Alexandros Kaklamanos
Captives (2021), In situ installation, Scaffold, Plastic wrap, Synthetic textile, concrete, video screen , 3 x 3 x 3
The Captives project started as a collection of images from Athenian monuments that were covered during their conservation process. At first I saw these institutional gestures as potentially personal work. In 2019 I proceeded with a public intervention as I covered a sculpture in the center of Athens following the practice and materials from the existing personal archive. The intention of this installation was to change or hide the identity and the signifier of the statue. Anticipating the lack of interest and reaction on the part of the state apparatus that would not respond to this partly illegal act for about a month, I set a planned trap for the official rejection of the political meaning of the monument. The notion of ATOPOS as a non-space and Fidetzis' approach in relation to the challenge of monumentality raised the idea of an installation in dialogue with Fidetzis' work. After applying this practice to Fidetzis’ Headless Jacobin, the archetype of a flawed revolutionary, a dialogue emerges in relation to the limits of institutional and historiographical impositions.