What We Found After You Left [2019]
From April-July 2017, Tripoli Cancelled screened at EMST as part of Documenta 14 in Athens. For Greek audiences of one generation, it was a chance to see, again, the vanished Ellinikon Airport of their memories. Designed by Eero Saarinen in 1969, the airport was closed in 2001 and replaced by the current Eleftherios Venizelos.
For younger audiences, it was an airport that was never theirs. Those born in the 1990s may never have flown through location, at least as far as memory can be recalled. Thinking of the idea of visiting the memory that was never, a group of photographers from Focus and 18 Ano began visiting the empty Ellinikon. Over the summer of 2017, they worked with POLKOEOA, the Cultural Center of the Olympic Air Personnel, who had previously worked with the film crew of Tripoli Cancelled.
By the end of summer, this group of photographers came back with images that are radically different from the film. Other than a few common markers (control tower, runway, airplane, mannequin), most of their projects uncovered different fragments– those visible when not pursuing the airport as film stage. Ellinikon was, again, a site of waiting stories.
In Bengali, usila is an occasion and excuse, but also something that moves away from the first story. What did they find, on this second journey? Gates that open onto sleeping runways (Panagiotis Vorgias), glass houses waiting for owners (Anna Kantrivioti), a newsreel of goodbyes (Penny Theodosiou), a play between floors and ceilings (Christina Zagoreou), a waiting room of reunion (Panos Mazarakis), a letter for the final journey (Kostas Klinakis), the paper trail of permission (Dimitris Chronopoulos), a pigeon as human double (Michalis Georgiou), infinite corridor of secrets (Filipos Ferentinos), a continent defaced (Vaggelis Kokoroskos), foam without utility (Nora Gkika), fuselage of waiting (Victoria Kounaki), synchronized mechanics (Christos Kanakis), tracks of tears (Konstantina Flegka), the vertical of signage (Rita Chela), a phone before call waiting (Ioanna Paraskelidi), the erotica of tourism (Eva Beslemle), prohibited and allowed (Stella Anastasopoulou), the vertical of midpoints (Eirini Angelidi), maps and their arrows (Eleftheria Motaki), through the glass window (Giorgos Sotiriou), a grid of bodies and ghosts (Léa Martin Abazoglou), and a mannequin on the move (Nantia Panagopoulou).
This exhibition stands as a monument to a modernist ambition that in the future may not exist. Being of an optimistic temperament, we invite our fellow Athenians to begin to thread other stories into this space.
Ellinikon is not over yet.