With the metropolis of Athens as its immediate context, the theme of The Antimonument negotiates the role of the monument as a carrier of significance and challenges the invisible structures that have shaped the city and inconspicuously define its everydayness. The research uses as an object of study the unfinished skeleton of a modern cultural phenomenon that continues to shape Greek modern life to an exceptional degree: the polykatoikia apartment building. The simple concrete structure of the polykatoikia, which can be built rapidly and cheaply, with the possibility to finish it in any desired style or fashion, has been essential for the explosive urbanization of Attica in the 20th century and embodies an endemic Greek low-tech variant of modernism. Accordingly, the unfinished concrete skeletons found everywhere in the Athenian cityscape can be understood as representations of the aspirations and values of a nation passing into modernity. In their emptiness, we see a reflection of otherwise concealed currents and structures that define the physical image of the city and the relations of its inhabitants in private life as well as in public space.

Traditionally, the architectural survey of archaeological built objects is a fundamental step in the process of defining the object in question as a monument. The registration of the object captures an essence that until that moment was undefined, shapeless, or without substance. Once registered, it becomes something. This basic act becomes the starting point of the research. Through the study of one specific unfinished polykatoikia skeleton, the investigation aims to produce a both conceptual and tangible definition of the antimonument.

In the same way that specific regulations and rules are defining which structures are of such cultural historical value that they can be listed as monuments, other regulations and rules are often the reason for the unfinished state of the Athenian concrete structures. Adjustments and changes to laws relevant to the building during years of being left on pause, as well as family feuds and unfulfilled private ambitions, create a perpetual impasse making it impossible to finish the construction, practically forever conserving the concrete state of the building.

This creates the condition of the anti-monument: an open concrete structure without any evident cultural historical value, preserved by law in the condition of an unusable space in the city. At the same time, the typical unfinished building shares many features with the ancient Athenian ruins: a simple structure with a clear monumental quality, mutely being evidence of an undisclosed history. This specific history makes it part of the communal history of the city.

APPLICATION FOR A MONUMENT

19th November 2021 – 6th February 2022

A perpetual impasse preserving a concrete archetype.

The exhibition presented the installation ‘Application For A Monument’ by Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot along with the text ‘Obsolescent Progress’ by Brooke Holmes. The artwork unfolds the case of the most iconic concrete skeleton in the Attica region in the form of Lalou & Aymo-Boot’s defence for its preservation in its current state as the archetype skeleton of the polykatoikia apartment building typology. The installation is structured around documentation material submitted as part of the official application to the Hellenic Department for Preservation of Cultural Heritage, responding to specific paragraphs of law N.3028-2002, arguing for the importance of the specific concrete skeleton and requesting its status as a listed monument. A central element of the argumentation is a comprehensive building survey, accurately recording the concrete structure in detail, using the contemporary archaeological registration methods of Terrestrial Laser Scanning and Digital Photogrammetry.

Brooke Holmes’ text, ’Obsolescent Progress’, aligns facts, chronicles and the implications of the current along with the perspective of a Post-Classisists' argument on the preserved, responding to the theme of The Antimonument as the invited resident of cross section archive 2021-22.

Holmes’ text is featured in the first issue of Document, the annual publication by cross section archive, which was launched during the opening of the exhibition. Read it here

Application For A Monument and Obsolescent Progress are the first two chapters of the annual theme 2021-22 The Antimonument

‘Application For A Monument’ by Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot.

wooden structure, video essay on mounted monitor, orthophotos on Hahnemühle photo matt fibre, projected video loop of digital 3D model, prints on A4 paper.

Digital architectural survey executed by architect Effimia Lianou and professor in Architectural Morphology and Preservation Studies at DUTH-GR Nikolaos Lianos.

‘Obsolescent Progress’ text by Brooke Holmes.

Document is designed and printed by Friends Make Books.

The research for The Antimonument is supported by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture & Sports.

THE EXPERTS MEETING

13th – 26th June 2022

An attempt to preserve significance of a pause

On Friday 10th June six people sat down in the Library of the Netherlands Institute at Athens to discuss the term the Antimonument and its relation to the city. The founders of cross section archive, Maria Lalou and Skafte Aymo-Boot, invited four experts in different fields to create a definition of the Antimonument through a communal effort: Hilde de Bruijn - curator and advisor in the arts, Sofia Dona - artist and architect, Platon Issaias - architect, researcher and educator & Vladimir Stissi - archaeologist and architecture historian.

A prologue of the meeting was formed by developing/capturing a sort of vocabulary with the starting point in certain significant notions on the term The Antimonument suggested by Lalou & Aymo-Boot. These vocabulary terms were approached by each one in reference to a personal memory, an attempt for etymology, a representational parathesis, etc.

The prologue advanced to a series of questions, moving away from the independent perspectives towards a critical presence or speculative perspective of the potentiality of The Antimonument, concluding in a new series of possible terms to be added to the vocabulary.

The exhibition The Experts Meeting is a visual documentation from each one's oral perspective to a registered text projected on the wall in the space of cross section archive. During a performance on Monday 13th June at 21:00, the projected text was created from the recorded words, live in the space by multimedia programmer Giuliano Anzani, from which point it was running in a loop every evening after dark for two weeks.

The Experts Meeting is the third and final chapter of the annual theme 2021-22 The Antimonument.

‘The Experts Meeting’

Concept, directors, organization: Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot

With: Hilde de Bruijn, Sofia Dona, Platon Issaias & Vladimir Stissi

Sound and programming: Giuliano Anzani

Camera: Nikos Alexopoulos

Studio assistant: Eleftheria Litou

Kindly supported by the Netherlands Institute at Athens.

The research for The Antimonument is supported by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture & Sports.

COLLECTING DUST

Exhibition period: 26/06 – 12/07 & 04/09 – 01/10 2020

Dust is the smallest archaeological fragment. It is a floating particle measuring the passage of time while covering surfaces.

Collecting Dust as time on hold and as a void of space could exist, be observed, and get registered as evidence of forgotten memories of the city. The installation occupying the space of cross section archive puts on display the process of registering this micro-scale find together with its tools.

In the summer of 2020 cross section archive presented the exhibition Collecting Dust by its founders, visual artist Maria Lalou & architect Skafte Aymo-Boot, installing the space as a disclosure of their findings, as a vitrine of their practice and as a space becoming a document to be experienced from the crossing of Mavromichali and Isavron streets. Blending into the streetscape of Exarchia as an artwork in public space, Collecting Dust presented itself to the Athenian public, daily during the evening hours.

COLLECTING DUST by Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot

Video loop 21’, recorded in Athens September 2013 inside the concrete skeleton at Agiou Konstantinou 61 & Deligiorgi, unfinished since 1963.

MDF 180x180 cm, painted NCS S 1505-Y30, brooms, dust mask, protection glasses.