Site Specific Art – Space, Architecture and Sound
‘Sound School’
Took place at the 1st elementary school in Katerini (Greece) now used as a sort of gallery. 6-13 March 2015,
Curator: Eleni Boufeti
Concept:
Based on Merleau Ponty’s ideas, this building ‘carries’ certain memories; those (obvious) related to a school at the ground floor and those (hidden) related to Nazis’ torture rooms at the basement during the World War II.
Based on these two elements, firstly I used one of the classes (now completely empty) in order to create a Class using the old school desks, low lighting and 4 speakers for sound. The low lighting helps in order to have an acousmatic experience away from pictures and images. The class is transformed into a Sound Class.
Secondly, the sound itself takes the responsibility to reveal those things which are hidden. In this case, this is a hidden story of violence created by a military regime. But there are different sorts of violence and different ways of imposing it; it could also be political, economical, etc. As an effect they cause immigration, economical crisis, etc.
More or less this is the story of Greece in the 20th century.
The sound for that reason is constructed in the form of Sound Documentary based on documented sound samples found on you tube from the beginning of the century (Eleftherios Venizelos) to the end of it and the induction of Greece into the European Union (Konstantinos Karamanlis).
The sound documentary finishes with a silence which let the audience to place their own ideas and emotions inspired by the nowadays experiences.
Some samples are from Iannis Xenakis’s pieces who was victim in one of these historic dramatic occasions.
Every sample is 30 seconds the most.