MONUMENT & MEMENTO | Acropolis Archeological Site, Athens 2003

About This Project

MONUMENT & MEMENTO – The relevance of the monumental and the memento

The work is the action performance of an artistic research at the public archaeological site of the Acropolis in Athens, with a final video-documentation product, photos, and a collection of peculiar postcards which were the only material I used for this action. The duration of the action took was one day and place on 28 August 2003. Video-documentation was exposed at Reithaus-Weimar during the symposium The Unmastered Past in Contemporary Art organized by the Master’s Program of Art in Public Space and New Artistic Strategies of Bauhaus University of Weimar in Germany.

Keywords & Terms: tourism, cultural values, image representation, aura, scale, object, reproduction, modern-modern, action performance

This action is part of a larger -utopian – proposal for the ephemeral installation of sculptures-written texts by tourists in their native language. Through this action the relationship of the tourist eye and emotions with the real place of the monument is recorded. The utopian purpose was to construct these texts out of metal, in a size similar to that of the Parthenon, and to combine ephemerally as installations within the monument. These texts would link the human size to the monumental. For the action I would like to thank Charisios Tsiouras & and for her help on the theoretical text Dora Economou

When we become aware of a beautiful site, we are used to cry filled with admiration: How marvelous! It’s like a photograph! This feeling gave me an idea of how to realize an art project related to the tourist’s memory and feelings, in comparison and juxtaposition to monumental sites. In this context I examine the reverse of the established 2dimentional representation to 3dimentional, and thus, I compare the human size with that of the monument. The first phase of the project is to involve tourists who visit the site. In this case the site is the Acropolis of Athens. Giving them postcards of the ancient monument, I ask them to write a text related to the monumental space having in mind they are sending a greeting to a beloved person back home. My final task and ideal goal would be to create 3dimentional text-sculptures relevant in size to the monument, or billboards with projected images of the texts written on the postcards from the tourists, on the top of the Acropolis’ hill.

Concept

For some years now I have been interested in how a monument is defined; on how ephemeral memory connects to the cultural heritage of a place; on the glamour (aura) of a monument and popular tourist sites, the lost aura of their representation turned into mementos, and the way it affects people interacting with the site.

A monument or a tourist site signifies the cultural heritage of a place. It is self defined by its aesthetic merit (rock of Acropolis of Athens), by its historical signification (the Buchenwald monument and museum, the ex concentration camp next to Weimar, in Germany), or by its contribution to the social life (CBGB, the music hall in NYC, the late Twin Towers in NYC), and finally by marketing (Las Vegas), speaking of places of prefabricated aesthetic value. On the other hand, some actual cultural exchange happens through mementos: tourist cards, statuettes, etc. Visitors buying mementos take with them some of the site’s glamour. Subconsciously or not they try to make a part of the place “theirs” while the local tourist market profits by it. What is left behind for the place in terms of aesthetic value by the tourist?

Monuments and people moving around them become one single synthesis. I decided to play the role of the go-between, the interpreter of those two fields of interaction: the human (the spectator’s, passenger’s field) and the eternal (the monument’s situated and permanent place).

My intention was to keep a “piece of tourist memory”, to remain trapped and actually get objectified on the site. I work on a process of compiling monuments and adapted postcards. I visualize the final form of the project to be monumental texts coming from the tourists, which by their turn will be made steel sculptures of relevant to the site’s scale, pieced together with the site itself. A prerequisite is that the postcards will be written on the site and no collection of ready-mades, and also that they are written in the mother language of each tourist. As soon as the text will be transformed into an object it will become a sign. The texture and the size of the sculpture will differ according to the size of the monument, or tourist site. Another possibility would be instead of constructing texts into objects/signs, to project them on billboards next to the monument, or site. Ideally the project could be repeated in sites all over the world. The work can be produced virtually and presented in a website.

The procedure and the ideal realization

The project comes in four phases.

1^st phase: my interaction with tourists on the site; collection of material.

Visiting the place loaded with postcards my first task is to involve the tourists. I provided them with a written statement and postcards, with the request to write a greeting. I kept the postcards which are not going to be sent where they were addressed actually.

2^nd phase: permission and sponsoring.

The perfect reality would be to get in contact with the relevant authorities for permission and I ask for sponsoring by the local post. It is very important to have the post symbol represented next to the monument as well.

3^rd phase: temporary installation.

The collaboration with civil engineers and architects is essential for the realization of such a project, as well as relevant constructor firms and technological support.

4^th phase: dismantle the ephemeral installation.

After an essential time the piece would become into pieces again and either would be sold to a collector or a museum, or recycled.

Though I should be an artist of Christo’s, or Smithson’s prestige in order to realize such a project on the Acropolis Rock, still it could be realized in small scale monuments.