Nikolas Ventourakis: Rituals for Our Safety Pt. III
“Be safe!” cordially shouted by the grandparent, every time the grandchild is leaving the house. No matter if the grandchild is a 10 year old going to the square to play with their friends, or if as an adult it was preparing to fly to another continent. But what does it mean to be safe? And how does one invoke a protective circle around oneself that manages to render one immune to the dangers of the world as surely as the grandparent intended with their verbal command to the forces of the cosmos? In literature there are magical cloaks and spells, enchantments and phylacteries that when bestowed upon or when found would allow the protagonists of the story safe passage, safe journey towards the fulfillment of their goal, protection from the evils that would hinder their quest. However, insidious and broad actions of states and societies towards perceived dangers lead to the curtailing of freedoms and personal rights. Actions that have always functioned as unilateral proposals around the world for the construction of Walls and the creation of fortifications and barriers to keep “dangerous, unclean aliens” out and "citizens" safe –in confinement. Even in our proclaimed technology driven, rational era, we still act with prejudice and superstition. Old traditions can be benevolent connections to the past and offer a continuity in a society’s historical existence, but more often than not, they end up as the basis for reactionary policies.
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The process of researching my (future) project-(body-of-work) “RFOS:P3” (Rituals for Our Safety: Part III) could be described as a series of constant realignments due to external and hyper-internal forces and events.
My intent for the two months of my official residency was to focus on the use of verbal components in the creation and sharing of plain ritualistic apparitions of Safety. How we transmit our wishes for other people to be safe, how we safeguard our personal safety, and how the language used can be distorted by states or other groups to reduce the safety of marginalized people?
The example that I used as my starting point is the utterance from a person close to another, bonded by either social or familiar ties, on the occasion of traveling: “Be safe / Safe journey / Let me know when you’ve arrived safely”. The vocalization of an inner wish could turn into a protective cloak.
However, two trains collided in Greece and the tragic loss of life made it impossible for me to continue this particular thought experiment. It was too real, too close, hyper-present. My confabulations about verbal spells manifested in the streets, where bodies came together to demonstrate in anger and sorrow. “Στείλε όταν φτάσεις” (Text me when you arrive) was printed and painted on fabrics, shared on social media, written in texts. I had to let this part of my research dormant, until that point in the future when I felt that art would have something to add to the hyper-reality of the moment. The only element that I kept for the Open Day #5 presentation was a questionnaire (attached) that the visitors could fill in anonymously and deposit in a filing box. Most of the replies somehow reflected the demeanor of the time.
Almost simultaneously, my own body either failed me or tried to protect me. During the first week of the program, I experienced a bout of vertigo that incapacitated me for a few days. It was the first time in my life that I had no control over my body and it took many weeks and many different doctors to reach a point where I regained almost all my balance and hearing. This illness, that seemed to me to come out of nowhere, made me change again the focus of my research and turn to further studying the idea of Armors, that is, psychological or physical barriers.
I approached this part of the research through a mental experiment and through a physical workshop – a self-defense introductory course for minorities/femininities run by Antonis Pitas and Margarita Pita (an AiR fellow) which was my contribution to the program. According to the participants, the workshop was successful and allowed them to reconsider aspects of personal safety and how it is possible to position oneself in our shared social space with other humans. The mental experiment involved matters of personal body safety when that involves the alignment of a person with state forces, and what that would represent for an individual. The imagined piece would be a video installation where a person would be slowly wearing the armor worn by riot police.
The third event that marked my research choices was a fatal labor accident in the Greek shipyards of a worker that was of similar age to me. I focused on the idea of safety in work environments, how it is communicated and what amount of risk is socially acceptable. The protective gear, the signs, the language used, and how the dangers inherent to several jobs have been internalized as normal. For the last Open Day of this cycle of the program I presented a multi-channel installation titled “Hard Hat”, which consisted of videos that I had shot in London and Athens and edited during the final weeks of the residency. For the piece I collaborated with my brother, Dimitris Ventourakis, who is a musician and wrote and performed the score.The residency program allowed me to lay the seeds for the future artworks that I am in the process of making. It has been of extreme importance to me, the support that I received during a time when I was under capacitated and experiencing mental and physical fatigue. I am looking forward to the development of some of the ideas that emerged during the exchanges I had with the other AiR fellows and to future collaborations with the program.
Note: I would be remiss if I did not mention the importance of my participation in Manolis Tsipos’ workshops. It was truly a highlight and it changed the way I approach constructive criticism.
