Aggelika Korovessi Interview – Sound work & Balancers

I found myself studying at the School of Fine Arts Athens in the class of Dimitri Kalamara who was a great artist and teacher I was initiated by him in the art of sculpture with great devotion and love At the same time I studied marble sculpture, the plastic arts and bronze casting I finally received a diploma in conceptual art It seems funny, but I still remember the moment I felt the certainty that I could become a sculptor I was seven years of age, on a school trip to the Archeological Museum of Olympia when I found myself standing across from the amazing huge white marble sculptures of the temple of Zeus I thought, with a certain confidence, to myself that I can make these too Since then, that idea has never left me and up until today that feeling is always established inside me

Very early on in my career Iannis Xenakis came to Athens and had an exhibition at the National Gallery After that I observed his work and philosophy which had excited me because he was simultaneously working holistically with image, sound and movement Since then I realised that behind all things there is a common thread that connects them in a way I have always followed his output A long time later, when he opened up the Centre for Contemporary Electronic Music in Athens and I visited, I found myself following the world of music through this specific electronic technology and this instantly created a trigger in me to want to create sound sculpture

Having an oscilloscope in my studio gave me the ability to explore and observe the sound waves which allowed me to discover the sound-form of words Words are a structured sound unit which, even though I am not a linguist, by exploration I found I could use as a model to work on And that my model for that period would be the sound of words When the city of Athens organised a competition for modern sculpture in Athens I took part with a work that had come about through my explorations of sound and was called Communication which was installed in 1988 on the Mesogeion Avenue in Athens That work was comprised of many rhythmically arranged antennae which created harmonious curves based on a golden section grid My intention was to highlight the need for society to communicate As I was observing and looking at other artists’ work through the years there have been some artists that partially but not directly influenced me Magdalena Abakanowic and Nancy Graves were creating multi-figural compositions and elegant rhythmic compositions respectively Definitely from early on the philosophy and drawings of Paul Klee and of course Alberto Giacometti and many others

In my daily battles, one of the things I was always seeking by necessity was harmony The word ‘peace’ includes in it the sense of harmony

During my childhood, the still-fresh narratives of war cast a shadow in my young mind Thus when I started working on the meaning of the word ‘peace’, I created the first work Irini I (1997) which was made out of shapes repeated in space so I could convey the sense of spatial diffusion of the word ‘peace’ the notion that there are no boundaries

I also experimented with how this word looks and oscillates in other languages, for example I created the works Peace and Paz (1996) in the English and Spanish languages Humans try to balance themselves and reach ultimate harmony besides isn’t that what peace is: finding balance among a multitude of people? The multi-figural composition which is based on the structure of the sound wave, upon re-examination, could reveal an influence from the polytheistic compositions of the friezes on ancient Greek temples and from a different point of view, we could also see it as a cosmic lyre that brings about harmony in the human race In order to balance two opposing ends, they need to be consisted of contrasting entities and this gives us continuous movement, continuous fluidity, continuous changes Harmony is found exactly on the point of balance between those two opposing ends

If we look closely at Balancer Perhaps, we see that while he is trying to balance on a stretched line, he is not an athlete He is a tired person, striving through the adversity of life to stand up-straight and walk with a certainty that is related to his own path. And by doing so he becomes his own Master At the retrospective exhibition I had at the National Archeological Museum of Athens titled ‘Time, Form, Concept’ (August – September, 2013) Balancer Perhaps could be found next to Artemision Zeus Zeus’ stance and body characterise him as a human-form god While my balancer, slim and tired yet still standing, emerges as his own god He finds all of life’s adversities and fears within him, and he stands a fighter

Sonic Alphabet (2013), was created specifically for the National Archaeological Museum of Athens exhibition and was installed next to a large amphora, on which there is the first Greek text including vowels ever to have been discovered That is where we see the first phonetic alphabet, and with this work I attempted to present all the words of the Greek alphabet with the sound waves – the sonic alphabet – being in a discourse with the cube-shaped forms, which look like a city The work aims to show the power of the word, how communication is always potent and also has the role of a spiritual arc while it carries the building blocks of communication It has influences of Alberto Giacometti’s The Palace at 4 a.m. (1932) and Paul Klee’s Italian City (1928) Here we can hear the sound of noise. Also to see its shape. Look at these disarrayed connected nails that create a sense of pain and the sense of noise. While here, we hear a harmonic sound. We observe that in this piece of work we have simultaneously two elements of sound transformed into image noise… and harmony, musical harmony. Because this arrangement up here is based on the sound wave of the word ‘Altis’ (Jumper) first ‘Al’ – then ’tis’ So the jumper creates a harmony with his wings, while the hurdle he’s overcoming is effectively a noise