Maria Papapostolou
Are you going to eat your soup, b--- b--- merchant of clouds? (Topologies of clouds)
2017
Video
13 minutes
Nominated by Dimitra Skandali
I am impressed by the artist's poetical approach on such a crucial theme, like the extinction of the sand worldwide. A small island and its uniqueness become an image reflecting the whole world. Personal becomes global. We are all one - and what we experience right now, becomes a strong proof. Questions raise like: how do we preserve unique landscapes? how do we find solutions for sustainability? where is the line between love and betrayal? who defines uselessness? why should everything have to be countable? why should everything have a tangible outcome?
Using contemporary means and poetry, Maria's work reflect current global environmental issues that need to be questioned, re-appreciated and resolved drastically before it is too late. Or is it too late already?
Artist Statement:
A video work about love, ownership and betrayal.
Video footage is filmed at an abandoned sand mine, situated on the highest top of Lefkada, the second most visited island of the Ionian Sea in Greece. “Lefkada” in Greek means whiteness, and sand is the natural resource that contributes to this island’s identity and reputation.
The island’s massive touristic industry though, is in high demand for garbage disposal areas, and this unclaimed land, useless and free from investment planning, seems an earthly choice. The local community’s decision is pending, their visions of future are in conflict. A new value is expected, yet of no prominent sort. Will the rare beauty of the site- almost of an extra-terrestrial quality, the history and uniqueness of the mine, be outscaled by the needs of commercial growth? There has to be a sacrifice, or is it a betrayal?
Worldwide, sandlands are in extinction. Entire islands have been eliminated from Asian Seas to become building material of contemporary mega-cities. This eco- crisis resulting to illegal excavation, even mafia deaths, raises the same questions of value and usefulness.
The work’s title is a citation from Baudelaire’s poem Clouds and Soup, his wife scolding him for being a clouds merchant. Beaudelaire values passing clouds, as he puts it in another poem, the Stranger’s only love. (Petits poèmes en prose, I and XLIV-1869) Could one say that what lies between love and its failure, its treason, is the cost of uselessness? A field left un-mined is a cloudiness.
In this short film, a drone camera goes on a fruitless search- a day dream- in a post-human future environment. It moves in a mechanical way, by remote control and inconsistencies, having as driver assistant, or guide, a digitally produced voice. This non-human agent offers instructions on how to own a cloud, how to handle it, in a broader sense, how (or not) to manage cloudy conditions.
