Скачать или смотреть Souvenir de Chine - Jean Michel Jarre

_Buried goodbyes, self existent souls-

Photography / Artistic synthesis / Writing / Reciting
Video creation - Eleni Tsonis
Music by Jean Michel Jarre - Souvenir de Chine

Φωτογραφία / Εικαστική σύνθεση / Ποιητική απόδοση / Απαγγελία / Δημιουργία βίντεο - Ελένη Τσώνη

Αυτεξούσια.. / Τ Ο Σ Ω Μ Α -
Ξεγλιστρά με ασάφεια, μα ατρόμητο και με άκρα σταθερά.
Σώμα που τρέχει με μένος, και θράσος ανυπεράσπιστο. Μέσα από εμπόδια αυτεξούσια, διαβαίνει.
Στης προσμονής την εμμονή επιμένει. Στης τρεχάλας το άσφαιρο υποδύεται.
Το σώμα —

Ελένη Τσώνη / ΑΘΗΝΑ 2022

Autonomous.. / T H E B O D Y -
It slips vaguely, but fearless, and with firm limbs.
A body running, with defenseless rage and audacity. Through autonomous obstacles, it crosses away.
It persists in the obsession of anticipation. In the rally, it is pretending to be a blank.
The body —

Eleni Tsonis / ATHENS 2022

Buried goodbyes, self-existent souls -

My main inspiration for this project was the result of a visit to Lavrio Mines* and the story of the miserable working conditions set by the unscrupulous Italian Serpieri when he bought the Mines and had them operating again. From within a hyperrealist perspective, (fantastical, bizarre, absurd, or eccentric I tried to create images, having faith in the higher reality of certain types of associations, and ultimately in the omnipotence of the dream. Playing with ethereal figures, birds, or ears of corn, each bearing its own symbolism, rambling around the now abandoned facilities of Lavrio, sometimes motionless, sometimes in action-reaction and the other way round, looking down into the "well", the inherent pain of "despair"..? When signing, willy-nilly, for your integrity, you find yourself in a space where you finally discover that the acquaintance with the non-material, the intangible, brought in from elsewhere along with the vibrations it carries, are even more magnificent, but also more difficult. But why not more promising..? “Dreams must always come in excess..,” I once wrote.
After all, these people were within this illusory dream once. They existed, and they worked hard for it..; “A man was shouting from under the stones—perhaps also from inside us—shouting, shouting; no one listened; they were hastening to go—where? — to do what? They didn't have an hour of their own to undress, to lie down, to dream in their own body, to look at themselves in a mirror, to look at someone else; they only looked at themselves in the eyes of the others—what could they see in there?Perhaps, only what they wanted to see, not at all what they were.
” Yannis Ritsos - “Ismene” - excerpt from the “4th Dimension”

So in 1864, the mines of Lavrio are operating again... Poor workers from all over Greece arrive in the area to work, many women and children being included. From dawn to sunset, they worked non-stop, with the mice as their only company; and yet, those were also the only creatures able to sense any landslide and literally save the lives of the workers.

[The Lavrio mines, near Sounion, Attiki, date back to 3,000 BC, but their systematic exploitation begins with the birth of the Athenian Republic in 508 BC. by Cleisthenes. They were the main source of wealth of Athens as they also produced silver, copper and lead during the classical era (5th, 4th century BC), but the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) caused the mines to shut down. In 1860, Gianbattista Serpieri, an Italian businessman ventured to reactivate in 1864 and mined lead, silver, iron, and other metals. Sarpieri exploited and maltreated the workers, so there were social and labor conflicts in the late 19th century culminating to the army intervention of 1896.Later French and Greek companies take over until 1989 when the mines shut down, and in 1992 the whole place goes to the Ministry of Culture, as a preserved monument, and in 1995 it becomes the Technological Cultural Park of Lavrio.]

Eleni Tsonis

Θαμμένα κατευόδια, αυθύπαρκτες ψυχές -

Η κύρια έμπνευση των έργων μου, προήλθε από τα Μεταλλεία Λαυρίου και τις άθλιες συνθήκες εργασίας όταν αυτά αγοράστηκαν από τον αδίστακτο Ιταλό Σερπιέρι. Μέσα από μία υπερρεαλιστική οπτική, (φανταστικό, αλλόκοτο, παράλογο ή τρελό) προσπάθησα να δημιουργήσω εικόνες, έχοντας πίστη στην ανώτερη πραγματικότητα ορισμένων τύπων συσχετισμών, και εντέλει στην παντοδυναμία του ονείρου. Παίζοντας με φιγούρες άϋλες, πουλιά, στάχυα (το καθένα με το δικό του συμβολισμό), που πλανώνται στις εγκαταλελειμμένες πια εγκαταστάσεις του Λαυρίου, άλλοτε αμετακίνητες, άλλοτε σε δράση-αντίδραση και τούμπαλιν, κοιτώντας στο “πηγάδι”, τον αυθύπαρκτο πόνο της “απελπισίας”..; Αυτοί οι άνθρωποι υπήρξαν μέσα σ’ αυτό το απατηλό όνειρο. Υπήρξαν, και δούλεψαν σκληρά γι' αυτό..

Ελένη Τσώνη