Micrographia, under the auspices of the City of Athens, in collaboration with the City of Athens Culture, Sports and Youth Organisation (OPANDA) within the framework of Culture is Athens presents: “Lessness”.
“Lessness” is a dialogue between a visual exhibition and a performance, an introduction to Samuel Beckett’s text “Lessness” and the artwork of Ira Spagandorou, an initiation into a world without verbs, where nouns and adjectives are repeated non-stop, a single fragment impression.
All sides endlessness earth sky as one
Grey sky no cloud no sound no stir earth ash grey sand
Earth sky as one all sides
Endlessness
No sound not a breath same grey all sides earth sky
Phrases are repeated in Beckett’s poem. Twenty-four verses negotiate the absence and presence, the loneliness and solitude of human existence. Like a book that unfolds its pages, an engraving will unfold from parts of the city where we come across the boundaries of the simultaneous presence-absence of people in a shared environment.
The way Spagandorou works is both conceptual and gestural: the artist places the palette of inks on marble slabs and broken pavements and then transfers all her bodyweight into her hands, thus imprinting the marks and spots that emerge on Japanese paper.
The result is a formalistic trace of the city, which brings to light the signs of memory and the history of the streets and the steps.
Formalism, abstraction and involvement with the urban landscape, not as an architectural form but mainly in relation to the socio-economic fermentations that shape urban reality but also the experiential aspect, were the elements that brought the artist and the director Dimitra Dermitzaki together to create a performance that will adjoin and accompany the exhibition.
Lead by Ira Spagandorou’s gestural approach and the concept of imprinting, the repetition of phrases and steps, the fragility of Beckett’s universe and a broken pavement in Omonia Square, Dimitra Dermitzaki guides the performer Angeliki Beveratou, on a conceptual, abstract path, towards an uninterrupted, three-dimensional interpretation of Beckett’s phrase: “Never but this changelessness dream the passing hour”.
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March 7 to 12
Daily 11:00-19:00
Saturday & Sunday 10:00-15:00
The performance will take place at 18:00 on weekdays
and at 12:00 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
Exhibition Opening Date: March 7, 17:00
The City of Athens Art Center, Parko Eleftherias, Vas. Sofias Avenue.
web: www.opanda.gr