Τετάρτη 6 Οκτωβρίου 2010

Map of the hidden treasure PAI 2011in Samothrace


In July 2011 Xene's Lapis Exilis PAI, will be hidden somewhere in the windswept, occult, mountainous landscape of Samothrace.  In order to discover it, the participants in the Game will have to follow the instructions in a special map, prepared by Kasda and Kaltsou and illustrated by A. Papantoniou, solve riddles, clean themselves in sublime waterfalls, climb on mountains, discover symbols, reach by boat inaccessible by road coastline wanders . The landmarks of this virtual reality treasure hunt are scattered all-over the cabirian island.

The Gate of the Sun in Samothrace island will be one of the stops in our  hunt map

This ancient map carved on stone embedded in the rocks of Palaiopolis
will be part of the immersive hunt-game PAI 2011
The natural carving of a creature on the stones facing the Chora


Primordial space
article by unforgettable friend and writer -anthropologist VASILE AVRAM who is now in the other floor of the world.
 We find ourselves in a place that could be defined, without any reservations, as the primordial space. A strange island, rising from the sea as a granite giant, supreme breath of Gaia, searching in the pieces of her existence a space prepared for a new world beginning. There is no wonder that here, lies the strangest source of myths, structured around the original mysteries of Cabiria, linking the human being to the secrets of the Earth, from whose bowels, the forces that give meaning to life arise, like an Athanor of cosmic dimensions.
An island inhabited in illo tempore by a population whose senses are open toward the two infinities – the stars in the sky and the stars in the depths of the earth, toward the macro-cosmos and the micro-cosmos, to the music of the spheres and pulses of the grass that rises from a soil burnt by the volcanic fires. A population that built, in a synchronic time to the Egyptian, Sumerian, Mycenaean, Thracian, not only a citadel defended by gigantic walls, built from rocks brought from the mountains, but also a model for integrating man in the cosmic mysteries.
Again, there is no wonder that the ancient world as a whole, from Homer and Herodotus to Plutarch and Strabo, was fascinated by the rites celebrating the powers of the Great alchemic Gods of Samothrace, because it was here that Poseidon followed the development of the Trojan War, it was here that Macedonian king Philip found Olympia, the one that would bring to the world, in a cosmic wedding, Alexander the Great, here Arsinoe built a spherical temple devoted to the primary mysteries founded on the strange magnetism of the porphyry stone thrown out of the Earth depths, it was here that the true image of the most exciting Goddess known by the human spirit – winged Nike – was revealed, supported by the winds that never stop blowing on this island.
There is surely no place more adequate for crowning the mythical network, structured in an essential way by Polyxène Kasda in her bold incentive to restore the primary sense of existence, to bind immanence to transcendence, to rehabilitate, not only in a cultural way, but in an ontological way as well, the great myth from which all the elements of the World were born.

27.07.1996, Samothrace
Speech held at the PAI 96 symposium, curated by P.Kasda, in the Island of Samothrace, Greece, 21- 28 July 1996
 Transilvania Review 1-2-3/1996
Translated from Romanian by Emil Matei Videa and Ileana Daian

Project Myth/Network 1990-2011, european heritage integration in modern perception



Kasda's project Myth/Network 1990-2011 is an enduring work of integration of our cultural primordial heritage to our present perception:
Sub-project PAI 2010/ “the eon is a child playing”, was realized in Alexandroupolis-Samothrace (org. Union of Cultural Associations of Evros) and was extended in Patmos-Thebes-Athens. 
PAI (Child) is an inscription on votive utensils, in the museum of Palaiopolis, in Samothrace. Based on the ‘archetype of the Child', project PAI fuses the present state of crisis with its timeless principle of Dionysian regeneration
.Her concept triggered a series of cultural events that involved the participation of local craftsmen, musicians, poets, dancer, fishermen. More than sixty international, selected, artists responded to her call and donated their works to create a municipal pinacotheque on the island and children interacted with the artists by creating an installation dedicated to the return of the storks, indices of fertility and health of eco systems. A polycentric exhibition of the local artists was held all over the Chora, which, the international guests visited and were acquainted with the local residents. 
The local municipality offered a traditional building in the Chora, in order to be restored and converted, into a small museum hosting the PAI international collection. Project PAI extended in 2011, with a cultural Treasure Hunt Game based on Heraclitus enigmatic fragments, associated to a deck of cards illustrated with the sites to be discovered on the island. The revenues from the deck of the treasure hunt and the game organized by the local group IDEA, will be invested in the creation of a small theatre. 
 
In her sub-project Gargling Sky for the Year of Astronomy 2009, she co-created another international polycentric pinacotheque, in the form of a constellation,in the remote, mountainous village of Crete, Gergeri. Watermills, storehouses, abandoned schools were transformed into art places; a process that inspired the creative participation of local artists, shepherds, housewives and of the youth who linked the different spots of the exhibition by paving the streets with hand-made star constellations. A happening in the Forest of Rouvas, sanctuary of wild life and in the 'Diogene’s Lake, (Vromolimni), ground meteorite recession and home of wild birds, were part of the inauguration process, which lasted two days!. In 2010, the old school was demolished and rebuilt as a hostel for visitors, the only one in the village and the paintings moved to the library, to the elders' home, to the shelter {cafe], which was built, in the meantime, in the site of the Vromolimni. After her visit to France. in October 2009, as honorary guest of the French mayor of Chateau Landon, Kasda proposed the cultural liaison of the two sites and her proposal was accepted, by both the Greek and the French mayors.
These two last sub-projects can be considered as applications of her Maps of the Hidden Treasure 1994-96, in which, participants, mainly from the European Network of Poetry, following her instructions, were sensitized to their psychic connection to mythical landscapes. In this process of mapping a new/ old world, mythical sites lying outside mainstream tourism, were consecrated by her act, cleaned and restored by the local municipalities, e.g. the temple of Artemis Tavropolos, in the municipality of Artemis in Attica, was unearthed from under the trash and the village Kamilari in Crete entered a European conservation program in 94. Her itineraries have inspired many artists and poets to write articles about the ontological value of our European cultural/ landscape heritage. Artooth- team telecommunications project 2007, Miorita, Melusina and the Sphinx for the twin European capitals of Europe, was a hi-tech application of these principles; a project questioning the hybrid interchange of cultural landscapes/ local legends in modern globalization procedures, while in search for our European identity. 
Code Lexomorphes 1991-2009, her research into the aesthetic forms generated by the Pythagorean numerical modelling of Greek language, was applied to her Cup-shaped Word monument 'Chrysalis' which hosted the Olympic Flame, in P. Faleron, Athens in 2004, linking, with a word, the Olympic event with its seed principle of regeneration. A twin Word -monument 'Chrysalis' was installed in 2005, in occupied North Leucosia, in the center of a green Palamanova-like model of the ring-city where it became known as the Flame of Peace.
All her sub-projects can be considered as extensions of her initial Chrysalis installation in 1990, initiated, in the bottom of the Lake of Mornos in Greece, that had surfaced, for a while, with the drought, uncovering, for a short while, cultural treasures, dressed in oysters. Her archetypal sculptures, made out of mud, were disseminated to hundreds of international artists, who installed them in selected sites of the world in 27 countries; the visitors of her first earth installation, had to travel all over the world, in order to discover the Chrysalii, which, in the meantime, had melted in the rain; they were left with the feeling of belongingness to our geocultural natural and mythical heritage and with the knowledge of the secret treasure still lying in the depths of the Lake of Mornos. They were also left with the experience of this technology-free geocaching game and global interactive network activity, as early as 1990 .
Her 20 years old, innovative, project is outstanding because of its internal consistency, its duration in continuous change, the poetic beauty and the depth of her generic research that triggers the enthusiastic involvement of audiences from all backgrounds and inspires the interest and involvement of local authorities, producing, thus, concrete changes in real life, but, also lasting changes in their state of mind. Polyxene proposes, through her projects, an outlook of abundance and hope in an age of national debt, moral collapse and socioeconomic crisis, by shedding light on our cultural roots which are directly linked to our psychical makeup and human destiny.Through her dedicated and continuous work, she provides a solid platform for the forging of our european identity. 
Detailed description 

Project Myth/Network 1990-2011
An enduring work of integration of our European cultural heritage in our present perception
Sub-projects (selection):
PAI 2011: Tinkering with Heraclitus fragments in the primordial landscapes of Samothrace
Concept/ Project: Polyxene Kasda
Illustration: A. Papantoniou
Game design and organization: local group IDEA
Auspices of the Municipality of Samothrace
With the help of a deck of cards illustrated with the special sites to be discovered, while having in mind a set of fragments by Heraclitus, building blocks of western philosophy, The revenues from the selling of the deck of cards by IDEA will be donated for the building of a new theater on the island.

PAI 2010/ 'The eon is a child playing' Heraclitus
Alexandropolis/Samothrace-Patmos-Thebes-Athens-
Concept/ project : Polyxene Kasda (inspired from her french poetic essay PAI, translated in 5 languages (Sept Dormants co-ed University Lucian Blaga, Ro. 1997, Frankfurt Inter/al Bookfair)  
General Organization : EPOFE/ Union of the cultural associations of Evros/ gen. secretary K. Kaltsou
Under the auspices of the Museum of Natural History and of the Ethnological Museum of Alexandropolis, the Prefecture of Evros, the Municipalities of Alexandroupolis and Samothrace .
International collaborators: D. Sacquegna Primopiano LivinGallery Lecce, Italy- P. Chirouze, Paris-
C. Angelou, Thebes, M. Pesmazoglou, Patmos, Greece.
Sponsors of communication: Wooloo Coppenhagen, Culture News, Artooth.
The PAI collection was also hosted in Technopolis AthensArt exhibition 2010, under the auspices of the Greek Ministry of Culture and of the Municipality of Athens.
The PAI collection was complemented by the children installation 'Cicognia, cicognia come back', dedicated to the return of the storks, which in European legends carry PAI/ the child.
 PAI (Child) is based on an inscription on the sacred utensils in the museum of Palaiopolis Samothrace and links the present state of crisis with its primordial principle of Dionysian regeneration.
The main tangible result of this project was the creation of an international collection of works of art, donated by 62 selected artists, as a tribute to the cultural impact of the archetype of the Child (PAI) on our European soul. The abandoned school in the Chora was donated to EPOFE, by the local municipality, to be restored and converted, in into a municipal pinacotheque hosting the PAI 2010 collection, creating a new international spot of reference in the island. (its realization must be under follow up survey)
The Cabeirion of Thebes, which is completely forsaken and neglected, was highlighted in the context of the PAI local events.The artists in the island of Patmos, interacted with parallel cultural events.

2009: Gargling Sky in Gergeri Crete for the Year of Astronomy
Concept/ Project, international collaborations and org.: Polyxene Kasda
Local organization contacts: Ch. Vathianaki 
Creation of an arch of cultural diversity inside an arch of biodiversity.
Co-Curators: Pierre Chirouze, K-Droz Paris-Donatella Bisutti, Poesia e Spiritualita review, Milan- with the cooperation of the University of Crete and of the Local Board of Youth presided by Efi Koutentaki and the supervision of M. Prinianaki
Auspices of the Municipality of Rouvas, Gergeri, Crete
The project was presented in the Municipality of Athens 31/10/09 in Urania's Gardens conference organized by P. Kasda
Sponsors: Municipality of Rouvas, the Rouvas water association, Minoan ferries
Gergeri is a remote village on the flanks of legendary Mt Ida, at the proximity of the ecological Forest of Rouvas, a wild life sanctuary. Through this project, a connection of this closed society with international artists was established. 
The aim was to create in Gergeri a permanent spot of international reference by giving international prominence to its special cultural/ ecological heritage. 62 selected international artists donated their works for the creation of the Gargling Sky international pinacotheque. To this end, a polycentric cultural arch, in the form of a constellation, extending throughout the village was created. In this process, the Foyer, a traditional stone building, used as a storehouse, two 16thc and 17th c. watermills and an old school, at the end of the village, where the small museum of natural history is situated, were cleaned and restored in order to host the paintings. The youth of the village was inspired to pave the way connecting the different spots of the exhibition, with star constellations, drawn on the streets and installed with ribbons and threads on the walls of the houses, reminding Ariadne’s thread in the labyrinth.The local artists carved roots and trunks of ancestral hollies and stones.The inauguration was accompanied by the traditional music of shepherds with their ‘askomandoures’, self made musical organs. The inauguration happenings in the Forest of Rouvas and in the Diogene’s Tomb,or, Vromolimni; a ground recession caused by the fall of a meteorite, home of aquatic turtles, water snakes and wild birds. The Vromolimni was painted by one of the artists, while local residents improvised ‘mantinades’, the 15 syllable rhyming couplets in Cretan dialect. In October 2009, Polyxene, as guest of honor of the mayor of Chateau Landon in France, proposed its unification with Gergeri, thing which was accepted by the respective mayors. Thus, the small remote village Gergeri turned out to be a cultural site of international reference.
In 2010, the old school was demolished by the local municipality to build a hostel and the paintings were moved to the library of the village, to the elders house and to the cafe that was built on the site of the Vromolimni. Now, the municipality of Rouvas is merged to the wider municipality of Gortyna and special follow up care must be given for the safety of the Gargling Sky international collection.






 Maps of the Hidden Treasure 1994-1996
Concept, research, project realization: Polyxene Kasda
Under the auspices of the Municipalities of Artemis Attica, Ano Karyes Arcadia, the Greek Ministry of Tourism and the Municipal Radio of Athens, the European Centre of ultural Dialogue East-West Constantin Noica in Romania, the European Network for the Promotion of Poetry, the University of Lucian Blaga of Sibiu Romania, the Biennale di Poesia of Alessandria, Italy.
Subprojects and sites:
1994: The Gate of Fire, Crete: itinerary from the museum of Herakleion to Agiopharango. Kamilari village enters the European conservation program. Polyxene's concepts inspire their application in schools, e.g. the  foundation of the group of the Tracers, by prof. P. Chatjimanolaki, auspices of the Schools of Kostea Geitona, Athens.
1995: Arcteia/ Tracing Artemis: itinerary on the isosceles triangle linking Artemis temples in Brauronia Attica-Icaria island- Mount Lykaion, Arcadia. {Tradition et Modernite, les Sept Dormants, Leuven 1995}
1997: Samothrace PAI 1: Conference in Palaiopolis based on the archetype of the Child/ PAI and its significance in the ancient Cabeirian rites, as well as in our changing present; laying the ear;y grounds for PAI 2010 project.

Gargling Sky 2009 and PAI 2010-11 could be considered as applications of her research and experimentation in her Maps of the Hidden Treasure 1994-96, in which, participants, mainly from the European Network of Poetry and the Biennale of Poetry of Alessandria, Italy, following her instructions, on her illustrated maps, were made conscious of their deep structural connection to mythical primordial landscapes, revealing the trans-temporal initiatory importance of mythical sites and symbols, mostly, lying outside mainstream tourism, which were, thus, consecrated by her act. Her maps propose an alternate form of tourism in Greek mythical sites, as a rite of self- regeneration. In this process, neglected ancient sites are cleaned by the local authorities to host her events, like the temple of Artemis Tavropolos, lying on the seashore of Loutsa, which was unearthed, in 1996, by the local municipality, from under the trash.

Our Artooth Team telecommunications project Miorita, Melusina and the Sphinx, selected by French Arscenic for the twin capitals of Europe 2007, was a modern application of these principles; a hi-tech project questioning the interchange of cultural landscapes/ local legends in modern hybrid globalization procedures, while in search of our European identity.

CODE Lexomorphes 1991-2010-
The Numerical modelling of Greek words: modern application of the Pythagorean structure of Greek language
First research publication: Poesia e Spiritualita review of Milan
First official presentation: trans-Hellenic conference on Greek language, org. by the Greek Chamber of Visual Arts EETE/ Ministry of Greek Culture, in the Ancient Parliament of Athens 2009
First applications as Word public monuments: Municipality of Athens 1991- Municipality of Palaion Faleron Athens Olympics 2004, Municipality of N. Leucosia, Cyprus 2005, Municipality of Rouvas, Crete 2009..
In her innovative research on the visual dimension of Greek language, she devised a way to generate aesthetic forms from the numerical modelling of Greek names, based on their ancient Pythagorean structure. Her system was applied in the construction of her Word- generated public monument Chrysalis in Palaion Faleron, which hosted the Olympic Flame in Athens 2004.
A twin Word monument ‘Chrysalis’ was installed in 2005, in occupied North Leucosia, It was installed in Leman Square, in the centre of a green replica of the Palmanova model after which Leucosia was built, a city which was called Heavenly Jerusalem, now torn by irresolvable conflict.

Chrysalis world installation 1990-94-
Under the auspices of the Municipality of Athens, the TV studio ICON, the editing house Govostis, PAND USA, the Meeting of the Worlds Joensu Finland, the State University of Cleveland USA..

In 1990, the bottom of the lake of Mornos, in Greece, surfaced because of the drought, uncovering an old village with a stone basilic of rare beauty and an ancient city with Hellenistic mosaics, all dressed in oysters. There, she performed creating, with the mud, the Chrysalii sculptures. These earth primitive sculptures were distributed to hundreds of artists who interacted with them and installed them in selected sites of the world, thus, spreading the information about the cultural treasure sunk in the bottom of the lake of Greece; image of our European cultural treasure sunk in the depths of our unconscious. The visitors had to travel all over the country, in order to discover the Chrysalii, which, in the meantime had melted in the rain and he was left with the experience of the discovery of these fabulous, unknown, landscapes.
Myth/ Network project is outstanding because of the originality of its poetic approach; its verticality and associative power that integrates current events to their primordial principles, providing a stable axon, for a dynamic global change. It is outstanding because of its flexibility coupled with the inner consistency of her thought pattern.The generic concepts slide from one project to the other,getting deeper and deeper in research and more and more applied to tangible real life situations; Myth/Network is a process of mythological Begrundung [grounding] and Grundung [founding].
Her multi-level projects attract the creative interaction of large numbers of audiences from all disciplines and cultures. They raise our awareness for neglected sites and forgotten symbols, high lightening their trans-temporal ontological importance and, thus, producing new spots of world interest; they propose and sustain an alternate form of tourism based on ecology and culture. Her projects transmit the enthusiasm of the spirit of our age and inspire the synergy of the local residents, forcing, thus, national authorities to work for the preservation and enhancement of our cultural heritage as a prerequisite for the foundation of our future. 
Text by Constantine Angelou, president of Artooth.org   



 “We can describe her work as an authentic outpouring of mythical knowledge…. Myth thus becomes a ritual of initiation adapted to contemporary sensitivity” Eugene Van Itterbeek, Cahiers Europeens de Poesie n.159, Belgium’97
“She starts from the depths of the earth to lead us to the next level of our consciousness” J. J Caldwell, Ohio press release, state university of Cleveland, 3/3/91
“Her work is an open system that evolves on many ontological levels” Elzbietta Koscielac, ICA, the web, Govostis ed. 3/2/91, Athens
“Her bold initiative to restore the primary sense of existence, to bind immanence to transcendence, to rehabilitate, not only on the cultural level but also on the ontological, the great myth through which all the elements of the world up surged”. Vasile Avram, Transilvania’96, Cultura Nationala, Rumania.
"Polyxene  Kasda belongs to this transtemporal and biomatic pionnering, in the sense that, by analogy speaking, the Pythagorean and Orphic mysteries would seem pioneering in our days." Victor Ivanovitch, writer, critic.
“Her work is, simultaneously, an artistic proposition and a philosophical system”. Georges Marcou, ICA, Art and philosophy, Greece s weekly 3/2/91



Polyxene Kasda, Samothrace, 22/8/10. ph. Hakan Akcura

Letters of reference for Polyxene Kasda’s Maps of the Secret Treasure
Milan, 29 June 2010
Polyxene Kasda by Donatella Bisutti
"I met Poly Kasda in Crete, where I participated in her itinerary Myth/Network 5. I was in no way prepared to live this experience from which I don’t believe to have much recovered.
I also had the opportunity to participate, with a group of international artists and writers, in her Myth/ Network 6 dedicated to Artemis and this was another extraordinary experience in Attica, Peloponnesus and Icaria Island.
In due time, I entered more directly in the essence of her work and I was convinced that it treats of something extraordinary and unique in its genre.
Poly Kasda was born in Alexandria, Egypt, she is Greek and she actually lives and works in Athens.
She is an artist with experience in the field of informatics, a poetess that has studied chemistry, physics and at the same time, has a spiritual vision that holds on the psychology of the unconscious. Her extraordinary point of departure is that mythology must come out of the pages to become action of the soul in the very sites where the myth was born; to extract it and reconstitute it as a present through a series of intuitions and  metaphors, symbolic interactions that rediscover language as active and creative. The world and nature become again, in this way, living books of cosmic knowledge, in which mythology is still operating. The mythical collective unconscious is objectified, confirming the poets intuitions, through a web of precise and organized references linked to the most advanced scientific knowledge, projecting themselves in a cosmos beyond the dimension of time. We can define her work as ‘landscape semiotics’; a mode of reading a landscape through all the possible correlations, in order to decipher its message;  point of intersection of lost and occult energies. Her aim is not to revive a pre-historical knowledge, but to serve as a trajectory of the soul. Mythology is for Poly Kasda and this is her major originality, a process of initiation, which is possible even today with  modern sensitivity like old times. As she says: “the earth reveals its spiritual reality; our consciousness is laid out on the living fabric of the soil’.
An example of an itinerary addressing contemporary man, is the Tracing of Artemis, the Goddess of the rejuvenation of nature and archetype of mental/ psychical integration in man; ‘Artemin’ means to reveal and to actualize one's self.. This state can only be experienced and mythology for P. Kasda is always a living experience.
The maps of her itineraries, that are transmitted from hand to hand, are based on a series of subliminal, symbolic coordinates and synchronistic events that elevate in front of our eyes the matrix of meaning that sustains the world.
Through collective synergy which is sustained by pure subjectivity, her itinerary maps are transformed into concrete experience for the participants; an experience tending to be reduced into abstraction, through rational elaboration and writing.
To seek to enter in this dimension seems at first sight difficult, but, once you accept to make the effort, doors will open to unsuspected dimensions.
I sustain that Polyxene Kasda can be included as one of the most notorious representatives today, on an international level, of a culture capable to realize the conjunction of antique traditions with the discoveries of contemporary sciences and can furnish an original and fascinating key to explore the interaction of the universe with the human psyche in the research of a new spirituality. At the same time, her research re-actualizes the immense mythical patrimony that the Greek civilization has left to us, which she proposes as a trans-temporal, operating living reality, which we can continue to attain.
For these reasons Poly Kasda is in the stuff of my review that proposes to explore the territory of a new spirituality and  which she has significantly contributed to initiate".
Donatella Bisutti
Chief editor of Poesia e Spiritualita review, Milan
Rivistapoesiaespiritualita.blogspot.com

The Maps of the Hidden Treasure by Dores Sacquegna
"Myth and history are the fundamental terminals of the grand theoretical debate of Romanticism. The romantics recur to myth in order to interpret the tumultuous and chaotic present. W. Blake writes a propos of nature and its mythical dimension: ”see the world in a grain of sand”,  restituting, for the isolated from history and fragmented individual, a sense of belongingness and communion.
And with this historical promise, I would like to introduce the project “Maps of the hidden treasure” conceived and coordinated by Polyxene Kasda, artist, curator, myth researcher, with the involvement of international personalities and artists. Human adventure is suspended on natural teleology and Polyxene Kasda restores the sacredness of creation in order to understand the ambivalent relation between myth and history.
It is in his subjective space that the artist reconstructs the world. By revisiting myth, Polyxene revisits and, in fact, reconstructs history itself: Myth becomes an auto-representation of a subject that is in search of an appropriate form. Starting with the presupposition that creation is not something perfectly concluded and inaccessible, but, is open to a continuous dialogue with the world, Poly Kasda, with her projects, invites us to observe, listen, perceive its evolution; the vital and expansive force, the rhythm, as Novalis wrote “ he who possesses the rhythm, possesses the universe” .
In this sense, we can approach her “Maps of the hidden treasure” which are based on the mythical/ linguistic/etymological triad. They activate in the participants, a new personal consciousness, by inviting them to connect the antique symbols with the geometrical designs on the map. In some cases, precise instructions are given for the search of symbols of archaeological and ontological importance, in the landscape. This project represents a moment of encounter, of communion, of dialogue; of knowledge
To understand our individuality is the capacity to generate a collective experience of observation of the world, to supersede the dualism in the perception of the nature of this world; to perceive the apparent and the hidden to the senses. Nothing is what it seems to be. This is the prehistoric origin of the feeling that nothing is what it appears to be. This is the revelation of a profound meaning, of a hidden reality more real than the apparent.
In this sense of the existence of a world that exceeds our immediate experience accompanied by the driving force of  curiosity which is the engine of knowledge in this project. From this study of the landscape, amplified by observation, scientific research, linguistic analogies and involvement with the local residents, a precious project was born; a “doc” important for the future generations and for all people that would like a form of tourism based on ecology and culture.
The Maps of the hidden treasure realized by Polyxene Kasda, concern local sites, lying outside common touristic circuity and represent the history and the mythography of the place. Myth and history result, here, in the perception of existential places, possibly, natural vessels of  past/ present connection.
History always exhaled the figure of the artist with the creative genius; crucial time artist, her word is mythic; a sacred language and original thought and this work is inscribed in the universal history of humanity. Her project represents a precious cultural testimony on Greece, an extraordinary objective and intellectual contribution; a vehicule of information on the ancient history and on the contemporary situation, but, also and primarily a window of intercultural, participative and educative dialogue".
Dores Sacquegna
Director of PrimoPiano LivinGallery, Lecce, Italy.

On Polyxene Kasda's work by Yael Navaro-Yashin
"Polyxene Kasda's work merges the mythological and philosophical with the artistic at each and every point. Her artistic work is not only aesthetically of the highest quality, it also exhibits a profundity and depth of conceptual engagement with ancient Greek philosophy. In this light, her artistic work generates immense impact in public awareness about the philosophical scope of ancient Greek heritage. At each and every point of her art, Kasda re-casts and re-interprets mythological and philosophical concepts, bringing them back to life in aesthetic form.“
Dr. Yael Navaro-Yashin
Senior Lecturer
Department of Social Anthropology
University of Cambridge
http://www.socanth.cam.ac.uk/staff

΅Il percorso organizzato nell'agosto del 1995 da Polyxene Kasda ha portato un gruppo di operatori culturali di varia nazionalità a scoprire luoghi dell'antichità dedicati alla dea Artemide.
Seguendo itinerari - non turisticamente convenzionali - ci si è spinti all'isola di Ikaria, per ritornare poi al Peloponneso, in Arcadia, e a Brauronia: in ogni luogo si sono visitati i resti archeologici e si sono riscoperti miti e leggende.
I partecipanti al tour hanno anche potuto esibirsi in momenti spettacolari e scrivere testi poetici e prosastici che, successivamente, sono stati pubblicati nei loro luoghi di provenienza.
L'esperienza è stata decisamente indimenticabile e il merito va tutto all'ottima capacità organizzativa dell'artista Polyxene Kasda.΅
Aldino Leoni 
Fondatore e presidente della Biennale di Poesia di Alessandria

I participated in three of Polyxene’s Maps of the Hidden Treasure, meant for the preservation of the cultural heritage of Greece and for intercultural dialogue on an ontological basis. Specifically:
1. The Gate of Fire in Crete 1994 was an itinerary from Herakleion to Agiofaraggo, linking, with mythological information and intuition, ancient symbols to natural sites, inspiring poets and writers from all over Europe to feel with their body and mind and soul, the Greek mythology in the land where it was born
In this process, the small village Kamilari was declared as a site for cultural preservation and the audience of our poetry symposium in an old school consisted of its residents, who for the first time had such an intercultural dialogue.
2. Arkteia 1995, was a huge itinerary linking with mythological correlations the temples of Artemis in Icaria, Brauronia and Arcadia
In this process, the local authorities of these places were inspired to do things for the preservation of their precious cultural heritage, for example, the wife of the mayor of Loutsa with the help of the local municipality, cleaned the temple of Artemis Tauropolos from the sand and the trash and we had a poetry symposium there, while, simultaneously, in Icaria, another group of our colleagues had an event in the temple of Artemis Tauropolos. The detailed maps of the banks of the river Chalari, illustrated by Antonis Papantoniou, helped us raise our awareness of the natural elements and to feel why Artemis was worshipped as Goddess of wild nature
3. In Axieros, Samothrace 1998, her maps made us feel connected under the common denominator of PAI, the Child , the mysterious birth that took place in the Cabeirian mysteries .
It was an experience that changed us for ever and there I understood that Polyxene’s Maps of the Hidden Treasure were leading us to find our deeper self; the treasure was our we-ness behind all cultural diversities
And this is why, I believe that it was something outstanding, adding in the European value system.
Angela Spoerl 














Παρασκευή 30 Απριλίου 2010

Polyxene Kasda, Project Myth/ Network 1990-2011

Updated dedication to Polyxene Kasda, in Tyflomyga review 03

Project Myth/Network 1990-2011

"Myth/Network was a linguistic, self-referential, experiment that hurled me in the bottom of a lake to dart me off to the stars" P. Kasda, Uranias Gardens conf. Athens municipality 09
"Project Myth/Network was a way to go back home; it took some magic to do so " P. Kasda, Tradition et Modernite conf. Leuven- Brussels 94

When Alexander founded Alexandria he made a circle on the ground using wheat, but the birds kept eating it before flying away throughout the world. The oracle concluded: 'The city that you are founding will nurture the entire world and everywhere you will find people that descend from there’. {Pseudo-Kallisthenes, Le Roman d' Alexandre, GF Flamarion }


Here is the project of an artist who was born and raised in Alexandria-Lost; a hellenistic home, which, she retrieves in the cosmic dimension of her work.
Polyxene's Project Myth/Network started when the Hubble telescope was launched, in 1990. No wander all of her archetypal installations, connecting primordial principles to contemporary perception, are meant to be seen from an aeronautic point of view. Her project lasts for more than 20 years, but, she considers it to be one and only work of 'lasting present'  'resting on its continuous transformations' (Heraclites)
“Her artistic work is an open system that develops simultaneously on many ontological levels”. Elzbieta Koscielac (Art critic, AICA).
“Her work is an artistic proposition and at the same time a philosophical system; she presents to us a contemporary interpretation of ancient philosophy by engulfing us in it “ Georges Marcou {Art and philosophy, Greece s weekly 3/2/91}
“In her work we can speak of an authentic outpour of mythical knowledge; her work is a marvellous contemporary paradigm of an experience of the world of symbols, lived by a woman of today that refers to traditional and archaic societies“ Eugene Van Itterbeek {Cahiers Européens de Poesie n 159, Belgium 97}.
“Her courageous initiative to bring back not only on the cultural level but also on the ontological, the great myth through which all the elements of the world up surged”Vasiile Avram {Transilvania’96, Cultura Nationala, Romania}
“She captures myth in its primordial state, experiencing its meaning, which, has its roots in the depths of our existence” Vasiile Avram {La Tribuna, 16/5/97, Romania}


Initiated in the Meeting of the Worlds in Joensu, Finland, in 1990, project M/ N is characterized by its sub-marinian mode of working, its subliminal impact on our ‘abysmal receptors’, its autonomous self-growing character, the entelechic consistency of its internal utopia, the ‘lastening’ of events in a continuous present,  its interactivity and polycentric expansion on a global scale and its open-end feeling of adventure/ peripeteia.
Her aim was not to depict objects, but, to ‘open a Mystery’; a pattern that continuously renews itself, tempting her to surmount herself, leaving behind traces, like those left behind by her risky performances and installations in the bottom of the Lake of Mornos, or, in the depth of the cup-shaped precipice Chaos 90; a r-evolutionary state of mind that snowballed in her latest PXK Route global installation 2004-08- , linking Asia-Europe with her PXK material, which stands for her continuous skin shedding leap of self-supercedence.


"M/N was born out of my desire to reach, in the future, this Something Essential Missing [SEM];
There are some exceptional gaps in our time texture, which escape from the censorship of our perceptual system, waving us to penetrate the undetectable background hum of our existence. 1990 was such a crucial time for me: Instead of seeing the world out there, I was seeing my self seeing the world, conscious of my very structure transforming waves of light into a comprehensible reality. The others were indispensable partners in perfecting this conspiracy”. PK {the Adventures of the Eye, 1985 ERT national TVdocumentary}


In 1989, after an extensive cosmopolitan period, she withdrew in her Knitting Room installation 82 and declared herself to be contaminated by the Deep-Exploration Virus.
“In fact, it was the Homo Sapiens/ Word- Virus HSWV that was manipulating me to slide out from the safety of my cognitive platform into the abyssal lake of my unconscious”
Her whole project seems crouched inside the Greek word ΧΡΥΣΑΛΛΙΣ/Chrysalis, natural archetype of ontological mutation/ of culture formation.
“Sometimes, a Word opens its gargling ‘mouth’ in the midst of our ordinary reality, swallowing us in its resonant belly, in which we shed our skin, peeling and molting according to its image. Thus, language is incarnated over and over again». P. K {Art-Act, Athens, 2OO5}.


geometrical structure of the Greek word ΧΡΥΣΑΛΛΙΣ, 19 91
Seen in retrospect, her whole experiment can be conceived as a revival of the legend of the Grail; the archetype of irresistible quest, which, on the edge of truth and deceit, she exhumes from the mathematical scaffold of the Greek word Chrysalis, where she discovers it engrailed!
“By projecting the geometrical scaffold of certain greek words in space, I obtained Speaking Sculptures, deeply anchored in the Pythagorean tradition” P. K { Ancient Parliament of Athens, EETE congress on Greek language, 2009}

From the bottom of the lake to the stars 1990- :

Performance in the bottom of the lake of Mornos 1990. ph.S.Samios

Chrysalii creation and installation in the bottom of the lake of Mornos. ph. S. Samios

In 1990, the bottom of the Lake of Mornos, in Greece, had surfaced with the drought, uncovering an ancient city {Kalipolis} and an old village {Kalion}. Polished black trees and an old stone church surfaced, dressed in oysters. On the altar of this church, she created, with the mud, hundreds of “Chrysalii”; vortex –like, centauric sculptures, which were to be installed by artists and scientists in special sites of the world, where they were bound to melt  in the rain, leaving behind the map of their memorial embedment and the feeling of eudaimonia and abundance, while “assimilating spaces in our intimate space, making out of the earth our home and playground” P. K {Casa/Retea, Transylvania review, Rumania, 1995}
“On the altar of the sunken temple, I carved in the mud the Chrysalii, as though I was searching that SEM in the dark. I did not know it then, but, I was caught in the jaws of this Word that had swallowed me, like a whale, in the bottom of the lake, to dart me off to the stars”
P. K{ Ancient Parliament of Athens, EETE congress, 2009}
“She starts from the depths of the earth to lead us to the next level of our consciousness” J.J Caldwell, Ohio press release, State University of Cleveland, 3/3/91

“The Chrysalii circulate among the people of the world challenging their creative potential. The receiver becomes an emitter of information. In this way the old system of art with the artist-emitter at its centre, with a passive audience, is transformed into a living system-network of the international creative society” E. Koschielac, Myth/Network, Govostis ed.91



A Chrysalis in Kallipolis, on the sunken hellenistic mosaic, in the bottom of the Lake of Mornos '90. ph. S.Samios (on the cover of Letters, Seven Sleepers ed. 1994.





This polycentric installation was followed by a simultaneous happening in 27 countries, in 1991, with basic launching stations, the Municipal Centre of Athens and the State University of Cleveland Ohio:
“The Universal Coordinated Time Tinkering Toast to the Chrysalis, in 1991, in 27 countries, was announced before I had realized that the form of the Cup was already engrailed in the very mathematical structure of the Greek name ΧΡΥΣΑΛΛΙΣ. Maybe the act of toasting and tinkering cups, around a table /trapezi, commemorates our yearning for cosmic heroism and immortality; our irresistible genetic drive for self-destruction and rebirth. The word Trapeza in Greek means simultaneously table/altar/bank. We can live together by restoring the altar/alter as the cornerstone of human civilization; a place usurped by the banks” P. K { Homo ontologicus vrs homo economicus, Athens Municipal Center,  1991}

 
horizontal numerical modeling of the Greek word Chrysallis, 91
vertical numerical modeling of the word
In 1991, she designed a structure derived from the geometrical scaffold of the word ΧΡΥΣΑΛΛΙΣ, for the Structuralist Art exhibition Hommage a Stazewski,  in the Municipal Center of Athens. {left, ph. S.Samios}
This structure was due to take its full-blown 3D form, in her Chrysalis/Grail, monument for the Athens Olympics 2004, which hosted the Olympic Flame in Flisvos, Pal. Faleron, Athens. (right, ill. by VimViva)
Performance/ creation of clay Chrysalii, in the bottom of the Lake of Mornos 1990. ph. S. Samios

              The Word/Chrysalis monument hosts the Olympic Flame, Flisvos, Ath.2004-

“The Idea was already conceived, in its wholeness, in 1990, during my ritual performance on the altar in the depths of the lake of Mornos, yet, on this floor of the world, it took, for me, 14 years to exhume the form of the Grail from its invisible linguistic scaffold and to deposit it on the altar. Through this experimental process, I had a strong insight into the nature of  liturgical timelessness and of its projection in empirical time. The answer to my longing was no other than the archetype of eternal longing itself, which is imbedded in the very language that was driving me out of my skin “ P. K {The Word that swallowed me. uned.}  

Her hyper-text Greek essay Pyrisporos 1994 {Seed of Fire, name of Dionysus} is a collage of subliminally connected scratches of rebounding information, engendering a dynamic web reflecting the simultaneous firing of my brain neurons, at that stage, with no space to make out of this mental space a real space. Pyrisporos text has a dynamic, thick, scrolling structure, which can be compared to modern electronic texts; a non-linear multilayered, short-format hyper-text, that imposes itself, subliminally, through its internal structure”. P. K {ENOPE, Athens’94}
In the global architecture of Pyrisporos, the reader has to construct his way of navigation throughout and inside out the text, like surfing in the net. In it, she gives real life to the Magistrus of the Game of Beads -the fictive character in Herman Hesse’s novel - who connects, vertically, with his numerical systems, her intuitive analogies.
“In the Australian Kalkatoungou aborigine dialect, the word for ‘eye’ stands also for ‘seed/ star/ raindrop’, that is the analogical way the aborigine embed themselves in the world. This netlike approach was similar to what was happening in the Magistrus kitchen, around the table covered with plums, olives, bread and endless coffees; we were treating the void as solid water: Huge word-structures, were rising like alien ship prows, opening up into other word structures; the world was transformed into a holographic acropolis of talking sculptures, sliding on infinite layers, which started from the everyday things to reach a realm of ideas in the depths of my memory, lying anywhere else, outside my brain. In fact, we were creating a meta- space, with transcendental coordinates, hovering above the usual space”. P. K {The word that swallowed me, unedited}


Virtual-Supra-Space Maps of the Hidden Topological Treasure 94-96:


From 1994 to1996, her Myth/Network artwork consisted of minimal lines and primary shapes, drawn on her supra-space Maps; lines vibrating with meaning ful content, connecting through subliminal, linguistic analogies, ancient greek sacred sites and symbols, with contemporary perception. In this process, she deconstructed ancient sacred names, to their primary elements, which, she reshuffled, into different configurations, generating word-isotopes that 'revealed the inter-connection of things in the’ quantum trans-substantiality’ of language'.
The abyssal dimension of language is, according to her, the source of man’s fascination with codes, puzzles, games of treasure-hunt and mystery stories. 

ARTI review 1994

“Her starting point is that myth must come out from the pages of books to become action of the soul in the very sites where it was born and where she recovers it, opening doors to unsuspected dimensionsD. Bisutti, La Clessidra n.1, Joker,1995, Italy.

Her main participants in her virtual-supra-space expeditions in Crete, Icaria, Arcadia, Brauronia, Samothrace were poets from the European Network for the Promotion of Poetry {Belgium}, the Biennale di Poesia di Alessandria {Italy), the European center of cultural dialogue east-west Constantin Noica {Romania} under the auspices of the municipal radio of Greece.
In Transylvania, cultural magazine of Romania, she presented, in 1996, the concept of Casa-Retea/ Home-Network, to express the organic complexity of intimate space. a meta-logical text that inspired  Rumanian poet Mircae Ivanescu, to write his elegy : Voyage hypothetique vers Polyxenia dans un train immobile.
In the Centre of Art Lowenstein in Belgium, in the Symposium Tradition et Modernite, in 1994, she proposed the Object-that-found-me, challenging M. Duchamp’s Found-object. With this change of voice, she expresses the notion of an intelligent, nurturing space, which tempts us, through signs and symbols, to enter in a game of hide- and- seek with XENE, the stranger, whom she compares to the themeli escaping from the center of her dramatic spacetime stage.
“Xene, that strange name embedded in the middle of my name, was my atemporal, universal, twin, pushing me, with no apparent reason, out of my mind, out of my skin” P. K {Tradition et Modernite conf. , Leuven- Brussels 94}


In her Supra-space itineraries 1994-1996- , she used Zephiroula, a centauric -nomadic object-of- art-in-progress, impregnated with supra-space memories'. Zephiroula’s scratches, burns and bumps, residues of her adventurous inter-dimensional itineraries, are amended, since 2004, with bits and pieces of her emerging experimental material PXK. 
Her Supra-space maps 94-96, were the dashing boards for her later telecommunications team project, Miorita, Melusina and the Sphinx, dealing with the syncretic fusion of 'mioritic landscapes' {Lucian Blaga}, in the context of the twin Capitals of Europe 2007; which was selected by Arscenic {France} to be realized in Luxemburg, Romania and Greece, simultaneously. It dealt with the crash of different time concepts in astrophysical time and it questioned the centauric nature of modern perception, intensifying  the Riddle of the Theban Sphinx.
Her supra-space maps were the scaffold  for Uranias Gardens 2009-2011 projects of mythical foundation; a team work that incorporates many socio-cultural issues and of her latest Treasure-hunt game in the island of Samothrace 11, with the 'dangerous' guidance of the paradoxical Heraclitan fragments that throw european philosophy in it s burning roots. .

Fugue, the self-growing dispersive location of the fugitive Child 1996-98-

Fugue4, the Aegean Fountain, Aegean Foundation, Paros 1999.

PAI performance in Fugue construction, Castro di Piovera, Bienale di Poesia di Alessandria, Italy 1996.
Her ‘supra-space Maps' were followed by her open-ended, polycentric, Fugue 1996-1998- , in which she proceeded, from inside out, by installing herself in the Mystery, communicating her mystical experiences in her repetitive performance Pai, a ritual directed to our ‘abyssal noology’ {Lucian Blaga}. Her intention was to reenact the elusive threefold antinomy of Self-regeneration: Mother/Kore/Child ; the core-structure of ancient mysteries and, maybe, of our creative destiny. As scenery for her repetitive performances, she created monumental constructions based on the Golden Series, the universal constant of self-growth, which she left behind, creating logocentric, connecting patterns meant to renormalize, through their intrinsic harmony, the abused, by power institutions, human body’s rhythm”.
“Her artistic act intervenes and transforms space into a holy site”. Eugene van Itterbeek {Cahiers de Poesie, nu. 159, 1997}
Seen, from an aeronautic point of view, all her Fugue structures form one single art-work. Seen locally, they stand as independent monuments, smaller variations of the larger one, reflecting the local/universal spirit of our time.
Parts of Fugue are situated in the Castro di Piovera in Italy, the Crabova fountain on the Lykaion Mt in Arcadia, the Aegean Foundation in Paros Island and in the University Lucian Blaga in Sibiu, Romania,97.  Her work finds resonance in the philosophy of Lucian Blaga.

She sees in the Golden Series a mathematical depiction of the "Logos of the soul that comes out of itself" {Heraclitus).
In her French book Pai 97, translated in five languages, she reveals“the cryptic, erotic, inedible experience, secretive like a gland secretion, of PAI; the 'Thing per se ':
"je suis la flèche du grand désir qui vise l éternité "delivre moi, delivre moi Grande Mere de cet Amour mortel qui précède ma naissance" je supplie la Mere et de son tronc émerge la Korè féconde, moi, mère et fille en même temps, de notre giron surgit le phallos érige qui devient Enfant» P. Kasda, PAI, les Sept Dormants, co-ed University of Lucian Blaga Press, Sibiu Romania-International Book fare of Frankfurt 1997.

Small Arctos, oil on old tile, Epistrophw gallery 1998
Monument to the Ursus Minor, 2001, Floisvos Park, Athens.
The ‘threefold antinomy of self-regeneration’ was also expressed in her series Small Arctos 98{Small Bear}: old ceramic roof tiles, painted with girl faces, tribute to the Small Arctoi, the little girls dedicated to Artemis in her temple in Brauronia, that bear the self-contained, Smile of the Kore {the enigmatic midiama}.
“In the museum relics of the temple of Artemis Kourotrofos, in Brauronia, I realized that this apocryphal experience was already somatized, but, I recognized the Small Arctos as such, only when my own hands exhumed her, from her invisible scaffold, in the act of painting; this inside out recreation is, perhaps, the only way to decipher these ontological symbols, situated in our present future from the past P.K {Art-Act, 2005}   

In 2001, her Small Arctoi were enclosed inside a cupper pyramid 272X168 cm, a mysterious space- object, that she installed in the yard of gallery Epistrophy in Athens, in September 2001. Her Monument to the Small Arctos is now permanently installed in Flisvos Park, Athens. 
  
Code Lexomorphes 91-10- : 'the name is a speaking sculpture' Democritus

LEXOMORPHE DAKRY/ teardrop


Her tendency to serve an objective art; residue from her 1991 Chrysalis Word structure, finds best expression in her research work Code Lexomorphes, in which she creates a series of geometrical structures derived from the the numerical modeling of Greek names.
“According to Heraclitus, ‘names are uttered from the invisible, they contain the latent and the actual and they are physical laws'. My Word-generated structures raise ontological questions as to the nature of language and its connection to our creative destiny: Could words as sets of numbers transcend dimensions? Do certain names bear an intrinsic geometry connected to myths and symbols; signs of a supra-dimensional, self-referential game that is meant to trigger the ‘mystery revealing capacity of our mind'? Are names mysterious vessels of self sacrifice and regeneration? Is this linguistic Game ruled by rules of a higher ethic which finds response in a certain genetic predisposing factor? P.K {Old Parliament, EETE Panhellenic congress on Greek language 2009}


Code Lexomorphes, a language of  interdimensional communication?
geometrical  hieroglyphs generated by the mathematical structure of the Greek words
ΑΝΘΡΩΠΟΣ, ΟΝΟΜΑ, ΤΕΧΝΗ, ΨΥΧΗ, ΕΛΠΙΔΑ, Σ ΑΓΑΠΩ
(Kasda, Sitra, Papantoniou)

Code Lexomorphe ANTHROPOS
Her research Code Lexomorphes was first published in the Poesia e Spiritualita Italian review 07 and was first presented in the Congress on Greek language, organized in 2009 by the Chamber of Visual Arts of Greece {EETE), in the Old Parliament of Athens, where, she proposed the Lexomorphes as an inter dimensional language of cosmic connection, since “sets of numbers cross dimensions without losing their characteristics; according to the paradox theorem of BanachTartski a pea can be disconnected like a 3D puzzle and be reconnected as a sun “.{Ibid}
Word Chrysalis Olympic Monument 04
Her first Lexomorphe Monument was the Chrysalis/ Grail 2004, conceived in 1991, linking, at a word, the Olympic event with the Mother-Idea that gave rise not only to athletic contests, but to the contest of life itself; the first athletic games called Lykaia 14BC, in Arcadia, were rites of self- hypervasis, transcendence of the instinct of survival itself. Contrary to the words contests anf Games, the Greek word Agones, used for the Olympics, connotes Agony, which means 'striving towards Being'. Her Olympic Chrysalis monument is dressed with her hand processed innovative material PXK, after the initials of her name. PXK also happens to be the scientific name of a Homo sapiens protein coding gene! In the context of the Genome year, PXK stands for the sweating and burning skin of the adept who is transfigured by inner acceleration, while “going through language to reach the beyond language.” {R. Barthes}.


‘My PXK Olympic Chrysalis Word  monument continuously changes and renews itself; frequently, I climb on it to mend it with new PXK extensions; like me,  like my whole project, it is resting in its continuous change/ metavalon anapavetai”. P.K {Biennale of Beijing conference 08}.


In October  2004, a piece of her PXK aurea pellis was exposed at the entrance of the Biennale di Poesia di Alessandria, 2004, in Italy. In her intervention, she proposed the Chrysalis/Grail as a symbol of a “self-kenotic, logocentric state-of-mind ” and she delineated the moral obligation of the artist-knight in the ethical restoration of the world, because of his unique capacity to exhume abyssal archetypal structures from our unconscious and to lend them tangible form in empirical reality, making people conscious that “they are not here to preserve but to surpass themselves”.
In June 2005, she installed another Chrysalis Word sculpture in the occupied half of Leucosia in Cyprus.The city of Leucosia was designed after the Palmanova renaissance ring model, as the symbol of the ideal Heavenly City. "Medieval Leucosia is the very site where the First Round Table took place in 1224 along with the legend of the Grail".  Her twin Chrysalis/Word/Grail was placed in Lemar Round Square in the center of a green replica of the ring castrum of Leucosia, with water jets representing its 11 bastions; “it was a model of the heavenly city, hovering between dimensions, seeding, in the midst of wasteland, a new level of moral awareness, above the clashing antinomies, tearing apart the horizontal  level…..the evening of the discrete inauguration of the monument, which I did not attend for security reasons, I, in Athens, was healed from a persistent pain in the area of my right eye, which I had endured for seven years. I was convinced, then, that art can exert healing powers, something like white magic*”. P. K {Art-Act 2005}.
Installation of the twin  Chrysalis in Lemar crossroad, N. Leucosia  in the centre of the ring city replica
it came to be known as the Flame of Peace

*In 2010, with no apparent reason, or communication, both Chrysalii monuments in the Heroon Square Athens and in the Lemar Junction in North Leucosia were moved to another location of the respective cities and were replaced by  almost identical 10m. tall, monumental sculptures of  military horesemen!  

PXK Route installation 2004-2012-

PXKAlogon, 2nd Biennaleof Beijing, 2005

OlympicFIneArts, beijing 08, gold medal ς
In 2005, she participated in the 2nd Biennale of Beijing, with Alogon, a toy-leaping-horse, found in the recycling trash, which she dressed in PXK extensions

 “Alogon is a leap frozen in its own acceleration and so was my whole

PXKROUTE ATHENS_TASHKENT_PARIS 2007
PXK Route installation 2004-2009- , realized on the move, while traveling from one place to another. Three days in the Tashkent Biennale to continue, the next day, the same installation, in Paris ‘Nuits Blanches 07’; the earth had shrunk to the size of a ball in the palms of my hand”   
P.K { Municipality of Athens, Uraniasgardens conf. 09}.
PXK Route was realised through her participation in big international events, like the Athens Olympics 2004, the 2nd Beijing Biennale 05, FMC Syria 06, the 3rd Biennale of Tashkent 07, the Nuits Blanches in Paris 07, the Olympic Fine Arts 08, DESIGN11 Municipal Pinacotheque of Athens, confecting a new path in established frames of reference, in which she had to undergo, willfully, the trial of contest selection: PXK ROUTE is an anti-system  passing in the real world through the system.


Alex and Deme create PXK extensions for the exhibition in Damascus, Aleppo, Syria FMC2006

PXK Route 04-08 was presented in the congress on the Olympic Spirit held by the Biennale of Beijing 2008 and her PXK work Do not rest on your laurels was awarded a golden medal from the Olympic Fine Arts. 

Sunflower, Technopolis 2010, Athens 


Doodling interludes

The interval spaces, between the big phases of her 22 year old project Myth/Network, were filled with her automatic notebook Doodling; seedy authentic, subliminal, all-inclusive notebook scribbles, which she describes as 'gravitational perturbations of the probabilistic mind elevated, through a process of Hegelian ‘aufheben’, to the status of works of art’ P.K {Open FT University, Psychico, Athens, 2008}    
  Olympic Doodling, 3rd Biennale of Beijing 2008 
 From the PAI Colllection of the Union of Cultural Associations of Evros.

Foundation stage: Urania’s Gardens 2009-10-11-
For the International Year of Astronomy 09, she co founded the multidisciplinary association Urania’s Gardens. 'Urania is the muse of Astronomy and daughter of Mnemosene; when we look deep in the sky we are looking at the remote past’. P.K.(EETE journal'09)
Urania’s Gardens foundation projects can be considered as realistic applications of her earlier Supra-Space Maps 94. 'Those Gardens are cradles for PAI, the archetypal primordial Child, who is reborn at the end/beginning of an era'
 
In Gergeri, a remote village on the flanks of legendary Mt Ida {cradle of baby Zeus} in Crete, she co-curated the Gargling Sky, a multicultural arch, in the form of a constellation nesting throughout the traditional, ecological village, leaning over the mountains. In this process, abandoned old watermills, store rooms and neglected schools were restored as art scenes and the youth of the village, instinctively, connected the spots of the exhibition with star constellations painted on the narrow streets or knailed with ribbons and threads on the walls of the surrounding buildings, reviving, unconsciously, the thread of Ariadne.. 

In 2010 she launched project Pai/ the eon is a child playing 2010 in Samothrace island:
“it takes time back and forth, for the 'cryptic' liturgical dimension of life to unfold on the 'phanic' plane. I had consecutively enacted  liturgical performance PAI/  lapis exilis, in my project Fugue 1996-98. Now was the critical time for this Idea to be founded in real space and by so doing to restore the mythological/ontological importance of this island, where the Cabeirian mysteries and the birth of PAI were taking place".
Sixty international, selected, artists responded to her call  to offer their work to the nascent pinacotheque of Samothrace.The children interacted with the international artists by creating an installation, in the forest, dedicated to the return of the storks. PAI, like the magnetic Heracleian Stone, which Socrates compares to the Spirit of the Age, triggered a series of cultural events in Patmos, Thebes, Athens, Bulgaria, Lecce (Italy).....


PAI 2011
"We are and we are not "(fragment 49, Heraclites)
 In 2011, she initiated the concept of the Treasure-Hunt-Game on the island, under the stochastic guidance of the antinomic fragments by Heraclites, which throw our mind out of our usual conceptual framework, in the burning roots of european philosophy.
Kasda, PAI, Lapis Exilis, hidden in the flanks of Saos mt. Samothrace  11

The treasure to be discovered was her Lapis Exilis carved stone. Maybe this Lapis Exilis 'despised by fools and cherished by the wise' is the source of  that irresistible drive that had hurled her, some 20 years ago,  from the bottom of the lake to the supra-space gardens of the muse of the stars, where she recovers her home; Alexandria-lost where she was born and raised in the midst of clashing belief systems, trained to see the we-ness behind  cultural diversities.
 "Perhaps, Myth /Network, this multiform Odyssey inside the Grail-shaped belly of the Word Chrysalis , was a way to deliver the PAI/Child, the new eaon, that was and was not, me”. 

PAI to be and not to be found in the forest of Samothrace





The Conscious Eye, 1988
In her Greek essay The Conscious Eye, as early as 1988, she saw in modern art and science  'the signs of an increasing consciousness of the censored nature of our cognitive structures that impose on us a virtual reality, which is meant to be superseded'. This statement was at the core of her project Myth/Network 90-11- 

“It all started in the waters of Avythos in 1985, in the island of Cephalonia in Greece: as I was walking in the sea, in the sun showering the waves, it felt like I was inside an early cubist painting by Picasso and Braque, immersed in the debris of a world floating in an ocean of light, striving to be reconstituted into the familiar world of things. From that point on, I was seeing myself seeing, I was thinking myself thinking; nothing was taken for granted any more. This innocent walk in the sea of Avythos, turned out to be the most revolutionary act in my life". P.K {Art Act 2006}



"the kingdom is the Child's", PAI 2011



Revised, updated  text based on Tyflomyga review, dedication to P. Kasda, Sept.03