had nothing else. I was short, a bit dark, a mediocre student, I had premature existential angst, and I was totally useless at football. To attract the attention of others I used to draw obscene scenes of tangled women on small scraps of paper. With these I bribed my more popular classmates and bought off my participation in football matches, even if the football never touched my feet. My drawings had an exchange value since the First Grade.

So you think that your father’s gallery in Volos provided the initial stimulus for going into art.

Still, I never felt enthusiastic about anything that I had seen in that gallery, or someplace else. Whereas I was very familiar with the act of painting, I wasn’t into viewing art. I still am a bad viewer of art, and this might be a kind of autism. I find it hard to pass judgment on other artists’ work. I seldom, if ever, marvel at any product of art, but I could never refrain from doing art. And this pattern, which started as a loose game within my family, never changed. It never became something more serious – that is, if we accept that a game has no seriousness. At 18, when I left Volos to attend a School of Graphic Arts, which did not interest me at all, I thought that the smartest solution would be to take the entrance examinations for the Athens School of Fine Arts. Thus, I could carry on the game with my parents’ blessings and sponsoring. The third time I finally made it into the school, and I felt like I was pulling the wool over everybody’s eyes, because I couldn’t conceive of a higher education without the coercive character of secondary education. You see, my only obligation was to paint. Total bliss! The Athens School of Fine Arts had those fantastic annexes on many islands; I used to go to Hydra, where I stayed at the Tombazis mansion, loafing about.

And you also held your first solo exhibition of engravings in Hydra, isn’t that right?

Yes. I had read and loved, as I recall, Margarita Karapanou’s The Sleepwalker –a novel full of atrocities, which are supposedly performed in Hydra by the local community of foreigners– and I was looking for the book’s real-life characters. Enrique Llorca, an Argentine architect, who is in love with the island, plays in the book the role of a pervert who rapes and kills a child. Actually, he is a man who has never used violence in his life, but would use it gladly against the book’s author. He organized my first solo exhibition in his gallery. I presented a series of engravings that were engendered by assiduous readings of Dionysios Solomos’ work. I felt that I owed an apology to this poet, because the unmotivating teaching methods used by high school teachers had led me to believe that his poems on the schoolbook pages merely were an ideal raw material for making paper airplanes.

Your first works converse with works made by artists in the late 80s and early 90s, artists who wanted to spotlight the peculiar character of their national identity, on the basis of their personal experiences: Marios Spiliopoulos with beekeeping and the maps of Chalkidiki, and Panos Charalambous with fishing and the tobacco-growing activities of his family. You gradually distanced yourself from this trend, without, however, ceasing to deal with the autobiographical element. How did you experience these developments, particularly within the School of Fine Arts, and to what extent were you influenced by the prevailing tendencies of the time?

When I entered the School of Fine Arts I thought that there wasn’t much to learn, because I knew how to take what I needed from art. My lungs hadn’t turned black from the charcoal used in art cram school, because I never attended an art cram school. I painted with fluorescent colors, and I enjoyed myself a lot. It was all I wanted. I was the greatest fan of my work, and I was convinced that the future History of Art would dedicate some of its glorious pages to my oeuvre. And these beliefs didn’t stem only from my extravagant innocence, but subconsciously I was also developing a defense mechanism against the city that tried to crush me. I had forsaken Volos and the sea, I was living in a murky apartment on Hippocratous Street, and this was the first painful displacement. If your eyes have been used to always be bisected by a horizon, and you find yourself in Athens, you lose your bearings completely and you get into a state of depression. So, during my first year I reacted against everything that my professor, Panayiotis Tetsis (whose workshop I attended by accident), was trying to teach me. But since constantly reacting against the rules of a framework, within which you are situated at your own free will, is a kind of stupidity, I decided to absorb “the secrets of painting” that the master had to impart. So I did it for two years and then I stopped, because I instinctively realized that craftsmanship was not the key to the things I wanted to do. Also, I thought it was totally idiotic to be mixing paint and to be trying to find the right tone when I had before me a beautiful naked female body. I was afraid that I would acquire a “clinical” eye for the object of my desire. Tetsis, an affable man, although he believed that I could become a good painter, did not insist. He continued using his unorthodox method for teaching art, through cooking and eating and drinking, and I have to confess that this method was far more effective. At the end of my studies, it was evident that colors were fading away. The fluorescent colors that I used before entering the School of Fine Arts were becoming misty, eventually boiling down to the monochromy of my thesis exhibition. My self-confidence was equally ravaged. I felt I was a failure, I was in despair, and because despair does not allow you to distance yourself and think clearly, unconsciously I kept borrowing.

But which was the critical moment of “awakening”? Did you adopt an anti-artistic attitude towards things at the time?

I was acquainted with a number of readings and ideas, which couldn’t yet find a way to take form. The supersession of art, as evangelized by the Situationists, seemed a very stimulating idea, but I still was too close to the coercive precepts of Art History to be able to create any great rift. During that time, I visited Paris and I realized that the art that I had known from photographs, the art that had influenced me, was in fact totally different. The whole fabric of art that the Athens School of Fine Arts had thrust upon me was a mound of misinterpretations and misunderstandings. All these years I was seeing Beuys cradling in his arms the dead hare, in a black-and-white photograph, and in my mind’s eye I was piecing together the whole performance, guessing what he could be saying or doing before and after. At the videothèque of the École des Beaux-Arts I finally saw the entire performance, which was a different work. I saw everything I hadn’t seen. It was a real “Satori in Paris”, and on the Left Bank of the River Seine too, where the Situationists used to booze it up and expose their wounds.

The theories of the Situationists must have been quite widespread in Greece at the time.

Yes, although mostly among the authors.

You’re right – there was Dimitris Nollas, Evyenios Aranitsis, and Giorgos-Ikaros Babasakis. The Greek artists, however, hadn’t adopted these ideas, with the exception of Nicos Charalambidis, who in 1992, in his first solo exhibition, held at Galerie Artio, entitled The Theater of Shadows, used maps making an allusion to the Situationists. But, broadly speaking, there wasn’t much of a response from visual artists.

In those days, the most interesting things in Greece happened at Galerie Artio, but even these were nothing but a belated local version of Arte Povera. I dabbled in codes influenced by this situation, because the good and bad thing about artists is that we all handle the current codes. I started to produce works that conversed with the memory of the buildings in which I exhibited. Many artists, on an international scale, worked this way at the time. The good thing was that, at the same time, I performed and composed music for the theater, I did comics, and I wrote articles for magazines. My most negative critics saw me as a frivolous charlatan, and my most positive critics saw me as a versatile personality. Luckily, this ordeal stopped when I was called up. I regarded the army as a miniature Greek society, and I tried in vain to find my position in it. People asked me what I did in life, and when I described it, no one understood. Displaced from my artistic microcosm I was violently realizing that nobody cared about what I did. With my camouflage uniform on, I made a big and wise decision. I didn’t want to do something so lonely in my life. I didn’t want to be an artist. I was in a bad psychological state when I was conscripted and I was in an even worse psychological state when I was discharged. I had run out of credit and I had to find a profession. Although I knew nothing about PCs, I worked for some friends who brought out the first CD-ROM interactive magazine. My job was a sort of directorial editing, namely I tried to psychologically direct the user into the magazine’s navigation menus. I was paid well enough.

This happened after Awkward Industry?

Yes, I did Awkward Industry in ’94–’95, a short while before being conscripted. Well, I was working there, and though I hardly knew how to turn on a computer, I was a good onlooker, and as I was standing behind the programmer’s stooped back I started to understand the real potential of digital technology, even though it was in an infantile stage, and the computers were really slow back then.

So you think that working for this magazine was a determining factor in your involvement with the New Media.

It was. I realized that the time had come to materialize some of the objectives put forth in the manifestos of the avant-garde, and the idea of Black Box –of an archive that would contain my images, which could be projected by the viewer’s voice onto a screen–, began to form in my mind. It was then that Efi Strousa, commissioner of the Greek Pavilion at the 47^th Venice Biennale, came to see me. She had seen Awkward Industry and, as she was trying to work out the Greek representation, she came over to my house. I announced the decisions I had made in the army, but she didn’t seem dismayed, indeed she agreed with all I was saying. And because it isn’t right to leave someone’s house after the second sip of coffee, we kept talking, and I mentioned a few things about the idea of the Black Box. I pointed out that it wasn’t a new work; it was a possibility for the playful use of digital technology, which would be good for the new communication possibilities. I had nothing to show her, I didn’t even knew whether I had the necessary technology, but nevertheless she asked me to participate with this work at the Biennale, and I accepted, not straightaway, but after two days, when, after 40 hours of insomnia, together with the magazine’s programmer, we managed to say a word on the microphone and to project an image onto the screen.

And this is how the celebrated Black Box was made…

Yes, I didn’t make it as a work, but as a software, which potentially could be used by anyone, inserting his own images.

Perhaps that’s why it was a successful work.

I believe that it was a successful work because I made it at a time when I had consciously disavowed my artistic identity. I was making a big leap, severing any link to all the things I was taught that should accompany a work of art. The only thing I cared about was to make something that would create new ways to communicate with one another. I believed that a real digital revolution could take place if more programmers worked without thinking about the profiteering side of digital technology, but this hasn’t happened yet. Hundreds of talented people are now working, with the companies’ money, to produce one more convenient gizmo for drone consumers.

And this dampened your enthusiasm?

It still is the focus of my interest, and I’m working towards that direction with my students. We are constantly looking for a way to make “non-productive” software, and we are also looking for a way to transfer the digital experience into the three-dimensional world of lived experience, in contrast with the policy of the market which tries to convince us that digital technology is here to satisfy our old familiar needs in a quick and easy way.

In any case, it seems to me that Black Box is a matrix-work, a real image tank to which you “return” at regular intervals in order to gather material. For instance, one sees there the picture of a swallow’s nest, which appears later in another form at the exhibition Psygooglearth. But, in general, this is something that occurs often in your work: the braiding of vines from Santorini, from your student period, recurs in the installation Body Milk; certain figures and motifs from your comics, such as the one with Pinocchio and his family tree, subsequently became paintings, from which stemmed the animations. You act as a hoarder of personal moments.

Indeed. What you discern is that I often return to treat anew something personal, with a different medium, something that changes dramatically the meaning of things. All things are constantly reinterpreted by being in a constant state of abeyance, as Yorgos Tzirtzilakis has appositely remarked.

Therefore, if I understand it right, indirect allusion is the object here.

The generation of the 80s–90s isn’t quite looking for answers, it is more interested in posing a few arresting questions. As far as this generation is concerned, the answers always seem gross, but it doesn’t say no to some broad allusions to things.

It is what Duchamp has said: “There is no solution because there is no problem”.

I’m trying to find how all these are reflected in what I do.

Many of the motifs that are found in your work come from your surroundings: objects, persons, situations, experiences. Besides, this is where the poetics, or rather, the post-poetics of your images lies.

If you saw what I’m going through now, you’d understand that I couldn’t have done otherwise. I work whenever I can snatch time from nursing the babies, in between wet diapers, hiccups, cries, disinfectant smells, gastroesophageal refluxes, depressive foreign nannies, desires that I have to defer, the panic to redefine in such a late stage this thing that carries the terrifying title “family”; in other words, it is an environment-plexus that can drive you insane if you don’t see it as a raw material.

But don’t you gain control when the work has taken shape?

You just attain a distance that keeps you from breaking down.

So you’d say that, in a way, it acts as a medicine?

Well, not quite. The medicine is the moment when personal experience finds its universal worth. And then the suffocating problem, supposing that the problem is your initial stimulus, belongs to everyone, it becomes bearable since the whole mankind carries it on its shoulders.

And then you feel relieved…

Yes, if you succeed – because there is always the possibility that you may come to nothing. This was the logic behind AskMeWhy, the punching bag, which gave you a good reason for using violence each time you punched it.

We get, so to speak, deliverance through defusion.

Indeed. Here it coexisted with the element of physical defusion. It seemed very amusing to get in a museum and start punching one of the works. The first version of this work, which was produced in collaboration with the industrial designer Natasha Makowski, in Boston, from a cutting-edge material called levagel, gave you the impression that you were beating a human body. This work was completely destroyed by a viewer who ran amok and couldn’t stop beating the bag until it fell in pieces on the floor. This bag met the end it deserved.

Come to think of it, its destruction probably was its ideal end. In the course of time, however, the autobiographical element began to be expressed through a more universal framework, as in the painting exhibition Neurotica, which was held in 2001. Gilles Deleuze has said that neurosis is incurable because it is not an illness. It is the most widespread form of normality.

The absurd thing is that today everyone takes pride in his neuroses, flaunting them as invaluable virtues. When someone says that he never touches meat, never leaves his house without taking two Ginkgo Bilobas, and that he always buys his clothes from Milan, and he expects to be respected for that. Indeed, neurosis is the driving force of urban life.

And did you try to find your personal retreat, far from the urban atmosphere, for that very reason?

Psygooglearth was such a statement. I’m paraplegic in the urban space. A member of my body is permanently installed in Southern Pelion, in constant contact with the earth and the sea. I’m complete when I’m there.

Well, in a way, we all are displaced makers of swallow nests. Haven’t we all used as a screensaver a picture of some favorite landscape, or the picture of a beach in which we plan to have our summer holidays sometimes?

The odd thing is that, save for the scenic representation of a seaside folklore, the work of most Greek contemporary artists seems to have been produced by the inhabitants of a country that has no sea. In fact, Psygooglearth was an attempt to do landscape art.

I suppose that this work was the result of your experience from teaching at the Department of Architecture in Volos.

Yes, it was. A year ago I was examiner of a students’ degree thesis that proposed the construction of a building complex in the Park of Alonissos. A topographical model that represented a piece of the island, the place of the intervention without the intervention, was first in the presentation series. While the students were talking I couldn’t take my eyes off the model, about which –to my surprise– they didn’t say a single word, either because they forgot it or because they couldn’t find something interesting to say about the representation of a piece of land, namely of rocky earth with a seashore. I asked them if they would sell it to me, sort of, I adopted it and lived with it for a while. It was a place to scale, with almost human curves, portable, made from layers of thick cardboard, but at the same time it maintained the physiognomy of a landscape that you have visited, and you could even recognize some of its parts. The important thing here was that you could feel its rises and ravines, and instead of thinking that what I had before me was a reduction, I kept having the feeling that I had acquired supernatural dimensions. I realized that if I could regard the landscapes in which I grew up the same way I would be standing on vantage ground for viewing my own childhood.

Many of those childhood moments are expressed through animation. What attracted you to this contemporary form of narration? How does it feel to make art with a medium that doesn’t have a long tradition in Greece?

I’m not just living in Greece. I live in Greece in the age of the Internet. And I’m not doing animation, I’m doing Flash animation. In other words, I handle a moving image platform, in a moment when the whole world begins to deal with it, because Flash is totally new software, offering solutions to a series of problems and contradictions that had to do with the Internet itself. Since the early 90s, that is, the communities of Web users, and the communities of artists in particular, have been envisaging the instantaneous dissemination of the moving image, but this wasn’t possible, due to the huge size of the archives. Watching a video, for instance, was like trying to make a wardrobe pass through the eye of a needle. The innovative character of Flash, like YouTube, which was founded only in 2005, consisted in making possible something for which we were already prepared. Television had familiarized us, globally, with the moving image. Platforms like Flash and YouTube show that there is a second “mother language”, which is understood and mastered the world over. We now speak with moving images on the Web, and each time we do that, even when we talk nonsense, we practically challenge the dominance of the TV set.

Many people maintain that animation as a genre belongs more to literature than to plastic arts. In fact, in their effort to locate its origins, they even connect it with Ovid’s Metamorphoses – which stands to reason, considering that it really is something not related to the static image, but rather involves some sort of “metamorphosis”.

The particularity of Flash animation is that it has to do with what could be termed as “static movement”, and this can definitely be traced back to literary ploys. I mean that Flash’s product par excellence isn’t a narration with a beginning and an end, but a loop where the end is the beginning. I believe that many of the artists who adopted this software by integrating it in their practice did it not because they loved Bugs Bunny as children, but because they found a way to create a whirlpool in the speed of time. When, for instance, you isolate a movement and you repeat it in exactly the same manner to infinity, you remove once and for all the ravaging power of time, thus offering it the possibility to converse with “eternity”.

Perhaps this is the reason why the animations that you make put me in mind of haiku.

The monumental dimension of the trivial.

Have you ever thought how these animations will be after a few decades?

Like digital haiku of low technology, I hope, but I haven’t given it much thought because I’m riveted in the absolute now.

And, on the other hand, you also demonstrate the need for investigating the absolute, the absolute form, which is apparent through your painting, a painting that has precise outlines and absolute color surfaces.

Probably. For one thing, the use of the computer to the limit of its capabilities gives you the tools to such a complete control of drawing, which was impossible to happen before it. What I do may be called painting, but it is a painting of neurotic control. Vectors and line segments create forms that have the characteristics of industrial design sketches. They can be mass-reproduced, but it is not clear why this should be done.

The fact that animation can combine a large number of references from various disparate fields (illustration, comics, pop culture, etc.) brings to mind the idea of interrelations, which are made of disparate materials, and with which you have also dealt in the project IN.4b that you presented in the exhibition Going Public in Larissa.

Yes, it works in much the same manner as in the cinema. I dealt a lot –and I still do–with the interrelations of disparate things, and mainly of the discarded refuse of Western culture, studying the impromptu structures in the plain of Thessaly. The work Interrelations for Beasts was just that; a series of unexpected associations of things made by the middle and low strata of rural Greece in order to find solutions to practical needs. They activate a way of thinking that is the very opposite of programmed design and “absolute solution”, articulating probably the most spontaneous and interesting discourse that the contemporary architect should study. Their solutions, individualized and imaginative, give cheek to what the organized market has to offer, still being a slave to the obsolete model of target groups.

It is like the phenomenon of bricolage, which is also prevalent in music these days. Aside from the practical part, the anonymous creator –see, for instance, Aris Constantinidis’ notion about “anonymous architecture”– can also realize an “imaginary” part of himself.

Yes, it’s true, these people feel creative, and, above all, they know how to observe. They hoard up castaway things, on the logic that “this may come handy”. Their interrelations are a blend of wisdom, acumen, and humor.

The Callas also address the idea of Greek ingenuity, of inventiveness, in their performances-installations.

It’s a good thing that The Callas –who also are perceptive observers–, are here to remind us again that the modern Greeks have been planting their gardenias in cheese tins for years now. They are not doing it because they ignore the dictates of aesthetics, but because they know that gardenias need iron. The tin gives them iron, the gardenias thrive, and this is what counts.

In the exhibition What Remains Is Future (curated by Nadia Argyropoulou) held in Patras, on this logic of DIY, you also formed a rock band. How did you come up with the idea for the work A Monster of Education?

I tried to settle some “open accounts” with my troubled adolescence. So I formed again, now that I’m 40, the band that I was forced to break up by the compulsions of that period. I wrote a song that I should have sang at that time. I suppose one should take care of what’s left unsatisfied in his life. To be sure, this work was an amusing way to articulate a discourse about what is happening today in the sphere of Greek education, where it seems that nothing has changed for years; an “academic” who rants and raves like an adolescent is a funny and at the same time tragic sight.

So you are healing wounds.

This sounds very serious. I didn’t spend my childhood carrying bricks and going barefoot in the mud, and I wasn’t sexually molested either. Seen in another light, the things that I often describe as childhood traumas could be hilarious. Looking back in your past, however, especially looking back in your childhood, is something that leaves a dramatic aftertaste, since that very moment you realize that you will never see again things as you saw them then, or you will never live them again as you lived them then. It is a moment that you have to devise a mechanism that will make your past renegotiable, a past that isn’t completed yet. And you can find many ways to influence your present through the past. The psychoanalysts do something similar, but they often try to impose a new definitiveness.

Do you feel an affinity with what the Neen (Miltos Manetas, Angelo Plessas, and Andreas Angelidakis) are doing?

I do keep up with what they’re doing. We talk sometimes. They do very well what they’re doing.

Have you ever thought how are you going to be recorded in art history, in the “disputed art history”, as you once called it? Does it trouble you?

It doesn’t trouble me, but I have thought about it. I hope to be recorded as a guy who did the first thing that came into his head, but you lose valuable time when you start thinking about these things. Art History, especially the Western Art History, oppressed me in the past, and I suppose that it will continue to oppress others in the near future. Seeing yourself as part of this process isn’t nice. And for this reason, we often torment all the taken-for-granted values of art, trying to redefine art, to customize it, leading it to a realm of total freedom, where the sense of responsibility has no place in it.

And how much responsibility do you feel towards all that? I mean, in the moral sense.

What we call “contemporary art” is a sphere of outrageous irresponsibility – it would be unfair if it were anything else.

But there is vanity in that, don’t you think? Or is it part of the game too?

Vanity is the result of the Art History you have read. When your mind is cluttered with the model of artists who have once existed, you inevitably start thinking that the future history will include you in a similar manner. It never crosses our mind that, a few decades later, what today is called “Art History” may be the most boring thing in the world, something ossified, dull, and disputed.

So you don’t think that you are continuing something?

I’m still handling what was established by the avant-garde of the 1920s. Suffice to say that Man Ray’s solarizations now are a Photoshop button.

Amphitheatro Virginia

2007-09-05T04:28:00.000-07:00

Tags: <Camera, Obscura, η, επινοητικότητα, των, ακατοίκητων, κτιρίων>

Οκτώ φοιτήτριες της αρχιτεκτονικής, αφουγκράζονται τις καρέκλες των καπνεργατριών και η Εύα Μανιδάκη τους συντονίζει. Ανακαλύπτουν μικρά σχεδόν αδιόρατα σημάδια επάνω στο ξύλο και προσπαθούν να συνθέσουν μια αφήγηση για τα σώματα που κάθισαν εκεί και για τα σώματα που θα καθίσουν στο μέλλον.

Σε τέτοιους χώρους καταλαβαίνεις πόσο εξασκημένος είσαι στην παρατήρηση. Για παράδειγμα χρειάστηκαν τέσσερεις ή πέντε επισκέψεις στην καπναποθήκη για να αντιληφθώ τις δεκάδες μικρές λάμψεις στους σκοτεινούς διαδρόμους των βοηθητικών χώρων. Η πυκνή, αδιαφανής σήτα που κάλυπτε τα παράθυρα είχε οξειδωθεί και μικροσκοπικές τρύπες είχαν εμφανιστεί στην επιφάνεια της αφήνοντας δέσμες φωτός να την διαπεράσουν. Στο εσωτερικό του κτιρίου μπορούσες να δεις αντεστραμμένο αυτό που συνέβαινε έξω. Οι συνθήκες δημιουργούσαν το φαινόμενο της camera obscura.

Κατά κάποιο τρόπο τα κτίρια μοιάζουν να ξέρουν πως η εγκατάλειψη τα οδηγεί στο θάνατο και γερνώντας βρίσκουν μόνα τους τον τρόπο να κατοικηθούν.

Ήμασταν μέσα σ’ αυτό το κτίριο πριν βρω το κλειδί που άνοιγε την πόρτα του.

Για δεκαέξι ολόκληρα χρόνια -το κτίριο εγκαταλείφθηκε το 1991- η αντεστραμμένη εικόνα της πόλης χόρευε στη σιωπή.

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Μιλάω για μια ασθένεια της καπνικής ποικιλίας Virginia, με την ενδιαφέρουσα ονομασία Root-Rot. Η ασθένεια προσβάλει το ριζικό σύστημα του φυτού με συνέπεια τον αφανισμό του. Υπάρχουν ένα σωρό ασθένειες των καπνών, με ενδιαφέρουσες ονομασίες, αλλά ξεχωρίζω το Root-Rot γιατί φαίνεται να είναι μια αμερικάνικη ασθένεια μιας και δεν υπάρχει αντίστοιχη ονομασία στα ελληνικά. Οι αμερικάνοι επέβαλαν την αμερικανική ποικιλία Virginia, φέρνοντας και τις αμερικάνικες ασθένειες να επιβληθούν στις ελληνικές.

Δεν είμαι ειδήμονας στην καπνοκαλλιέργεια, απλώς τις τελευταίες μέρες διαβάζω το γεωπονικό – οικονομικό – προπαγανδιστικό εγχειρίδιο «ΒΙΡΤΖΙΝΙΑ» που βρήκαμε στοιβαγμένο μέσα στην καπναποθήκη. Ο αρχιτέκτονας Ζήσης Κοτιώνης εμπνεύστηκε μια ολόκληρη ομιλία-performance από το ίδιο ανάγνωσμα αλλά εγώ, ως πιο επιπόλαιος αναγνώστης, θυμάμαι μόνο το Root-Rot το οποίο επαναλαμβάνεται στο κεφάλι μου σε λούπα σαν ένα δυσοίωνο τέμπο.

Τα περισσότερα πράγματα μέσα σ’ αυτή την αποθήκη είναι Root-Rot.

Root-Rot, 01: Οι όροφοι του κτιρίου διαπερνούνται από τεράστια μηχανήματα επεξεργασίας καπνού που πάλιωσαν μέσα στην πρώτη τους νεότητα χωρίς ποτέ να ακούσουν τον ήχο της λειτουργίας τους. Όταν τέλειωσε η εγκατάστασή τους, οι αρμόδιοι συνειδητοποίησαν πως είναι αδύνατον να λειτουργήσουν τέτοια μηχανήματα μέσα στο κέντρο της πόλης.

Root-Rot, 02: Στα αρχεία του Εθνικού Οργανισμού Καπνού βρέθηκαν εκτεταμένες αναφορές για τα πολιτικά φρονήματα των εργαζομένων, κυρίως κατά το πρώτο μισό του προηγούμενου αιώνα. Οι φοιτητές που ασχολήθηκαν με την αναμόχλευση του αρχείου κάτω από τον συντονισμό της εικαστικού Μαρίας Χατζηνικολάου, μοιάζουν μάλλον σοκαρισμένοι μ’ αυτήν την καταπρόσωπο συνάντηση με τις μελανές σελίδες της ιστορίας του Βόλου αλλά και της Ελλάδας ολόκληρης.

Root-Rot, 03: Τα αρχεία αυτά, με την ένδειξη «ΑΠΟΡΗΤΟ» βρέθηκαν σε μια γιγάντια στοίβα στο λερωμένο πάτωμα του κτιρίου.

Root-Rot, 04: Η παρατεταμένη εγκατάλειψη του αρχιτεκτονικά μοντέρνου αυτού κτίσματος και η ασφυκτική του γειτονική δόμηση, δημιουργούν μάλλον μια άδικη γνώμη για τον ρόλο του στον αστικό ιστό. (Κανείς δεν καταλαβαίνει σε ποιο κτίριο της Ανθίμου Γαζή αναφέρομαι αν δεν προσθέσω τη φράση «αυτό που μοιάζει με φυλακή»).

Tags: <Δεν, θα, έπρεπε, τα, σοφά, πλάσματα, να, είναι, τόσο, νόστιμα>

Το περασμένο καλοκαίρι βρέθηκα πρόσωπο με πρόσωπο με ένα χταπόδι που στεκόταν στο χείλος μιας σχισμής. (Αν είχα το ψαροντούφεκο μαζί θα του είχα ρίξει ανάμεσα στα μάτια χωρίς δεύτερη σκέψη αλλά ήμουν άοπλος και το μόνο που είχα να κάνω ήταν να σκεφτώ την σημασία μιας τέτοιας συνάντησης.)

Έχοντας ακούσει πολλά για την ευφυΐα αυτών των πλασμάτων αποφάσισα να τη δοκιμάσω και πλησίασα αργά δείχνοντάς του το ρολόι μου που γυάλιζε. Το μαλάκιο έστρεψε τα δυο του πλοκάμια προς το ρολόι αλλά ταυτόχρονα, με την ίδια αργή ταχύτητα σα να επινοούσε μια χορογραφία της συμμετρίας, έχωνε άλλα δύο πλοκάμια προς το βάθος της σχισμής, προφανώς για να γαντζωθεί και να είναι έτοιμο να αντιδράσει σε περίπτωση που η συναναστροφή με το «χρόνο» αποδεικνυόταν επικίνδυνη. (Δεν είχε άδικο. Μπορούσα να το αρπάξω και με το χέρι.)

Αυτή τη συμμετρική κίνηση του χταποδιού ακολουθούσαμε όσο καιρό δουλεύαμε μέσα στην εγκαταλελειμμένη αποθήκη. Κάποιες ομάδες εισχωρούσαν στα αρχεία κορφολογώντας το παρελθόν και κάποιες άλλες δημιουργούσαν καταστάσεις σε χρόνο ενεστώτα κάνοντας υπαινιγμούς για το μέλλον του κτιρίου. Οι πορείες δεν ήταν ποτέ γραμμικές. Το μόνο που είχαμε σίγουρο ήταν πως ανά πάσα στιγμή μπορούσαμε να διαλύσουμε αυτή τη συμμετρία προς όφελος μιας δυνατής ιδέας. Δεν ήμαστε σοφά χταπόδια.

Tags: <Η, δική, μας, γραφειοκρατία, είναι, καλύτερη>

Για να φιλοξενήσουμε μια σειρά σύγχρονων δράσεων (ομιλίες, συναυλίες, performance), φτιάχνουμε ένα αμφιθέατρο από τα πράγματα που βρέθηκαν συσσωρευμένα στην Καπναποθήκη (από την ιστορία του κτιρίου δηλαδή).

Η στρατηγικές της συλλογικής δόμησης είναι οι εξείς:

Συναρτήσεις υλικών και άυλων ευρημάτων
Ήπιες μορφές σύνδεσης
Όχι οριστική αλλοίωση των αντικειμένων

Αυτές οι συμβάσεις ενεργοποιούν έναν τρόπο σκέψης που βρίσκεται στον αντίποδα του σύγχρονου, εξελισσόμενου, δυτικού τρόπου παραγωγής πραγμάτων. Αν το «φτιάξτο μόνος σου» του ΙΚΕΑ για παράδειγμα, απλώς τοποθετεί τον χειρώνακτα πελάτη στο τελευταίο πόστο της παραγωγής, ζητώντας του να συναρμολογήσει τα κομμάτια μιας έτοιμης και απόλυτης λύσης, οι δικές μας συμβάσεις οδήγησαν όσους δούλεψαν ακριβώς μπροστά στο πρόβλημα που ζητάει λύση εφοδιάζοντάς τους με έναν περατό αριθμό πραγμάτων που στο παρελθόν αποτελούσαν μοναδικές λύσεις για κάτι άλλο. Ο bricoler στέκεται στοχαστικά μπροστά σε μια στοίβα φαινομενικά άχρηστων αντικειμένων δημιουργώντας συναρτήσεις που θα τον οδηγήσουν σε μια λύση ιδιοσυγκρασιακή.

Καταλήγουμε στη σκέψη πως αναδιατάσσοντας συνεχώς τα υλικά που περιέχονται στο κτίριο και κρατώντας αναλλοίωτο το κέλυφος, μπορούμε να στήσουμε ένα αμφιθέατρο, ύστερα ένα ξενοδοχείο σαν κι αυτά που η Μαρία Παπαδημητρίου στήνει ανά τον κόσμο, ύστερα ένα κέντρο υποδοχής αστέγων, ύστερα ένα στρατηγείο πολιτιστικών δράσεων με διεθνή εμβέλεια και στο τέλος -αν πραγματικά υπάρχει ανάγκη- μια καπναποθήκη.

Αλέξανδρος Ψυχούλης, Βόλος, 7/7/07

PSYCOOGLEARTH/Shallow's nest maker

2006-04-05T12:43:00.000-07:00

Installation, a.antonopoulou.art, 2006

PORTABLE PLACE
A DISCUSSION BETWEEN THANOS STATHOPOULOS AND ALEXANDROS PSYCHOULIS

Thanos Stathopoulos: How do you feel, really, when you look at a digital image of a place on Google Earth?
Alexandros Psychoulis: Google Earth is nothing more than a sum of satellite photographs in the shape of a globe. You will never see something that is happening at this moment. Because you know from the beginning that it is not about real time surveillance, you take on the role of "Big brother" and you give in to the fascination of the physiognomy of terrains. I search places that have been photographed with higher resolution, at the same time (18/12/2005) that the Office of the Greek Ministry of Defense (ΓΓΕΕΘΑ) complains about Google’s excessive clarity in the depiction of their military facilities. It is obvious that ΓΓΕΕΘΑ and I have different interests, yet we all try to touch coordinates of a world where nothing can be hidden in the dark. It is not accidental that on the planet of Google Earth the meaning of night does not exist.
T.S.: I am not sure if we try to touch the coordinates, as you say, or if we have been addicted to the spectator’s behavior who enjoys ever bigger doses of simulation.
A.P.: Let’s admit that it is like that. The question that seems timely without being a new one is if through the specific simulation we can have some new type experiences, and how much these experiences enter our experienced world and change certain facts. I prefer to face the digital experience as a qualitatively expanded dimension of imagination rather than as an illusion.
T.S.: You know that this is also my stance, still, a new type of experience requires the complete disengagement from the condition of software that seems to be shaped more by the needs of the Greek Military, rather than the needs of the artist.
A.P.: Yes, but if you look a bit at the practice of netart you will realize that it is possible for interesting things to result from the appropriation and change of commercial and military structures, either in software or hardware. The Internet itself is the biggest example of such a practice.
T.S.: But this is exactly the change that I also suggest. Besides, due to the appropriation and change is that software – as well as every other material (I like to see software as material with the same ease with which we refer to material used in the past) – can constitute a space with significances that they exceed, if they do not suspend by now, the use of software. On the other hand, perhaps what you call "experienced world" might already constitute a type of software.
A.P.: Google Earth is a software as "useless" as solitaire, and what I try to understand is this fascinating condition of observation. The image of the starting point when you open the software is that of Earth as you would probably see it from the Moon. The planet looks a lot like a light fixture in the form of a globe, which you can turn with a movement of the mouse, something that certainly reinforces your self-confidence. On any side of the Sphere you can begin your decent with successive zooms, which in certain cases have break-neck speed. Little by little you discern marks of human civilization – you can find your city, your neighborhood and if you move with caution your house. Here begins an existential drama that differentiates the condition of observation from that of an astronaut or a person who flies with a plane.
T.S.: Because you are inside the place that you observe or gaze...
A.P.: Exactly. And in both cases, of the astronaut and of the one in the plane, the observer knows that he is outside the system he observes, while you know that the image you look at includes you. You might tell me where I find the drama... Doesn't the same thing happen when we look at a photograph that includes us? There is an important difference that is not easy to explain without an example. I am talking about the photograph that includes us without showing us. Let’s say that we are photographed in front of the Cheops Pyramid and after a week we look at this photograph. Nothing strange. Let’s suppose now that someone photographs the pyramid the moment where we are inside and naturally we do not appear in it. When you look at this photograph you see nothing but a photograph of the pyramid where the only thing that differs from other similar photographs is that in this specific moment you are inside, naturally immobilized and invisible. The total of potential posings and expressions that you could have the moment of taking the picture is so great that it defeats the immobilizing power of the photograph. While everything is frozen in a given moment, you continue to silently live inside the photographed structure, in a loop that has as a starting point your entry inside it and ends with your exit.
T.S.: We are dealing with a concealment at the moment where everything is exposed in the light. Something like a loss of signs.
A.P.: I don’t know if it is intentional but in Google Earth images you can’t distinguish even a person. The planet appears uninhabited, something that makes you place the moment of the photograph in some near future rather than in the past. But logic says that the sunny day when the satellites were passing above and photographing the ground where I live, I was there. Google Earth is a festive photograph of the planet. I would like to know if in that moment I was driving on the highway, making love or picking my nose. However I don’t appear on it, hence I could be doing anything, so I continue to move and live in the temporally immobilized images that I observe from high above, in an endless loop that contains all that I could do on a sunny day.
T.S.: This absence seems to fascinate you, I assume for reasons that allow you to poetically "fill" the software with your presence. From this point of view, the title that you choose is something more than indicative: psychooglearth/swallows nest-maker: the linguistic expression of the impersonal, global, and indeed with conditions of strict locality! The reversal is obvious. Perhaps there is also an unconscious irony, I don’t know...
A.P.: Let’s say that I attempt a Post-Google Earth topographic survey of a particular place. I remember the last time my father and I went to the abandoned patrimonial properties in Southern Pelion, in order for him to show me for the umpteenth time the borders of the field that extended to certain mountainsides covered with bearberries, wild blackberry bushes, holm-oak and a few wild chestnut trees. I knew the three borders, but still today the fourth is completely indistinct, something that infuriated my father. Trying to comprehend why I don’t see what was obvious to him, I thought that my father had lived near these fields during his childhood and had seen them cultivated and cared for. Therefore when he pointed in a particular direction, he showed what was temporally existing under the lush vegetation and probably contained vegetable gardens, pruned fruit trees and irrigation canals, while I, who did not have any experiential memory of the place, saw only what really existed, in other words the foliage of a botanologically wild forest area. I understood that while we looked at the same place, I saw one thing and my father something else. After his death I obtained a topographic survey of the region from the Army Geographic Service. I inscribed with pencil the three borders and began again the puzzle of the fourth. I took the topographic survey and went again to the fields in order to confuse myself even more. I saw something, my father something else, and the topographer still something different. Recently a fourth Google Earth viewpoint of the place was also added. I "hovered" a while over the Southern leg of Pelion. Now I could see one almost flat darkgreen expanse that looked like many places on the planet. But what was becoming visible here and added certain new elements was the borderline of land and sea in the wider region. That is to say there was a coastline that was giving a precise physiognomy to the peninsula of Southern Pelion and only from this distance could you discover it. Of course I also had this panoramic view before, from a series of maps, however because in maps there is a big explanatory intervention you never have the sense that they are 100% accurate. From there and beyond the borders of the field enter a second fate, as you understand, and what interests me is to combine all the above visuals in order to create under scale three-dimensional models. I reconstruct in other words the relief of the ground based on the topographical surveys in such a scale that I can physically dominate the landscape where I lived and still live in the summer.
T.S.: I don’t hide from you that this return to the ancestral lands that you attempt impresses me, especially in a time where most Greek artists try to suppress in any way anything that "smells" of some type of nationality.
A.P.: There was never some type of departure for us to speak now about return. If in the maps that you see hanging in the streets of tourist cities there is always a double red circle that says: "You are here", mine "you are here" shows – even when I move continuously – Southern Pelion. The "grounding" of my personal attitudes and thoughts happens without any effort, in the exact opposite of a continuous path, as much on the highway as in virtual junctions of the Internet.
T.S.: Precisely in the exact opposite of my own urban landscape and indeed the closest one – if you think that the last fifteen years of my life I not only live in Athens, but in the heart of the center. Recently I moved from the center even more central! To Syntagma. Athens, as you know, is the place that I worship. Not only because it is the city where I was born and grew up – very often this fact might counteract – but because it allows the perpetual projection of my view and experience on the already existing and familiar, however permanently transforming, urban web. A type, I would say, of my own psychic “grounding” that I own, the same time when it escapes me changing. The meaning of the center, that is to say – an obsession which I bring from my childhood – focuses me on my personal center. In my forty two years I know very well now that doesn’t interest me to – and I could not – live anywhere else, besides Athens, and especially in the center.
A.P.: This obsession of yours is what made me want to have this particular discussion with you.
T.S.: As the opposite pole! The last few years you almost always begin from someplace on the Internet or from some software, to arrive in essence to a materialistic process and imprinting. In this particular installation, let’s say, even though you use mixed media, the material essence is declared from the beginning with the attribute of the "swallows nest-maker".
A.P.: Most important in this work is the condition of distance. I have a software program that gives me the capability to muse familiar terrains from a visual angle that renders them unfamiliar, that homogenizes them with a large number of other terrains on the planet. The elements that would make the place recognizable are so far away that they are faint. The reduction in size, the under scale three-dimensional reconstruction with layers of cardboard, of another type of "distance" in other words, allows me to completely dominate them in a way that recalls voodoo dolls. The distance is what allows me to be launched above a perceptual system that includes me. I become the external observer while the system continues to include me in many ways, and thus I can even observe my own self as the "swallows nest-maker", as if the self was a certain drifter, that suspends three-dimensional fragmentary images of his own coastal place from the ceiling edges of an urban space interior. The "portable place" becomes his most precious possession.
T.S.: Like the distance this place reveals as a fragment of a real as much as imaginary biography...
A.P.: For the moment the only certain thing is that "distance reveals".

Mammals

2006-03-15T08:07:00.000-08:00

"My Father's Taill", Acrylic on Wood,2005, Leonidas Beltsios Colection

“Family” is the labeling of precious trauma

Blood bonds
From my family I inherited some real estate in the country and the gene B-27 which declares a predisposition to rheumatism.

The omniscient jackal
The Luminous Omniscience was a clever table robot with a metallic rod piercing its guts. With the help of this bent rod it could point at the right answer to a series of encyclopedic questions none of which I remember. I do however remember – possibly because of the existence of a photograph – my sister piercing, with a similarly bent rod, the guts of a dead jackal in the middle of a tar road which led to South Pilio. I, merely three years old, hid in the car and cried inconsolably. The idea to stop and take a photograph with the jackal must have been part of my fathers’ educational tactics. He was a hunter. Although my sister hated him, nevertheless in this instance she showed great zeal and creative imagination, maybe because she enjoyed terrorizing me, maybe because unconsciously she shared a paternal disposition--the familiarity to dead mammals.
The incident probably occurred late afternoon because my mother who is taking the photograph has an oblong shadow which has spread out and managed to cover the bleeding carcass making the sight of its death bearable.

The big egg
One day I found a big deformed egg in my grandfather’s chicken hutch. It didn’t have the perfect curves that eggs have instead it was almost a mould of the hens internal organs.
I protected this egg as best I could, I held it gently in my hands as we returned home in the car, climbed the stairs carefully and placed it on the marble surface of the sink whereupon it cracked under its own weight. If it hadn’t cracked I would have held this egg till today so that it could feed my imagination with the enigma of its contents.
I was 7 years old and felt lucky that at such a young age I had seen something so rare. When I bring it to mind now I think about the hen’s grief, which is probably a symptom of maturity. I could still draw happiness from the luck of that experience but the suspicion of some exaggeration in my narrative takes on the form of a smile on the lips of my grown up audience.
I have been made to “mature” as a result of this incredulity. Nobody ever understood how big that egg really was.

The torture
At the age of 7 I believed I had a false mother, a false father and a sister who was a real executioner made especially in order to torture me. I believed I was the only real creature in the world or rather an experimental human model which had been developed by omnipotent beings from a different dimension in order for them to study the limits of mental resilience. As much as I tried to uncover the deception I was never able to. My false parents continued to pretend they were human and my sister continued as a torturer. This dead end led me to my first attempt at committing suicide with a kitchen knife. I stood at the entrance, on the huge marble staircase and tried to stab myself in my side but it hurt too much and I stopped. Determined to live I tore the note I had written saying I had understood everything, and continued carrying the burden of the cross as the sole representative of the species.
I remember basing the certainty of my assumptions on the fact that I had no recollection of being in a womb for 9 months. My otherwise ingenious creators had forgotten to install this decisive memory.
As I grew up I was forced to dismiss the certainty of this conspiracy so that I wouldn’t go completely mad. At the back of my mind however there nested a notion of unauthenticity which was a barrier to trusting anybody and in order to reject this notion I believed I had to witness a person being born.
During my wife’s childbirth I was determined not to miss any detail. The artificial labor pains were not rendering the expected results but we had so many biscuits, chocolates and CD’s that we could stay in there a whole week. I didn’t even realize how they threw me out in order to do a caesarean.
In a quarter of an hour they called me to see my wife holding a baby.

Disabled images
My father had a microscope, as all chemists have to. As he was an oenologist the microscope was of no use to him or at least that is what I believe for I never saw him using it in order to analyse the samples of must the small wine producers from Pilio brought every September. I spent many hours of child boredom among white tiles and test tubes, totally dizzy from the fumes of surgical spirit and the bubbling of the distiller waiting patiently for him to finish his analysis so that he would pluck out a hair from my head. He would crush it between two glass sheets and place them under the microscope and once he had focused on the image he let me look. The luminous circle with the gigantic root of the hair crowned by pitch darkness introduced me to the enchanting images of the organic microcosm, there where each molecule of dust was of importance changing the whole environment by its random existence. This image was so like the image of the full moon when you look at it through a telescope. Having understood instinctively a fractal dimension of the world I played a game of instant shift of perception by saying “now I am looking at something from my body” and then saying “now I am looking at the moon.”
I repeated this game countless times without ever thinking of placing something else instead of one of my hairs under the microscope. Each time I parted with a piece of myself in order to examine it- I literally plucked myself.
With one eye on the viewer and the other shut tight I got hooked on “keyhole daydreaming.” The view of the luminous circle burnt my retina and since then my images ceased to have angles.

Triple Pop
The baby is crying. I take it into my arms. I let it beat the glass surface of the table, to pluck the watered basil plants in the window box. I put it on our bed and give it the remote control to bite on. It loves anything black. I bath it in the tub without talking to it. It slaps at the water till its eyes hurt. I dry it. I let it bite at the bottle of shampoo. I put cream on its bottom and a clean diaper. I brush its hair and let it look at itself in the mirror. I tell it that it is beautiful. It cries. I feed it 120 grams of warm powdered milk in a bottle. It drinks it greedily and its nose sweats. I give it the remote control to bite on until it burps. I take it into my arms. I open the essential oil of citronella for mosquitoes. It cries again. I continue holding it in my arms and walk up and down with a limp because that lulls it. It sleeps. I put it in its cradle as I hold my breath. I sit in a chair near it and play Triple Pop in the dark. You get 25 points each time you manage to join three balls to the same colour.

Body Milk

2006-03-15T07:27:00.000-08:00

Installation,Pink cord, variable dimensions, a.antonopoulou.art, 2003

The details of the information
Excerpt from a discussion between Thanos Stathopoulos and Alexandros Psychoulis

Thanos Stathopoulos: Let us begin with the information itself, as you found it by accident while surfing on the Internet, which was what triggered Body Milk: a woman’s suicide attack in a supermarket in Jerusalem, last May. A tragic event, yet in the language of the computer is just a piece of information among many—not a momentous occurrence in any case, but only a point from which immediately you go on to the next one and so on; an endless succession of points…

Alexandros Psychoulis: …Until you return to yourself, to a point that coincides with some aspect of your life or violently disrupts your thoughts of that moment.

Th. S.: I wonder which part of yourself you can recognise in the everyday terror one experiences in the Middle East.

A. P.: I have to tell you that I had access to many pictures of ineffable horror, but I remember that the one photograph I looked at for some time was that of an Israeli woman bending over a dismembered body amidst a heap of kitchen rolls which had been thrown on the pavement out of the bombed supermarket. The woman had set down her shopping bag beside her, hiding the victim from the lens. She seemed to be staring at the bags with despair.

Th. S.: All this causes an accumulation of horror… a sense of generalised desperation which certainly touches upon certain aspects of our life. And quite often the associations are not only obscure but unconscious and apparently remote from the information itself.

A. P.: The thing is that next to the familiar image of a Western woman in a supermarket a different female behaviour is revealed to me. We often stop at the parts of some news item which are associated with our own life in some way. I am frequently impressed with the familiarity women feel in the supermarket. I may spend a long time looking for a product, rushing around the aisles on the verge of nervous breakdown, whereas women know the code by which the items are arranged as if they had placed them there themselves. I have come to view supermarkets as a purely female affair, a large-scale reflection of their own neat cupboards and, by extension, of the needs dictated by their nature. A supermarket is rather a super woman, a fertility goddess complete with sales coupons and mega-offers. So I am interested in a woman who enters the supermarket not with a shopping list in her hands but with several kilos of explosives tied around her belly. Highly ironically, her outward appearance is that of a pregnant woman.

Th. S.: Pregnant with death… In a strange way, the place where she chooses to dismember herself and the others provides an unconscious security to her… come to think of it, it may not be so unconscious. Her natural reference to that space makes it equally natural that she might wish to die there and only there, in a place which is fully compatible with her nervous system and which she is about to blow up, with all the violence her act entails. Yet what is the picture formed by our journey through the Internet as we seek some information? And how does the mature of that information affects the picture? Seen through the gossamer that Body Milk weaves —that vast lace that links blown-up members and blown-up products in what I would call an exploded metaphor— these questions become very pressing to me.

A. P.: In order to understand what the Internet means we have to realise that it might vanish without any tangible trace if all users were to switch off their phone connections. Restoring those connections again one by one would be enough to re-create it. It is the users who shape the net once they enter it and roam along its connecting neurones. Each user is a solitary co-creator of a collective field, but this collective character he only perceives in an incorporeal manner. He weaves the web just as a small-town woman might knit a lace in the old days. When he operates his computer he performs a repeated action, much the same as that of the lace-maker. The desire for communication, information, entertainment or purchase is above anything else the same monotonous click of the mouse. The continuous flow and the successive clicks determine the method of weaving in this particular installation. The form is dictated by the nature of the information, given in a corporeal way, through an act of manual work that trips up what we call ‘speed of information’. It is as if it invokes the time of synaesthesia.

Th. S.: Yes, speed is motion in panic, the opposite of synaesthesia. The pace of synaesthesia is slow.

A. P.: In the marketing of hardware and software, speed is the ultimate bargaining point. It is promoted as the single most desirable characteristic, in such a way that you are prepared to admit at any time, without much thinking about it, that you ‘could do with a little more speed”.

Th. S.: The nature of information and its fragmentary character you mentioned before is, I suppose, what led to your choice of material for this installation: a cord that weaves a web not around the event but around its transposition to a reality which is not virtual, and may even be no longer tragic. A personal metaphor in which emotion, surprise, libido and horror constitute elements of an overturned gaze – a hidden detail that springs out.

A. P.: A bomb attack in Israel spawns a multitude of digital information and some of that, impregnated by highly personal experiences, produces in turn a three-dimensional installation in Greece. As you see, all this involves a whole series of mediations. I punch my keyboard in safety, knowing that I cannot be stained by the victims’ blood. Due to these mediations the original event pales away, becomes merely a trigger and may lose its significance in the process. What grows out of proportion —perhaps arbitrarily and inhumanely— is the detail, what Barthes calls a punctum: a woman entering a supermarket to shop, and another woman who walks in with an entirely different purpose.

Th. S.: Mediation is the rule. What is conveyed is information, not the event. The event requires tangibility, the unmediated experience of what occurred so that it acquires substance and becomes a locus. Information is a non-locus. It is the neurosis of the real, assuming that the real may still exist after so many mediations have ravaged its core.

A. P.: The side-effects of these digital mediations remain unexplored, although we feel that they determine us, hence they are of crucial interest.

Thanos Stathopoulos is a poet

The exhibition Body Milk was realised with the collaboration of: Yannis Arvanitis/ Dimitra Stamatiou/ Orestis Argyropoulos/ Yannikos Vassiloulis/ Aphrodite Psychouli/ Eliana Tsapatsari

CV

2006-03-15T07:18:00.000-08:00

Psychoulis Alexandros
Associate Professor to the University of Thessaly.
e-mail: psycool@uth.gr

CURRICULUM VITAE

Born in 1966 in Volos, Greece.

Education:
1988-90 School of Fine Arts, Athens
1984-86 School of Graphic Arts, Athens
1993-94 Guest artist in the Research Center of Art and Sciences (KETE),
established in Athens by the Greek sculptor Takis.

Individual Exhibitions:

2009 «The Room/ Gragility makes me special», a.antonopoulou.art, Athens
2007 «Virginia», Old Tobacco House, Volos
2007 «Tags», Porfirogenio Foundation, Agria
2006 «PSYCOOGLEARTH/ shallows nest maker», a.antonopoulou.art, Athens
2005 «Mammals», Zina Athanassiadou Gallery
2003 «Body Milk», a.antonopoulou.art, Athens
2001 «Redesign Point», Zina Athanassiadou Gallery
2001 «NEUROTICA», A. Andonopoulou Art, Athens
2000 «Mediterranean Desert», Concerto for Piano, Harpsichord & Video, Music by
Giorgos Koumendakis, Piano & Harpsichord Maria Metaxaki. Hellenic Center
London, Hellenic American Union, Athens .
1999 «Speak about your life through materials that have no memory »,Lionheart
Gallery, Boston Cyberart Festival
1999 «Do You Want?», Digital interactive installation, Epikendro Gallery, Athens
1998 «Do You Want?», Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, UK.
1998 «There's no place far enough for you to escape from images and the pain they caused
you», Deitch Projects gallery, New York, USA.
1997 «Black Box», XLVII Biennale di Venezia (Greece), Levi Foundation,
Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, Venice. BENESSE PRIZE.
1996 «The Nest Burning», Ladaba Gallery, Madrid, Spain
1995 «Machinery-Free Industry», Art and Cultural Centre Smaragda Ioannatou, Athens
1994 «The Ascension of Dionysios Solomos in Heaven», 4 Gallery, Volos, Greece
1994 «Machinery-Free Industry», Spirer Tobacco Warehouse, Volos, Greece

Selected Group Exhibitions:

2010 «THE ARK/ Old Seeds for New Cultures», Pavilion of Greece at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition- La Biennale di Venezia, Venice
2010 «Belle Vu», Ιλεάνα Τούντα, Αθήνα
2010 Space is the place, About, Athens
2008 Exploring cultural means to combat global homogenization, Foukoutake Hall, Tokyo University, Tokyo
2008 Games with out frontiers, Gallery Zouboulakis, Athens
2007 «In Present Tense, Young Greek Artists», National Museum of Contemporary Art,
Athens
2006 «MASQUERADES/ femininity, masculinity and other certainties», State Museum of
Contemporary Art, Thessalonikι
2006 «ON: THE CONTEMPORARY AND THE MODERN IN EUROPEAN AND JAPANESE
CULTURE», Tokyo, Shizuoka Performing Arts, Thetre (S.P.A.C.)
2006 «What remains is future», Arssakeio, Patra
2006 «an outing», Leonidas Beltsios Collection, Milos, Trikala
2006 «Tattoo My Art», a.antonopoulou.art, Athens
2006 «Positive Charge », State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessalonikι
2005 «BIDA» Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki
2005 «Dreamscapes»,”De Chirico” Art Centre, Volos
2005 «Old People’s home», Historical Archives - Museum Hydra, Hydra
2005 «Going Public’ 05/ communites & territories, Larissa Contemporary Art Centre, Larissa
2005 «Lost in Translation», Hellenic American Union
2005 «Visions», Athens Imperial Hotel, Athens
2004 «38th Parallel – the Horizon», Skironio Museum Polychronopoulos, Attica
2004 «The Sneeze 80x80», Gazon Rouge, Athens
2004 «Body Works» Art Center of Municipality of Nicosia, Cyprus
2004 «Athina: Metropolis by mistake», Bios
2004 «BREAKTHROUGH!», Greece 2004, Contemporary Perspectives in the Visual Arts,
Alcala, Madrid
2003 «Bureaucracy» Home Office of Greece, Athens
2003 «ϋber MENSCHEN», ACC Gallery, Weimar/Germany, Church S. Paolo, Modena –
Civica Gallery, Sassuolo, Italy
2003 «Quite almost RADAR», “Lab” Gallery, Athens
2003 «Greece Now», Room#1107, New York, curator Dimitrios Antonistsis
2003 «Free Transit(?)» , Zappion Megaron, For the Hellenic Presidency of the EU, Athens
2003 Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki
2002 «Digi 01», Digital Art Festival, Epi Kolono, Athens
2002 «Organ Channel prototype», Frankfurt
2002 «Sketching out Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday”, E. Averoff Museum, Metsovo
2001-2 «Technotaxia», Omonoia Square, Athens
2001 « Frankfurt 2001 – Mythologies of the BooK», Frankfurt
2001 «Language is a virus», Gallery Crac Alsace, Perpignan, France
2000 «SYNOPSIS 1», National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
2000 «Benesse Prize Winners», Benesse Museum, Naoshima, Japan
1999 «OBJECTHOOD 00», Hellenic American Union, Athens, Rethymno Center of
Contemporary Art, Crete
1999 «Magic Software», Gazi - Athens, Mylos - Thessaloniki
1999 «Europe in the Box», ACC Gallery, Weimar , Germany
1998 «Global Vision, New Art from The 90's, PART III», DESTE Fountation, Athens
1997 «RADAR 4», Z-OO, Athens, Greece
1997 «RADAR 3», Elefsina, Athens, Greece
1996 «Modernita Progetto 2000», Fondazione Bricherasio, Turin, Italy
1996 «In the Middle of Nowhere, the Unexpected in Communication»,
Thema Gallery, Athens, Greece
1996 «The Clients», «X» Gallery, Athens, Greece
1995 «RADAR 2» Mylos, Thessaloniki, Greece
1994 «Across», Municipal Gallery of Athens, Athens
1994 «Ancient Greek Myths in Contemporary Art», Art and Cultural Centre
Smaragda Ioannatou, Athens, Greece
1994 «RADAR 1». Loulaki Gallery, Hydra, Greece
1993 Contemporary Art Museum, Reich, Yugoslavia
1992 «6th Biennale of Mediterranean Young Artists», Valencia, Spain
1990 «5th Biennale of Mediterranean Young Artists», Marseilles, France

Activities:

2006 “Me vima Argo” , Animation Graphics for a dance performance directed by Apostolia
Papadamaki, Volos
2003 “PLAYBACK” , Installation/presentation for the new edition of the writer Thanos
Stathopoulos. “Lab” Gallery, Athens
2002 Animation Graphics for Multisession CD «Giorgos Koumendakis._4 works for Aris
Christofellis».
2002 «Warholic», club event, club Plato, Athens, Greece. In colaboration with
choreographer Konstandinos Rigos.
2000 «I don't believe in your eyes», Theatrical Performance. Theatre of New World, Athens,
Greece.Directed by Emmanouil Koutsourelis.
1998 «Two street stories», Video, duration 7,25', in cooperation with
group of dance artists «Sine qua non», Open Theater, Athens
1992 «Bacches», with the «Etaeria Katastasseon», Vorre Museum, Athens
1988 «Houses of memory, Houses of silence», Patras Festival, Patra, Greece
1987 «'87 Roads», musical impromptu with Irina Dimaki and Nikos Touliatos

Publications:
1990 «The Ascension of Dionysios Solomos in Heaven», handmade publication
containing ten engravings.
1992 Founding member of the «Etaeria Katastasseon» and chief editor of the
homonymous magazine.
1994 He set up RADAR in cooperation with Ioannidis Kostas and Giorgos Gyparakis
and stared publishing the homonymous funzin.
2001 «Pit Bull» comix monography , OXY publications

Black Box

2006-03-15T07:07:00.000-08:00

I possess the images of a human being
of male sex
named Alexandros Psychoulis
born in Greece in 1966
SPEAK
pause for a while after uttering each word
you can speak using his own images

Black Box
Digital interactive video installation 1997

- 1997 Benesse prize in 47’ Venice Biennale.
- 1998 Deitch Projects gallery, New York
- 1998-99 DESTE foundation, ‘Global Vision III’, Dakis Joannou Collection.

When I pronounce the word "Sea"
I have in mind its quiet image
at the Aegean shores of South Pelion.
The image of the same word
is quite different
for whom has suffered a wreck experience.

The communication through words and phrases is partial.
We understand each other up to a certain degree but not thoroughly.
We speak, we listen and perceive enclosed within the frame of our own images.

What would happen if speech was automatically interpreted in images?
What would happen if we could speak by the use of someone else' s frame of images?
……

"BLACK BOX" is, in a few words, an "automatic image-producer" of the speech. It consists of a video-wall, a microphone and a powerful computer.

The spectator can speak to the microphone. The words automatically bring out pictures on the video-wall. Actually the spectator speaks and his speech is made into a picture through somebody else' s experience.

The artist sees his images projected by the mouth of a complete stranger.

It is finally impossible for him to control them.

……………….

Words are ne ver alone
A young actor is vocalising a text during an audition and the director stops him.
"Your intonation is always correct", he says, "but you pronounce the word "mother" as if it were a foreign word".
The young actor confides in him that he was brought up in an orphanage at Volos, that he never knew who his parents were and that he ascribes the word "mother" to the only chair he has in his apartment. When he utters the word "mother" the only image that comes to his mind is that of the chair.
A.P.

BLACK BOX is in short an "automatic animator of speech".
It consists of a video-wall, a microphone and a powerful computer.
There are approximately 4,000 images stored in the computer (still and moving pictures) which correspond to an equal number of English words. The images belong to the mental space of the artist, in other words to a Greek male, named Alexandros Psychoulis, of thirty-one years of age who lives in Athens.
The viewer can speak his words into a microphone. His words automatically project images on the video-wall. In reality, the visitor speaks and his speech is animated through somebody else's experience.
The artist sees his own images in the mouth of a stranger. As a result he cannot control them any longer.

With these simple and sparse words, Psychoulis describes the alphabet of the words and the images he has created. Is it perhaps a game of unexpected combinations of words and images? It might be that as well, if we pause in front of the screen and speak and play for a while. In any case, there are not many alternative ways any longer that can make the viewer stop in front of an image. Screens have now usurped the place previously occupied by paintings. This is true enough.

However, Psychoulis's BLACK BOX apart from containing unexpected and secret information is also an ark that encloses the soul of a contemporary artist interpreted into experienced images. Their projection is activated by vocal speech, but their narrative character changes according to each distinct way of thought and is coloured by the oral expression of the viewer who utters them. Things that are voiced, as Aristotle tells us, are the mishaps of the soul. The vocal script, as Derrida later explains in his treatise De la Grammatologie, listens to its speaking self. In this way a new language is born.

The evaluation of the radical transmutations of world culture during the passage from one millennium to the next, and the role of the new deceptive pictorial image of the world, introduced by digital technology, will be decisive.

Who does the language of the image belong to? Who is its creator in today's world? And who is the principal image-maker of the world?

This role has been ascribed to the artist for centuries throughout the history of art and civilisation. Art addressed itself through the power of rhetoric to an recipient and the world of pictorial representation was either a window that opened on to a designated field or level of symbolic images that spoke their own language. A language that has always exercised power on the eye and the soul in different ways. The image of the work of art, as a text, was offered for the reading of the plot, the form and the thought which the artist wondrously unfolded in the eyes of the observer.

Art in the twentieth century has radically changed the basic structure of pictorial representation. It has broken and minimised it to the point that the narrative character of the artistic text has now completely disappeared. Or conversely, it detached the "text" from its purely representational and fictional quality and restored it to the domain of language itself. Art as a language has explored all the ways that led to and revealed its source, from the fundamental formalistic structures to the conventional expressions of body language. In addition, the natural and social environment has become the framework of the observer with a view to rendering him active in the re-creation of the natural environment and abolishing his being a passive recipient.

The long list of the transmutations of form, structure and concept always had a constant characteristic. The transmutation was the result of a single creator, orator or versatile commentator. Behind each elevating or annihilating transformation of art, the "magic wand" was manipulated by the artist's hands. His writing was the reading text. Within this continuous relationship between writing and reading, the observer was always an integrate part of the design of the work of art.
With his work entitled BLACK BOX, Alexandros Psychoulis drastically intervenes in the fundamental scheme of art through the centuries. In reality this vigorous intervention is not entirely due to him. As a man and artist of this age, Psychoulis is today the recipient of this transformation in the relationship between writing and reading. This transformation questions the role of the creator irreparably. This time, it is science itself that has moved the magic wand, rendering the reading of the pictorial "text" an undertaking that does not permit passive acceptance. Any image, any word mediated as knowledge or information through the demonic digital machinery can simultaneously be substituted according to the volition of the viewer by his personal intervention.

The application of this new mode of "writing" in an extensive radius and scale in the natural and social environment is daily read in the powerful presence of the pictorial media, from advertisements to every kind of signification. It remoulds the environment of contemporary man into an open illustrated text, where the avant-garde design of form, the simplistic codes of communication and the most advanced metaphorical use of writing-reading coexist on an equal footing.
For this reason, it is not strange that a young artist with perspicacious and sagacious spirit concedes his image-making role to the language of the observer. Psychoulis does not simply create an unrestricted work with his BLACK BOX. In reality it is deceptively beguiling. The BLACK BOX is like a Trojan Horse which as a toy contains hidden and unexpected traps. He encloses information in the "black box". His own images are the products of a private interaction between images and words as experienced in his own personal environment. By definition, they are not familiar to others. Thus they are stored in the memory of a computer. The thread that connects these images with the source of their origin is invisible and mystical as it is unwound by experiences that are not repeated and do not belong to the viewer. All the illustrated information, all the connections that bind it to speech, are clearly a personal matter of contemporary man.

The viewer who projects them on the screen with the use of his voice, appropriates them and starts experiencing the illusion of personal narration. Without seeking to do so, he takes on somebody else's role, while their initial moulder -the artist himself- automatically becomes the observer of his own self, the viewer of a process of detachment from his own self.
Nothing corresponds to anything.

A strange presentation of the re-presentation is inaugurated.

In the archeology of language, Rousseau claims that "the first language was necessarily pictorial," therefore, metaphorical.

This claim seems to find correspondence in the pursuit of a new artist who searching for a new mode of "writing" instinctively turned to the exclusion of his "ego" from his own language.

Psychoulis ploughed the terrain of many different arts and forms of communication before being drawn to his BLACK BOX; from the theatre, video films and illustration to cartoons, narration, the graphic arts, multimedia and publishing. In a great number of his produced works, co-creators and colleagues equally underwrite them and, in some cases, as it happened with his installation entitled "Machinery-free Industry" (1994), the visitor of the exhibition appears to be a co-producer. The objects placed in his installations in space are his own creations that have an intensely ironical character like the works he appropriates. The wooden sculpture that decorates the glass ark which contains the sacred heirloom of the braided piece of hair of the favourite heroine of all his narrations, Anna-Maria, is the work of a worthy anonymous Greek craftsman with whom Psychoulis becomes one, as it also happens with the deceased constructor of the Infant-Recipient. He voluntarily confirms or revokes his existence in the capacity of the artist-creator in relation to what already exists in everyday life whether that may be in the past or in the future.

This characteristic is a constant force in Psychoulis's creation and he does not hesitate to eliminate the identity of the creator, the omnipotent "ego" of the artist who has always dominated or bolstered art's proposition. Thus, the BLACK BOX adopts the common method of "writing" through the interaction inaugurated by digital technology. However, the use of this apparatus, the artist does not pretend to be paving the way in order to facilitate the viewer's transport to the top of creation. The person who talks in front of the screen, enters into it in order to dispense with the artist. The viewer, left by himself, becomes the forger of art. Left alone, the artist, becomes an awkward observer. BLACK BOX is a signpost showing the way to a situation of extreme alienation and detachment from everything familiar. The sign that signifies the present offered by Psychoulis, is in reality a big question mark that is brought about by every radical change of values of a certain civilisation and, consequently, its language.

In the design of an "ecumenical" level of co-existence and understanding the experience of Babel prevails as an almost necessary precondition. "In what place could we understand each other by talking and listening to one another? "Could that happen in the theatre", Derrida wonders, "which unites spectacle with speech, and could it substitute the unanimous assembly?" Even in the theatre language cannot remain pure and new; it becomes complimentary.
With this question in mind, Psychoulis considers the theorem of the qualities of the dead and living languages with clear-sighted thought. Grammatology explains that "the unvocalised and universal writing of science is in this sense a theorem. As Leibniz used to say, "ad vocem referri non est necesse".

The BLACK BOX restores the birth of language through the lost unity between seeing and oral speech. With this process that is facilitated by high technology and which also revolves round the particular reality established by electronic society, Psychoulis transfers the quality of the artist to the intermediate stage between the pre-lexical condition of civilisation that gives birth to vocal writing and the strictly personal reality as experienced by the individual.

Psychoulis's BLACK BOX is deceptively offered as a toy. A toy in which his entire life is incorporated with pictorial signs that cannot be interpreted. His illustrated life, stored in the computer, becomes a womb. The artist-creator is rid of his "ego" and maintains his femininity. The word of a third party, the word of the new society, of multiple sensitivities and individual creativity, will produce the sperm for the birth of a new language in a different art form.

Efi Strousa

Fax Fatal

2006-03-15T07:01:00.000-08:00

“Fax Fatal” is an active performance, very close to a game, which took place for the first time in Perpignan, South France, during the exhibition “language is a virus”. The audience of the exhibition could take part in the performance. The performance itself is an adaptation of a well known game which called “broken telephone” in greek and “telephone Arabe” in french.
The participants of the game are sitting at low sits placed in line, one behing another as you can see at the picture. First participant is holding a marker pen and has in front of him a blank paper. The one who is sitting in front of the last participant has his back naked. The last one is writing with a crayon and very slowly on the back of the participant who is sitting in front of him.

The participant with the naked back is “transmitting”, by his finger, to the back of the participant who is sitting in front of him, the route of the line in his back (which is written on his back by the last participant). Every participant in the line is doing the same on the back of participant who is sitting in front of him etc.The participant who is the first in line and sitting in front of anyone else is writing on the paper the word that has been “transmitted” through participants’ bodies.
Every time the group of participants are reaching the end, which means the first participant, a digital photo showing the drawing back is hanging on the wall just beside the final drawing of the word (35cmX50cm). The process is going on (with different words) and the wall is coming up full of pictures and drawings.

This performance has great fun as words seemed to fade and being transformmed into upstracted drawings. It could take place during the exhibition period by the audience of the event (we need two participants at least). In France this performance had a great success with small groups of Fine Arts students and students in general.