Lamentations, hoots and a few jubilations
Vassilis Vlastaras
"The King is gone" (2013)
Video instalation
RE-culture 2, 1/9 – 31/10 2013 2
International Visual Art Festival Patras "Visual arts and Diversity in a Reflecting Europe" Skagiopouleio Foundation Solomou str 85 & Ierotheou str, Patras
Opening: 1 September 2013, 19:00 opening hours: daily, Saturday & Sunday 10:00 - 20:00
Michael Adamis Katerina Titina Fanouraki Maria Glyka Jim Hobbs Karem Ibrahim Foteini Kalle KavecS (Vana Kostayiola, Kostis Stafylakis) Dimitris Rentoumis vassilis Vlastaras
curating: metaoccupy
FIRST ACT People had gathered early in the center of the square. Everybody wore black. They came for the last goodbye to the great leader. Some gathered the crowd in small groups and delivered speeches. They were promising that His spirit will live eternally through acts of self-sacrifice and offering. Some chanted "Give it to the people", "belongs to us." In a narrow street next to it appeared two figures with red tie and sunglasses. Part of the crowd started hunting them. An elderly climbed a chair stolen from a neighboring cafe. He shouted, "Bring them here I will bury them too." Some called TV channels crews. The bells started ringing. A priest at the microphone: "today is their last day, you will get to see them." Applauses. Some sang with guitars. They had white paint on the face.
SECOND ACT The crowd was screaming at the grandstands, against the sunlight, at the same time that the heroic player, writhed with delight, was running to the sweaty hugs of his comrades. In such moments fans and players become one and their cheers compete with their desire for conquest and imposition. And those on the other side, are they the hated enemies? The muscular one with the tattoos was the first that yelled at them "torn!". Then they all turned to them, "carrion you will die!". Horns, Drums, whistles, fanfare ... joy and hate. They poured into the streets, "there is no other"… songs and taunts to whomever sophisticated or pretended to be one, they came across. They filled the streets with burning steak smell and the urinals with piss, they were feeling "tough" between the "tough".
THIRD ACT He was a contemporary paparazzi. He was posting anytime the guy next to him to the next, the awful shoes of the lady in front of him at the line in the tax office, the prices of pleurotus mushrooms at the flea market, the view of the Acropolis from his car, the garden of Megaron swinging with Maraveyas Illegal. "Be contemporary" everything was shouting at him ...Visual poems were waiting to spring out from his keys ... he knew how to write properly: time was flowing differently, himself was at the mercy of his thought, a thought enriched with hundreds of adjectives to decorate his nouns, a bucketload of information that unprocessed were taken and given away, he was calling it "an exchange of catharsis", words ready to get diffused, to influence generations, to shape aesthetics, to delineate semicircles around the globe, to go to Thailand and get automatically translated , to change at once with autocorrect before even written. He was ready for these changes, in the ring of life he struggled to make it and ... haha haha a voice laughed nearby ... haha haha and he wiped stoically the visual shit of his pavement to his neighbor's garden!
FORTH ACT "Enceladus struck without warning" "great democratic faction" of "anti-people policy" when "unidentified citizen" shed "light", according to "information government circles", in "business policy cheating society." "The police launched a manhunt" to find those responsible and "draconian security measures" to "protect the citizens" were issued by the "national salvation government" set up "at the request of citizens." "Let’ s tower democratic shield" and "let justice do its work" asked former president of "progressive party". Because "THE REPUBLIC DOES NOT FEAR OR STEP BACK" shouted "the faithful crowd gathered to protest despite the bitter cold", creating an "attack in the city center" and asking the "blame". Soaring and this year the price of Easter lamb. One issue that will be discussed … to be continued…
