Stemming from the on-going artistic research project IN-QUARRY, initiated in 2021, addressing practicing public space and expanded choreographic methodologies, arisandmartha’s new work titled ‘they returned regularly, each time for more’ proposes a sound installation which activates and transmits the groups ideas, thinking and scoring
processes while working on the archive of a former stone-quarry in suburban Athens.
The work proposes a reversed activation of what it means to practice public space through the receptors of human or other-than-human entities, not on the site of the quarry itself, but on a remote and neutral space. One of the fundamental ideas of this work is the quarry seen as a vessel (damar means vessel/vein in Turkish) as well as a generator of ideas, thoughts and activations. The flow of excavated and extracted inorganic material (building stone and limestone) found its place into the Athenian urban fabric. In reverse, the flow of organic material (human and other-than-human entities)has returned into the quarry post its exploitation and excavation era. How do we inhabit and practice those spaces? How do we imagine and invent new narratives for the former quarry of Galatsi -Phychiko? Recordings, spoken text and performative actions are being shared between audience and collaborators in a spatial, scaled simulation of a collectively re-imagined space.
Artistic Research | Concept
arisandmartha | Aris Papadopoulos & Martha Pasakopoulou
Material development | Co-creation
Christina Karagianni, Anastasios Koukoutas, Jeph Vanger, Martha Pasakopoulou, Aris Papadopoulos
Artistic Collaborator
Anastasios Koukoutas
Studio recordings & Sound mixing
Jeph Vanger
Hosted by
Haus N Athen art space
Production
arisandmartha
Special thanks to Haus N Athen and Panos Giannikopoulos.
VISIT IN - QUARRY
Representations in Parallel
The quarries of the Attica basin are many. And they vary in status, considering the qualitative outcome of what has been constructed out of their extracted material. For example, the quarry of Penteli, which supplied the Parthenon marble, cannot compare with the quarries of Galatsi, which supplied the construction of certain suburbs with simple stone and lime. Different times, different needs, different priorities.
The quarries of Galatsi are also many. They are not one and the same. They are numerous and extend to different widths and heights within the area they occupy. The quarries of Galatsi are mentioned in the plural yet for another reason. A different quarry is defined each time the use of land and the way each visitor choses to act within it change. At the same time, as each visitor’s perspective and frame of action varies, this creates yet another representation or activation of each quarry. The space as a hollow container or shell remains the same.
The quarry of a shepherd who lives there and performs daily livestock work was until recently a reality. Here the landscape of the quarry is defined as the living space of the shepherd both for himself and for the animals he raises. It is not a bucolic or pastoral landscape for him. He is already integrally part of it and therefore cannot distance himself and define it as such.
At the same site, we as pedestrians and visitors, access the space inquisitively but at the same time extractively. We ‘dig’ for new information be it empirical, experiential or other, using the quarry as a vessel which accommodates our own narratives, or the ways by which we choose to read the space and transfer that information into a third, neutral space within the city. Excavation – Transfer – Rendition. We seek for a way to talk about this site through the distance and at the same time we wish to be validated by it.
The final activation is the one happening here and now. Our own quarries of Galatsi, compressed into a sound format, are redeveloped in this gallery space, in an attempt to simultaneously activate the multitude of representations and performativities they carry, through the bodies of the visitors of this expanded choreographic proposal.
