Contemporary Art Exhibition: “Our ears to the cement”
In her text “Ecofeminism as decolonial and transindividual ecology”, philosopher Chiara Bottici discusses the need to rethink the perception of nature as a mere provider of “raw material” that must be subjugated to the capitalist mode of production, as well as the very separation between “living” and “non-living matter.” She focuses on the transindividual idea that “all beings are, to some extent, animate: within such a philosophical perspective, the environment cannot be perceived as something external, outside there, but becomes constitutive of our being, inside here. (…) “we are the environment.” Hence the ecofeminist proposal to move from the notion of the “sustainable development” to that of a “subsistence perspective.”[1] Can we reverse the entrenched capitalist hierarchy of man, woman, animal, plant?
Referring to this year’s theme of the festival “Routes in Marpissa” “Air, Earth, Water, Fire! Elements Unbroken” (from the collection Homelands by Kostis Palamas), which focuses on the elements of nature, the visual exhibition “Our ears to the cement” (from a verse of the poem «huecuvu mapu» by Valeria Mussio from Argentina, translated by Spyros Pratilas, Teflon magazine issue 30) starts from the recent interest in the more-than-human life by leaning in to listen to the plants, the animals, but also the “inanimate” beings of the island’s landscape and the stories they have to tell about today and yesterday.
In an era when solastalgia (stress about the planet’s future) becomes more intense, and in Ecuador or New Zealand, indigenous communities achieve the recognition of rivers as legal entities and treat them as living beings, the invited visual artists who worked on (or with) the island turn their attention to the natural environment and whether we can move from the discussion of its exploitation to forming a relationship with it.
Through the work of artists reflecting on changes in the natural environment and the hidden stories behind them, and in the aftermath of the impact of the Paros Citizens’ Movement for free access to the beaches, the exhibition questions whether the conflicting international and national narratives about sustainability in the era of climate change can intersect with local experience in the direction of claiming democracy for all life. Are stones, streams, and dry-stone walls animate beings? What can the waves, bees, alien fish, and the practices of a wild animal care center on Paros teach or unteach us?
Considering the misunderstandings about the desertification of the mountainous landscape and the challenges posed by development as well as the nostalgic ethnocentric approach to tradition, the exhibition comes through mostly new works resulting from a research process, both onsite and offsite, to add new “entries” to a nomadic archive of practices and works of art under construction. An archive that, starting from Marpissa and the “Routes,” has been building an alternative narrative for years, bridging the past of Paros (and broader rural and island Greece) with the issues and stakes of today and tomorrow. As archaeologist Faidon Moudopoulos – Athanasiou characteristically mentions, “tradition is not a static concept, and often the concept of progress is more ambiguous than described by the dominant narratives. What do we keep from a past where collective expression and solidarity were primary forms under extremely difficult conditions for a future that appears more individualistic than ever?”[2]
Many of the artists who traveled to Paros this year shortly before the start of the season returned with Mediterranean depression,[3] observing the shrinking natural landscape and the expansive human presence and how it affects non-human beings. Is the water used for washing rental cars less than that consumed by the pools? What can invasive fish species from other seas, which environmental organizations urge us to learn to eat so they don’t wipe out local species, tell us about colonialism and nationalism today? How Parian is the anchovy, why does fish and a stranger stink on the third day, as a Parian proverb says, and what does the invasive lionfish taste like when served with the appropriate national-gastronomic narrative? What does a descent from the highest peak of Paros, dominated by antennas serving communications, to the sea reveal about the ecosystem processes taking place on the island? What do we think about the feminine landscape of the present by watching the waves in a video shot or seeing them wash up a rubber jellyfish on the shore? And what about work and the landscape as we see concrete flowing from workers’ hands into a construction mesh alongside the creation of a beehive’s labor?
With “Dreams made of wax, they melt at sunrise,” Athina Koumparouli, through a small-scale sculptural installation and video, explores how unregulated construction shrinks the natural space and the entities that inhabit it. Questioning what is needed most for survival today, she observes the landscape transforming or slowly disappearing under volumes of concrete, linking it to beeswax, whose vulnerable materiality inevitably melts and collapses under the scorching sun.
In the segmented video-essay “no trace of a beginning, no prospect of an end” by Phantom Investigations (Ino Varvariti and Giannis Delagrammatikas), snippets of thoughts, archival references, and field notes create a poetic and scientific interpretive scheme inspired by the topology and cultural context of Paros. The narrative motif of the work symbolically adopts the gradual, downward transition from the highest peak of Paros, where the church of All Saints is located, to the sea. The entire project is the result of intersecting narratives of personal, geological, and anthropological interest.
In the installation “Alien species served with local purities” by Pegy Zali and Panayotis Lianos, three myth-critical texts in the form of recipes and a series of sculptural magnets are presented in the abandoned Gavalas mansion in Marpissa, which has long awaited its next day. The work refers to alien species from distant areas that colonize Mediterranean waters, disrupting the balance of both the local ecosystem and human activities, posing a threat as they compete with endemic species. It also refers to funding programs aimed at promoting the consumption of these species in collaboration with chefs and environmental organizations. Here, the alien species are served with local “pure” products, proposing recipes that utilize ingredients such as overtourism, the refugee crisis, the rise of nationalism, and colonialism.
Katerina Komianou presents two videos, one older and one made for the exhibition. In the video narrative “Medusa,” an entity pulsates on the shore. We do not know if it is alive, dead, or has a gender. It is “a jellyfish, made of black braids (…) The waves beat it, like a female body.” For Komianou, “we are not the feminine landscape of the past.” When faced with the consequences of the past, she refuses “to reinforce them by repeating them, to attribute the irreversible, the equivalent of fate, to confuse the biological and the cultural, because now the future should not be determined by the past.” In her new video “uneasy love affair,” the video of a Paros wave found online is re-filmed with analog video cameras, exploring how a given image is destroyed, how a poorer but no less true one is made. A study on fluidity, duality, and the passage of time, and a form of resistance to the impositions of the modern capitalist condition.
Engaging with the theme of this year’s “Routes in Marpissa” festival “Air, Earth, Water, Fire! Elements Unbroken,” the participating visual artists revisit the natural landscape as it is increasingly converted into exploitable units. Centered on a Cycladic island – a champion in building permits – and as new specters like the tourism mafia add to the consequences of the climate crisis and tourism development such as water scarcity, the exhibition’s works make us wonder how unbroken nature’s elements are today, if there is still an alternative, how pure it can be, and what we do about it.
Finally, considering that both “Routes in Marpissa” and the works, discussions, and interactions that have emerged through them constitute an archive of practices on how we can imagine island life differently, and given that similar archives are increasingly being created intensively over the past decade on different islands, this year’s exhibition is framed by the discussion ” Insularity. A discussion about visual arts activities on the Greek islands,” starting from the research of art historian and curator Evita Tsokanta in which producers, curators, and artists participating in different artistic projects (Paky Vlassopoulou, visual artist, Iordanis Kerenidis, co-founder of Phenomenon, Anafi, Akis Kokkinos, curator and founder of DEO Projects, Chios, Despina Zefkili, art critic and contemporary art curator of Routes in Marpissa, Paros) participate.
Day and time of discussion: Friday, August 23 at 20:15
Day and time of guided tour and performative readings (Parian anchovy is also served!):
Saturday, August 24 at 20:30
Contemporary Art Exhibition Participants: Pegy Zali and Panayotis Lianos, Katerina Komianou, Athina Koumparouli, Phantom Investigations (Ino Varvariti and Giannis Delagrammatikas).
Curator: Despina Zefkili
Titles of works
Athina Koumparouli, Dreams made of wax, they melt at sunrise (2024)
Phantom Investigations (Giannis Delagrammatikas, Ino Varvariti), no trace of a beginning, no prospect of an end (2024)
Pegy Zali and Panayotis Lianos, Alien species served with local purities (2024)
Katerina Komianou, Medusa (2023), uneasy love affair (2024)
[1] Chiara Bottici, “Ecofeminism as Transindividual Ecology,” translated by Athanasios Katsikeros, published by Temporary Academy of Arts / PΑΤ within the framework of Waste/d Pavilion – Episode 2 at State of Concept Athens (May 27, 2022 – September 24, 2022). https://temporaryacademy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/chiara-bottici-1.pdf
[2] Vovousa Festival: (Dis)continuities in the high mountains or how the dominant narratives about the depopulation of the mountain landscape are overturned, interview with Despina Zefkili, Athinorama, November 2, 2023, https://www.athinorama.gr/texnes/3022541/festibal-bobousas-asunexeies-sta-psila-bouna/.
[3] I borrow the term from Dimitris Gioulos’ poem “Conclusions 1” from the collection Extreme Weather Phenomena (Thines Editions, 2023), from which the following verses are taken:
Nights like tonight
where I curse the bones of Elytis
and I mobilize
the remaining creativity
I have left to think of new curses for
the Greek summer
Nights like tonight
I want to grab a psychiatrist
by the lapel
to talk to him about Mediterranean
depression