REQUIEM POUR LE XXE SIECLE

(OPUS 18 DU CYCLE DE L'ANGE)

of KLONARIS Maria, THOMADAKI Katerina

FRANCE, GREECE, 1994, 00:14:00

Production : ASTARTI, EIKONA
Genre : Video art
Keyword : Experimental, History, Photographs, Politics, Society

Summary :
« Requiem pour le XXè siècle » is the 18th part of the « Cycle de l’Ange » that we produce since 1985: installations, multimedia performances, photographs, acoustic works, radio creations, artist books. A set of works that has as a matrix a medical photograph of a hermaphrodite, associated to the “Angel”. That picture has been found in the archives of Dr. Georges Klonaris.“Requiem pour le XXè siècle” is a manifesto against war. It is an elegy. The photograph is connected with images that are part of our collective memory: extracts from newsreels of World War II that have been reworked and transformed through various optical and electronic processes. World War II was a condensation of violence (biological and environmental destructions, racism, ethnic clearing, and persecution of people who are different…) and ongoing wars perpetuate that violence. This work is a metaphorical representation of all past, present and future wars.This work is constructed on the dramatic tension between the violence of wars and the presence of the “Angel”: His eyes are bandaged; he is a symbol for difference, having an ambiguous position: observer, witness, victim or judge.

to print