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athens beijing 1 - 31.03.04 - cheapart

Haris Kondosphyris , Installation. Commisioner: Eirini Savvani

ATHENS BEIJING Bienale Sao Paoulο
ATHENS BEIJING| cheapart
Athens, in the beginning of the XXI century, is but a provisional episode in the lives of many an immigrant hero. This is the outcome of a new division by shearing movement, whereby the whole planet is convulsed: be it illegal immigration or exile, adventure and escape, freedom is more than often a spurious promise, in a total diaspora through which entire worlds are devastated and others are born.
Athens, is a node in the web of dislocation. So many people of varied origin gathered here, are seeking out their place and in the process they contribute new harmonics to a civilization that need be postulated out of chaos. Starting with the minimum, immigrants have the fascinating capacity to optimize: maximum dislocation / influx / growth. The long distance from Athens to Beijing is covered in two stages, in the exhibition space of Cheap Art. First, a symbolic structure of concrete, a fragrant temple of reminiscence is perceived as floating in the horizon of events that clutter the life of a Chinese emigrant. An Emigrant's Ark looks very much like a traditional Chinese temple, the beauty of which we can contemplate and still be suddened by the ark's imminent reflection surging to burst on our feet.
We move along. Words appear, embroidered in relief against the padded walls. The scent that pervades the space is in its turn permeated by sound emitted by an invisible electromagnetic installation. We are about to enter the second stage, the Heart of Dark. A narrow passage and now, the music takes shape. Opposite, on the bed of a riverlike corridor we see a crowd of emigrants-immigrants standing of a familiar-unfamiliar on this central Athens sidewalk.

Stainless sheet metal, sheared as if by the digressions of this conglomerate: multifarious human forms mapping the contours of a continuing inner city voyage.
Co-travelling in this with Panayiotis Bossnakis, Orestis Davias and Vassilis Kokkas: a poet, a botanist and a musician, wander and intersect each other in sensory nodes.
The installation is representing Greece at the 26A Bienal de Sao Paulo(Brazil).
National Commisioner: Irini Savvani.