Daphne
Daphne is a paper panel self-supporting and site-specific installation situated in Pyrgos, Greece celebrating the coexistence of past, present and future.
Daphne installation is situated within the tunnel stairway that interplays with the notion of concealing and revealing the ancient interior surfaces of the tunnel leading to the peak of Pyrgos, Greece. Made entirely of self-supporting paper panels, Daphne creates an enclosure that intervenes with the visitors' perception of the existing conditions as a container of conglomerated memory as the paper panels age and deform accordingly to the local weather conditions.
A village is a vessel of memory, and reaching to the highest peak at Pyrgos from the main village square is an excursion to its past memory where every surface of the village contains a history.
During the excursion to the Kasteli, visitors have to encounter a tunnel stairway that leads to the destination. The history of the tunnel may be unknown to visitors and the space of the tunnel may seem insignificant to the passersby at first.
Daphne is an intervention that makes a mundane moment of procession through this enclosed space into a highly charged space that celebrates the coexistence of past, present and future. A trace of Daphne first appears at the entrance of the tunnel stairs.
Starting from a few panels at the foot of the stairs, it will increase in the number of panels as it enters into a tunnel surface that encapsulates the interior surface of the tunnel, only maintaining its key element to wrap the space and juxtapose the "past" with the "present" intervention.
The interior illumination will accentuate the space from dusk to dawn that can be of an emphasis on how the existing materiality can coexist with new materiality to suggest uncanny, yet, mesmerizing possibility.
Further impact of environmental condition plays an important role in this installation. The wind and humidity conditions as well as passersby interactions during Santorini Biennale affect aging of the material. This inevitable and unpredictable factor of the delicacy of paper installation and the process illustrates how the transformation of paper textural and color quality can bring phenomenal conditions of time and space. These latent effects of material expressing the ephemeral condition becomes a key factor, in which the "past", "present" and "future" all are contained.
