The All is One

Out of curiosity I typed the word “ceremony” into the hard disc search field and pressed “Enter”. To my surprise, there was only one result, a PDF document that was listed not once, but three times, under the title “frsfpa_naming_ceremonymarch_7_2014”.

My surprise grew when I opened it to find that it contained a two-page document entitled “Frances Rich School of Fine and Performing Arts Naming Ceremony”. The file had been saved to the location “F:\Marinos curatorials and projects 2020\Collectanea – the measure of all things\ACG_the collection”. 

Without my suspecting it, the “ceremony” search had taken me back via an unfamiliar path to another ceremony; indeed, to a ceremony-exhibition that I myself had curated. Just like the snake that eats its tail –what the ancients called the “ouroboros”–  I had returned to an experience that I had created, an experience that is part of my body and memory.

I opened the “Collectanea – the measure of all things” file: it is 10.1 GB and contains 57 items; the traces of an exhibition; the remains of “Collectanea”. I wondered why am I here? What ceremony is this? I am looking at photographs of the works that were exhibited. “Have you eaten?” asked a work by Mytro Xanthopoulou, while another spoke of “500 days in the desert”. “SICK”, read a detached wall surface by Maria Tzanakou. “Give me back my Shape” screamed a drawing by Ria Dama. On days like this, at times like this, I fell like the “Lost bird”, like the woman with the paper mask in the photo by Studio Lialios Vazoura. I was moved when I looked again at Yiannis Theodoropoulos’ photo (“Summer, afternoon, Skyros”) because I thought of myself in a different situation – how I am now and how I would like to be, where I would really like to be while writing these lines. The thought that I will be on the island I love with special friends again this summer consoles me. Maybe I don’t know how a ceremony begins or when it begins, but at least I know what it can mean and more or less what I would like it to be like.    

Christoforos Marinos