Christopher Kardambikis, “Terra Nullius”

 

Christopher Kardambikis
Washington, District of Columbia
https://www.kardambikis.com/terra-nullius-1

Terra Nullius
2020
artist’s book
10 inches x 7.5 inches x .05 inches

Artist Statement

Terra Nullius presents a drive through multiple, specific spaces. The first is the Rust Belt. The place of a small town, worn thin but cut with well-worn grooves by daily rituals. Grooves that carry a flow of memory and people that, in turn, carry a weight.

The second space is speculative. A site in which one can rearrange and examine the component parts to conjure, if however briefly, possibilities.

Rituals are re-enacted beyond the specific locations they were initially bound to. The relationship between Myth and Ritual forms a narrative link between what has happened and what is. We develop myths of spaces and how they are supposed to function. Myth as a story we drape over a place to overwrite a series of prescribed ideas and functions. To program a location and define systems within which people can move.

Terra Nullius attempts to open up speculative spaces within an established architecture and a rusted out story. This is an act of curiosity, questioning how to rewrite places to perform new functions through the introduction of visual language and symbols. An attempt to make space for reinterpreting familiar lines and developing new Myths to carry forward.