YIANNIS MELANITIS

K R Y O G R A P H I A  

THE CONDUCTIVITY OF WRITING

Wednesday 14 October 2010:

Lecture by Christa Lerm Hayes, - How Joyce plays Into Contemporary Art: 14 October, 20.00

Performance and opening, 14 October, 21.00

Duration of the exhibition 14-30 October 2010

P e r f o r m a n c e  K R Y O G R A P H I A:  Yiannis Melanitis

T e x t: The Act of Writing: Evi Voyiatzaki

The installation performance Kryographia presents the act of writing as a metaphor for absolute coldness ... The writer¹, collector and producer of ice, constructs an insulated situation in order to capture the ultimate work, starting from Finnegans Wake of James Joyce.Through the use of the liquids , he tries to transcend the entropic situation of the space, to create a new thermodynamic order.²

During the performance, Yiannis Melanitis will write the text The Act of Writing, by the writer Evi Vogiatzaki which is the first Greek edition of the text. (Original title: The Act of Writing, Lexington Books, 2002, USA). The extract is part of The body in the text / James Joyce's Ulysses and the Modern Greek Novel. The Greek version of the text is also translated by the author from the English prototype.

The Kryografia is an issue for the theory of arts in the form of handwritten text. The unique copy, once completed will be accessible in the library of About. The first issue examines  the concept of "the Body as a Text, the Text as a Body".

In the performance, the penman (also acts as an iceman), activates a valve, using the existence of vacuum to initiate water movement; the whole procedure is only possible during the act of writing. At the end of each line of the text, a pair of electrodes captures the movement of the writer and switches on an electro-valve, releasing the liquid. After moving through a system  of glass pipes, the liquid is frozen. Generally, the installation functions as a cryomachine.

The exhibition opens with the lecture "How Joyce plays Into Contemporary Art" of Christa Lerm Hayes, writer of the book Joyce in Art.

 1. Kryographia starts backwords, from the act of death. The last paragraph of Joyces’ Finnegans Wake sets the coldness of the fathers’ body, short before the text is completed without any full stop and  seems to get narration back to the start of the book...[. I am passing out. O bitter ending! ...... I go back to you, my cold father, my cold mad father, my cold mad feary father, .....makes me seasilt saltsick and I rush, my only, into your arms....End here. Us then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the  ]

2.  During the writing of In search of the lost time, Marcel Proust insulated his room with cork sheet. "Special space" created, also with the addition of double doors and heavy curtains, aimed at complete detachment of the author by the sound, light, dust and noise, which through quarantine to capture the expanding world of the novel. [http://www.studiocleo.com/librarie/proust/mainframe2.html]

14 - 30 October 2010 at ABOUT:

ABOUT:

Miaouli 18

10554 Psyrri,

AthensTel

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