Constantinos Kalisperas architecturalstudio

Ipervasi

Constantinos Kalisperas / Nicos Kouroussis, 2015, Nicosia

A strange foreign body appears to have been stuck on the south side of the Municipal Arts Centre. Quite high up, like another appendage, it seems to protrude vertically from the wall like a huge nest of a mechanical bird. On a closer look we realise that this is an iron trailer with the insignia of the United Nations. It is in fact an old mobile telecommunications station of the UN forces in Cyprus. Passing directly underneath, the viewer sees a sequence of numbers projected on the sidewalk.
Looking up, there is a lit surface, shiny as a mirror, which is the ‘floor’ of the construction, engraved with the sequence of numbers projected on the sidewalk. The artists Nikos Kouroussis and Constantinos Kalisperas have carved on this surface all the resolutions of the Security Council of the United Nations on Cyprus. In direct dialogue with the Stairs of Innocent of Pravdoliub Ivanov, the work deals with the concepts of security, monitoring, communication and protection. As it is attached to the wall of the Municipal Art Centre’s library, this huge construction, incapable of action, transforms into a contemporary monument of “collapsed endeavours”.