Helene Black: 1997 :: Messages of Lost Cities

Diaspro Art Center, Nicosia, Cyprus
3-25 June 1997
Solo show

The nature of language as an abstract system of signs is my starting point for this series of artworks. By using Louis Perentos’ poem Dialogue with Light and putting it through a process of linguistic and pictorial dissection, I separated the poem from its author (and its content) to find its latent meanings. I then pulled apart these ‘filtered’ meanings into their layered concepts and presented the resulting artworks in the form of metal wall constructions. These artworks are not about their visual appearance but, instead, my process of understanding text, lyrical and theoretical as a carrier of simulacrums and hence an aesthetic, self contained entity related to, yet distinct from its source, transformed into its plastic properties. Louis Perentos’ poem is a dense work describing the poet’s conversation with light. Through this ‘dialogue’ the poet analyses the economic, political and social conditions that followed the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The poem does not concern itself with the war but instead concentrates on its social impact. It does not look outwards for answers but inwards. In this context my works are about this precise questioning of the Cypriot sociopolitical identity. My research for this series also included a study of Cypriot chalcolithic sculptures as well as essays on Particularism and Universality by contemporary writers such as Ernesto Laclau, Helena Kontova and Julia Kristeva. Rudolf Arnheim in his book ‘Art and Visual Perception’ discusses Cypriot chalcholithic sculptures and quotes the sculptor Hildebrand who states: “… we imagine a statue placed between two parallel planes of glass one in front one in the back. It should then be possible to see the statue as a series of layers parallel to the glass”. My artworks can be read in this manner. The chalcolithic sculptures are translated into lines, their three dimensional quality into layers of glass and perspex and their context is moved to that of the structure of the poem. The research of identity through history, ancient and contemporary, political and personal resulted in my final study. The artwork as a personal statement for universal consumption. My reduction of the forms on the artworks into lines, crosses and squares aims for a universal understanding. It also aims to establish the identity of the individual artworks into a kind of a ‘stand alone’ entity for the individual, ‘no author’ interpretation.

Louis Perentos – Dialogue with Light
Translated from Greek by Helene Black and Yiannis Colakides, Cyprus 1997

It was dawn around the afternoon. Again
absentminded, he says …… No, dear light, I say
if you want, I can count the hours from the beginning.
Again, he says,
confused is the poet. Everybody is awakening, and he,
wrapped in his deep dream
sleeps. In his hands unpublished pamphlets, old maps
of Cyprus, drafts of revolutions.
Stop, then. Stop confusing me, change the
expression, the structure, speak straight. The clock works and
you are delayed constantly,there is no other day there is no tomorrow,
will you speak?
I swallow the howl¹ of Ginsberg, my voice
is lost in banks, in between loans and
loan sharks, for years now testing people
and new tricks

“I refuse to resign from my persistent idea”²,
the one hidden in flowerpots and glossy buildings, that
“we are in rats’ alley”³. The roads
are filled with rubbish, the houses don’t have
windows anymore, and my other self knows that
those who have left for the hunt of the big sea urchin
have filled their hands with spikes, and the swimmer with
one leg, slaps on his forehead the hopelessness of his dead
glory.⁴
I begin not to understand. You said you will write simply
and now you are mentioning dreams. Dreams?
They are not dreams, they are
your right, your left wall, that which you cannot see,
because they denied you the eyes, those who were frightened that
you would see the trees blossom, the poem to form.
That is why I will keep on writing until the last uprooting, I will
persist being busy with “petty” things
I will be falling, until I reach the lowest depths, and
I might as well be
the glass basket, filled with impregnated dreams,
stones, seas. But, don’t ask me what is Poetry,
clean, lyrical, surreal. All are eggs
in the same basket, ready to break with one movement.
I speak to you and
you scratch your left knee, recollecting times on
heavy tables, beds with red blankets,
darkness, darkness! But, believe me,
there will be no light, when you decide to get up,
with eyelids closed and wrinkled skin,
feeling for switches and pots
there will be no light, when you will be recalling the devil, and
he will have tired of you, the stillness, the dust, the

lethargy
you will be trying to cross out, but you will not find a pencil,
nowhere, never.
What are you, then? I am
the armour of my defeated ancestor, I curry in my
bones the injustices of my old self,
records of planets, messages of lost cities, and
perhaps I am
the damned of my years, the surrendered in the
hell of my ego, the radical poet, who
sees nothing breathing. Finally, perhaps I am
the only child of the devil and I struggle
to hold on in between light and darkness.
“I ended up perceiving as sacred the disorder of my mind”,⁵
the sarcastic voice within dreams is hunting me
everywhere, on the glass resides the eye of yesterday’s
god, in my garden the marble is blossoming, you see
how strangely I am governed by meanings, by thoughts?
You will say, you mislead me, friend, you annoy me with heavy
things you forget the National issue, you have to speak
about the stolen countries, name the responsible ones
now, now. Look, I tell you, a bit further up, left,
no, more to the right, all over my body
names, colours, waters, explosions, names again.
Angelika spent years under Hitler. Now, all is fake,
breast, teeth, hair, she says
put them all in a sack and hit them with a stick.
And you can be sure, you are always hitting the right one.
You attack me. You insist that I am wrong, you ask
me to reconsider, somebody has to be governing, and I
shout
I detest every government, like the stupid
army socks that prickle on every step…
You are an anarchist! Each one playing his own tune, I say, beyond
all this though
“Fortunate is he who still has a country”,⁷ and alas, misfortunate
the refugee whose soul was softened with
money. He has no voice, no cry,
“wattane, wattane”,⁸ to sing hitting his
breast, gesturing to the places that were stolen from him to
demand the house, the sun, his days. For
hours
he sits, watches television, stroking hedonistically his
soft parts, and tomorrow the same again, and forget Karpassi,⁹
I have settled. You are unfair friend,
things are not like that. I wish I were the
liar, the blind one, the ignorant one, and to live on the day of
verification, if it will ever come. You are overreacting!
You enter in strangers orchards, you pluck plants which do not
belong to you, you do not know, you do not know. What I know
l learnt it myself, so you learn too that
father was not god and those that providence ignored,
we became poets, to lift buckets of bile from
strangers wells. These wells
others have dug them, and when they found no water,
they abandoned picks, tools, they disappeared in holes like
worms. I do not understand,
you are delirious, change your way, sleep to find
your senses… At last I woke up.
St John the Recluse,¹⁰ fifty years
of dry bread and water in a closet,
beware of traps, he warned me, the loquaciousness
kills the truth, close your eyes, go away, go away.
Where
can I go, where, I was asking. I have friends, family
a divided country, I have the light, it is challenging me…
I am afraid of the sea, I am afraid of the sea and everybody will
say that
I am a dreamer and a madman, who says
cliché phrases. But, who else lived for thirty-two
centuries within her deep entrails? At last
I woke up.
Even in my sleep you are hunting me, you change
mask, you become a devil and string, you tighten my
larynx, you test me if
I am a pure blooded offspring of Onesilus¹¹, or if ,
since then, the wives of our grandfathers went out to the
acacia forests and changed the lineage
without thinking of us, tomorrow that we were going to ask for
explanations, before the council, before you
who
is looking at me with a sideways glance. Your sly eye casts a shadow
upon half the room, in the other half, crumpled papers,
flags, wings, tomorrows bread. And I “remain in
complete confusion, innocent”.¹² You offer me a cigarette,
I do not want one, I tell you, I have stopped it together with the cheap
slogans, I am still thinking of inventing a new
voice, different, frightening
without sound and colour, an insensitive voice that can
put the wolf to sleep and wake up the lamb, to sit
by the hours at the traffic lights and scare the
people, in the evenings with a leash
to tie up the leg of the establishment and to ponder…
Enough, enough philosophising and devilish thoughts
you are not going to become a hero, there is no hemlock anymore,
be content with whatever you can, with whatever is allowed for you.
My dear Light,
my country has no rivers, her children died in
one summer, now, half disabled, half
bleeding – don’t ask how, why, where I see blood – I wait
for her to be glorified, as I have waited for years, as the pirates were leaving
the pirates were coming, and she
placing salt upon her wounds, started the births again,
so, it is not for me that I water, evenings mornings and
afternoons, the daphne at the dry river. Did you understand?
Yes, but for whom
now that the cowardly traitors have become resistance front liners and
the essence of the struggle is lost in jealousy, for whom
do you stay awake at night sweating, gathering old photographs,
documenting of mountains and seas, talking to old people
who do not listen, running, running? Tomorrow, tomorrow

the new moon will come out, the children will be asking
for fairy-tales, and our books will have been
replaced with videos, you tell me
who is going to speak on behalf of us?
Light, light, light, light, light, light, light! In the bottom
drawer I place my shadows in order, in the top one your white
shirts, in the third which cannot be seen
the secret voices of your waves, the ones that did not
reach the shores, accompanied by the seagulls and the pebbles,
as the seas were full of pirates and our promontories
did not have castles. These voices
one day, when the children will be watching the open sea with
their mouths agape, and in darkness they will be waiting the new
ship,
I will let them celebrate their first Sunday,
to climb on the dunes kissing the
skin of the children. Everything
you say is good so is that which you have not said, but
in the event
of the wave being ferocious, to be out of control and
cover the town, in the deepness of the night,
who is going to mend the cracks on the walls of
the houses, who is going to ring the bells,

do you understand the problem, do you understand my message?
You are tiring me,
you cut my nails deep, I cannot bear the pain of
your weight, your saliva is poisoning me, enough,
enough. And I believed you
“My times are in your hands”,¹³ and you said my hands
were stolen by your hours, we lost the sequence of
meaning, we will become a génération perdue,¹⁴ light, my
light
turn the handle n o w, squeeze n o w into the
room, acknowledge n o w the corners that you did not meet.
Otherwise, tomorrow
the key will have rusted in the flower pot, it will have been
stolen by passers by, and even if you find it
I will have become one with the humidity, you will be trying in vain to
see me, I will have been stolen by the darkness.

20-28.8.82

NOTES
¹ I am referring to “The Howl” by Allen Ginsberg, Contemporary Poetry, Boukoumanis Publ. Athens 1974.
² America, “The Howl”, Allen Ginsberg. (IBID).
³ p 126, Chapter B Wasteland T.S.Elliot, The Faber Book of Modern Verse, The Faber and Faber Limited Publs. London 1982.
⁴ Egyptian swimming champion who lost his foot in an accident.
⁵ “Alchimie du Verbe”, Arthur Rimbaud, (publishers, date of publication) “…Je finis par trouver sacré le désordre de mon spirit.”
⁷ “Alone”, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Aris Dikteos, World Anthology of Poetry, G. Fexis Publs, Athens 1960.
⁸ “My Country, my country” The wail of Palestinian women when their husbands leave to fight in war.
⁹ Greek village occupied by the Turkish army since 1974.
¹⁰ Contemporary Saint who lived for more than 50 years on the banks of The Nile surviving on seeds and water.
¹¹ King of Salamis (Cyprus) who reunited the Kingdoms of Cyprus in order to fight against the Persians (498 BC).
¹² p. 40, Michalis Katsaros (1924-), Of the Saduchi’s, Kedros Publs, Athens, 1977.
¹³ Chapter 31, Verse 15, Hymns.
¹⁴ Translated as Lost Generation.