|
Artists Main Programme Parallel Programme Workshop Performance Festival A-Ζ |
| biennale mission biennale shop |
| Hellenic Ministry of Culture
State Museum of Contemporary Art Thessaloniki Center of Contemporary Art Visual Arts in Greece Art Editions |
|
|
|
| Spiliopoulos Marios Born in1957 in Polygyros, Chalkidiki. Lives and works in Athens. The record of emotion In the autumn of 2008, at the old oil mill and soap factory in Eleusina, Marios Spiliopoulos presented his installation entitled Human Traces. In this occasion he attempted to revive the collective memory of the place in a perennial bond between its mythological and recent industrial past. In terms of the 2nd Biennial of Thessaloniki he worked upon the same concept by presenting the traces of the people leaving in Thessaloniki, a city with which he keeps personal relations. His installation has the form of a memory passage based on the meetings and the testimonies of people that live in this city and have agreed to take part in the journey of self-knowledge. The artist takes on the role of the coordinator or the animator of the project refuting the distinction between the producer and the recipient of the artwork. He utilizes most of the methodological tools of the actual historian, who does not see any significant difference between the valuable and the worthless material sources in the interpretation of the past. Oral testimonies are only some of the ‘sentimental records’ that are used in order to recall multiple versions of the collective memory. From this point of view, the artist’s work is in dialogue with contemporary historiography that takes subjectivity in consideration and explores a variety of commemorative practices that juxtapose or contribute to the official aspect of memory. The endeavour to write “history out of the crumbs” is connected with the social and political explosion of the ’60s than helped the emergence of new subjectivities during the following decade, such as women, students, workers, homosexuals. Speech, gestures, rituals of daily life and anniversaries gain an equally important role in comparison with the “great events” within the framework of autobiographic narrative, satisfying in this way the oppressed and forgotten social groups’ demand to articulate their own alternative discourse, thus disrupting the continuity of the established historical narrative. As “memory” is not connected with the past on the basis of knowledge but instead on the basis of emotions , Spiliopoulos’ installation incorporates and diffuses with generosity the emotional loading of people; through their narratives we regain our lived connection with the past. The switch from the big to the small is organically connected with the accession of the artist in terms of co-creation; “Voices of many people we are all” Marios claims, serving in this way the demand for the reconnection of art with the praxis of life. Syrago Tsiara  Download CV |  Traces of Men |
Sponsors - Media Sponsors
