Diary Fragment: ‘‘I am just a person in the sea of persons called society’’
Idea, Performance| Katerina Kataki Visual Curation | Katerina Kataki & Ira Spagadorou Text Curation | Katerina Kataki Video, Photography| Alexander Koromilas Production | Α.Μ.Κ.Ε. Micrographia Special thanks to: Dimitra Dermitzaki, Afoi Milioni, Janno Martens, Chloe Aligianni & Ioanna Apostolopoulou.
When*:
January 30, 2023 | 13.00-16.00
February 01, 2023 | 13.00-16.00
February 03, 2023 | 17.00- 20.00
Where: Syntagma Square,in front of the archaeological exhibit of Peisistratos’ Aqueduct.
Right Exit of Metro Syntagma Station (Towards Vasileos Georgiou A Street)Athens
(*in case of difficult weather conditions, new days and times will be announced)
A citizen dressed in pajamas as if in her room, sits at her office placed at the edge of Syntagma Square and attempts to write her diary on a typewriter. At the same time, there is an option offered to any passer-by who wishes to leave their own handwritten notes. Each written paper is placed in public view on the ground of the square, as a different historical record, a live one, alongside with everything else that is happening on the site. In this condition the use of subjective diary writing meets the mechanical objectivity of a typewriter giving rise to a potentially poetic means of expressing and processing data. The artist attempts to record internal and external realities that occur in the time of the action through four categories of accessible journal entries corresponding in four types of paper: Evidence, Observations, Confessions, Unknown. The deposition of these notes which ‘capture’ passing thoughts, feelings, moments, creates a kind of map and various visual frames in the busy city square. The diary, a private object with a public reputation, opens its pages and is at hand. Without discrimination it enables revelations and reassessments of self and the world through the process of recording. The great lesson it offers by hosting every trivial incident, is that every life deserves to be recorded as a unique story. The often invisible passers-by of the square, the residents of Athens, have a strong place in the collective calendar that is created. Every presence, every movement brings a beat to the typewriter keys. The project Δημόσια Ημερολόγια // Public Diaries combines the art of Performance and Visual Installation in progress. It is a personal, artistic and social experiment, which seeks to approach what happens when a person decides to publicly expose the process and imprints of journaling and share this experience with other people. The project wonders on the possibility of creating an intermediate, ‘transparent’ space between the private and public spheres, where the two landscapes intersect with free perspectives of thinking, imagining, seeing and interweaving moments. Seeking to inspire and encourage the possibility of restoring possible identity fragmentations in the constantly under construction narratives, the project wishes to embrace and safeguard the disconnected, hidden, unseen and also visible aspects of human existence and action. It claims the vulnerability and its visibility as a universal characteristic, promoting freedom of speech and expression in the public environment, within a square whose name derives from the requirement to create a Constitution.