Humble will be the air as you go down

Πιο κάτω ο αέρας θα είναι πιο ταπεινός/ Hubble will be the air as you go down.1

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Tool16, 22SEP2016 3:45pm (detail), Materials: clay, striped silk dress , Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki, Amorgos 2016

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Notes on books and works Quoted expression through a conversation Dictionary of Untranslatable, a philosophical lexicon, p.131-132 3‘ Χωρός’, ‘Χορός’(http://vasilikisifostratoudaki.gr/Xoros-Xoros) 4 The plural of demiurge in Greek 5 Kserolithies, ξερολιθιές = dry wall 6 Λαογραφικόν λεξικόν της Αμοργού του Μιχαήλ Ι. Στρατουδάκη 7 The words and their interpretation are notes from conversations 8 Le Cobrisier - “Το μικρό σπίτι” and 9 Ο λόγος ύπαρξης του τοίχου φράχτη, που βλέπουμε έδώ, είναι για να κλείσει τη θέα στον βορία, στην ανατολή, λίγο στον νοτιά και στη δύση, το τοπίο, πανταχού παρόν προς όλες τις κατευθύνσεις, παντοδύναμο, γίνεται κουραστικό. Παρατηρήσατε ότι με τέτοιες συνθήκες δεν το “βλέπουμε” πια? Για να μετρά το τοπίο, πρέπει να το περιορίσουμε, να του δώσουμε διαστάσεις με μια ριζική απόφαση: να αποκλεισουμε τους ορίζοντες σηκώνοντας τοίχους και να μην τουσ αποκαλύπτουμε, με διακοπή των τοίχων, παρα με στρατηγικά σημεία. - Le Corbusier σελ.24 10 παφλασμός = breaking the waves (softly) 11 time 12 Λουλούδι, Αναφορά στον Αριστοφανή, ρούχα δίαφανα και κοκκινα 13 “Nostalgia of light” (2010) directed by Patricio Guzmán 14 “The village” (2004) directed by M. Night Shyamalan 15 Ethel Andan 16 Tool, 22SEP2016 3:45 pm, Clay was used to fill in the rocks in which I had been walking for several days, the water of the rain would gradually wash it away.

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Tool16, 22SEP2016 3:45pm (detail) Materials: clay, striped silk dress Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki, Amorgos 2016

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Published by Yellow Brick /LETTERs and PRINTs ISBN: 978 - 618-83847-0-5 Graphic Design by Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki Pictures by Maria Nikiforaki Edited by Katherine MacBride Printed in Mounken paper of 70 gr by Shape Communication

Πιο κάτω ο αέρας θα είναι πιο ταπεινός/ Hubble will be the air as you go down.

Βασιλική Σηφοστρατουδάκη/ Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki

Αθηνα/ Athens 2018

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Τhe SEA is so transparent that I/we both can see the rocks under the waves.

He is soft.

The wind has connected us – beside the ruins of the ancient city – I am spending the time in my thoughts imagining the crops that once were harvest here.

HERE. Where I am standing I’m gazing at their architectural constructions.

Pirates or not, we possibly spoke the same language.

He says that at his country there are no Rocks as such, nor in wilderness or in violence by the coast line.

He pauses. Maybe in Nepal’s coast line the Rocks.

The cliffs there are making huge walls into the sky.

“Do we always need an edge to hold us?”

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ΘΕΛΩ ΝΑ ΜΙΛΗΣΩ ΜΕ ΠΕΤΡΕΣ ΣΤΟ ΣΤΟΜΑ ΜΟΥ.

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Το όλο μέρος μοίαζει με μοναστήρι. Αισθάνομαι σαν να με περιβάλει o Τρούλος. Αιώνιος πάνω από τα βούνα, ακόμα και πάνω από τα ζώα – σαν να είναι αγιασμένα. Στο νερό. Στα Μοναστήρια. Χθες μόνο πήγαμε στη Χώρα, ήταν γεμάτη με καφέ, ταβέρνες, ανθρώπους και στοές. Συναντήσαμε ανθρώπους που ήξεραν την πόλη από που προερχόμουν. Οι στοές είναι γεμάτες από σκαλοπάτια. Τα σκαλοπάτια αυτά που από το πάτο τους ξεχειλίζουν σ’ αναιβάζουν στην κορυφή, στη λόζα κοντά σε μία ακόμα εκκλησία.

H πολή(sic) μυσταγωγία και έθιμα και δεν είναι για μένα.

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20.9.2016 ΦΟΒΑΜΑΙ. (note from my notebook)

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Όλα έχουν τη χρήση τους σ΄αυτό τον χώρο,3 aυτό τα κάνει εργαλεία?

I woke up and observe once again the cinematic road opposite our “HOME”. I hear the sounds of birds and of the tractors.

The gate opens, they come, the owners. This place belongs to someone, to the community, which each and every one has a name, a way they do things, as ONE. Inside this ONE voice usually the act/do by cooking, dancing, going to church. But is also us. The strangers, the other. Us who call their place home, we speak another language and we don't know the use of the TOOLS. We don't know the NAME of the clouds, we don't know name of the GOATS or of their GOD, we call the space monastery or home or ours rooms.

But that we only know is our name, we are the GUEST, inside a space or even better a “Χώρα” (Chora)3. As is named in Plato’s dialogues, according to the context, the common place of “land”, “place”, “space”, or “room”. As Casey points out its primary is a connotation its “occupied space” as in “a field full of crops or a room replete with things” It first appears in Timeous where Socrates is characterising the country outside of the city people.

The Voice opened the gate, , now the gate is closed and the sound of the car going away into turns in silence.

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Ι am left as OTHER inside my silence. Wondering if i am alone in this Chora.

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In the land, place, space, room “demiurge, in Plato’s cosmology is compared to a craftsman, who as “intelligence” it self, “framed the universe”, fashioning “reason with soul and soul with body” as a living creature. Nor for a god or a “God”, the demiurge operates like a craftsman on material he did NOT himself create, with reason guiding his design” “As such we become from Others the Guest? The Hosts? or remain an-named as the demiurgoi4 of the Χώρα (Chora) we exist inside.

Still emptiness is filling me.

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ΤΗΕ ROAD “The length of the road is only made obvious by the movement of the cars and the sound of the broken motorbikes, the road is visible only when it ascends. It merges with the scenery of the mountains which look like the drawings of the waves in the Minoan vases. The Kserolithies/ ξερολιθιές5, are the walls that divide the fields. They are no taller than seventy centimetres, built like a puzzle of stones which needs no mortar/ λάσπη to hold them together but one stone becomes the holding point of the other. At the the top of the dry walls the stones are stabilised with some branches that are inserted in between them or a bigger stone. Nowadays a layer of cement functions as the branches or the stones once did.

The dry walls are painted white near the perimeters of the Orthodox Churches, cemeteries or other communal - social spaces

Maria has woken up. The day has started.

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LOCAL VOCABULARY6 Θεωρία, η: η όψη, η εξωτερική εμφάνιση. Θωργιά, η: η όψη. Παρ’ Αρχαίοις, όψις, πρόσωπον, θέα. Λίμα, η: η ρίνη, η φλυαρία. Παρ’ Αρχαίοις, ρίνη, βουλιμία, βουλιμίασις, απληστία, λαλιά, πολυλογία. Λόζα, η: η πλατεία, συνήθως η κεντρική. Χώρος περιπάτου, καταστημάτων και φυσικά οικιών. Λόξα, η: η ιδιοτροπία, η παραξενιά. Παρ’ Αρχαίοις, λοξίς, πλαγιότης, λοξότης, λόξωσης. Αλλαγωγή, η: κάθε είδους ανταλλαγή Αγγρλίζω: εξαγριώνω κάποιον, ερεθίζω, παρενοχλώ, θυμώνω. Αγγριφιά, τα: τα αγκάθια, ό,τι το μυτερό σε κάποια επιφάνεια. Θέλως, το: αντί το τέλος.

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ORAL VOCABULARY7 Βραχάς, o = the man who makes stone walls (vrachas) Βουκινάς, o = a cut shell in a way that becomes an instrument, the fisherman use it to announce that he has arrived - I heard him for more than ten minutes between in between the mountains thinking at the start is an alert fro Pirates? for war? a boat? Καστρί, το = κυκλώπια τοίχοι/ cyclopian walls (kastri) Χαβάνισμα = κόψιμο καπνού με ειδικό μαχαίρι Λινάρι, το = από το λιναρόσπορο παρήγαν το έλαιο και το νήμα για τα λινά ρούχα Βιγλάτορες, οι = σκοποί που χρησιμοποιούσαν σύμματα με φωτιές για να ειδοποιήσουν για τους πειρατές. Τα σήματα ήταν ορατά από την Αγιάλι, την Μινόα ακι την αρχαία Αρκεσίνη.

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THE ROCKS Τhe Rocks compose a set of steps for me towards Her. The voice of the sea is calling me like the creature of the BLUE. In the outline of her body the same stones look like the skin of the Orca wale.

This imaginary skin is of the same creature which keeps me company during the winter time in Moby’s Dick story. hold my breath before it accelerates, by now is two years.

Her touch is warm and makes my soul smooth.The frame of my I-Phone catches the details of the rocks that look a landscape seen from the window of a plane. I get attached to Her, by Her song I am under her spell, I dare not to touch her today, I don’t know the impact of Him in my skin. I wake up and I/ me/ Εγώ talk to him once again in the edge of physicality and love.

He8 swam into he Mediterranean waters end, after living right beside Her9. I wonder “Did he at any point, ask her, “Can I go back?” or he continued swimming in the pause/ θωργιά of the moment.

It is the voice of silence when I dive in her, the only thing I hear is my heart beat and the παφλασμός10, the wind, the birds, the waves and of my thoughts and pencil as I write.

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Now Today all over the landscape of Amorgos there is a ceiling of the transparent. Its colour is light yellow and has the green reflection that the leafs lemon tree have in spring time. Under her skin His11 body is made a hostage. Next to him she breathes.

What could she have said to him? What do they talk about while they build?

PAUSE

DURING THE READING FOR 30 AT LEAST SECONDS

Was he the demiurge/creator of randomness who put in order the randomness of the ancient architects in dialogue with the landscape in the Chora? “Small cubes of stones, partly painted white, make the domestic space.

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A - MORGOS Amorgos from a dress is made, Red/ πορφυρό, transparent, full of Aristofanis12 satire, with rocks of clear shapes the crocodile, the hock, the seal, the taurus all surrounded by the stones who hide the water and the ones on which the animals are slotered/ θυσιαστήρια.

“A - morgos” = curved churches in the rock. The external dome of the churches stones εξέχουν/ protrude like the bones of the dead cow we found on the top of the hill. The animals are left to die or buried in the landscape. Do we ourselves build a contemporary ephemeral temple with a material that we did NOT choose but we were found in? If so do we also become part of archeology and astronomy13?

At night we hear their bells once more we become Us together as One. THE GUESTS. And finally I shaw the line i was looking for at 06:32, the pink sun dawn was in His paste revealing it. The island, I was on the deck of the boat drifting away, living behind the island of made out of sponges. The One that i thought i wouldn't be able to leave from. I got caught in it . The locals clans is stable but i shaw it brake, disappear in the light and in the Autumn fog. The Autumn, is not a real for is the water which evaporates from he sea and the wind spreads it until the mountains, and it seems like they will disappear but they never do.

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The sea is still velvet blue for the sea we survive 14 for the sea we see.

The is no moment in silence. Looking for that moment I realise it more and more, as if i am lost in non-voice, non-silence. OUR voice is not. The boat and the smoke from my cigarette become my smell and my voice the tourist next to me from Brussels who they wonder if they remember seeing sow many stars there.

I go to sleep at dawn, I woke up at night to run away into the Her non-place which I feel stable where the ποθητή/ desirable line is.

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LETTERs and PRINTs www.yellowbrick.gr

ISBN: 978 - 618-83847-0-5