© Panos Sklavenitis. All Rights Reserved.

Acropolis Rocks

Panos Sklavenitis, Eleana Yalouri

 DV, 6 min 59 sec

Τo what extent is the aura of the Acropolis undermined if it is renamed into ‘PJ802TH24’ or if its image is disintegrated into digital pixels? Can we possibly reach its core if we analyse it into the primary elements that constitute it? How are all these elements reunited into an explosive collage of images and sounds creating a gigantified body that expands beyond the ancient hill, and is spread out through mental, narrative and material reproductions and transformations?

We perceive the Acropolis not as fixed in time and space, but as a mobile body consisting of several parts, with different microhistories and multiply situated; as a field of sensorial interactions and as a meshwork of memories and narrations; as the object of power and control practices of preservation, beautification and corrective aesthetic, but also as a subject accumulating the potential energy of the past, the present and the future. Τhe Acropolis sums up biographical events, memories and materials which ‘prepare’ her later forms, while at the same time ‘recapitulating’ all its previous ones. The Acropolis appears, thus, as acheiropoiete, that is, not made by any human hand, but with an autonomous personality and agency which make her the protagonist in the art process and of secondary importance the artist who created her.

Presentations:

'The New Parthenon (beta)', Athens Biennale 2013, AGORA (Host: Ilias Paraskevopoulos)

'VALUE workshop', Athens Biennale 2013, AGORA (Coordination: Elpida Rikou)

'Archaeology, Anthropology, and Contemporary Art’ workshop (Coordination: Eleana Yalouri)

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