Alpha to Omega of Our Athens Nostalgia: T is for Timing

What time did you take this photograph? Was it too early in the day for Social Dissonance? Were you curious enough to return at 7pm or didn’t you have the time? Or was it 7pm on a Monday, the day of rest for the performers? What did you make of the room, behind these doors? Did if offer you any more information about Social Dissonance beyond the floor-text with a list of names, of the Bilbaino artist (Mattin) and his Greek interlocutors (Dafni, Danai, Ioannis and Eleni)? Reading these names, did you perhaps think of them as performance art equivalents of Socrates and his interlocutors (e.g. Diotima, Phaedrus, Hippias and Thrasymachus)? Of a Platonic dialogue, minus Plato? Could you imagine what they discussed? The weather? The nature of happiness? A story about bees? Love? Debt? Home? Timing? Did you wonder, if only the timing of your own visit had been different, you too could have been there, as an audience-instrument, helping the collective self emerge, making sound out of the silence? Did you know that, a month or so after your visit, when documenta opened in Kassel, Mattin, Ioannis and Eleni left Danai and Dafni alone in Athens to go to perform Social Dissonance in Germany? Were you aware that a few weeks later, Danai went to Kassel, swapping with Eleni? (Do you think it sounds less like a Platonic dialogue than a soap opera?) If you had been watching the drama, how would it make you feel to know that in a few days’ time there will be no Social Dissonance in Athens and that they will all be in Kassel? What do you think it would be like when they are all reunited, albeit away from home? We will find out soon on YouTube.