Athanasios Argianas: "Pinna", 2013

"Cavafy's interest is focused on accurate but quirky histories, specific small and fairly unknown parts of history, brought to light by his poems and used always in a broad and open ended way; the trivia that attracts him are often metaphorical

vehicles for situations as diverse as the political, the personal, sensual and philosophical.

As Cavafy refers to Greece and antiquity, fact and fiction, and the dichotomies of the personal and political realms, so does "Pinna", hovering too between fact and fiction, between singular and plural, using structures which are indebted to his work.

Pinna is a film, albeit almost a theatrical work; It consists of a single shot, single unedited scene, from beginning to end.

And interestingly, it hovers between being a monologue, and a duet.

The subject of the monologue is a mollusc, pinna, commonly found in the Aegean. It is an animal which has an intriguing symbiotic relationship with a shrimp, acting as an extension of the Pinna's perceptive organs, or its nervous system.

The way in which the duet is choreographed, mimics this quality of the "Pinna" itself, making yet another self-referential cycle, within another."

Script excerpt:
“Its perceptive prosthesis, makes it a metaphor for modernity, a remote sensory add-on, which translates back what it sees, nevertheless without enabling its host to actually 'see'. The exchange is on a symptomatic level.

And the soft shelled crab is an instrument; for the pinna, and vice versa. Each becoming an involuntary maker of a tool, and a tool too.

It is a series of relations and dependencies, weaknesses and strengths, multiplicities and units, heterogeneities and hubris.”

—Athanasios Argianas

Actor: Irene Cioni
Supporting role (hands): Pepa Ubera
Camera & Director of Photography: Simon Minett
Directed by Athanasios Argianas
Shot in London, August 2013
Duration: 4 min.