Dimitrios Antonitsis. Levitation Strategies

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The discovery of an enigmatic monolith in space brings mankind face to face with the greatest challenge of its history. Soon, the first manned mission to the outer planets is becoming a reality. But as the spacecraft Discovery travels to the edge of the solar system, carrying the dreams and expectations of humanity, its crew members will be challenged beyond human imagination… This is main theme of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Arthur C. Clarke, which left an indelible mark on my (teenage) daydreaming. Even now, my thoughts are revolving around human evolution and existence in the cosmic and the hyper-cosmic.

The idea and aesthetics of the monolith still seduce me and perhaps that is why whenever in Chicago I visit the forgotten, bulky, never-in-operation fountain by Isamu Noguchi outside the Art Institute. In contrary to his more recent and more celebrated Floating Fountains in Osaka, where cubic monoliths sway on top of tall geysers.

The idea of canceling the force of gravity, leads my thoughts straight to the experience of diving, when the diver has acquired so much comfort that he can release himself to the experience of the ocean floor with all his senses. The oceanic feeling is the sensation of being one with the universe. A simulacrum of “eternity”, a total union with nature and the universe, which resembles a kind of religious ecstasy.  Freud in Civilization and its Discontents, refers to it as a fragmentary vestige of consciousness possessed by an infant who has not yet differentiated himself or herself from other people and things. Further, as the pick of the erotic intercourse, when the boundaries between two people are dismantled and one diffuses into the other.

The annulment of loneliness, the disintegration of the armour, the end of cynicism (Alas! Diogenes) and the (meta)physical emotion of baring ones existence is the core of Levitation Strategies. Two correlating sculptures are presented: an oversized cracked urn and an S-shaped mattress/chaise-longue. They are to be perceived as bodies in neutral buoyancy, weightless in a choreography of universal swirling. After all, whirling is perhaps one of the oldest and most widespread practices known to man, which both  fulfills our need for catharsis, and also bridges a gap between the body and the soul, the heart and the mind, the unconscious and  the conscious, the finite and infinite. While most of us skim along the surface waters of existence, we all tend to have a deep craving to navigate into the depth of the ocean of life and experience its true fluidity, its true mysticism.