Written by Danae Stefanou & Yannis Kotsonis-
Transpiration is an investigation of the shifting relations between “inside” and “outside”, familiarity and uncanniness, during a state of “pause” and prescribed distance. It was realised as a 40- composition at the Tower of the Winds in September 2020, and later developed as a separate composition, based on recorded excerpts from the performance-installation of the same name.
During the original performance, the building was transformed into a singular instrument, where everyday domestic sounds and incoming noises were amplified privately and out of sight, then publicly diffused outdoors, across the Roman Agora and its surroundings. The sonic result, at times imperceptible and almost impossible to distinguish from ambient noise, and at times intense and penetrative like a siren, explores silence as a permeable perceptual category, and captures a state of temporary dwelling and familiarisation within a quintessentially silent ancient monument that otherwise appears frozen in time.
Α poem by Danae Stefanou, written especially for the event, served as a score, providing an abstract structural and conceptual basis for the performance-installation. After the event, ambient recordings from microphones inside the tower, as well as an internal recording from the mixing desk at the centre of the Agora, were repurposed by Yannis Kotsonis, to form a 9-minute electroacoustic composition with the same title.
Design & realisation: acte vide (Yannis Kotsonis & Danae Stefanou)
First presented & performed at Deeper than silence, Athens Roman Agora, September 2020
Curation: Daphne Vitali (curator, National Museum of Contemporary Art)
Organized / Sponsored by: National Museum of Contemporary Art / Ministry of Culture
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