weak monuments show

A function of the city as murder place is constructed and shown in the Bar Association of Thessaloniki (Tsimiski & Pavlou Mela - 18.10.2009 - 17.11.2009). The project could be a curatorial one but the curated material is found in existing, real archives of the city and in some significant rooms and halls of the city: lawyers offices, the court house, police stations, the city's morgue, funeral offices, the criminology department of the city.
Thessaloniki's murder urbanism is related to the presentation of the infrastructure of murder; this is done through the creation of another archive including drawings, documents and texts. The drawings describe part of the city's equipment for the reception of murders. This description is mostly done through plans and sections of the places that receive or are awaiting for the city murders. This murder infrastructure is linked to a concept of modern urbanity. A particular mapping of the city through its illicit lethal acts detects the murders as theatrical, unrepeatable city actions. An intrusion in some of the official murder archives materializes the approach to the city's murder infrastructure. In 4000 pages of selected official documents the names of the protagonists were erased. Furthermore a series of texts are printed in the multiple show's catalog: theoretical texts treating murder in the city, historical texts, narrations, short interviews from the medical examiner in Thessaloniki's morgue, from a toxicologist's specialist, from a professor of criminology in the University of Thessaloniki and from other murder specialists. * *




The catalog's picture by Petros Phokaides.