Statement 2019
Transcription of the statement for the 21st Biennial
The inspiration for Laboratory of Dilemmas came from Aeschylus’ theatre play, called “The Suppliant Women” (Iketides). The suppliants from Aeschylus’ tragedy flee Egypt and arrive in Argos, Greece asking the city’s king for asylum. The king is then faced with a dilemma: by helping them, he risks starting a war with the Egyptians, who will come to claim them; but if he doesn’t help them, he breaks the sacred laws of the gods, which demand the protection of all suppliants. The King’s dilemma raises a question about how we take our decisions based on pragmatism or idealism, how we deal with the unknown, the different, the strange and what we would risk in order to accept and protect it. The work deals with the anguish, puzzlement, and confusion of individuals and social groups when called upon to address similar issues.
The tragedy’s dilemma is re-contextualized and presented on the basis of a biological experiment. Right at the last stage of the experiment a different cell group than the one researched emerged inexplicably. The research team was pressed to allow these new cells to organize themselves with the existing cell culture of the experiment—otherwise they would risk being extinct. However, allowing such a thing could put the survival of the existing and successful cell culture to risk. By giving a new context to the old tragedy’s dilemma, written 2500 years ago, I wanted to open it to a broader interpretation. It is historical, and at the same time it is and will always remain contemporary. It is not a random story mentioned in an ancient tragedy. It expresses a crucial question for today’s societies, science and, first of all, about ourselves.
My original work, presented at the Greek pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, was a narrative, walk-in, labyrinth-like, multichannel sound and video installation. It focused on the ancient play’s dilemma through the excerpts of an old documentary about a biology experiment. The story was presented piecemeal through multiple video and sound sources inside a labyrinth, which was actually the replica of the old laboratory of the experiment. The visitor could almost literally follow the steps of the professor in his laboratory, see and/or hear him, collect all the fragmented info about his research and get to the point of the final decision. The visitor created the entire story mentally after collecting—in an also physical way, by walking around—all the visuals and sounds of the story of the old experiment.