LITO APOSTOLAKOU

The document (be it text, video or image) selects fragments of the past and enshrines them within its confines creating a monument in the present. The monument becomes the representation of the past. All else is excluded. The fragments of the past as enshrined in the document become the whole of the past. Monumentalised the past replays itself on repeat. MONUMENT is a recursive meditation on the past and its representation. An 11-inch video player plays a looping video of the tombstone it faces. Alongside it, a list of references discloses the work’s conceptual framework. Revealing the “sources” that influenced its creation, MONUMENT is self-aware of its status as an artifact. There is no original or “authentic” object: both objects (the tombstone and the video of it) are physical proxies for absence, both selective and interpretive – dealing with fragments of the past which they present as the whole of the past, reflected back to the viewer – locking gazes in a loop. MONUMENT’s recursive gesture renders documentation of the past as both enduring and unstable – trapped in a cycle of preservation and reinterpretation, where no original remains. References Peter Schwenger, The Tears of Things. Melancholy and Physical Objects, University of Minnesota Press: 2006 Andrea Colombo, Floriana Ferro, “Virtuality and Immanence in Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty”, Aisthesis 16(1), 2023: 7-16. Ed Atkins, “Losslessness” in Daniel Birnbaum, Michelle Kuro (eds.), More Than Real: Art in the Digital Age, The 2018 Art Summit, Koenig Books: London 2018. Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography, trans. Reaktion Books: 2016 Terry Castle, “Phantasmagoria and the Metaphorics of Modern Reverie” in Terry Castle, The Female Thermometer. 18th Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny, Oxford University Press 1995: 140-167 John Mullarkey, Refractions of Reality. Philosophy and the Moving Image, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 Nathan Jurgenson, The Social Photo. On Photography and Social Media. Verso: London 2019 Film: Landlocked (2021) dir. Paul Owens, USA Film: The Devil’s Bath [Des Teufels Bad] (2024) dir. Veronica Franz & Severin Fiala, Austria