BIDA 2005
9-18 September 2005 | Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art & "Kaftantzoglio" Stadium | Thessaloniki, Greece
September-November 2005 | Las Atarazanas | Seville, Spain
September-November 2005 | Las Atarazanas | Seville, Spain
"Your brain is a sensual, wet organ, not a bodiless judge" - Adam Zaretsky
C o d e s
No doubt: Those years I perceived the human organism as a bunch of cells, transmitters, synapses, proteins, DNA formations etc, have long gone. M.K., a biology researcher of the Demokritos Institute of Biology, has provided me with biological maps and graphs, she indicated methods of research, guided me through a second hand scientific knowledge which resulted in six years of artworks in the studio. The electronic microscope and its imagery, the different functions in the human body such as cell multiplication, mutation, and so on: this area of knowledge is apocalyptic... These "little truths" expand an artist's field of vision towards a newly generated gaze which welcomes alteration, flux and the "transient".
When I was commissioned for the Bida 2005 artwork, M.K. helped me find the molecules of adrenaline, dopamine and testosterone. As an experienced post- Olympiad viewer, I felt that dealing with the subject from this particular angle was an adventurous path. It is clear that the war of different biotechnological applications on the body makes the horizon between reality and the possibility of alterations vanish forever. The excess of possibilities for eugenic transformations alters the body's basic physiology and transforms the real into the virtual. Genetic engineering is always a high –risk venture. It creates "human abstractions" in the sense that selected bodily traits are overemphasized at the expense of the depreciation of other traits. The biotechnology-aided athletic hybrid body is a construction: its virtual mass media consumerist and theatrical performance is desired. Less "human" means more "profit". The body is there, reconstructed in full intelligence.
P a s s w o r d s
No doubt: The years when I perceived the human organism as a bunch of neurons, synaptic gaps and interacting transmitters has long gone. I was then researching the primeval knowledge of the memeplex - derived from the historical long dead alphabets. I created a second hand scientific knowledge of the Linear B language of the Minoan era ( 2.500 years ago).This is an alphabet that conjures up the worlds of imaging and coding. Its eighty seven diphthongs are highly visual, in shapes derivative from ideograms. It is a code that unites images and signs in an unforeseeably loose way.
The Linear B experience as a visual code was enriched with the so called "amputated" lyrical texts, after a discussion with E.K., a scholar at the Hellenic Open University. These fragments are the oldest texts handed down to us, (7th-6th century b.c.), along with the Homeric epos. The difference from Homer is that, while Homer is a complete text, most of the lyrical poems are fragments. These fragments cannot be transferred as meanings to the languages we use today since they lack contiguity and continuity. The fragments suggest a perfect processing of the ancient Greek language; they are not at all "raw" material.
From Linear B, to the "amputated" lyrical poems, to the DNA code: the body remembers. Its memes is its sense of the real. It is the sense of belonging at a certain time in a certain place: this is conveyed through its every cell. At the same time it exists in the space of flows, where time is compressed and disarranged to the point of deformity. Reality is continuously fleeting and simultaneity is organized so as to create the coordinates of three-dimensional space: everything seems to be possible. Dwelling in real virtuality makes one experience a grotesque present.
____________________________________
Effie Halivopoulou, May 2005
*This text follows readings on S. Blackmore, M. Castells, A. Zaretsky.
Special thanks to Dr. M. Konstantopoulou and Dr. E. Karakantza.
Bida catalogue text, Seville, Spain
C o d e s
No doubt: Those years I perceived the human organism as a bunch of cells, transmitters, synapses, proteins, DNA formations etc, have long gone. M.K., a biology researcher of the Demokritos Institute of Biology, has provided me with biological maps and graphs, she indicated methods of research, guided me through a second hand scientific knowledge which resulted in six years of artworks in the studio. The electronic microscope and its imagery, the different functions in the human body such as cell multiplication, mutation, and so on: this area of knowledge is apocalyptic... These "little truths" expand an artist's field of vision towards a newly generated gaze which welcomes alteration, flux and the "transient".
When I was commissioned for the Bida 2005 artwork, M.K. helped me find the molecules of adrenaline, dopamine and testosterone. As an experienced post- Olympiad viewer, I felt that dealing with the subject from this particular angle was an adventurous path. It is clear that the war of different biotechnological applications on the body makes the horizon between reality and the possibility of alterations vanish forever. The excess of possibilities for eugenic transformations alters the body's basic physiology and transforms the real into the virtual. Genetic engineering is always a high –risk venture. It creates "human abstractions" in the sense that selected bodily traits are overemphasized at the expense of the depreciation of other traits. The biotechnology-aided athletic hybrid body is a construction: its virtual mass media consumerist and theatrical performance is desired. Less "human" means more "profit". The body is there, reconstructed in full intelligence.
P a s s w o r d s
No doubt: The years when I perceived the human organism as a bunch of neurons, synaptic gaps and interacting transmitters has long gone. I was then researching the primeval knowledge of the memeplex - derived from the historical long dead alphabets. I created a second hand scientific knowledge of the Linear B language of the Minoan era ( 2.500 years ago).This is an alphabet that conjures up the worlds of imaging and coding. Its eighty seven diphthongs are highly visual, in shapes derivative from ideograms. It is a code that unites images and signs in an unforeseeably loose way.
The Linear B experience as a visual code was enriched with the so called "amputated" lyrical texts, after a discussion with E.K., a scholar at the Hellenic Open University. These fragments are the oldest texts handed down to us, (7th-6th century b.c.), along with the Homeric epos. The difference from Homer is that, while Homer is a complete text, most of the lyrical poems are fragments. These fragments cannot be transferred as meanings to the languages we use today since they lack contiguity and continuity. The fragments suggest a perfect processing of the ancient Greek language; they are not at all "raw" material.
From Linear B, to the "amputated" lyrical poems, to the DNA code: the body remembers. Its memes is its sense of the real. It is the sense of belonging at a certain time in a certain place: this is conveyed through its every cell. At the same time it exists in the space of flows, where time is compressed and disarranged to the point of deformity. Reality is continuously fleeting and simultaneity is organized so as to create the coordinates of three-dimensional space: everything seems to be possible. Dwelling in real virtuality makes one experience a grotesque present.
____________________________________
Effie Halivopoulou, May 2005
*This text follows readings on S. Blackmore, M. Castells, A. Zaretsky.
Special thanks to Dr. M. Konstantopoulou and Dr. E. Karakantza.
Bida catalogue text, Seville, Spain
