‘Tis blood—my blood—
My brother’s and my own! and shed by me!
Then what have I further to do with life,
Since I have taken life from my own flesh?
Lord Byron, Caïn (1821)
Des photographies, des témoignages et des récits de six cas d'homicide différents, d'un architecte de prison et d'un gardien de prison, composent un environnement qui nous rapproche des confins de l'univers de Caïn.
Il a été produit dans des lieux liés à l'homicide : commissariats et archives de police, prisons, salles de détention, morgue, tribunal, musée du crime, véhicules de police, prison en construction, prison transformée en hôpital vétérinaire... et la ville d'Athènes, toile de fond du crime passionnel.
La maison de Caïn (1999-2005) is a body of work conceived as a pilgrimage towards the world of crimes of passion, which it encircles without ever crossing its boundaries. It explores the fine line that separates us from the irrationality of murder and a cosmos we can never enter unless we cross its gate and tragically become Cain!
Photographs, testimonies, and accounts of six different homicide cases, a prison architect, and a prison warden create an environment that brings us closer to the confines of Cain's universe.
It was produced in places linked to homicide: police stations and archives, prisons, detention rooms, a morgue, a tribunal, a crime museum, police vehicles, a prison under construction, a prison converted into a veterinary hospital... and the city of Athens, the backdrop to the crime of passion.
La maison de Caïn (1999-2005) è un corpus concepito come un pellegrinaggio alla scoperta del mondo del delitto passionale,, che circonda senza mai oltrepassarne i confini. Esplora quella sottile linea di demarcazione che ci separa dall'irrazionalità dell'omicidio e da un cosmo in cui non potremo mai penetrare, a meno di varcare la sua soglia e diventare tragicamente Caino!
Fotografie, testimonianze e racconti di sei diversi casi di omicidio, di un architetto di prigioni e di di un guardiano carcerario, compongono un ambiente che ci avvicina ai confini dell'universo di Caino.
È stato realizzato in luoghi legati all'omicidio: commissariati e archivi di polizia, prigioni, sale di detenzione, obitorio, tribunale, museo del crimine, veicoli della polizia, prigione in costruzione, prigione trasformata in ospedale veterinario... e la città di Atene, cornice del delitto passionale.
Fotografie, testimonianze e racconti di sei diversi casi di omicidio, di un architetto di prigioni e di di un guardiano carcerario, compongono un ambiente che ci avvicina ai confini dell'universo di Caino.
È stato realizzato in luoghi legati all'omicidio: commissariati e archivi di polizia, prigioni, sale di detenzione, obitorio, tribunale, museo del crimine, veicoli della polizia, prigione in costruzione, prigione trasformata in ospedale veterinario... e la città di Atene, cornice del delitto passionale.
La maison de Caïn (1999-2005) είναι ένα σώμα δουλειάς που έχει σχεδιαστεί ως ένα προσκύνημα στο πεδίο του εγκλήματος από πάθος, το οποίο περικυκλώνει χωρίς ποτέ να ξεπερνά τα όριά του. Εξερευνά τη λεπτή διαχωριστική γραμμή που μας χωρίζει από την παράλογη πράξη του φόνου και από έναν κόσμο που δεν μπορούμε ποτέ να διεισδύσουμε, εκτός αν περάσουμε τα όριά του και γίνουμε τραγικά ο Κάιν!
Φωτογραφίες, μαρτυρίες και αφηγήσεις έξι διαφορετικών περιπτώσεων ανθρωποκτονίας, ενός αρχιτέκτονα φυλακών και ενός δεσμοφύλακα, συνθέτουν ένα περιβάλλον που μας φέρνει πιο κοντά στα όρια του σύμπαντος του Κάιν.
Δημιουργήθηκε σε χώρους που σχετίζονται με την ανθρωποκτονία: αστυνομικά τμήματα και αρχεία, φυλακές, αίθουσες κράτησης, νεκροτομείο, δικαστήριο, μουσείο εγκληματολογίας, αστυνομικά οχήματα, φυλακή υπό κατασκευή, φυλακή που μετατράπηκε σε κτηνιατρικό νοσοκομείο... και η πόλη της Αθήνας, το φόντο του εγκλήματος από πάθος.
Φωτογραφίες, μαρτυρίες και αφηγήσεις έξι διαφορετικών περιπτώσεων ανθρωποκτονίας, ενός αρχιτέκτονα φυλακών και ενός δεσμοφύλακα, συνθέτουν ένα περιβάλλον που μας φέρνει πιο κοντά στα όρια του σύμπαντος του Κάιν.
Δημιουργήθηκε σε χώρους που σχετίζονται με την ανθρωποκτονία: αστυνομικά τμήματα και αρχεία, φυλακές, αίθουσες κράτησης, νεκροτομείο, δικαστήριο, μουσείο εγκληματολογίας, αστυνομικά οχήματα, φυλακή υπό κατασκευή, φυλακή που μετατράπηκε σε κτηνιατρικό νοσοκομείο... και η πόλη της Αθήνας, το φόντο του εγκλήματος από πάθος.
The photos were printed @ Photolab in Athens, on duratrance & fuji paper.
* CLICK ON IMAGES TO SEE LARGER & MORE
Wax sculptures exhibited at the Museum of Criminology, Athens.
If, say in the sky, in this vast space, I saw a single star, if there had been hope as tiny as a star is, what happened would not have happened. Total darkness. No light. Everything is off, M. said about the murder of her 14 year old daughter.
The project La maison de Caïn is mostly an effort to give soul and body to the expression of this human need to install a bridge between the two sides: the inaccessible world of Cain and us.
They asked me to take their photograph, and I did! One day I saw on of the two in outdoor cafe in Athens, and he told me that he never recieved the print I sent to prison but didn't ask for a new one either.
During a transfer, the police van stopped at a red light. I saw through the window,
a classmate on his moped. He was waiting for the green light. I watched his eyes.
And that's when I realized the infinite distance between us.
I felt a longing through him, and regret for the life that I have lost.
I wanted to call him "George", but I could not.
The Architect: The life that they will be living here is manufactured by us.
The only thing we do not know is their faces.
A bank reflects a deconstruction of the police headquarters.
They lock me because I killed.
... And a soccer ball in the air.
There is a place for all, in the police records, on the 7th floor of 173, Alexandras Avenue.
The lobby of the court, an artificial calm.
My encounter with Caïn takes place in the space of one common presence,
in the world of passion, guilt and destruction.
When they took me to the police station, I thought they would let me go home.
I thought that was the prison, said an old woman who murdered her son.
cell 111
I'm fine here. Here you can hide. I hide from myself,
from the act that brought me here.
I took a shower because I was covered in blood.
I changed my clothes and I left the house as I was leaving every time.
Separation is also the encounter of two different paths.
It was during the day at 11:30 am. In the street it was!
She was pregnant and the child inside her was like a commodity.
An average man with average intelligence, this is me. I am not different in any way from millions of other men. This crime has changed my life. And as if I had died that September, too.
The prison warden: Guard men, keep them quiet in their death.
At police headquarters, on the 7th floor,
a deaf cry bouncing off piles of archives, in a jungle of ivy.
During transfers, I always ran for the window on the side of the van.
I never looked out the back window.
Last breath
At the morgue, a graveyard in the balance!
The morgue, a piercing smell of cleanliness & blood.
They never look at us as human beings but as a "huge mistake.
When God says, "I lived", we’ll all have forgotten what rhymed all these separations.
The first thing I thought was that no one learns!
I poured a glass of water and wiped my fingerprints.
P. confessed to her murder almost one year after stabbing M., a secretary at a private company of loans.
They took my fingerprints, I washed my hands and I realized that there was no way back!
Sometimes I can't see the difference between freedom and imprisonment!
I have a tape with his voice. It can not be heard well ... A photo, a paper with his writing.
The transistor that had been on our bedside table, his pack of cigarettes from that night.
There's his blood on it.
Police headquarters, Athens.
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The murder weapon.
Some see the light in the words of justice and some the afterworld!
At the Museum of Criminology in Athens, the moment of the crime has been immortalized, whereas in the past it was only imprinted with a tattoo that lasted a lifetime.
Today I had a visit from my children. The youngest asked me to make something for him.
That’s why I say that now I have to make a bicycle that flies.
Sacred Letters engraved on the window of a prison.
Female prison, Korydallos, Athens.
The little mirror on the cell's wall.
Often I wonder if of one man's fall there are great lifts?
Even in prisons class distinctions exist and therefore detention conditions.
I got out of Prison full of hope...
I was impressed by pedestrian bridges.
My old clothes seemed to me ridiculous.
Fugitive, handed himself over to authorities.
The time of a glance, at the bottom of the chaotic and noisy kitchen of the prison of Koridallos, the light brings silence and peace to my ears.
Prison, a monastery without faith.
In the kitchen of the prison ward of Korridalos in Athens, this image reminded, oddly,
some ancient monasteries, seen a year earlier at Mount Athos.
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Double cage.
When I arrived, it was Dec. 17, a Thursday, the day when women come from the parishes.
As Christmas approached, they had brought gifts. And when they gave me the gift, I could not accept it.
It impressed me that people can forgive me what I had done.
A red light, a second before or after,
that was enough to never encounter. And why I followed him?
I took away a life for nothing, I killed for a word.
The person who lives with me now consider this as a fairytale.
That's how he sees it, a fairytale of the past.
The project La maison de Caïn questions the world of the murderer without complacency,
shows the fragility of our rational will, confronts the absurdity of the crime, casts doubt on its field, evokes it without representations, affirms its failure and its horrors,
and interrogates its constant pain.
Immediately afterwards I felt lighter … With immense relief, something flew in me,
it was as if I did not touch the ground. It felt as if I was flying.
And it lasted a infinitesimal time, few seconds.
Immediately afterwards, he never went back home.
He spent the first night under a tree on the hills of Aspropirgo.
He then buried there the murder weapon, a knife that had been bought and given by his victim.
At dawn he stood up with dried blood on his clothes
and returned to the city to surrender to the police.
exhibition
Casa AUT (Sicilia) - November 2011
featured
wip5 - Greece (August 2009)
edition
Zero91 - Italy (September 2009)
