Tag: THE NEST ISSUE

THE NEST ISSUE

THE NEST ISSUE

April-July 2020

In late March 2020, A) GLIMPSE) OF) made an open call asking writers, and artists:

What is your NEST during lockdown? If you feel like sharing your thoughts during this time, send along your collaborative poems, your monologues and drawings, your tears, your aargh!, your sleepless nights, your manifestos, your curses, and your sadness.

To my delight, a lot of fascinating responses came in. Poems, sound poems, photo collages, sound and prose pieces, visual and prose poems, conceptual photographs, and drawings depicting worries, memories, longings, and changing habits in those extraordinary times. Works were published gradually.

Many thanks to Clara Burghelea, John Morgan, Daniel Whelan, Caterina Stamou, Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Tracy Gaughan, Zoe Sklepa, Tony Iantosca, Amy McCauley, Smaragda Nitsopoulou, Thomas Osatchoff, Daphne Xanthopoulou, Richard LeDue, Kevin Canfield, Oz Hardwick, Babak Ahteshamipour, L Scully, Catherine Chatzidimitriou, Sara Rosenthal, Hunter Gagnon, Kiriakos Spirou, L Scully, Catherine Chatzidimitriou, Sara Rosenthal, Christina Alexiou, Robert Sheppard, Anthoula Lelekidis, Marie Hervé, Zebulon Huset, Jessica Tyson, Nolan Hutton, Daniel M. Shapiro, Sam Heaps, Linda Kemp, Erika Hodges, Aea Varfis-van Warmelo and Jeremy Allan Hawkins for sharing their works with us.

Hope you are keeping well.
Enjoy the issue!

Dimitra

Jeremy Allan Hawkins

THE NEST ISSUE

Paper Project Suite for Prospective Trees

jeremy-allan-hawkins-paper-project-suite-for-prospective-treesDownload

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Jeremy Allan Hawkins is a French-American writer, educator, and researcher. A former NYC Teaching Fellow, U.S. Fulbright Grantee, and Fellow of the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Program, his work includes poetry, criticism, architectural writing, and arts-based research in spatial design. He is the author of A Clean Edge, selected by Richard Siken as winner of the 2016 BOAAT Chapbook Prize. His poetry has been included in the Best New Poets anthology series, the extended program of the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture, and the Rencontre Mondiale de la Poésie, along with literary magazines in the United States and Europe. 

Aea Varfis-van Warmelo

THE NEST ISSUE

Revelation Apocalypse

 

see if the dome still holds weight, see if that soil (of little interest now) can carry you, heavysoheavy as you are / θαύμα που θα ήταν να μην είχαμε πνεύμα, you say, you could rest easily without breath, you say, and then, forgive me αλλά θα σας μιλήσω στον πληθυντικό, αφού το σώμα δεν υπάρχει πια spirits as we are, awful as it is that you have wished both away and conjured more, but the soil that soil that cracks underfoot, not ready yet for more — have you thought of waiting longer, do you think, until we are ready — no, a dimple of a test will do, press your toe first and see the resistance, ready for a sole or something more and then /c/r//ck/ it does again — sorry sorry it was not meant to, you saidsaidsediment! — it will heal if we wait long enough —————————————————————— here it’s summer a quarter of a year that lasts a third / here it’s winter a quarter of a year that lasts a month — here o here the vantage point —δεν νομίζεις ότι απ’εδώ μοιάζει με νεκροταφείο? τόσο λευκό. like teeth, yes, dashed tombstones. notice the marble steps, the dent where feet have — ναι. αλλά μην νομίζεις ότι είστε συνδεδεμένοι, bodies have been here before but they are indifferent to us / the dent where the dent has the dent where feet have passed – not bodiesbodies sharing place αλλά απλά αναθυμιάσεις. contrary to popular belief the earth forgets it is dirt that remembers // I am here and / they are not ——— NO — to — hiss sickle more to — harvest of the — here to suffer more of — the sum has never been more more than it is to be here of here to here of here to here — NO — to the heliolatrist who is always looking up — NO — NO ————————————————————- is this a HOWL? is this a HOWL? what do you know to howl about you s/ttu/pid child. when the world ends you’ll be busy feeling sorry for yourself you narcissist you probably think artists will be mourned // the mode of disposal is simply forgetting —- when did you stop using language? Ι stopped when Ι forgot how to. frightened of το μεγάλο βάρος / that game of being understood / το μεγάλο βάρος που αυτό το όργανο σηκώνει. Και όταν ξεχάσεις πως να μιλάς την γλώσσα σου δεν θα το παρατηρήσεις until you begin to speak and find it missing from your mouth — NO — fear without language. How will we warn future historians not to study us? Kill them all! ——————— O — I have seen spring in theory only, time is misbehaving now —— does the face remain in the sand —- does the face — see its own works — I know I do know that utopias are achievable but only if you’re dead —- I have dust ///// in my hand —— ο οδυσσέας ήταν μάλλον άνθρωπος / και έτσι ήταν οι ναυτικοί του, με βουλο-κερωμένα αυτιά / μήπως προτίμησε τη θάλασσα από την Ιθάκη // μήπως προτίμησε το θαλασσόασμα — ναι μάλλον — the borders have softened now and there was lots of hugging lots of kissing and many deaths —— I / I I am bored of the self —— these bodies are only temporarily abled we will be inhibited at some point don’t worry ———————— I have feasted on resentment so long —————————————————————— and now the — hear the — here is — the spe/ech —— O — O —— τη βρήκαμε – βρέθηκε στις αναθυμιάσεις. troy will fall. she said troy will fall, wittering like a bitch // must not rome rise? aeneas flees at the cost of troy, so be it //e//e/////eeee μας είπε η Κασσάνδρα eeeeee///EEE/ee — μεταφραστή! μετάφρασε — she says you are naive to think narrative will survive us

 

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Aea is a Greek-British writer and actor living in London.

 

Erika Hodges

THE NEST ISSUE

37 stages

 

There are actually 37 stages of grief which are as follows:

No
No
No
Drop
Animal
Braided intestines
Now in your throat
No
Nothing
No
Icy fingernails
Embering heat behind the cheekbones I got from you
Nothing
Relief
achenothingno
All again
Miss
Miss you
Miss you can’t be in here Maybe I’ll wake up
No
Not at all
Fine. Fine. Shrug
Nothing
All
Dirty back of teeth
Pleading
That candle was a wish for you to exist somehow
No
Where
When
Never who
Sift
Bottomed
Tunnel corners
Ein Sof

 

This piece is a sound poetry piece written and composed by while in quarantine. I spent the last few months inside my Brooklyn apartment listening to the endless sirens and walked past the hospitals with reappropriated ice cream trucks loading corpses into them from the stretchers on the ER bays. My father died on a ventilator a few years ago and because of extenuating circumstances I was not able to be with him at the time of his death. I listened to him die over the phone. I was also not able to have a funeral for him. My experience with death is now so many others’ experience with death because of COVID. and so this poem that I wrote after my father died is now extended through this sound piece to all the grieving families that are not able to access their grief because of distancing orders. A collective offering of mourning together.

 

Erika Hodges is a gender expansive poet and performance artist living and breathing in Brooklyn, NY. They are a graduate of Naropa University and an MFA candidate at Pratt Institute where they are the current Leslie Scalapino Fellow. Their work can be found or is forthcoming at Flag + Void, CALYX, The Adirondack Review, The Poetry Project and others. They are a 2020 Can Serrat residency fellow as well as a Brooklyn Poets Fellow. They are also the 2020 Rougarou Poetry Contest winner. Erika is a volunteer at The Poetry Project as well as a poet’s assistant and archivist for elder poets in the community. Their work and life is deeply devoted to queer love, troubling the dystopian values of borders and binaries and the ideas of poetry and lineage as a sort of home.

Linda Kemp

THE NEST ISSUE

circuits

analyses indicate increases in loneliness predicate inconsistencies
through externalising suggestibility the adolescence of developmental
highlights the unpleasant variety of negativity the paucity of
distrust in outcomes particularly recent leading relationships the
adaption of has been & the well documented risk achieved of
increase in the not the number of investigative clauses
hypostasised interpersonal increase the greater the final together these
actual lack in the circumagitate indications of risk rate peak & norm the
focus on poorer phases of intervention the expansive waste of influence
consistent across the middle-childhood the behave exists
longitudinal into not because the lone of during affect & respectively
in these between the base & how the inclusions exclude the found statistically
constituting thoughts endorsed endorphins report attempt
measuring widely used & subscale liminalities the problem
combines in computational reflections the displacement across adolescence
investigative decreases in ratings to change the during thought the hold
& risk of participative indications to sample external the
conduct with demonstrations through binary logistic regressions see
not associations the idea increases the specifically alone with both
middle indirectly demonstrating extremes fizzing out behaviour
modelling the particulate thus in demonstrating
time intent to seriousness conflating risk with delight &
distinction to attempt the however is to adverse the logic to high-
light relationships implications for undergoing finally the find to
negligence in investigative change continually to displace

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Linda Kemp‘s publications include Lease Prise Redux (Materials, 2016). Other poems can be found in DATABLEED, Erotoplasty, Front Horse, Splinter, Tentacular, Zarf and elsewhere. They edit Enjoy Your Homes Press.

Sam Heaps

THE NEST ISSUE

A Father A Son A Market

I tell them. This is the morning I haven’t bought the gun for. They tell me, it is hard for you, but, if you say it again I’m going to have to call the cops or something.

Standing in the shower. Showering two, three times a day. Wishing I knew how to drown. Incompetent even in this want. A painting. Hands over a body in a shower. Baby blue hands. Another painting. A woman reclining, hovering, a crouch and also a rest. Her right breast exposed to the viewer and the paint is thin near the center of the meat so it is like a light comes from inside her. A white figure, bigger, hunching, leaning over, lips extended to kiss the highest arch of the front her neck — which you could slice a wire through. A line of thick black, of empty space, between the man’s lips and the woman’s chin. As though the black touches each of them. As though the space is dense and part of their touching their closeness their want. But, thin enough to taste the space on either side where they are apart. Death. On the far left. Laughing. Death’s hand supporting the slenderest bit of the woman’s back.

And life too, to the right. Headless.

Music to cover the relentless weeping the talking in the mirror for the neighbors. You are here. You are right here. To the mirror. You are here. Touching the body seeing the woman who is you touch the body. You are right here. Cambodian rock from the ‘60s. No don’t think about the torture. The body. The nipples. The lesions. The photos. The bodies. All dead. The stack of the musician’s bodies. The empty spaces in the sounds. The circles of pavement the market. The circles of pavement the market. Aerial view then slipping amongst the pillars running and laughing and you remember the smell of the fish and the heat. Trying to say, in the now, “I am here,” to the streets as you begin to sob by the trash cans. Streets emptied from the virus which remind you of the photos again and then suddenly a man in a mask with a son. I am here. I am here. I am here.

No matter the boy’s age no matter the look of the father. Sweating. Gulping for air that is not wet with you A. Orange robes and hot. And the circles of pavement and the market.

Our last night. When you stand with me in the shower I am so cold and you touch me and you tell me, but no sex I just want to touch and you say, why can’t we just lie together? But I don’t want to get out of the water drinking beneath the hot stream and standing like that I feel the loss of you. The loss at the end of the summer. The sudden black space where before there was.

The thick black line between our faces on the street. The whole world is hot with my want to cross the line to touch.

I will not again use the word love. This is too painful to be love. The way you left me is not love. What you have with them is love. Whatever we had was something else. Maybe just void. What exists before void. When now there is only void. What is before.

And we fight. You tell me, you are impulsive. You lack boundaries and patience. Do you like that she is threatened by you? I beg you not to look below my shoulders.

You ask why I want to punish you. I tell you it is not meant to be torture, but that there are consequences to your leaving.

You tell me to look at how good you have been. You tell me, you have to trust me.

You, touching my breast, and I cannot feel the hand like my skin has turned to callous. So eager to be in the scalding water with me you leave the key in the door. Forgetting.

But we are already dead.

And when I consent and lie with you and touch my hand to your cheek as you cry, as I cry, and you say. Will it help with the pain if I have sex with you? And I say yes when I mean no. But I have been begging for you the whole night, and so you must think you are doing a service. And you fuck my body like it used to be fucked by you. And I am in my body, I suppose I must be. And this too feels like mourning. And I ride you and hold your hands above your head. And you tell me it feels so different. You tell me it does not work for you the way it used to, and I don’t know how to tell you it is because I am not there, that I don’t know how to find a way back into my body after your betrayal. When you are finished you are hungry, not for me but for food. Your body longs for sustenance elsewhere as I have not given it enough.

You leave me like this, lying naked in the bed, and you never return.
And the bed to my left. And the same walls. And the same shower. And I am here every day looking at the gravesite. And I am here every day sleeping in the grave. Too much sun in the windows. Outside endless channels of empty pavement. Grids. But, wavering.

And you leave.

A letter I keep on yellow paper. You sit with me before returning to your child. Why can’t I give you to him willingly when it means you are good? When it is good. I refuse the martyrdom offered me to instead remain a parasite.

The letter is written in all caps on yellow paper. Your wife must know this is how you write, must be so intimate with this writing. A shopping list. A love letter. An apology. A note so you don’t forget. A photo of her sitting on a hotel bed. Young. A shiny sleeveless dress. Brightness between you, the way she looks at the camera. The look mortar.

In the letter you say you can do nothing to help me deal with the pain. But you think of me. You say better, when you mean worse.You leave. And before you leave I am stroking the tears from your cheek.

The skin along your jaw, loose. The tears. And. Your cheek in my hand. Your cheek in my hand. And. You leave.

My own hand to my own cheek. To the mirror. You are here. You are here.

Your neck beneath the cheek. I have spent too little time thinking of the neck that supports the grace.

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I am an emerging writer but have published in a few small journals including Entropy, & Of Other Things and Collected. I hold an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where I was the recipient of a New Artist’s Society Full Scholarship and a nominee for the James Raymond Nelson Fellowship. I currently work as a Master Lecturer at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Daniel M. Shapiro

THE NEST ISSUE

THE NEST ISSUE | Daniel M. Shapiro

Daniel M. Shapiro is a special education teacher who lives in Pittsburgh, PA. His poetry books include How the Potato Chip Was Invented, Heavy Metal Fairy Tales, and the forthcoming (This Is Not) a Mixtape for the End of the World.

Zebulon Huset

THE NEST ISSUE

On Tables Named Lack

We were drunk and played the floor is lava
                          while the world outside was on fire. You
              came home and made the bold claim that
                                         imaginary friends are for children like cartoons
              or believing in Santa or eating your vegetables.
Just because flat-packed tables aren’t real wood
                          and they don’t use real screws and we got a real
              gash on the shin. You were essential, selling
                                         houses to rich people. 100,000 have died, we said
              but you said you didn’t want to hear it. Old news.
True, we replied like a Greek chorus. It’s up
                          at least another thousand since this afternoon.
              While some locals fight their facemasks,
                                         last night, a guy kidnapped his three year old
              twins and full-on Duke’s of Hazzard-ed his truck
into the Pacific because his estranged wife
                          was getting the police involved. We won
              with rum and fruit juice and you joined the jumping,
                                         crumpling cheap tables and chairs to the molten
              floor like they were the furniture for paper dolls, lava
everywhere, setting fires and shifting the ground.
                          They said the Yosemite super caldera was overdue
              for a huge eruption—wipe out the dinosaurs
                                         huge. But who’s got the decades to wait on that plug.
              We’re not on geological time here—this
is something different entirely.

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Jessica Tyson, Nolan Hutton, Zebulon Huset

Quarantine Exquisite Corpse Project* #1

it was impossible to tell if the neighborhood kids were shrieking in terror or joy
         the siren was like a baby down a pitch-black hall
                     sitting on the back of the garden chair in the rain
 
the Chinese elm tree hissed leaves roiling before
                                                         the exasperation of poverty
and                          is this the peace you seek?
         Only ever                sings for you,         if it ever does.
 
Discovered in Budapest without shoes
the sound of a small motor and metal grinding and zydeco music down the alley
                     as ants carry more weight than any of us.
 
Before the calves got ornery, as they say—
         the pericos, as Pete called them, erupted from the branches
                                                         without a ticket or fare—we proceeded
                 filling the sky behind the siren—
                                         truth that bleeds into the space between your breaths
         he believed that wood milled on a full moon was somehow stronger.

  • A series of exquisite corpses completed by poets online, from their various nests.

Zebulon Huset is a teacher, writer and photographer living in San Diego. His writing has recently appeared in Meridian, The Southern Review, Louisville Review, Fence, Rosebud, Atlanta Review and Texas Review among others. He publishes a writing prompt blog Notebooking Daily and is the editor of the journal Coastal Shelf.

Marie Hervé

THE NEST ISSUE

Composition pour une longue explication

Il s’agit d’une production de textes et schémas sur un rouleau de papier (15cm X 3.50 m) découpé à la scie, Composition pour une longue explication – un long monologue tentant de donner une réponse à l’angoisse de la page blanche, l’état de vide, de veille, d’immobilité comme possible décision politique.
Scindé en trois actes, le texte développe le monologue absurde d’une femme qui attend, Sieste; puis le Manifeste pour une pratique de la sieste, et finalement une Longue explication sur le fait d’écrire, pour rien.
Le “rouleau”, en phase de traduction vers l’anglais et l’italien, se déploie sous la forme de séquences d’images, de pièces sonore, de vidéos.

Marie Hervé Retranscription Virtuelle Composition pour une Longue Explication


À la suite d’études en hypokhâgne-khâgne, Marie Hervé intègre l’École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d’Arles, où elle poursuit actuellement son cursus. Elle y développe un travail d’auto-publication et de mise en espace de photographies, textes et images en mouvement où sont interrogés les usages contemporains de l’image photographique comme fantôme, ruine personnelle ou mémoire commune dégradée; depuis l’archive familiale et l’espace du musée jusqu’à l’image de téléphone portable. Dans le même temps, elle développe des projets personnels et collectifs sur le territoire méditerrannéen, notamment lors de Roundtable #3 pour Lucy Art Residency, Kavala, Grèce ou encore Transformer Project pour Blitz, Malte, ainsi qu’en collaboration avec l’Arthotèque de Vitré. Elle a exposé en France durant les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles, à Égine, Grèce ou encore à Lyon.


After a two-year intensive preparatory course for French Grandes Écoles in Arts, Literature and Langages, Marie Hervé entered the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d’Arles, where she is pursuing her studies. Through spacial installations and self-publications, her work interrogates contemporary uses of the image as a phantom, a personal ruin or a damaged memory; from family archives and museum conservation to cellphones images. She is currently developing personal and collective projects within the mediterranean area, during Roundtable #3 – Lucy Art Residency, Kavala, Greece or Transformer Project at Blitz, Malta, as well as in collaboration with the Vitré art space, France. She exhibited her work in Arles during Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie, as well as in Aegina, Greece and Lyon, France.

Robert Sheppard

THE NEST ISSUE

From British Standards:

An overdub of The Dancing Girl by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

this is the darkest time though colour fields                                    I
  flex and shimmer in the retinal pool eyes                                    don’t
    shoot dance through thin surfaces this is                                     want
      a weary world flattened indoors into                                        to
           fresh-faced images of fresher faces seen                                  just
               (as they seem) less clearly for our lesser                        make
                   looking she takes the breath she slices moulds form
               its feeling vibrations in creaking knees she                      the
           lifts the line of poetry to shift the limbs                               plastic
      we open the shutters to let in light                                                 hope
    to sharpen all the hopes to harp-notes                                         of
  and unshackle the air and shape the ear she                                    hope
stretches in crooked space to bend it                                             itself

11th April 2020

Robert Sheppard is a poet who lives in Liverpool, England. His most recent publication is Charms and Glitter (with photographer Trev Eales), out from Knives Forks and Spoons; before that was Hap: Understudies of Thomas Wyatt’s Petrarch. This poem is part of a long project transposing sonnets entitled ‘The English Strain’, this part ‘British Standards’. His selected poems, History or Sleep, is available from Shearsman, which also publish The Robert Sheppard Companion, edited by James Byrne and Christopher Madden: this carries essays on his work. Co-editor of the Arc anthology Atlantic Drift with James Byrne, he is also a critic of contemporary poetry. The Meaning of Form is published by Palgrave, and he has published studies of Iain Sinclair and Lee Harwood. Emeritus Professor at Edge Hill University. Web: robertsheppard.weebly.com.

Anthoula Lelekidis

THE NEST ISSUE

from Fragments of Diaspora

“Fragments of Diaspora” centers around the theme of identity, migration, and the desire to uncover one’s roots. The lives of diaspora are filled with nostalgia, a deep yearning for home and the need to create a life away from it. By combining fragments of my photographs together with personal family imagery, I reassemble and rework a new collection of memories. My process is not planned or controlled and includes tearing apart prints then combining them again. These physical rips begin to resemble the splitting of families who fled from their homeland due to war or poverty. They depict symbols of cultural traditions and family bonds, while highlighting feelings of displacement and isolation.

The idea of post-memory; a term coined by Marianne Hirsch in her book “The Generation of Post-memory”, is a great inspiration to me. ‘Post-memory’ explains the relationship that the ‘generation after’ has to the collective and cultural trauma of those who preceded them. As a first-generation artist, I search for connections between my birthplace, New York City, and that of my ancestors, who originate in Greece and Asia Minor. These reconstructions illustrate a journey through inter-generational narratives, with hopes to keep custody and deep care of these personal inherited histories. This investigation and the need for an individualized story, act as a meditation between the realm of post-memory and realization.

 

CAPTIONS
01: “A Village Gathering”, Photo Collage, 11×14, March 2020
02: “Two Generations Ago”, Photo Collage, 8×10, March 2020
03: “At the Foothills of Mount Olympus”, 11×14, March 2020
04: “A Memory Relived”, Photo Collage, 8×10, November 2019
05: “Smoke Break”, Photo Collage, 8×10, November 2019
06: “Fragments of Diaspora”, Photo Collage, 11×14, January 2020
07: “A Moment in Between”, Photo Collage, 8×10, December 2019
08: “A Village Gathering”, Photo Collage, 11×14, March 2020
09: “Spring / Fall”, Photo Collage, 8×10, April 2020
10: “Under the Hell Gate”, Photo Collage, 11×14, December 2019

 

Anthoula Lelekidis is a Greek-American lens-based artist who utilizes photography, photographic collage, and mixed media in her practice. Her work navigates themes of personal memory, loss, migration, and the inability to create new memories. With a deep interest in the archive, she alters found family photos to interpret a deeper tie to and uncover ancestral roots within the blank spaces of her recollection. She holds a BFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design and received the Community Fellowship from the International Center of Photography. She was a resident at the Skopelos Foundation of the Arts. In 2008, she earned a scholarship from the Students On Ice Organization to travel to photograph Antarctica.

AnthoulaLelekidis.com
IG: @AnthoulaLelekidis

Christina Alexiou

THE NEST ISSUE

ΦΩΛΙΑ / NEST

Ζω και εργάζομαι στην Αθήνα. Θα με χαρακτήριζα ως ένα πολυδιάστατο άτομο που επιλέγει να εκφράζει τις σκέψεις και τα συναισθήματα του με διαφορετική μορφή κάθε φορά είτε μέσω του κολλάζ, είτε του illustration και άλλων μορφών τέχνης όπως η χαρακτική, ο πηλός, τα κόμιξ. Πιστεύω στη δυναμική του D.I.Y και της επανάχρησης των υλικών. To "Quazar" είναι το πρώτο μου fanzine και αποτελεί μια προσωπική φωτογραφική συλλογή με graffiti, stencils, stickers από διάφορες περιοχές της Ελλάδας και του εξωτερικού. Instagram: @kri.ctin

I live and work in Athens as a Construction Supervisor. I stUdied in the Technological Educational Institute of Patras at the Department of Renovation and Restoration of Buildings, and have participaded in Eco-Building and Art Therapy courses. I would describe myself as a multidimensional person who chooses to express her thoughts and feelings in a different way each time through collage or illustration, or art forms, such as linocut print, clay, comics. I firmly support D.I.Y., and the reuse of materials as way of life. I love to create my handmade silver jewellery, as well as ‘Quazar,’ my first fanzine which is a personal graffiti photo collection of graffiti, stencils, stickers from various regions of Greece and abroad. Instagram: @kri.ctin

Antigone Michalakopoulou

THE NEST ISSUE

South

          It was standing there, a few metres from the shore, about twenty centimetres tall, facing the South – the South that always fills me with hope. This time it was hard for me to turn away and just abandon it there. It has never been so hard before. As I was walking away I kept turning my head to have another glimpse of it from afar. At some point I think I must have turned back to it, to have one last close look. Maybe I’m making this scene up, I’m not sure to be honest, but it feels like I turned back just once. Then I left.
          This wasn’t the first little hut I’ve built during my walks here and there in the nature, usually by the beach. This has become a habit almost a year now. But this particular one was made one day before the lock down starts. Since that day I haven’t visited again this place as it’s too far from home. As you can imagine, there is no excuse for me to be there given the circumstances.
          So I grew this affection for this hut. Maybe it was the time of the day, the afternoon light, the deep orange terracotta colour the pebbles I used for the floor had, the cleansing breeze, or the idea of a safe, calming place. I do have the memory of such a place. I remember well the fresh smell of the calm summer sea, the warm pebbles under the naked body, the reassuring shadow a little tree would offer. While balancing the little sticks and building piece by piece the tiny hut, I could imagine the 15 centimetres tall version of myself hanging there. Lying down softly on the orange pebbles, not necessarily alone, gazing far away the South, the South that fills me up with hope.
          As if I needed to bring back and freshen up the memory of that safe summer place, I had my little moment by the beach that day before the lock down, and then I left. One evening a couple of weeks later, I started to draw the hut by memory, like I always do with all the huts I’ve made in the past. This time I didn’t need to challenge my memory or my drawing skills. I only needed to draw it. To watch it unfold in front of me. Each time I would once more pass with my thin brush the diluted ink on the paper, I could feel the afternoon light and the moist breeze on my face.
          Right now, almost one month after that evening, I’m writing this text and I once more feel the sense of this safe, summer place coming back to life. I’m still not allowed to be far from home without a serious reason, given the circumstances. But facing the South, still fills me with hope.

Σπούδασα αρχιτεκτονική στο ΕΜΠ στην Αθήνα (2005), καλές τέχνες στην ΑΣΚΤ (2009) και στο Λονδίνο (St. Martins College), ενώ ολοκλήρωσα το μεταπτυχιακό μου στις Καλές Τέχνες στη Γάνδη, στο Βέλγιο (2014, ΚASK School of Arts Ghent). Έχω λάβει μέρος σε εκθέσεις, φεστιβάλ, καθώς και έχω παρουσιάσει περφόρμανς και workshop στο Βέλγιο, στη Γερμανία, στην Ελλάδα κ.α. Έχω πραγματοποιήσει residencies σε διάφορους χώρους στο Βέλγιο (Workspacebrussels, Kaaistudios, Air Antwerpen, Recyclart Brussels). To 2017, επέστρεψα στην Ελλάδα και τώρα ζω και εργάζομαι όντας σε κίνηση ανάμεσα σε Καλαμάτα, Αθήνα και Βρυξέλλες. Παράλληλα, διδάσκω από το 2009 εντός διαφόρων πλαισίων. Με το καλλιτεχνικό μου έργο διερευνώ τους πολλαπλούς τρόπους με τους οποίους αντιλαμβανόμαστε τις έννοιες του τόπου, του χώρου, του χρόνου και της μνήμης οι οποίες διαμορφώνουν την ταυτότητά μας και τη σχέση μας με τον κόσμο.

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I studied architecture in NTUA (2005) Athens, fine arts in ASFA (2009) Athens and in St. Martins College in London, and I obtained my MA in visual arts in School of Arts Ghent (2014) in Belgium. I have taken part in exhibitions and festivals in Belgium, Germany, Greece and other countries with visual works, performances and workshops. I have also followed several residency programs in Belgium (Workspacebrussels, Kaaistudios, Air Antwerpen, Recyclart Brussels). In 2017, I came back in Greece and I now live and work between places (Kalamata, Athens, Brussels). Besides my artistic activity, I practice art education with various age groups and in diverse contexts since 2009. In my work I combine very different media such as performance, video, drawing, photography and installation art, investigating the many ways we perceive the concepts of place, space, time and memory to constitute our identity.

Kiriakos Spirou

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Kiriakos Spirou (b.1984, Limassol) is a Cypriot art writer, editor, copywriter, independent publisher and award-winning composer and pianist. He has contributed art criticism, interviews and articles to newspapers, magazines and online media in Greece, Cyprus, Belgium, Sweden and the UK, and has written for exhibition catalogues in Greece, the Netherlands, Serbia and Cyprus. His curatorial projects include five group exhibitions and a solo show. He has composed music for contemporary dance theatre, and has taught workshops on methodology and interdisciplinary collaborations between music and dance. His musical works have been performed in Cyprus, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Italy, Puerto Rico and the UK. He is the founding editor of und., an artist-run publishing platform for the development, promotion and documentation of underrepresented contemporary art in Athens and its wider region. Since 2019, he is a member of the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art (AICA). He lives and works in Athens, Greece.