ARTiculAction Art Review - Special Issuue Aug. 2016 | Page 32

ICUL CTION
C o n t e m p o r a r y

A r t

Thodoris Trampas

R e v i e w

Special Issue

transformation. How did you balance the
performative aspect with the performative
feature for this stimulating piece?

Pangaea was a project which was taking shape
every day. It was never the same. There were
four processes in the project: •catharsis
•imitation •creation • destruction. Each time
the audience completed one of the processes,
the project changed as regards its visual
terminology depending on the intention I put
into it. Every day, my body tried to experience
the existence of nature through my connection
with the rock. I had never imagined that this
project would advance to such an extent. It was
finally taken out of the platform and filled the
atrium of the museum. It looked like a bombed
place. As I have mentioned before, the balance
between the performing procedure and the
human factor was difficult. Sometimes the body
could not endure and gave way, the exhaustion
was so great that it collapsed. But that was the
truth, the visitors awaited that moment, there is
nobody and I have to go on, everything was a
part of the action. In performance art you are
not supposed to act, to play a role, you are what
you have carried before and what you carry
afterwards, everything flows. Performance is a
living work of art, a living organism feeding
itself off the Performers themselves.
As the late Franz West did in his installations,
Pangaia shows unconventional features in the
way it deconstructs perceptual images in order
to assemble them in a collective imagery,
urging the viewers to a process of selfreflection. Artists are always interested in
probing to see what is beneath the surface:
maybe one of the roles of an artist could be to
reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially
of our inner Nature... what's your view about
this?

For me, the artist is a part of society itself. S/he
is not isolated and s/he must listen to the
heartbeat of society and observe it. The artist is
the restless intermediary of the existential

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