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| Paris and Its Wonders, 2013, mixed media on the back of a Paris postcard, 10,5 x 15 cm |
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| Still Life 3 | ||||||
| Still Life 3 is a project developed during the residency at 59 Rivoli in Paris which addresses the issue of „Nuclear France”, the existing 59 french nuclear reactors and the french nuclear weapons arsenal, and it does not aim at the visible banality of the nuclear disaster horror, too wellknown to us that we are either desensitized by its frequency or resigned with its future recurrence. The project concept will focus on carefully constructed imagery of France, seemingly bucolic landscape and romantic atmosphere of the nineteenth century cityscape, covering the present day reality. France, which irradiated the European continent culturally and politically for the past centuries, pushed to the outskirts of this practice to influence European continent, revived its worldwide role, not through its culture of central significance but through the undeniable nuclear strength while keeping the cultural aspect but not the cultural function itself. Today the French power to predetermine Europe is irradiated nuclearly rather than culturally, since the Europeans themselves made contemporary cultural influence redundant, forming the nucleus of the society within the economic and military power fields. Further more the social background of the French political scene is dependent on nuclear power and it promotes a monotonus position regarding the subject. The opposition to nuclear power is not part of the common repertoire of ideas of the French, even when polls show a growing concern about the risks of nuclear power, few take into account the costs of foreign energy dependent France, if even possible. This difficulty, maintains the need for skillfully made imagery of the French landscape promoted by stratagem and perpetuated through its entire cultural spectrum. France’s flawless and ethereal atmosphere hides its radioactive contents of its nuclear economic international presence and military transnational ambition. | ||||||
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| The final stage of the Still Life 3 was in fact its decommissioning. The body of work of the SL3 assembled in a single work was removed by the visitors of the 59 Rivoli from the occupied space, never to be assembled again. Dismantling moved the project from its presenting "objectual" status towards an active experience function creating in this process a new independent work, a happening - Still Life 3 Decommissioning. The happening itself consisting of removing the SL3 and of discussions regarding the project and its subject, expanded through an interactive seven-day long process becoming a social intervention. The participants of the happening were encouraged to clean the SL3 covered walls of its content this way becoming a part of the happening and transforming art into a social intervention. Art/ Social Intervention, outside of any commercial appreciation, determined to be rather what you take off the wall than what you put on it, art is what you make of it, is leaving the space itself striped of its content but not of its concept. The final stage of the removal process resulted in a SL3 free ambiance, an anthropogenic post nuclear disaster emptiness. However its social intervention function continues beyond the removal process through the complex relations and discussions carried out by the visitors both inside and outside of the SL3 occupied space. The participants which diversely interacted with SL3 from delicately removing the installation in effort to preserve and keep the removed parts, to aggressively reaping the installation of the wall in attempt to wipe its content, established a relationship with the subject of Nuclear France itself even when the visitors expressed their unwillingness to participate. Decommissioning followed by discussions with the visitors carried out during the event at 59 Rivoli forms a relational outset regardless of the consideration or disregard toward the subject. The project continues through the public which in a manner of nuclear fission, releases the concept from its object, spreading it towards an activating potential. | |||
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