I entered this semester with a question just like every semester. This time it was formulated like following:
"The intriguing notion of memory being present and walking parallel with the present is what I would like to investigate further in this semester, and hopefully through this year.
Spaces are infused with their memories; the people that passed through them, the functions they have changed, and the history around them that led to their current form but also exist at the same time in the here and now.
How could this be experienced by an audience present in those spaces?
How could these memories activate space in a different way, in a different nonlinear time frame?"
During my time in this program I have been chasing research questions trying to find what I want to say. It has been a struggle to settle for one thing and go deeper with care and focus, rather than getting facinated by a new exciting idea every semester. I sat down today to reflect on the semester and my thought process seems to start again from the beginning, a year ago today.
This installation started from an idea of creating something for a purpose. Five afternoons and 171 pieces of paper later I realised I was learning more about myself and my way of making, than the actual outcome. There is something fasinating in using fragile frames to speak about fragile topics. Staying in that space, sitting with something, spending time to center and focus are some of the elements I think follow my process until now. It was an improvised attempt to figure out my language before I actually settled on what I want to say. Improvised from the moment it started to the moment of revealing what the space wanted to talk about in the end.
A performative experiment adressing the distance between the reported news and the actual events, emphasising on how the media use numbers to present news in a way that causes both shock and eliminates relatability. In a fragile structure, the spectators follow the performer in something that starts as a performative lecture and a typical conversation at the same time. They are presented with the chain of thoughts that led to the experiment and slowly are transported into the list of event that are resited. "It's scary that if you google any number next to the words refugees / immigrants, its guaranteed that an event will appear."
Looking back, this workshop must have been one of the pins of my process that I missed. We sat in a room with Vinny who asked us to share a moment, a personal one involving the sensation of light. Through that conversation a later tiny experiment appeared, where a dark room would slowly be revealed to be a timed and choriographed light movement experience challenging the borders we see and the amazing thing that can happen if they are crossed. In that room the gaze was directed to notice and not see, to wonder though what is hidden and what is visible and play around with the limites of those things.
"architecture serves as a datum for human memory: a point of reference for an experience perceived in space and time"
I looked around me to the spaces that I admired. There was a question that I was determined to answer: Why Buildings?? What is there in the memory of the space that I want to share and address?
So I dived into archives and started reading. I have always been facinated by the way space can hold traces of the time passing through it, human traces but also natural traces. I wanted to address all those questions that rise when I walk in one of those spaces, when I recognise those traces.
There is a feeling of respect, a wonder of the people that entered that door before me, a huge curiosity on the fanction but also the feeling this space had in its past. And while investigating I can imagine, how the space would sound, smell, look, feel in another time.
Could there be a way to witness it??
mentions Peter Zumthor, in his book "Thinking Architecture", where he talks about his views on space based on associations and memories, embodied knowledge and understanding. From smells to feelings to memories of eventd and moments, he developed associations that will always come up first when thinking or even walking in space.
Beems bordering, where do they come from and where do they fade to?
Something like porus borders, a void, an absence and a presence in the space.
It generated actions between the participants like games, attempts to move and change the beems, there was no urge to cross the beems.
The intangible that becomes visible.
The collection of routes of people in the second semester, created an archival constallation (can be found in the second page of this research catalogue for reference) that visualised a lot the structural shape that my process has been taking. Jumping from topic to topic, even though they are related with each other, remind me of the constant moving solar system. Different views and different topics/angles could be seen as the planets and my process as jumping from planet to planet and using them to have different views on the rest of the planets.
To visualise the above thinking process and also talk about my source material I created an experience constructed by three of those planets, a story derived from where I am now, a story constructed from the memories of the collected routes of people and a personal story about my memories. All of them created a handmade book that was read between two people in front of the house that generated the first story. It was an attempt to grasp how my thought process from a closed house could generate associationg with my research material but also with my personal memories.
At that point I was revisiting Bark, the book of Georges Didi-Huberman about visiting the nazi consentration camps. His keen eye observes and detects how different and the same is a site that from a prison has become a touristic attraction. He walks though the camp with an interogative gaze always aware of the history that surrounds him but also the calmness that seems to conseal it.
One of his phrases triggered doughts about the approach of memory in a very factual almost archeological point of view:
"to look at things from an archeological point of view is to compare what we see in the present, which has survived, with what we know to have disappeared"
The art of staying
Thinking back to the first conversation we had with Anna Karin ten Bosch in Rotterdam, one of the things that stayed with me was her method of staying with the communities, living in the areas she is develloping work at and learning by staying. Even though that process takes time, effort and not necessarily pays off immediatelly it's a valuable practice to gather knowledge and experience that is missed when discribed and not lived.
The week in Terschelling came in a moment when I was consumed with archival research. The Utrecht Archive had offered everything it could and I had a ton of information about our studio building, but still no making aspirations. So I entered the island with no plan.
Terschelling was presented as a "research retreat" where we either park our research for a week and take a break or find inspiration and let the research take off. For me it felt like maybe a week of vacation. Maybe I should stop looking at things through the written traces and explore.
I am a walker. When I need to think I walk. Also when I want to see I walk. Walking keeps me grounded, slows things down, allows you to be late. And as the island was a struggle with the wind, I decided to find my route and walk it. Close to where we were leaving there was a road, kind of a straight one going to the beach. It passed through a small forest, and some low sand dunes and entered the endless beach of the northen sea. That was my first route. That same road streched all the way to the other side of the island and the dike. Imagine a line crossing vertically an island and you could walk it.
That line that cut the island in two was my newest adventure. I decided to walk it straight and continusly until I got tired. I left the house after breakfast and walked until the intersection with my route. I turned left and staring heading for the dike. The wind was blowing so strong that sometimes I would float rather than walk. It would move the grass around like there was an invisible hand strocking it every nw and then. I walked straight on the path until the stairs. Climbing the stairs and standing on the edge of the island felt a little on top of the world. And then the wind pushed me back and reminded me I had one hour walking from that side to the other. Crossing the fields, passing the houses, I arrived to the little forest. Here, the wind was filtered by the trees. I could still feel it but lighter. The trees were absorbing the noise. And then slowly from the noise of the wind to the noise of the sea.
That day I returned at the house and tried to remember the route I took, the feeling, the difference of walking in different soil, the smells. I documented or I tried to document all of those things on a map, my souvenir from the island.
Walking through the gardens with no purpose is staying, observing the life around is staying, sitting and noticing is staying.
Bringing the research to a specific space raises questions:
How does my method inform the way I see the space?
How does the space inform my way of looking?
What do you do when ypu walk in a new space?
How do you share your way of looking?
This time the archive was made not just searched. In a decision to not share the actual route,withthe rest of us as it was 2 hours long, and everyone was exausted, I decided to share than in the studio. I placed the map on metal stairs, and placed tracing paper on the steps. In a small performative gesture I would unfold the paper up the stairs, while the audience would take off their shoes and walk up the stairs on the tracing paper.
An attempt to take a memory of a time and a space and transport it in another time in another space using the existing elements of the new space in favour of the experience (aircondition, metal stairs with tecture ect).
I entered this semester with a question just like every semester.
"The intriguing notion of memory being present and walking parallel with the present is what I would like to investigate further in this semester, and hopefully through this year.
Spaces are infused with their memories; the people that passed through them, the functions they have changed, and the history around them that led to their current form but also exist at the same time in the here and now.
How could this be experienced by an audience present in those spaces?
How could these memories activate space in a different way, in a different nonlinear time frame?"
Peter Zumthor, in his book "Thinking Architecture", talks about his views on space based on associations and memories, embodied knowledge and understanding. From smells to feelings to memories of eventd and moments, he developed associations that will always come up first when thinking or even walking in space:
On the other hand in Dorrita Hanna's text "Event-space: Performance space and Spacial performativity, space is considered a performative entity, constantly performing though time:
I looked around me to the spaces that I admired. The main reason I turned to spaces, and as presented buildings was because it is easier for me to talk about them. But....
Why Buildings?? What is there in the memory of the space that I want to share and address?
So I dived into archives and started reading. I have always been facinated by the way space can hold traces of the time passing through it, human traces but also natural traces. I wanted to address all those facinations, all those thoughts that appear when I walk in one of those spaces, when I recognise those traces.
I talked about charged spaces like it was a category of space, like some spaces aren't charged with memory and stories. There is a feeling of respect, a wonder of the people that entered that door before me, a huge curiosity on the fanction but also the feeling this space had in its past. And while investigating I can imagine, how the space would sound, smell, look, feel in another time.
Could there be a way to witness it??
"architecture serves as a datum for human memory: a point of reference for an experience perceived in space and time"
"Because action in space has a reciprocal relationship with space in action, our banal everyday environments can be perceived and utilised as continually fluctuating performances. This is further confounded by how the so-called ‘real world’ is informed by the virtual worlds emerging from various media and our own imaginations."
The workshop in public space brought me back to the original archiving and searching of the history of the building and subsiquentelly the neighbourhood. Keeping the walking from the previous experiment and the historical references I asked my audience to take a walk along side the canal opposite our school. They were given old photographs and were asked to
"find the spot of your photograph and thry to observe what was and what is"
All participants would start looking together while they walked from one bridge to the next, pasing others who found their spot, look for the spot together, wonder.
An attempt on walking though time or with time, trying to place different moments of memories in the space where they happened and happen to observe elements of time passing.
It was very interesting to observe what happened to the space when 13 bodies where wondering, looking and at the end framing something in front of something else.
Could this be a bizzare view for someone who doesn't know what is happening?
But what did they get?
A conversation with Emily Huurdeman where she mentioned that through my different experiments what seems to be a common ground is time passing and attempts to observe that passing in space. But what is missing is the duration of it. "Until now you have fragements, and you find ways though fragments to see fragments of time. But you talk about the passing of time which is continuous, endless and present"
My mind has been busy with time, time that slips off my hands, that is ungraspable, invisible, omnipresent but also temporal and, for some, nonexistent.
I have been thinking about how time passes through space and how can that be perceived or experienced. Can you freeze in a spot and observe time passing around? Can you move so fast with time that you become it and then you feel it? Is there a way to walk through a space and witness its time, what was there through what is there? Something interesting appears in the notion of the now that is always already the past when we try to think about it. I try to grasp it, to keep its duration alive even after it passes. I wonder what happens if we don’t think of time as the universally accepted linear passing but as a parallel existence of past, present and future in the here and now.
Through the experiments and the experiences I create, I attempt to find ways for the audience to wonder with me. Placing time in the foreground and taking the time to sit with it, observe and think could be some of my methods. During this journey of finding out my scenographic practice, time has played the role of the tool and of the subject. I take time to observe things, to make things; I use it in a way that holds more in the duration of it than the actual end result. I attempt to approach spaces through their time by investigating the traces of history, memory, nature, human passing through it, and by staying, taking time to look, and placing them hand to hand with the now. “I don’t have time. How could you have time? And then who has time? Where is time? But it passed. But it’s still here. But it passed.” That back and forth situation between what is and what was and where do we, in the here and now, exist between those things sounds philosophical, existential and vague but it is exactly what lights up my mind.
Dueling between the identities of a researcher and an artist, I aspire to be an investigator that asks questions and wonders. How do moments pass, how do memories linger, and how both leave an indelible mark on the world we inhabit? Each attempt to address an audience with a work is a reflection on the tension between permanence and change, inviting the viewer to consider how the spaces we move through are shaped by the temporal forces that shape us. It’s a personal inquiry, somehow always present but now revealed about that thing around us that is endless but passing, that isn’t about what is lost but what has been gathered and the force these gathers offer me.
Alkmini Damianakou from 03/12/2024 until 15/12/2024
I am a walker. I walk. It grounds me. It slows me down. It gives me time to see. It allows me to look. “Why don’t you take your bike?” . I walk before I sat to right all this.
I never wear a watch. It annoys me. I can hear it ticking on my hand. I can’t keep it on my wrist. I can’t get used to it on my hand. I can’t write with it on my hand.
I like to stop. I stop looking at something and turn my face to something else. I lean back at the chair I am sitting on. I lean back on the wall I am standing in front of. My gaze moves around and up. “Looking at the floor won’t take you anywhere!”
I like to stay. I stay in a position for some time. I stand. I sit. I position my feet flatter. I pause my walking. I pause my thoughts. “A pause dances.” The pause of the movement is as strong as the movement. The pause.
I am always late. I rush. I run. I need to stop but I shouldn’t. I stop. I pause. Now I am late. “Being late will set you back.”
I am me. I am the person from a noisy big city, from the center of it.
I am the girl who runs with her mother and her sister through a crowded street to get to an appointment. We are always in a rush to get somewhere. We walk through legs, trousers, skirts, boots, sandals, shopping bags, fruit stands, the traffic next to us, the noise of the venders, a constant sound of mumbled talking, maybe rain, always evening, always lights and car horns, a constant pulling of my hand to go faster. It feels like we might catch the time and we won’t be late anymore. As we are crossing everyone in our path fast, they suddenly stop moving, everything pauses and only our time is running. And then we reach the door. And everything unfreezes, and we are back in reality, mum rings the bell, the elevator takes us up and far away from the world running full speed again.
I am the girl who plays through Athenian arcades while her father is working the kiosk of newspapers and cigarettes on the street. I run through suits, shoes, briefcases, the jewelry store, the toy store, the noise of the entrance, the heat outside, the cool inside, the people in a rush. They have a purpose, somewhere to be, up, down, outside, inside. I am not in a rush. It feels like I am in the frozen time now, and everything else is running, passing, crossing. People who know me say hello, strike my hair. Dad calls my name and I am not frozen anymore. He is going home, we are going home.
I am the woman who walks in that street. I am the person who passes through that arcade. Now it’s another street, with different vendors, with less noise, with faces. Now it’s another arcade, with closed shops, vacant offices, empty spaces. Now there is no crowd to run through. Now there is no rush around. I walk with a new lens and a different speed. I walk the streets, I cross the arcades through the buildings, I can see the rush, I can hear the noise, I can smell the rain, the heat. The toy store owner repairing the wooden train, the jeweler standing by his door, the difference on the marble floor where most people would step, the darkness and the silence, everything seem to be echoing what was once through what is left.
I wonder if it is still there. Is it just a mental cinematic trick nostalgia and memory play with my head?
I wonder about the moment that everything freezes. Do I watch the time or am I in the time that froze? Do I watch the time or am I in the time that speeds?
I wonder about the different times. One is the time you run, one is the time you pause, one is the time between then and now, one is the time from then to now. Are there more than the layers we have tried to measure?
I wonder about the grasping of time. Ungraspable things are fascinating. Can I grasp more than a glimpse? Can I keep more than a moment?
I wonder do we actually keep moments. Is a memory a moving image or a still one?
I wonder about slowing down. I wonder if slowly pausing is what I am looking for. Is there a way to see the past, the present, the future there where you stand?
I wonder can we take the time to have some time?