If therefore your eye is simple,
your whole body will be full of light
(Math 6:22)
art and texts
timeless remembrance
on “timeless remembrance”
The video installation “timeless remembrance” was created after the invitation to participate and produce visual and performance works on the thematic discussion “body and politics”. the initial presentation took place at the “Embros” theater, in March 2014. The installation was presented on August 7th of the same year, at the meeting of visual arts and literature “Ψυχή στο Λαιμό”(*), in the Psarades community of Prespa, and Tsepelovo of Ioannina a week later, on August 15.
During the discussion held in “Embros” theater, the initial reaction led to the idea of the spiritual body. The crucial decision to visually represent a dead person, connects the concept of the spiritual body with timelessness, while the ceremony of the funeral [funeral=κηδεία/kidia, from κήδομαι/kidomai=caring for] demonstrates the continuity in ancient Greek and Christian cults and concepts. The video/iconostasis -in parallel projection- marks the inner unity of time(less) continuity and memory. Fimed by “chance” near the field of the murderous battle of the Plataea and similarly by “coincidence” next to a remnant of a Roman (Byzantine) phryctoria (a tower used for the transmission of a specific prearranged message). Carrying these elements internally in the lit candle of prayer and remembrance.
(*) “ψυχὴ στὸ Λαιμό” (psihί sto laimό) literally means “soul in the Neck”. A wordplay with the word Λαιμός (Laimὸs). Lemos is the town were Municipality of Prespes is based and takes its name from the neck shaped land between the neighboring Prespa lakes.
The “broken” continuum passes from death to life. At first life in straitness. Urban, short, opaque. little lights in a theater darkness. In the next passage, life simple, difficult, and long hauled. The life of the many, reflected in the workers' apartment block in former Soviet Georgia. The voices on the street, of an unknown lonesome language, sound like the murmur of water sweetening the length of a short life and imply; in befitting the hilarity of the evening light, that something stronger stands and exists against the straggle and tragedy. That “something else” eventually becomes apparent in the children's carefree smiles of the last video episode. Bathing and playing in the summer sun, far away from the anxiety of the “grown-ups” and the (mis)perception of time. They offer the cleansing water we adults need and give us a bright memory of the future.
About the names of the dead, we will say a little here. We simply emphasize that they are illuminated in the space, not only as a memorial, but also as persons of real and timeless unity.