Absence Section ΙΙ

Going down three steps the viewer finds himself between two opposite big screens that ‘talk’. But do they really ‘talk’ or each of them autistically tells its own story with no intention to listen or share? As ‘talking’ has now become a graphic term and has lost its distinctive substance, this work constitutes a commentary on the lack of communication, which is not inherent in silence but instead in uproar. On the one hand, an old man recounts experiences from the time of war, all of them carefully selected in order that each of them separately sketches out, as a work-recording within the project, the mental loneliness experienced by a person. On the other hand, a soprano who is yodeling with her image slowly blurring by her own breath, as if it is her favoring or even choosing this failure of communication. The two so different figures express, each of them separately by different means- visually and conceptually- the alienation and isolation experienced by a modern man but both together as a composition, submit a feeling of anxiety, frustration and despair to the viewer, placing him in their ‘talk’ for a few minutes, as a third party in an highly problematic ‘conversation’.

they wrote...

This video is a work of Konstantina Katrakazou, part of a set, titled ‘Absence’. If the excesive use of words by the Dadaists created a ‘situation’ beyond words, the work of Konstantina Katrakazou seems to go further in the primordial roots, in the inarticulate speech. In this sense, if there is no precedent (at least I'm not aware of any), this project is truly innovative.

Daloukas Manolis