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Venue
Moni Lazariston / Bazaar Hamam / Warehouse C, Thessaloniki Port Area / Museum of Byzantine Culture / Courtyard of the Archaelogical Museum of Thessaloniki
Artist
Nikita Alexeyev
 Artists's biography |
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There Aint None, installation, 2007 |
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There Aint None, installation, 2007 |
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There Aint None, installation, 2007 |
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There Aint None, installation, 2007 |
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There Aint None
This work is a tribute to Saint Gregory Palamas who lived and worked in Thessaloniki in the 15th century; a tribute to this great teacher of theognosia (knowledge of God), the advocate of the negative way to approach God through the use of negation as a means to impart knowledge. He deemed that God is not this, nor that, nor the other; God is nothing and everything; that which is not does not exist, nor does that which is, etc. throughout the length and breadth of the transfer of meanings.
His approach is somewhat reminiscent of the inspirations of the great teachers of the Zen school of Buddhism. We all use words to express that which exists or does not exist. Each language has its own particularities in terms of conveying the meaning of “not existing”. I do not speak Greek, but the phrase den iparhi (does not exist) fascinates me due to the delicacy of its sound, like the flight of a small butterfly.
The corresponding phrase in Russian, “etovo niet”, is rectilinear; nevertheless, it hides behind the genitive case that is used to structure the negation “no - niet”: somebody had brought something to light and then that ceased to exist.
I was rather troubled as regards the English rendering of the phrase. Simon Waldron, who had once defended his thesis on Nabokov at Cambridge, helped me in this area. He suggested a popular, not so refined syntax, which nevertheless appears to me to be totally accurate. ‘There ain’t none’, a phrase that evokes Shakespearean irony and horror at the same time.
However, none of the above phrases are obligated, nor do they attempt to convey the simple meaning of “etovo niet”, “den iparhi”, “there ain’t none”. And this is probably because emptiness is good for one thing: even if it is completely void within, there is always some sort of revelation.
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