Small totem I (2023)

Small Totem I is a nine-minute video in which image and sound carry equal weight. It takes its cue from Manolis Anagnostakis' poem Η αγάπη είναι ο φόβος (Love is Fear). Cast ice letters spell a verse from the poem on dark soil — who will count all the raindrops before they fade to the ground — and are left to melt. Each letter keeps its own time. The sentence becomes unreadable long before the last of it is gone, and what remains is a damp mark in the earth where it stood. The ice — a transient totem of water, essential and endangered — dissolves slowly, and the soil absorbs the letters as they go, binding what is fleeting to what endures. What remains is a question about erosion: of landscapes, of memory, of love and fear alike.

Running alongside this, and given the same attention as it, is the soundscape of a family in an apartment: everyday talk that surfaces into legibility and slips back out again into texture and white noise. Neither track illustrates the other. The domestic murmur sets the scale of the piece — biodiversity loss and water scarcity as they are actually lived, at the level of kitchens and hallways rather than statistics. Through this quiet ritual, Small Totem I holds attention on the sacredness of water and on the fragile balance between people and the world they are wearing down.