A Shrine to Here and Everywhere Else
Curated by: Beja Protner - Chris Zisis - Georgia Vavva - Hazal Halavu - Holly Hudson - Isabella Haid - João Sá - Margarida Farinha - Natalia Koutsougera - Nour Annan - Wesam Hassan
The Hollow Tree in the village square of Makrinitsa is a space of parallel temporalities; a meeting point in an old village, a lived spacetime of the local residents on the one hand and a transitory space for visitors and tourists who are “only passing through” on the other. The Shrine creates a point of “pause,” where different temporalities meet and intersect, leaving material traces of their passage. Any ‘hero’s journey’ is marked by its desire to ‘safe-keep’/‘give-body-to’ immaterial experiences and ephemeral engagements that occur en-route. This shrine invites the passerby(s) to add a trace to this sacred space where parallel journeys can intersect, if only momentarily.
This intervention attends to the immateriality of memory in the absence of a collective imaginary, by inviting participants to enshrine multiple objects and texts representative of their time in Makrinitsa into the hollowed-out tree in the square – itself a shrine to what came before; a temporal cavity carrying potential for further remembrance. During the activation of the experiment, participants are invited to decorate the shrine with letters, words of ruination, artifacts, tokens, heirlooms, prayers, poems, souvenirs – any objects on hand or in their pockets. The amalgamation of texts and objects is also underlined by an audio poetry experiment of journeys between birth and (its) afterlives.
This experiment grapples with the construction of a collective memory in a historical village that is permeated by fleeting encounters from the outside. Through this process of enshrinement, we seek to create a material trace from lost objects and creative fabulations, a shrine of what remains here and everywhere else.
The Hollow Tree in the village square of Makrinitsa is a space of parallel temporalities; a meeting point in an old village, a lived spacetime of the local residents on the one hand and a transitory space for visitors and tourists who are “only passing through” on the other. The Shrine creates a point of “pause,” where different temporalities meet and intersect, leaving material traces of their passage. Any ‘hero’s journey’ is marked by its desire to ‘safe-keep’/‘give-body-to’ immaterial experiences and ephemeral engagements that occur en-route. This shrine invites the passerby(s) to add a trace to this sacred space where parallel journeys can intersect, if only momentarily.
This intervention attends to the immateriality of memory in the absence of a collective imaginary, by inviting participants to enshrine multiple objects and texts representative of their time in Makrinitsa into the hollowed-out tree in the square – itself a shrine to what came before; a temporal cavity carrying potential for further remembrance. During the activation of the experiment, participants are invited to decorate the shrine with letters, words of ruination, artifacts, tokens, heirlooms, prayers, poems, souvenirs – any objects on hand or in their pockets. The amalgamation of texts and objects is also underlined by an audio poetry experiment of journeys between birth and (its) afterlives.
This experiment grapples with the construction of a collective memory in a historical village that is permeated by fleeting encounters from the outside. Through this process of enshrinement, we seek to create a material trace from lost objects and creative fabulations, a shrine of what remains here and everywhere else.
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