On the burnt piano of the University of Macedonia

 

“…the memorial uncanny might be regarded as that which is necessarily anti- redemptive. It is that memory of historical events which never domesticates such events, never makes us at home with them, never brings them into the reassuring house of redemptory meaning”.

James E. Young

 

 

 

What is the story behind the burnt piano? The narrations are numerous; the memo- ries are blurred; the versions are conflicting. Its destruction is undeniably a reality of the recent past the University of Macedonia, a reality, though, that has been cut off from its historical dimension. The burnt piano has been elevated to the mythical realm. As a remnant of a formerly robust musical instrument, it clearly refers not only to the vandalism that is has suffered, but also to the troubled climate, the disorienta- tion and the general impasse of the Greek universities in recent years. Stripped of its original function, it was removed from its initial environment to retire for years in the “unclaimed objects” of the University.

 

Vasilis Alexandrou wished to talk about the piano’s past. But, how can one tell a story about which nobody feels comfortable? A story that makes everyone involved feel awkward and embarrassed, a story for which in reality there is no history?

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With the least possible interventions on the remnants of the piano, with actions that seek to stabilize and heal it, the artist “excavates” an existing memory, however re- pressed for long. The memory that is disclosed conveys something “uncanny”, a feel- ing that in reality is nothing new or alien, but something which is old established in the mind, which ought to have remained hidden, but has come to light.

 

Vasilis Alexandrou’s minimalist and careful reading of the piano elicits the contradic- tions inherent in this “familiar alien”, summarizing a tension that at any moment will burst forth and reinforcing the embarrassment and anxiety that the destroyed instru- ment evokes to the viewer.

 

With this “subversive” transformation of the burnt piano into an artwork, the artist mobilizes the process of its demystification; he reveals the myth-making mechanism behind it and reconstitutes its history. The “relics” of the piano stand there as a “wit- ness” to publicly recount the events; as a monument that aspires to mobilize art again violence and impunity within the University. An “anti-redemptive” monument, as James E. Young would have called it, which articulates political discourse, not to re- deem, but to memorialize; to interpret actions of violence and not to justify them.

 

 

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                                                                                                                                                                 Iro Katsaridou

                                                                                                                                                                 Art Historian