Nikos Arvanitis What Happened When I Went and Where I Went Sound Installation Canteen of the First Cemetary of the City of Athens, 2016 28 May - 19 June 2016 Canteen of the First Cemetary of the City of Athens, 29 Anapafseos and Trivonianou, Athens Part of the “Hypnos Project”, Onassis Cultural Centre www.sgt.gr Curators: Yorgos Tzirtzilakis, Theophilos Tramboulis Research Support: Pavlina Kyrkou Co-Ordination: Elisavet Pantazi With the support of the City of Athens The historic First Cemetery of the city of Athens is a place that reconstitutes a part of the city’s and the country’s history, as well as a permanent repository of the social and ideological conceptions professed by its residents.  In such a memorial place, history is reproduced and idealized and the major challenges of the surrounding modern city of the living are being reflected in it. The sound installation attempts to bring to the surface the silenced fragments of memory.  The narration is based on authentic audio recordings of the eminent residents of the cemetery and is non chronological. These audio material, found in public archives and digital libraries, is part of the formal and informal historiography.  The fragmentary reconstruction of the audio footage attempts to create a dialogue and a collective narration. Its fragmented structure contributes to the depersonalization of the voices of the speakers. The depersonalization of the voices overcomes the lack of recorded material from the dead who lived in an era prior to sound recording, as well as the lack of recordings from the non-eminent residents of the cemetery. The sound installation takes place in the canteen of the cemetery. The area of the living. A funeral is a collective process which each one experiences individually. The canteen is the space in which the individual becomes once again part of the community of the living. Nikos Arvanitis: What Happened When I Went and Where I Went, Brochure, English, 2016 (.pdf 2,3MB) Nikos Arvanitis: What Happened When I Went and Where I Went, Brochure, Greek, 2016 (.pdf 2,1MB) All photos by Alina Lefa Close Window