There is no safety, and there is no end.
The world is seldom heard in silence.
Maybe all the pain in the world requires poetry; someone to bear witness, to survey; to fix their gaze and remain steadfast in their pursuit of meticulously building a hut in the suffocating desert.
So often, you see things that shake you, move you—maybe once, a momentary glitch.
Maybe always, and constantly—a cacophonous litany.
Our planet is in peril. We must recognise that the fundamental conditions of global modernity are closely tied to the enclosure of our commons, which is altogether symbiotic to racial capitalism’s inherent dependency on the corralling of space. Modernity is a social and ecological disaster–one which we are constantly attempting to survive. To surmise it as anything other than brutal would be fallacious. We ought to understand modernity as a system and structure––deeply entangled with capitalism and its attendant brutality––rather than a fixed event. The nation states makes use of a variety of violent methods to claim the earth as ours, involving fences, borders, territorialisation; displacement, deracination and confinement; the destruction of our commons. This is an emergency: we must see the earth before the end of the world. By that metric, the precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate the darkness, blaze roads through the vast forest; open a line of enquiry as to how we might honour the earth, and in doing so, walk more lightly upon it.
The distant songbird call; a distinctly heartfelt undulation between observation, documentation and active participation. The natural world, and by equal measure, its form as malleable archive; rehearsal and reminder for living; evidence of the living-commotion, beckons to Stelios Kallinikou. A seemingly fragmented approach vividly translates into the articulation of his practice, stretching across the aural realm, photography, video and found-archival material. This is perhaps most emphatically realised at his recent solo exhibition, Calls and Songs, at eins gallery (Limassol, Cyprus).
Spring is a portentous season. The earth remembers its own name. The smell of chrysanthemums fills the air. Blades of grass stain your sneakers. New stars in the sky. The gentleness that comes not from the absence of violence but despite the abundance of it. First light of morning, the chemical of waking; the morning birds are a Grecian choir. I write my reflections below in a manner akin to my practice: parapoetics. These fragmented thoughts were written blithely; in the aftermath of my visit at the start of May 2024.
Poeticism is political. Always.
I. 1, 2-4. (Bird [ζευκαλάτης], 2022); (img #1, #2, #3 [feather paradox], 2019);
I Urge You.
pay attention to the natural world around you.
everything in nature is obedient and
always teaching us patience; grace.
INTERLUDE:
tap-tap on the rear-view mirror.
ecstatic territoriality.
modernity is an all-consuming macrophage.
everything matters—now more than ever.
our present moment, our imagination
is actively being deracinated; devoured.
technology is often inimical.
flashing screens
and diodes
and blue lights
and the future is now!
but the earth is dying!
take the little bird of rage
open her beak. blow into her sternum
so it looks like breathing
and take the fire she gives you.
Bird [ζευκαλάτης], 2022, video, sound, loop
img #1, #2, #3 [feather paradox], 2019, archival pigment print, 120 x 90 cm
II. 5. (Still Life 2-4, 2022); (AMMATIN, 2023);
part one
the side eye;
the cutting eye,
or otherwise:
retinal antagonism.
it is hard to tear the eyes away, but
facts about the iris
do not make the iris.
open.
your eyes adjust to darkness
but the heart never.
part two
all water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
glacial silence can be as heavy as metal.
a hard light. but
what happens when you listen to silence?
feedback is a ghostly entourage.
the groan of the ocean:
vibrational eloquence.
it beckons attunement of the ear.
love for the natural world.
not as attachment
but as a constituent element;
an enveloping.
Still Life 2-4, 2022, sound installation, seashell, mirror, microphone, amplifier, cables;
AMMATIN, 2023, video, sound, loop
III. 6–7. (Gas station, 2024); (Plant, 2019);
an ode to playful mythologizing; dream spaces.
the dramatization of nothing
is an intimate propellor into the future.
not garish, not inchoate.
a secret third thing:
a devotion to the eerie; amorous dereliction;
a trigger of hope.
Gas station, 2024, archival pigment print, 26 x 33 cm
Plant, 2019, archival pigment print, 26 x 33 cm
𓇼
Which is easier?
To imagine the end of the world, or an end to capitalism?
Stelio Kallinikou’s archive is recalcitrant. Calls and Songs is resonant insofar as its visual acuity is meticulously crafted and artistically installed; a tender oscillation between stillness and spectacle. Kallinikou’s work is exciting. The entirety of his critical, conceptual (and at times, ethereal) project is fully present throughout the particularity of this exhibition. Echoing Bertolt Brecht, art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it. As artists, our central call is to honour the collective utterance and echoes of those, and that, which came before us. In the shadow of gross capital accumulation and European modernity, Kallinikou honours the rapidly changing fabric of the Earth, all while honouring its expansive abundance and grandeur. In a resplendent manner, in large part due to the distinct and rich scope of his visual language, Kallinikou listens to the whispers on the wind in a refreshingly analytical manner––calling upon us to do the same; to couple the political act of witnessing alongside praxis.
Endnotes
the precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate the darkness, blaze roads through the vast forest: James Baldwin, ‘The Creative Process’ in Adolph Suehsdorf & Jerry Mason (eds.), Creative America (Ridge Press, 1962) 17.
we must see the earth before the end of the world: Ed Roberson, ‘To See the Earth Before the End of the World’ in Ed Roberson, To See the Earth Before the End of the World (Wesleyan University Press, 2010).
all water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was: Toni Morrison, from a talk given at the New York Public Library (1986).
a rehearsal and reminder for living: See Leanne Betasamosake & Robyn Maynard, Rehearsals for Living (Haymarket Books, 2022).
To imagine the end of the world, or an end to capitalism?: Mark Fischer, Capitalism Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Zero Books, 2010).
Installation documentation courtesy of Stelios Kallinikou.