μεταφορά- μεταφοραί/
wolrd fairs,
cultural-transports and historiography
https://vimeo.com/194752637
With the installation μεταφορά-μεταφοραί [wolrd fairs,
cultural-transports and historiography] I investigate the transport of the
Greek Pavilion from the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris to Athens, and
the negotiations for the transport of the Hermes of Praxiteles statue from
Olympia to the World fair of 1964-65 in New York. Within today’s constantly transformed world of global ows it
is called for new approaches of the past, which correspond to the ambiguities,
multi-perspective and polyphonic realities of the world. Between globality and
locality and vice versa I try through the appropriation of practices a
“relational and interactional” transnational approach of the ‘Histoire
croisée’, to reconstruct the two transports (μεταφοραί) - cases as a
paradigmatic artistic hypothesis. Using the example of the pavilion and the
statue my goal is to recast these two transports (μεταφοραί) as an artistic
synecdoche highlighting the interface between the (seemingly opposed)
tendencies of globality and locality. I perceive the two transports (μεταφοραί)
as a shift to transfer and metaphor. It acts on one hand as an allegory that
confuses while traverses the spaces of history and provokes ragtag compositions
and shifts, as well as juxtaposes of new images. On the other hand it as an
artfully arranged rhetorical argument that thus becomes the basis for an
artistic argument respecting the ambiguity of the current ideas and
requirements of the world: to interweave di erent historical perspectives and
directions of the world within a single unifying framework.
