L’éphemère est éternel[1]

 

The melancholy of the modern and the vibration of a moment.

 

Yorgos Tzirtzilakis

‘I don’t want to exhibit something to someone, but rather the reverse: to exhibit someone to something.’

– Pierre Huyghe, UUmwelt (2018)

Ι.

One of the integral elements of contemporary culture is the preservation of modernity’s past. That, admittedly, sounds like a paradox; the preservation of the past of the new. It could also be put as follows; the change of our beliefs in the face of the time of the modern. It is in such a context that we must situate the interest in the now abandoned building of the East terminal of the old Athens airport designed by Eero Saarinen. If the cultural beliefs and judgment criteria that we were once equipped with are shifting, are being reframed and are continuously expanding, the thing that remains constant is the fear of loss. A fear which appears to be the driving force behind this expanded mania of preservation which often manifests in an aesthetic attitude. Contrary to modernity’s efforts this fear stopped being the enemy and instead took the place of a privileged interlocutor.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, «Dimostrazione in grande del criptoportico accennato alla tav. IX con la lettera C», pl.XII, Le Antichità Romane, Ed. Angelo Rotili Roma 1756.

I am not commenting on this complex issue from the perspective of restoration techniques and protection policies of ‘cultural goods’, ‘tokens’, and ‘monuments’ of the past, despite the fact we all know that these ideas lend themselves to all sorts of ideological misconstructions and manipulations. Dazzled by the forceful return of history and the responsibility to defend these tokens of the past, we were late to realize the difficulties the various strategies of preserving the built environment presented us with and the dead-end they led us to.

As stated in the relevant legislation, the desirable preservation of cultural goods is prescribed by their “historical, artistic or scientific value”. Given, however, that understanding history presupposes knowledge of a cause, the activation of a series of inherent contradictions, as well as the accumulation of a lot more information, understanding is equated with a vain simulation, often described by the more reflective-sounding “seeming – φαίνεσθαι”.

​Nowadays, everyone understands everything, which is to say nothing. Strange though it may seem, when this kind of safeguarding triumphs, the past—and especially its differences—remain unprotected. And so, restoration and destruction coincide betraying the ambiguity of our positions on preservation, which is to say the danger of loss. Romanticism insightfully and charmingly foreshadowed the decline of monument protection as well as the distortion of our beliefs around temporality.

L’éphemère est éternel[1]

 

The melancholy of the modern and the vibration of a moment.

 

 

Yorgos Tzirtzilakis

 

 

‘I don’t want to exhibit something to someone, but rather the reverse: to exhibit someone to something.’

– Pierre Huyghe, UUmwelt (2018)

 

 

Ι.

One of the integral elements of contemporary culture is the preservation of modernity’s past. That, admittedly, sounds like a paradox; the preservation of the past of the new. It could also be put as follows; the change of our beliefs in the face of the time of the modern. It is in such a context that we must situate the interest in the now abandoned building of the East terminal of the old Athens airport designed by Eero Saarinen. If the cultural beliefs and judgment criteria that we were once equipped with are shifting, are being reframed and are continuously expanding, the thing that remains constant is the fear of loss. A fear which appears to be the driving force behind this expanded mania of preservation which often manifests in an aesthetic attitude. Contrary to modernity’s efforts this fear stopped being the enemy and instead took the place of a privileged interlocutor.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, «Dimostrazione in grande del criptoportico accennato alla tav. IX con la lettera C», pl.XII, Le Antichità Romane, Ed. Angelo Rotili Roma 1756.

I am not commenting on this complex issue from the perspective of restoration techniques and protection policies of ‘cultural goods’, ‘tokens’, and ‘monuments’ of the past, despite the fact we all know that these ideas lend themselves to all sorts of ideological misconstructions and manipulations. Dazzled by the forceful return of history and the responsibility to defend these tokens of the past, we were late to realize the difficulties the various strategies of preserving the built environment presented us with and the dead-end they led us to.

As stated in the relevant legislation, the desirable preservation of cultural goods is prescribed by their “historical, artistic or scientific value”. Given, however, that understanding history presupposes knowledge of a cause, the activation of a series of inherent contradictions, as well as the accumulation of a lot more information, understanding is equated with a vain simulation, often described by the more reflective-sounding “seeming – φαίνεσθαι”.

​Nowadays, everyone understands everything, which is to say nothing. Strange though it may seem, when this kind of safeguarding triumphs, the past—and especially its differences—remain unprotected. And so, restoration and destruction coincide betraying the ambiguity of our positions on preservation, which is to say the danger of loss. Romanticism insightfully and charmingly foreshadowed the decline of monument protection as well as the distortion of our beliefs around temporality.

ΙΙ.

If not the root of evil, then at least its seed can be gauged through a psychoanalytical lens, which seems to go unnoticed. I must start from Sigmund Freud who described the acceptance of an object’s loss as ‘mourning’ as opposed to ‘pathological melancholia’ which is a narcissistic identification with the lost object.[2] An architectural equivalent of melancholy can be discerned in Giambattista Piranesi’s Antichità Romane; in the fragmented representations of Greek antiquity by artists of the Romantic period, in the visionary monumentality of Etienne-Louis Boullée, in Adolf Loos’s contention that architecture arouses moods, in Dimitris Pikionis’s fragments, in Aldo Rossi’s dieses ist lange her, but also in the entire diaspora of abandonment that erodes modernist architecture.

Aldo Rossi, Dies es ist lange her (Ora questo è perduto),
Engraving, 1975, Fondazione Aldo Rossi, Milano.

It is worth shining some light on the subtle yet decisive differences between mourning and melancholia – between the processing of loss and identification with the lost object. Firstly, it is important to note that there is nothing macabre or frightening about this experience of mourning, which marks a symbolic victory over the fear of loss. Mourning is connected to an object’s withdrawal. Melancholy, on the other hand, attaches itself onto that same object and consequently resists its withdrawal.

​The first approach made its mark on the modern, the second the postmodern. The first practiced the exploration of temporality while the second condensed time into a continuous present. The creative form of mourning allows for the recollection of the lived historicity of the lost object. The melancholy of preservation, by contrast, traps the object in representation.

If it is true that both architecture and acts of artistic creation only begin when they themselves become a form of question then the question here undoubtedly is this; is it better to abandon our adherence to preserving the modernist past or to melancholically devote ourselves to it? One would argue that in an era where the culture of preservation and safeguarding is spun as an echo of nostalgia and an overabundance of a courteous, civilized conduct, the answer is apparent.

 

Nonetheless the unanimous support for the restoration of our architectural past is probably more about the removal of their uniqueness and originality—that is their historical, artistic or scientific value—and the relief from a certain awkwardness afforded by such an event. In a sense, most versions of restoration adopted and put forward under the ‘redevelopment’ of the airport area seem to resemble black holes, sucking in the past they are supposed to be there to rescue. Contrary to popular belief, restoration is often nothing other than a type of oblivion, the ideal way to forget. The most significant contribution of such ‘restorations’ is precisely their ability to accelerate a process of total disappearance into the vicious circle of the incubation of images; reproduction, inflation and expansion.

​

As a result, our previous dilemma constantly finds new ways to stay current, precisely because it forms part of the unresolved tension surrounding the scandal of the founding contract of modern culture, this double river bed within which we oscillate. In this sense, the anti-historical paroxysm of technological utopias and the rekindling of national and regional traditions under the conditions of ‘completed’ capitalism (fostered nowadays by postcolonial thinking), can be thought of as two alternating examples balancing each other. Anti-historicism is what pushed us beyond time; it is because of the return of national traditions that we are now unable to return.

This is why it is hard to identify exactly what the modern is across all the modernist buildings that still cast their spell on us today. Architects like Takis X. Zenetos and Dimitris Pikionis and artists working in the ethnographic or postcolonial turn personify the operation of this wavering.

And yet, the case of surviving modernist buildings in Greece—even those in conditions of progressive abandonment—brings up one more question; given their small number the object is lacking to begin with and thus our melancholic resistance to its loss coincides with that original lack. But at this point we can generalize; in its limited but also in its more complete form, the preservation of the modern—that is to say the transient and the fleeting, so as not to stray from Baudelaire’s definition—is not disrupted by the contradictions that lurked when the modern was active.

ΙΙ.

If not the root of evil, then at least its seed can be gauged through a psychoanalytical lens, which seems to go unnoticed. I must start from Sigmund Freud who described the acceptance of an object’s loss as ‘mourning’ as opposed to ‘pathological melancholia’ which is a narcissistic identification with the lost object.[2] An architectural equivalent of melancholy can be discerned in Giambattista Piranesi’s Antichità Romane; in the fragmented representations of Greek antiquity by artists of the Romantic period, in the visionary monumentality of Etienne-Louis Boullée, in Adolf Loos’s contention that architecture arouses moods, in Dimitris Pikionis’s fragments, in Aldo Rossi’s dieses ist lange her, but also in the entire diaspora of abandonment that erodes modernist architecture.

Aldo Rossi, Dies es ist lange her (Ora questo è perduto),
Engraving, 1975, Fondazione Aldo Rossi, Milano.

It is worth shining some light on the subtle yet decisive differences between mourning and melancholia – between the processing of loss and identification with the lost object. Firstly, it is important to note that there is nothing macabre or frightening about this experience of mourning, which marks a symbolic victory over the fear of loss. Mourning is connected to an object’s withdrawal. Melancholy, on the other hand, attaches itself onto that same object and consequently resists its withdrawal.

​The first approach made its mark on the modern, the second the postmodern. The first practiced the exploration of temporality while the second condensed time into a continuous present. The creative form of mourning allows for the recollection of the lived historicity of the lost object. The melancholy of preservation, by contrast, traps the object in representation.

If it is true that both architecture and acts of artistic creation only begin when they themselves become a form of question then the question here undoubtedly is this; is it better to abandon our adherence to preserving the modernist past or to melancholically devote ourselves to it? One would argue that in an era where the culture of preservation and safeguarding is spun as an echo of nostalgia and an overabundance of a courteous, civilized conduct, the answer is apparent.

Nonetheless the unanimous support for the restoration of our architectural past is probably more about the removal of their uniqueness and originality—that is their historical, artistic or scientific value—and the relief from a certain awkwardness afforded by such an event. In a sense, most versions of restoration adopted and put forward under the ‘redevelopment’ of the airport area seem to resemble black holes, sucking in the past they are supposed to be there to rescue. Contrary to popular belief, restoration is often nothing other than a type of oblivion, the ideal way to forget. The most significant contribution of such ‘restorations’ is precisely their ability to accelerate a process of total disappearance into the vicious circle of the incubation of images; reproduction, inflation and expansion.

​

As a result, our previous dilemma constantly finds new ways to stay current, precisely because it forms part of the unresolved tension surrounding the scandal of the founding contract of modern culture, this double river bed within which we oscillate. In this sense, the anti-historical paroxysm of technological utopias and the rekindling of national and regional traditions under the conditions of ‘completed’ capitalism (fostered nowadays by postcolonial thinking), can be thought of as two alternating examples balancing each other. Anti-historicism is what pushed us beyond time; it is because of the return of national traditions that we are now unable to return.

This is why it is hard to identify exactly what the modern is across all the modernist buildings that still cast their spell on us today. Architects like Takis X. Zenetos and Dimitris Pikionis and artists working in the ethnographic or postcolonial turn personify the operation of this wavering.

And yet, the case of surviving modernist buildings in Greece—even those in conditions of progressive abandonment—brings up one more question; given their small number the object is lacking to begin with and thus our melancholic resistance to its loss coincides with that original lack. But at this point we can generalize; in its limited but also in its more complete form, the preservation of the modern—that is to say the transient and the fleeting, so as not to stray from Baudelaire’s definition—is not disrupted by the contradictions that lurked when the modern was active.

ΙΙΙ.

What we are really fighting for today, therefore, is not so much (or perhaps not just) the time of modernity but the experience of its loss. The allure of the modern gradually became melancholy in its purest form. MOMAFAD by Dionisis Christofilogiannis and the group of artists and curators he collaborated with operates in an alternative third direction; in a zone that both relates to and distinguishes itself from the aforementioned division. The object of investigation here is the potential for a ‘momentary preservation of the building through the contemporary’ that comes with no reservations or guarantees. And, after all, guarantees in this particular case would be rather unnecessary. What can one discover within this momentary exhibition that assumes the character of a meeting? Some insightful ideas on modernism and the abandoned airport building? Random shapes and experiments on form? Political commentary on the redevelopment of the area? Fragments of psychological moods (stimmung) and site-specific assumptions? Or, as always, the wonder and trauma of a memory? Or maybe all of these together?

MOMAFAD seems to be re-introducing one of the foundational stipulations of modernism, at least as expressed by Baudelaire: ‘Modernity is the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable.[…] Modernity finds its antonym in the eternal. Having released itself from a conflict and comparison with antiquity and the classical past that had to be exceeded, it can now be compared only to what is ephemeral at any given time in an eternal spiral of self-transcendence.’[3]

​

The focus here is on the fleeting; the incoherent and changing nature of modernity that once again sets us onto a ‘self-transcendence spiral’. The process of preserving the modern, that is to say the ephemeral and the fleeting cannot but be ephemeral and fleeting itself. In this way, despite manifesting a sort of certainty towards modernism and Saarinen’s building, MOMAFAD becomes more a question that stimulates internal meaning. Because what sort of certainty could the momentary give birth to? The momentary leads to an interplay between work and receiver or acceptor,  that is to say all of us who are there to receive and observe it.[4] MOMAFAD (‘momentarily’) becomes the character of this interaction. I mean to say that the underlying theme of this exhibition is not so much the building of the old airport of Athens, as one would naturally assume, but rather it is us, its’ receptors and acceptors who take on the role of an active witness. As a result, art (the ‘contemporary’), is beyond the images and the act of seeing: it is rather the vibration of a moment which in its infinitesimal duration allowed the modernism that we yearned for, dreamt of, and still carry inside us—in this case the airport—to be reflected within us. It is only in this way that the ephemeral acquires duration.

​

[1] Michel Seuphor, L’éphemère est éternel (1926). trns. Manfredo Tafuri, «L’ephemere est eternel: Aldo Rossi a Venezia», Domus, 602, 1980, p. 7.

[2] Sigmund Freud, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ in Papers on Metapsychology, trns. Th. Paradellis, Athens, 1980, pp.110-129). Also very insightful are the remarks made in: Panagiotis Kondylis, Melancholia and Polemics,  trns. Μ. Papanikolaou, (Nea Estia, 1725, 2000): 18-36.

[3] Charles Baudelaire, Aesthetic Essays, trns. Maria Regkou (Athens: Printa, 2005), 149-150.

​[4] The poet and art historian Eleni Vakalo—whom, in keeping with the traditions of our domestic art scene, most seem to have forgotten today—often insisted that we use the term “receptor” instead of “recipient”, focusing on the aspect of “co-creating”. In their reconstruction of the work the “receptor” is not passive but rather an integral part of the work.

ΙΙΙ.

What we are really fighting for today, therefore, is not so much (or perhaps not just) the time of modernity but the experience of its loss. The allure of the modern gradually became melancholy in its purest form. MOMAFAD by Dionisis Christofilogiannis and the group of artists and curators he collaborated with operates in an alternative third direction; in a zone that both relates to and distinguishes itself from the aforementioned division. The object of investigation here is the potential for a ‘momentary preservation of the building through the contemporary’ that comes with no reservations or guarantees. And, after all, guarantees in this particular case would be rather unnecessary. What can one discover within this momentary exhibition that assumes the character of a meeting? Some insightful ideas on modernism and the abandoned airport building? Random shapes and experiments on form? Political commentary on the redevelopment of the area? Fragments of psychological moods (stimmung) and site-specific assumptions? Or, as always, the wonder and trauma of a memory? Or maybe all of these together?

MOMAFAD seems to be re-introducing one of the foundational stipulations of modernism, at least as expressed by Baudelaire: ‘Modernity is the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable.[…] Modernity finds its antonym in the eternal. Having released itself from a conflict and comparison with antiquity and the classical past that had to be exceeded, it can now be compared only to what is ephemeral at any given time in an eternal spiral of self-transcendence.’[3]

​

The focus here is on the fleeting; the incoherent and changing nature of modernity that once again sets us onto a ‘self-transcendence spiral’. The process of preserving the modern, that is to say the ephemeral and the fleeting cannot but be ephemeral and fleeting itself. In this way, despite manifesting a sort of certainty towards modernism and Saarinen’s building, MOMAFAD becomes more a question that stimulates internal meaning. Because what sort of certainty could the momentary give birth to? The momentary leads to an interplay between work and receiver or acceptor,  that is to say all of us who are there to receive and observe it.[4] MOMAFAD (‘momentarily’) becomes the character of this interaction. I mean to say that the underlying theme of this exhibition is not so much the building of the old airport of Athens, as one would naturally assume, but rather it is us, its’ receptors and acceptors who take on the role of an active witness. As a result, art (the ‘contemporary’), is beyond the images and the act of seeing: it is rather the vibration of a moment which in its infinitesimal duration allowed the modernism that we yearned for, dreamt of, and still carry inside us—in this case the airport—to be reflected within us. It is only in this way that the ephemeral acquires duration.

​

[1] Michel Seuphor, L’éphemère est éternel (1926). trns. Manfredo Tafuri, «L’ephemere est eternel: Aldo Rossi a Venezia», Domus, 602, 1980, p. 7.
[2] Sigmund Freud, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ in Papers on Metapsychology, trns. Th. Paradellis, Athens, 1980, pp.110-129). Also very insightful are the remarks made in: Panagiotis Kondylis, Melancholia and Polemics,  trns. Μ. Papanikolaou, (Nea Estia, 1725, 2000): 18-36.
[3] Charles Baudelaire, Aesthetic Essays, trns. Maria Regkou (Athens: Printa, 2005), 149-150.
​[4] The poet and art historian Eleni Vakalo—whom, in keeping with the traditions of our domestic art scene, most seem to have forgotten today—often insisted that we use the term “receptor” instead of “recipient”, focusing on the aspect of “co-creating”. In their reconstruction of the work the “receptor” is not passive but rather an integral part of the work.

​

Yorgos Tzirtzilakis is an architect, theorist and curator who lives in Athens. He is a professor at the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly and artistic advisor at the DESTE Foundation of Contemporary Art. He has curated several exhibitions, edited monographs, special issues and he is the author of several articles published in newspapers, journals and edited anthologies. In 2013 he published the book Sub-modernity and the Labor of Joy-Making Mourning: The Crisis Effect in Contemporary Greek Culture (Kastaniotis Editions). In this context investigated the paradigmatic work of some artists and architects, and concepts, such as the “dismeasured impulse”, the “sacred and the non-representable”, the “becoming minor”, the forms of “retribalization” and the “parody”. 

​

Yorgos Tzirtzilakis is an architect, theorist and curator who lives in Athens. He is a professor at the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly and artistic advisor at the DESTE Foundation of Contemporary Art. He has curated several exhibitions, edited monographs, special issues and he is the author of several articles published in newspapers, journals and edited anthologies. In 2013 he published the book Sub-modernity and the Labor of Joy-Making Mourning: The Crisis Effect in Contemporary Greek Culture (Kastaniotis Editions). In this context investigated the paradigmatic work of some artists and architects, and concepts, such as the “dismeasured impulse”, the “sacred and the non-representable”, the “becoming minor”, the forms of “retribalization” and the “parody”.