Certain historical events are important for us since they are able to answer urgent questions. Their ghosts are flying from the past towards our future, while at the same time we are able to see their moving, blurred images floating in the sky.
When we describe or encounter with a person, an event, an image, or a voice from the past, there is always a supernatural feeling of animating something dead and at the same time mystifying today’s reality. This is not a nostalgic feeling. As Marc Fischer wrote, trying to interpret the term “hauntology” by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, some artists refuse to give up on the desire for the future.
How do we decide which events of the past are important to commemorate today?
Which way could we describe them, reenact, or alter them?
Where could we place them? Which urban environment, city, or landscape should we select as their background?
How can the sounds of the city, buildings, or the passersby of today affect or interact with a past event?
How is it possible for a monument to become ephemeral?
Do we finally attempt to revive, return to another moment and relocate, or transform the here and now reality?
These questions could be answered by the presentation of a series of installations and their related historical events.
Zafos Xagoraris is a Professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts and his work consists of drawings, participatory events and public installations of sound amplification mechanisms with the use of historical recordings. He has participated in exhibitions such as documenta 14, Kassel and Athens, the fourth Athens Biennial, Manifesta 7, Rovereto, the first Bienal Fin del Mundo, Ushuaia, the first Thessaloniki Biennale and the 27th Sao Paulo Bienal.
