Lina Theodorou

“16th April 2003 is undoubtedly a historical day, however no one will remember the reason why”

Madmass 03 has been made especially for Channel Zero and consists of two simultaneous projections. On one screen the viewer can see isolated television reportage of the day during which the signing of the the accession of the new EU state members took place, in Athens (April 16th 2003). A strict ritual is enacted around the signing table; the faces of the politicians are not discernible at all times, instead there is emphasis on their fingers, during the moment of signature. The video ends with the customary official group photograph of the political leaders. On the other screen are juxtaposed images of street fighting, rioting, and incidents of public unrest that took place on the streets of Athens on that very same day. Clashes between the crowds and police forces, fire and smoke from teargas create a picture of general disorder and chaos. As the two conflicting episodes unravel in parallel, subtitles drawn from the speech made by Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission on the day of the accession, run through the screens.

The material used in Madmass 03 is drawn exclusively from television news programmes, re-filmed directly from the monitor and digitally processed, so as to resemble old-fashioned reportage, and have a lo-tech aesthetic. The final edited material, in combination with the psychedelic music by Nice, aims at intensifying the sense of confusion concerning the time and space in which the activity in the work takes place, as well simultaneously intimating 60s news reports featuring young idealists demonstrating.
Theodorou’s aim is to pinpoint that such reportage is a kind has become a kind of typology where the ideological orientation of the crowd remains unclear, and the proclamations of politicians meaningless. At the same time, it is a caustic comment on the distance dividing politicians from reality, the disconnect that exists between “official” interpretations of the news and that which takes place in reality. It is also a comment on the fact that such utopian political discourse – as articulated during the day of the treaty of accession – seems like empty rhetoric today. The work also questions the notion of what classifies as “historical” and points to the shortness of collective memory, which is amplified by the media itself and its frenetic consumption of current affairs. This is a “historical” day that no one will necessarily remember a couple of months or weeks later; Mad Mass, in effect, refers to an image of political reality created by the media in its attempt to provide striking, if temporary and consumable, re-presentations of events, thus rendering the political act (and resistance to it) vague and disempowered.

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