Nadia Kalara+Martin Carlé: Antidoron

This artwork investigates ways of exchange that are linked to the idea of the present. A compelling form of the notion of the present is the αντίδωρον — the gift in the form of a left-over.

The antidoron, as it first appears in the religious practice of the Greek Orthodox Church, is a small piece of blessed bread, cut off the offered loaf in preparation of the Holly Communion Mystery. Initially, it was given .instead of the gift. (αντί του δώρου) of the Holly Communion, to those not taking part in it. Nowadays, this left-over is given to everybody attending the mess. In the artwork, this substitution of the original gift of pairing with the holy, is put into historical perspective. Since any fulfilled gift can be understood as the successful procedure of an ever-to-berenewed presence of an original giving, a gift transgressing historical periods can never succeed. Any attempt of endowing historical identities thus acts in the form of the antidoron. What is being substitutedor given instead of, is a return to the origin, a fulfilled relation to a holy commencement.

There is a history of references, appropriations and translations constantly reshaping what is to be understood by terms like “Greekness” and “Germaness” and their interrelation in respect to a common origin. Outstanding figures in poetry and philosophy dealing with these issues, are present in the artwork. While Sophocles, Holderlin and Heidegger turned towards the origin, their left-overs are re-presented as unfulfilled uttered calls of computer voices. The resulting dialog takes place on a banquet table where three plates full of smashed miniatures of ancient Greek temples and statues are offered as antidora. The design of the tablecloth is conceived in relation to the sculptural objects and the sound installation. In sum, we are confronted with left-overs of discourse, of stereotypical imagery and with holy remains.

Wondering about the flow of history that, on the one hand, created the space we encounter today as a "site of historical memory 1941-1944" and, on the other hand, led Holderlin to sing the river Ister as a stream that "appears, however, almost to go backwards", we reflect upon the eventuality of their encounter. At the time when the Philhellenes come to help the Greek liberation, Holderlin named the home of the Germans in perspective of ancient Greece. While the philhellenic movement was fueled by a romantic identification of modern with ancient Greece, Holderlin, recognized Greece as the necessary otherness of the German ownness. It took a hundred years for his gift to be discovered by Norbert von Hellingrath bringing up the notion of a "secret Germany". When drawing on the insights of Holderlin's Hymns in the years 1941 and 1942, Heidegger opposed the Nazi-appropriation of H.lderlin as .the. national poet of a northern race of Hyperborians .returning. to Greece. Hence, a re-encountering of German voices at site may not only confront the beholder, but asks the addressees of the present offerings to exchange their own otherness as gifts.

Finally, comprehending that the fabric of history itself takes part in an economy of the present, three bold stages in relation to the holy and its mediation can be differentiated: (i) the unmediated ability of becoming demigods in making love, (ii) the intermediate institution of the antidoron and (iii) today's ubiquitous, mostly technological distribution of holy remains. Because procedures of renewal depend on mediation, the operation of works of art is essentially effected by these stages. Now, returning to our site, we shall question the substitutional diversification of .site-specific art. into a phenomenological, a socio-critical and a discursive paradigm of exchange, but instead, may ask the beholder to re-engage in the always site-specific act of accepting presents.