| You wander through dark corridors
and up and down staircases. Purple, red, blue flakes of plaster hang down
from the ceilings. Music, voices, high and sombre vibrations mix together,
double, fuse; as the spiralling melody of the synthesiser melts away, echoes
of a cadential air become clearer. From the distance, fragments of poetry
disappear like rolling pearls. On one wall of the corridor, long goldish
streaks of light on red background lead to the changing room.
•
Down there in the basement, the “Chamber of Transmutations”
is cold and damp. About thirty cubicles stretch in rows on either side.
Long blue or yellow neon tubes appear vertically on the pillars. You are
drawn along in a rhythmic walk with the cyclic laments of a cello and the
dry tempo of an electric guitar. Inside each of the cubicles, a blue bulb
illumines one image of the Angel; below on a little shelf is offered a
small cone of yellow, blue, black or white powder, like a promise of alchemy.
The Angel, in the same noble pose, appears in multiple bodies: baroque,
S-he is covered with light textures and thousands of stars; there, S-he
burns, a deep black shape seared with blinding flames going up her sex;
and in negative as a white silhouette consumed in black fires; here, huge
wings lie on his torso; there, her whole face envelopes her body; somewhere
else, as if in mourning, this face is a black satin mask; further, a dazzling
irradiation makes his solar plexus immaterial; in some alcoves, instead
of a picture hangs a mirror.
The Ancients saw the stars sometimes as angels, sometimes
as human souls. Astral bodies, they were made of Ether, the fifth element
of the Greek cosmology which was lighter and more volatile than Fire. In
the universe as described by a sixth-century monk of Mount Athos, angels
were in charge of the movements of stars and planets. The Cherubims of
Hebraic mysticism are said to be the fire spirits guarding Eden. In other
times, they were the inflamed keepers of the realm of the Moon Goddess.
In the “Chamber of Transmutations”, the Angel is
at the same time identical and perpetually metamorphosing from cubicle
to cubicle. Her-his materiality, skin changes. S-he escapes from the distinctive
logic of the elements. Celestial body, S-he is a corporeal and muscular
being. An earthly physique of improbable sex. Of the stars, S-he also belongs
to the chthonic world. And causes our comprehension of gender to waver.
You don’t dare go into these narrow cubicles where
the blue bulb seems to forbid any approach. No wild strength here protects
this body; rather is S-he exposed, vulnerable, prisoner of an outside control.
On one wall of the room hangs a black & white enlargement of the original
medical document broken into three pieces. Adjacent is a black hospital
bed, over which a roll of variations of the Angel image flowing down onto
the floor unfolds. To which universe, either clinical or alchemical, does
this bed belong? It may be the place of all possible bodies, but in this
room, time seems to be suspended in a state of pain. And walking along
this subterranean passage, surrounded by echoes, you will encounter the
reflection of your own face. |
| Going upstairs, you are suddenly blinded by the
flashes of a stroboscope. Each light-pulse opens on a huge iguana crawling
on the wall. Magenta eddies from a projected slide pass through it. Shards
of iron armour are fixed on the bars of a small staircase. Higher up, a
suspended silver dress throws back jewelled flashes. As you walk through
this violet-tinged darkness, your equilibrium becomes disturbed.
You open the door to the balcony, from where you
survey the pool. Perspective and depth are accentuated. In the distance,
the huge projected images of the Angel are doubled by their exact reflection:
in the air, in the water, S-he diffuses a subtle play of colours: red,
yellow, blue, green gliding gracefully, suddenly occupying the whole field
of vision. Closer to us, the felines and flames glimmer. The music turns
and echoes weirdly in the wide darkened space.
You stand just behind the projectors and the spotlights.
A computer establishes perfect synchronisation of the succession of fade-ins
and fade-outs with the soundtrack. Such an assertion of the technological
apparatus has always been part of the work of Maria Klonaris & Katerina
Thomadaki: while they conceive the image in terms of the power it has on
the unconscious, they also make sure that the power of illusion is somehow
distanced. This situation of the image / icon and its potential for transcendence,
facing its mere technical existence, rather than reflecting the Adoration
of the Image, bespeaks the passion of the image as both human creation
and poetic force.
An intense delight in seeing this “magic image”,
this surreal body of desire emerging from the digital textures of the computer
and the video. Radiating like cathode rays, sparkling with a multitude
of infinitely blown-up pixels, the Angel finds her-his celestial body through
machines conceived by the most rational mind: S-he becomes the messenger
of a Beyond that has not been predetermined by the binary closed-system.
And subverts it by alchemically transforming the electron into a star.
In this union of infinites, this incredible encounter
of skies and caverns through the Angel’s essential paradox, Maria Klonaris
& Katerina Thomadaki reach the pinnacle of their art. As filmmakers
of the body, they have long been working, progressively for the advent
of an ideal nocturnal image - simply on the very idea of the image itself
(‘ikon’ in Greek), which finds its source in magic and the sacred. Their
technological creation, in this darkened room, mirrors the primitive gesture:
that which invented the space of the Other, behind an inviolable boundary,
at the back of a cave. It is there that the image originates, there that
it appears: at the back of the dark room - the dark room of memory,
of course.
The Angel is the mediator who opens the door.
S-he is the essential mystery of the image. |
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