A phenomenon is something that is made appear or brought to light, but that can, as easily, fall back into obscurity or oblivion. On this remote island, made visible to the Argonauts when Apollo’s arrow slit the darkness and shed a light onto it, the works of the invited artists attempt to reveal the invisible, blur the apparent and invest alternative ways of seeing.
Visibility/invisibility is neither a property of the object nor of its observer, but rather of their interaction through light. Thus, altering the established relation to light forces us to look differently and elsewhere. Any such observation has a real effect, as it intrinsically changes the state both of the observer and the observed.
Nina Papaconstantinou carved the text of Alphabet: the good kids, the book from which generations of Greek kids learnt to read, onto sheets of blue book cover paper that she hung on the windows of the classroom. The text, partially discernable only from specific angles, lets the sunrays through small holes on the paper, creating constellations and opening up the words to new meaning. It creates an environment between day and night, between now and then; a fa- ding memory of childhood, where our first perception of the world was formed through language.
Kostas Bassanos examines the notion of the horizon, this spatiotemporal point of passage between light and darkness, where our vision is confronted with its limit. His blown up photographs of film negatives at the point where the printing of the image begins, create fictitious horizons at once dazzling and dystopian. These floating images dialogue with the video 25.4mm, where the artist uses sculptural tools to elevate and level a stone in order to look beyond the horizon, towards a fleeting sun.
Anafi was a place of exile between the two wars. Entire communities had been built by the exiles who had given names to streets, had their own governing bodies, newspapers and customs. This part of history is all but forgotten today. Indeed, the struggle of the marginalized is often a struggle for a place in history; a constant renegotiation with the master theory through experimentation and proliferation of local knowledges.
Haris Epaminonda creates fragmented narratives by invoking elements that voluntarily defamiliarise us and produce lines of flight: a text describing a maritime scene on a Chinese porcelain vase hangs in a bus-stop; a video projection of odd page numbers, counting the time that passes, alternates every day with a video projection of the moon. Defying simple interpretations, they work as hints to other times and places, freed from the burden of signification.
Daniel Gustav Cramer’s text work Vernazza, a story written in the first person of a man lying in a hotel bed at night gazing at the reflection of the water on the ceiling, is made of five stacks of paper. Each stack describes a fragment of this scene, overlaps with another, creating a continuous loop of elements appearing and disappearing with the rhythm of the wave reflections. XXIII, 2015, an iron sphere, is located on the island for the duration of the exhibition. The sphere’s position, as long as it remains in Anafi, is not fixed. For his second site-specific project Cramer brings together all personal names of the residents of Anafi in a book, creating a portrait of a place. Tales 05 is a photograph depicting the silhouette of a man standing on a rock near Pireus harbor from which one departs from the mainland to travel to the island.
Whether we are looking at something or remembering the past, we do it through language. What we see is shaped by the name we have already attributed to it, but does not merely reduce to it. The experience of staring at the Aegean is more than just “looking at the sea”. It is, in fact, in the interstice between the dis- cursive and the visible, in this “slender, colorless, neutral strip”, where creative processes occur.
Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain invent new ways of writing based on scientific or literary data, that challenge the limits of representation. In Lexicon (Kallistos Kosmos) they transform the stars of the sky into Greek letters. The alpha-stars are the most luminous, all the way to the faintest omega-stars. They use this new map to draw a new constellation by writing Heracleitos’ phrase Kallistos Kosmos, the best of worlds. In Archipelagos, they use found stones to write Archipelagos, the ancient name of the Aegean Sea, in a system that uses human steps as a measure: one step for alpha, two steps for beta, etc. In Pilha (Longitude/Latitude) the simple writing system Pilha, where alpha corresponds to one granite tile, beta to two tiles, etc., puts a mark in Anafi, displacing the focal point to the periphery.
Alejandro Cesarco’s video is composed of a fragmented text, appearing as inter-titles, interspersed with syrupy-snapshot-like images of memories (both personal and cinematic). Throughout the work conjectures about the past are balanced against promises of the future. The work flirts with the possibilities of memory, both as the object and instrument of our desires. By talking about the past, the artist also talks about his wants or desires. In this sense, talking about the past becomes a way of talking about the future; of fashioning a future.
The exhibition explores how notions of visibility/invisibility are formed through light, language and memory. It creates webbed accounts with multiple entry points as an invitation to wander, question the normative and invent previously unimaginable worlds.
Visibility/invisibility is neither a property of the object nor of its observer, but rather of their interaction through light. Thus, altering the established relation to light forces us to look differently and elsewhere. Any such observation has a real effect, as it intrinsically changes the state both of the observer and the observed.
Nina Papaconstantinou carved the text of Alphabet: the good kids, the book from which generations of Greek kids learnt to read, onto sheets of blue book cover paper that she hung on the windows of the classroom. The text, partially discernable only from specific angles, lets the sunrays through small holes on the paper, creating constellations and opening up the words to new meaning. It creates an environment between day and night, between now and then; a fa- ding memory of childhood, where our first perception of the world was formed through language.
Kostas Bassanos examines the notion of the horizon, this spatiotemporal point of passage between light and darkness, where our vision is confronted with its limit. His blown up photographs of film negatives at the point where the printing of the image begins, create fictitious horizons at once dazzling and dystopian. These floating images dialogue with the video 25.4mm, where the artist uses sculptural tools to elevate and level a stone in order to look beyond the horizon, towards a fleeting sun.
Anafi was a place of exile between the two wars. Entire communities had been built by the exiles who had given names to streets, had their own governing bodies, newspapers and customs. This part of history is all but forgotten today. Indeed, the struggle of the marginalized is often a struggle for a place in history; a constant renegotiation with the master theory through experimentation and proliferation of local knowledges.
Haris Epaminonda creates fragmented narratives by invoking elements that voluntarily defamiliarise us and produce lines of flight: a text describing a maritime scene on a Chinese porcelain vase hangs in a bus-stop; a video projection of odd page numbers, counting the time that passes, alternates every day with a video projection of the moon. Defying simple interpretations, they work as hints to other times and places, freed from the burden of signification.
Daniel Gustav Cramer’s text work Vernazza, a story written in the first person of a man lying in a hotel bed at night gazing at the reflection of the water on the ceiling, is made of five stacks of paper. Each stack describes a fragment of this scene, overlaps with another, creating a continuous loop of elements appearing and disappearing with the rhythm of the wave reflections. XXIII, 2015, an iron sphere, is located on the island for the duration of the exhibition. The sphere’s position, as long as it remains in Anafi, is not fixed. For his second site-specific project Cramer brings together all personal names of the residents of Anafi in a book, creating a portrait of a place. Tales 05 is a photograph depicting the silhouette of a man standing on a rock near Pireus harbor from which one departs from the mainland to travel to the island.
Whether we are looking at something or remembering the past, we do it through language. What we see is shaped by the name we have already attributed to it, but does not merely reduce to it. The experience of staring at the Aegean is more than just “looking at the sea”. It is, in fact, in the interstice between the dis- cursive and the visible, in this “slender, colorless, neutral strip”, where creative processes occur.
Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain invent new ways of writing based on scientific or literary data, that challenge the limits of representation. In Lexicon (Kallistos Kosmos) they transform the stars of the sky into Greek letters. The alpha-stars are the most luminous, all the way to the faintest omega-stars. They use this new map to draw a new constellation by writing Heracleitos’ phrase Kallistos Kosmos, the best of worlds. In Archipelagos, they use found stones to write Archipelagos, the ancient name of the Aegean Sea, in a system that uses human steps as a measure: one step for alpha, two steps for beta, etc. In Pilha (Longitude/Latitude) the simple writing system Pilha, where alpha corresponds to one granite tile, beta to two tiles, etc., puts a mark in Anafi, displacing the focal point to the periphery.
Alejandro Cesarco’s video is composed of a fragmented text, appearing as inter-titles, interspersed with syrupy-snapshot-like images of memories (both personal and cinematic). Throughout the work conjectures about the past are balanced against promises of the future. The work flirts with the possibilities of memory, both as the object and instrument of our desires. By talking about the past, the artist also talks about his wants or desires. In this sense, talking about the past becomes a way of talking about the future; of fashioning a future.
The exhibition explores how notions of visibility/invisibility are formed through light, language and memory. It creates webbed accounts with multiple entry points as an invitation to wander, question the normative and invent previously unimaginable worlds.