PERFORMANCE ART - IOANNIS KAROUNIS


Every act has a cause and an effect. With performance, I do not intend to protest; I simply exist, and I reveal this state of my existence.

I do not separate life from creation nor do I separate art from life.

Balance cannot be a form of protest, it is a situation which, once achieved, you simply exist in it. An attempt to achieve balance is an exercise aiming to understand the forces that formulate our existence and ourselves - we form an integral part of existence.

Man's passage through the urban landscape was necessary. This is what I keep from the city and from life; the usefulness concerning things and situations. I am looking for serenity even in the city, I support it, I claim it. It is a stance in a society that shouts and rushes to consume you and label you. It has always been like this.

 I do not judge people on the basis of their attitudes or behaviors - I try to understand them, accept them, making space for them within me.

I believe in all the efforts that man makes to believe in something, somewhere. However, I do not associate faith with religion; they are dissimilar things. Religion explains everything in the name of God. Faith creates God.

An essential prerequisite for personality development is the comprehension and connection of travelling and making stops. There is no stop-free trip, just as there is no stop without a traveller.

I liken life to a chord that pulsates and is constantly reshaped at any moment without specific angles or bows and sides, a chord that offers us no chance to measure it. This is the field that concerns me primarily, the general reshaping taking place on all levels.

What remains is what is, and what has always been; I just perceive it now. The realisation of the significance and, at the same time, of the insignificance of my existence balances me. Whatever is inside is out there too, equally far and close, right and left, up and down, back and forth.

I bear a responsibility in the act of everyday life, conscious of the whole and of the future. I am a sensor of the universe and my actions are recorded and return to me, not so much in the form of punishment or reward, but more like a trajectory I give to my own significant insignificant life.

IK