A Vindication of Tlon
On Sunday, May 6, 2001, at the "L. Kanakakis" Municipal Art Gallery the large group exhibition "The Vindication of Tlon" curated by Giannis Stathatos was inaugurated.
It was the central exhibition of the Thessaloniki international photographic event "Photosynkyria 2001" that had been presented in the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art last February and March, organized by the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography.
The Rethymnon Center for Contemporary Art (today Contemporary Art Museum of Crete) often collaborates with the respective bodies as well as with the newly established state museums of Thessaloniki. In the context of these collaborations the exhibition "A Vindication of Tlon" was also held, an exhibition in which Greek and foreign artists took part with new works relating to the rationale of the curator of the exhibition.
The artists were: Stelios Efstathopoulos, Olga Kalousi, Giannis Konstantinou, Eleni Maligoura, Natassa Markidou, Despina Meimaroglou, Emilios Morgiannidis, Nikos Panagiotopoulos, Panos Vardopoulos, Naya Giakoumaki who represented Greece and Haris Zevlaris from Cyprus.
The international entries were: Eric Emo (France), Joan Fontcubert (Spain), Philip George (Austria), Mark Hadjipateras (USA), Maggie Lambert (UK), Mari Mahr (UK), Wojciech Prazmowski (Poland), Lynn Silverman (USA) and Susan Trangmar (UK).
The exhibition "A Tlon's Vindication" explored photography's strong attraction to the fantastic, an attraction that has been fully integrated into the age of the digital image.
Giannis Stathatos drew the title and rationale of the exhibition from Jorge Luis Borges' short story "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" in which the great Argentinian writer invents two intertwined worlds: Ukmar, a mysterious Asian country, somewhere between Kharasan and Armenia, and Tlon, a mythical world whose description constitutes the unique literary occupation of Ukmar writers. Tlon's philosophers and metaphysicians “do not seek for the truth or even for verisimilitude, but rather for the astounding. They judge that metaphysics is a branch of fantastic literature". Tlon's metaphysics, zoology, and landscape are paradoxical. Borges, shocked, speaks of "transparent tigers and towers of blood".
In a 1947 postscript, Borges describes the discovery of an ancient conspiracy which, at the turn of the century, led to the publication of the first volume of Tlon's encyclopedia, which Borges claims is "the most colossal achievement of humanity".
The exhibition ran until June 18, 2001.
