Dialogues on Maritime Athens
Sea Figures, Liquid Grounds and a Lighthouse
The Island Orthograph
The drawing is about an approach, a journey from (an) Atlantis to (a) SNFCC. Five figures, Stavros Niarchos: the oligarch, Renzo Piano: the explorer, Plato: the mythmaker, Zisis Kotionis: the poet and Gilles Deleuze: the philosopher, are sailing the Aegean Sea, whose levels have risen covering almost entirely the Attica peninsula. Visible are now only the tips of the four mountains: Pentelicon, Parnitha, Hymettos and Aigaleo as well as a partial surface of the Acropolis and Lycabettus Hill. The rest of the city is submerged.
The drawing and the film are set next to each other. Printed on a 0.8m by 2.3m piece of transparent paper, the Island Orthograph hangs from a cross diagonal wire and is illuminated by a sharp beam of light, acting as a translucent index next to the film. Projected on a wall painted in light grey, the film is enlarged, occupying the same height as the drawing. It becomes a (drawing) copy since it is viewed through a projector (a device that by default generates copies).
© Eirini Makarouni
The drawing is about an approach, a journey from (an) Atlantis to (a) SNFCC. Five figures, Stavros Niarchos: the oligarch, Renzo Piano: the explorer, Plato: the mythmaker, Zisis Kotionis: the poet and Gilles Deleuze: the philosopher, are sailing the Aegean Sea, whose levels have risen covering almost entirely the Attica peninsula. Visible are now only the tips of the four mountains: Pentelicon, Parnitha, Hymettos and Aigaleo as well as a partial surface of the Acropolis and Lycabettus Hill. The rest of the city is submerged.
The drawing and the film are set next to each other. Printed on a 0.8m by 2.3m piece of transparent paper, the Island Orthograph hangs from a cross diagonal wire and is illuminated by a sharp beam of light, acting as a translucent index next to the film. Projected on a wall painted in light grey, the film is enlarged, occupying the same height as the drawing. It becomes a (drawing) copy since it is viewed through a projector (a device that by default generates copies).
© Eirini Makarouni
Three female voices - two Greek and one English - recite passages from Plato’s Critias. They are in dialogue, continuously deflecting from each other, softly narrating the story that occurred between Athens and Atlantis 9000 years ago. In parallel, a strip of animated grey light approximately two-and-a-half meters tall and a meter wide, compliments the voices, responding to their pitch, rhythm and tone. Hues of grey are superimposed, revealing different shapes, textures and surfaces. Some are reflections from lines etched deep into acrylic sheets, others are archival maps printed on transparent acetate paper and a few of the darker greys are shadows, cast by thick blocks of resin. The ripples and flickers of light are caused by a series of skewed projections, showing recordings of the moving water found in the site of the Stavros Niarchos Cultural Centre (SNFCC), built in the Athenian suburb of Kallithea, in 2017 and near Athens’s old port, Phaleron.
Cut-up film stills, printed on 90gr acetate paper are arranged next to each other on a white surface. Theyare folded and refolded, continuously remaking a type of ground. Upon first glance, they appear as a series of sections that cut through the site’s topography. When read in parallel with the text, they also take the form of waves, responding to the textual narrative. They are orthographically photographed and layered - on top of each other, next to each other. one partially overlapping the other - eventually forming a longer panoramic view of a liquid ground overlooking outwards to the Aegean.
The Phaleron Orthograph
This liquid collage is positioned in relation to the heavy line drawing that forms the SNFCC masterplan, sitting almost at the center of the drawing. It serves as an anchoring for other types of archives (viewed through a monochromatic filter), that were previously found in other grounds: an old photograph of the hippodrome, an orthograph of the SNFCC canal taken by Yiorgis Yerolympos, a horticultural map of Queen Amalia’s garden, as well as numerous “false” maps of Athens that can be (re)used to construct Atlantis.
The drawing’s title is the Phaleron Orthograph. Drawn at a 1:500 scale, the liquid SNFCC ground is now viewed in relation to the old port of Phaleron, nowadays including Athens’ Water Square (ΠλατείαΝερού). The monochromatic archives are gathered, rescaled, and dragged toward the blank paper surface of the square. Once again, a new, liquid ground is created, emerging from the grounds of the five figures. From this, a different figure-copy is derived: that of the Lighthouse.
This liquid collage is positioned in relation to the heavy line drawing that forms the SNFCC masterplan, sitting almost at the center of the drawing. It serves as an anchoring for other types of archives (viewed through a monochromatic filter), that were previously found in other grounds: an old photograph of the hippodrome, an orthograph of the SNFCC canal taken by Yiorgis Yerolympos, a horticultural map of Queen Amalia’s garden, as well as numerous “false” maps of Athens that can be (re)used to construct Atlantis.
The drawing’s title is the Phaleron Orthograph. Drawn at a 1:500 scale, the liquid SNFCC ground is now viewed in relation to the old port of Phaleron, nowadays including Athens’ Water Square (ΠλατείαΝερού). The monochromatic archives are gathered, rescaled, and dragged toward the blank paper surface of the square. Once again, a new, liquid ground is created, emerging from the grounds of the five figures. From this, a different figure-copy is derived: that of the Lighthouse.
