After In Site Compression, 2018, The following images depict views of the video installation, dimensions variables, N. Kessanlis exhibition Centre,
Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA), Athens
The ephemeral character of In Site Compression, as both literal construction and situation that require the participation of the viewers for completion, predicts its future absence from the site for which it was initially designed.
The experiences of the initial installation are irrecoverable, like the sense of bodily confinement in the space between the volumes and gallery walls of In Site Compression. These effects may be counterbalanced by the constantly shifting shadows of viewers projected onto the surfaces of After In Site Compression, 2018, which, by coinciding with one another, make the experience of sharing the space with others more palpable and involving.
or the noise of the deconstruction of the PP wallpaper in the corridor part of In Site Compression.
Recorded documentations do not fill the void left by the loss of the ‘actual’ site-specific installation, nor even represents it. Each exhibition of video documentation constitutes a new installation, like After In Site Compression, 2018, that establishes its own spatio-temporal frame and aims to reveal aspects of the viewer’s perception and experience during their bodily immersion in it, which differs from those of the initial works.
But the most important experience is that of the palimpsest of sites – the initial and subsequent one for the installation – which coincide in a transient space and an equation of time.
This displacement materialises an important contradiction intrinsic to site-specific art: its fixture within a specific site and speculation about its transformation, caused not only by its temporary nature but by the perpetually changing and unpredictable behaviour of the viewers required for its completion.