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| Pantelis Chandris articulator Articulators are the body organs used to produce phonemes during speech: the lips, the teeth, the alveoli, the hard palate, the soft palate, the uvula, the tongue, the oral cavity and the nasal cavity (which are also called the vocal cavity), the vocal chords, the lingula, the larynx, the pharynx. These organs determine the way in which a consonant or vowel is articulated [...]. They are distinguished into active and passive articulators. The active articulators are those which – essentially – move towards a passive or stable articulator. (link: www.greek-language.gr) Suffocated speech, unexpressed speech, suppressed speech. Articulators that lock up human existence and get ready to swallow it. Once they open, they may say everything but also nothing. Through infinite words and sounds or through a suffocating silence. From Heraclitus’ and Aristotle’s philosophic “Speech” and the relative approaches by theoreticians, like Foucault, up to the daily act of “speaking” itself, speech constitutes a means, an act and a notion that at times favours and at times undermines communication. Tongue “crushes bones” as the proverb says, exerts force but it may also promote, maybe more than anything else, the development of the human intellect. Pantelis Chandris’ sculpture supplements a body of work accomplished by him regarding speech and the ability or inability to articulate it. It deals with the truths and lies uttered by articulators, the main organ for the production of words and the exchange of concepts. The white sculpture is clenching a black creature in its teeth, which looks like a human being – shellfish, with no bones and no head. Either through its warmness or harshness, Chandris’ work addresses exactly this power of speech in all its manifestations . The teeth, as a boundary between the mouth’s interior and exterior and a symbol of direct or indirect pressure and violence, seem to crush everything around them. The tongue, a white and shiny sarcoma, the most powerful and sensitive muscle of the body, complements and intensifies this sense of crushing. The lips (one of the most erotic and affectionate parts of the body) are non-existent; actually, any form of soft surface is utterly absent from this mouth – “victimizer”. On the contrary, its only flexible feature is the black figure – “victim”, an already exhausted creature with no head, deprived of its own will and left abandoned under the control of this all-mighty organ. Abandoned in the hands of Speech itself, unable – like the rest of humanity – to escape from it. Areti Leopoulou  Download CV |  Articulators |
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