File:AFTERLIFE, Kouros of Volomandra by Dionisis Christofilogiannis.jpg

DescriptionAFTERLIFE, Kouros of Volomandra by Dionisis Christofilogiannis.jpg	English: AFTERLIFE, Kouros of Volomandra by Dionisis Christofilogiannis The carved traces of the Other By Apostolis Artinos http://leximata.blogspot.gr/2016/08/the-carved-traces-of-other.html The body, my own body, is where I surrender to the Other. It is not I who bear the Other, the Other bears me, pronouncing me in his own externality, in the alterity of its sole desire, a desire that is inscribed upon me, ex-posing my body, its relief, its revelations and concealments; the Other, who is identified in my desolation and in the traces of my loss rather than in the clarity of his unreality. The body becomes in this way an experience beyond the corporeal, this endocrinal loss of the body, and for this reason a poetics of language, an internality that becomes available to its externality, to the trial of its stamina. Language stimulates the body, registers it, devotes it to its parts, abandons it. Language is a loss of the body, this impossible adaptation of the body. Τhe body lies, is subtended, textualized, vilified from inside and out, and still, the body is what remains from this defamation. The apophatic character of the Other, the Other of language, registers the body with its negative character, the black-and-white of its detriment, the moment of its death, which also becomes the moment of its sole Immortality. Upon the Kouros’s archetypal virile poise, Christofilogiannis inscribes an aesthetic and emotional refinement; the self-inscribed mark of a handcrafted lace that traverses and distorts the offered-up body in the un-concealment of its materiality. Despite the vigor of these sculptures, in this particular kouros, the Kouros of Volamandra, certain formal deviations termed “latent moves” by archaeologists are identified, and also imbue the sculpture with an equivocal tension. The delicacy of its characteristics, its elaborate coiffure but also its slight grin, a characteristic feature of archaic statues, transform it from a signal of death as it was, to a salacious form. Latent moves, which can only as such however expose the trace of the Other to the place of the same Self. The trace of the Other, which is also a trace of a negative, the carving of a loss, what is ultimately an optical illusion, a floric of the image, a coating, what is left of it. The body of the Kouros becomes in the work of Christofilogiannis a reflexive object. Within the enflaming of its metonymies it also traces its truth. Carvings that are brought upon by desire and now surround him in its difference. The burning lace only leaves its counter-relief traces upon the body that is under trial. A body that is burning up, this enflammement in its stare, a now disembodied figure, a perforated surface. Carvings then, cracks, corrugations of meaning, illustrated traces, only these; the traces of the Other.
Date	30 August 2015
Source	Own work
Author	Dionisis Christofilogiannis

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Kouros, the principal form of archaic sculpture makes an appearance in the 7th century BC and is employed up until the end of the Archaic period. It depicts a nude male youth, standing upright, with extended arms falling down his sides and with his left leg forward in a walking position. The Volomandra Kouros was discovered in the cemetery of the same name in the Mesogia area of Attica and is now on display at the National Archaeological Museum (number 1906, room 11). Softly modelled in marble – possibly Naxian – the Kouros is associated with the workshop of Paros, as it is has also been established that sculptors from Paros were at that time working in Attica.

The Volomandra Kouros is dated to 560-550 BC. It measures 1,79 m. and is considered a relatively advanced example of the typological and stylistic evolution of the kouros form. His hair, forming small flame-like curls is pulled back, covering the band that holds it together. The characteristic archaic smile on his face is achieved through the slight arc of the lips, while his hands are positioned more accurately in relation to the rest of the body in comparison to earlier examples.

The archaic kouroi statues, life-size or larger-than-life, were used to mark the graves of youths of the Aristocratic class that could afford such an expense. The marble male form stood as an eternal symbol of the figure of the dead man who was lying just beneath, capturing in the indestructible stone a moment of the deceased’s youth, strength, vigor and beauty.

The handsome, brave kouros, a principal sign of death, is not depicted as dead. He is portrayed upright, with his feet firmly on the ground, in a walking position and with his fists clenched, ready to go into battle, gazing the beyond. While he symbolizes death, signaling the location of a deceased youth, this is in the form of a man who has died full of days. Dionisis Christofilogiannis’s kouros, also a symbol of death, was lucky to have been sculpted anew, to have been reborn patterned after the Volomandra Kouros, adorned with love and care, surrendered to the cathartic fire by the sea. Laying on his back, in a still walk, with hot flames licking his vigorous body and the wash of the sea signing him to sleep, this dead man who was reborn in stone, could – with his eternal smile – gaze into the sky, where he had already ascended, satiated with beauty and care. In a life equally short and precious with the one of the deceased youth marked by his predecessor, 2,500 years ago.

Text by Apostolis Artinos: The body, my own body, is where I surrender to the Other. It is not I who bear the Other, the Other bears me, pronouncing me in his own externality, in the alterity of its sole desire, a desire that is inscribed upon me, ex-posing my body, its relief, its revelations and concealments; the Other, who is identified in my desolation and in the traces of my loss rather than in the clarity of his unreality. The body becomes in this way an experience beyond the corporeal, this endocrinal loss of the body, and for this reason a poetics of language, an internality that becomes available to its externality, to the trial of its stamina. Language stimulates the body, registers it, devotes it to its parts, abandons it. Language is a loss of the body, this impossible adaptation of the body. Τhe body lies, is subtended, textualized, vilified from inside and out, and still, the body is what remains from this defamation. The apophatic character of the Other, the Other of language, registers the body with its negative character, the black-and-white of its detriment, the moment of its death, which also becomes the moment of its sole Immortality.

Upon the Kouros’s archetypal virile poise, Christofilogiannis inscribes an aesthetic and emotional refinement; the self-inscribed mark of a handcrafted lace that traverses and distorts the offered-up body in the un-concealment of its materiality. Despite the vigor of these sculptures, in this particular kouros, the Kouros of Volamandra, certain formal deviations termed “latent moves” by archaeologists are identified, and also imbue the sculpture with an equivocal tension. The delicacy of its characteristics, its elaborate coiffure but also its slight grin, a characteristic feature of archaic statues, transform it from a signal of death as it was, to a salacious form. Latent moves, which can only as such however expose the trace of the Other to the place of the same Self. The trace of the Other, which is also a trace of a negative, the carving of a loss, what is ultimately an optical illusion, a floric of the image, a coating, what is left of it. The body of the Kouros becomes in the work of Christofilogiannis a reflexive object. Within the enflaming of its metonymies it also traces its truth. Carvings that are brought upon by desire and now surround him in its difference. The burning lace only leaves its counter-relief traces upon the body that is under trial. A body that is burning up, this enflammement in its stare, a now disembodied figure, a perforated surface. Carvings then, cracks, corrugations of meaning, illustrated traces, only these; the traces of the Other.

The abandoned mould of the Volamandra Kouros, located in the deserted kapodistrian Eynardion building, once again comes to life producing the work of Dionysis Christofilogiannis. It follows a process of analysis, interpretation, redefinition and positioning of the self in the “signal” of the Now, a process that simulates the deathly rituals and though these, as well as through primordial purification processes that entail going through fire and water – elements beyond man’s control – the kouros mutates and is transcribed as both signifier and signified.

In the hands and mind of Christofilogiannis this replica is the archetypal great dead. He is the warrior who through the centuries sets us free through his own death. In this satellite body we see the man who has fallen into battle fighting pro aris et focis, he is Polynikes, he is the unburied Christ, Grigorios Dikeos Papaflessas, he stands behind the gates of the Athens Polytechnic, he is the eternally persecuted living-dead warrior who fights for the world’s high ideals. And as the Kouros, enveloped in his lace shroud in the ultimate act of burial, surrenders to its burning – shield and kindling at the same time – Dionisis Christofilogiannis – and through him all of us as well – becomes the mourning wife of the amphora of Dypilon, Antigone, the specious Joseph, Ibrahim Pasha at Maniaki, the mother of Kapralos, the one who lays our heroic past to rest with the hope of rebirth, through the ash of a relic symbol, of an expurgated new self, personal and universal.

Aigina 2016 Dionisis Christofilogiannis