The poetics of a built event; or the built event as a poetic "eidos"

The built event is a set of conceived events that constitute a work. At the same time, these events constitute an intellectual platform for the production of material works (meta-works, texts and constructions). Their sequence may conform to narrative as well as to objective time, or to both, according to their compilation. The objective temporal compilation of the conceived events could be called an event-driven historical procedure (periodization, diary); the corresponding narrative procedure built Event X. X constitutes the variable of the function f(x), which constitutes the identity of the object of project X. The conceived events intervene in the function and, as a result, cast doubt upon the identity of the object of project X. This procedure includes the possibility of a poetic (construction), where the local and specific can be transformed into the general and universal as a contemporary work.
The events concern, or rather could take place in one, or two, or even more <> or <> locations, as might occur among them during the performative paths related to object X. The project seeks to implement multiple temporary interpretations of the presence of X from the empty [ø] set of interpretations of its absence.
BUILT EVENT X is organized as follows:
1. The performative text is composed, describing the whole of the micro- or mega-events or performative paths that will constitute the project BUILT EVENT X, the specific locations or itineraries, and the specific moments the micro- or mega-events will take place, as well as the performative paths.
2. The text is sent to architects, artists (visual artists), philosophers, anthropologists, people belonging to the film, theater, and music world, as well as to people, in Greece and abroad, whose specializations are linked to subject X, who will be invited to participate in the process of creating BUILT EVENT X.
3. Construction begins from the moment the performative text is sent and remains permanently open, regardless of the fact that the submission of participant works constitutes a <>.
4. A large screw-bound notebook (usually 50x70 cm in dimension) is created, which will open and close to receive the material participants provide for the events or the initiatory paths. During its construction period, the project will have its own open website, presented as a file where participants may constantly and freely enter material. This website will also provide information on all events. The project BUILT EVENT X creates an open access procedure to object X, which produces the works. The works are produced as possibilities and probabilities, as well as responses to the difficulties in approaching the object. They consist of texts, proposals and constructions, material or <>, of every kind of art, which unfold inside a project, open during its construction period and incomplete the moment it is finished.
5. The process of compiling the events and initiatory paths from participants at specific locations and itineraries in an extended time period with, however, a fixed duration, may contain an analogical <> as regards a theatrical activity (without being that precisely).
One such general functional compilation [(f(x) = y] of the project could constitute a eidos (form) of <> for every X (x1,x2,…,xn) named in general: BUILT EVENT I, II, III, …n.
[ The compilation of the text took into consideration, among others, the works of: A. Badiou (L' être et l' événement), P. Ricoeur (The rule of metaphor), J. Derrida (Signature, Event, Context), Deleuze (The Fold), E. Grosz (Chaos,Territory, Art: Deleuze and the framing of Earth), M. Perloff (Radical Artifice). ]

The Built Event in the project: ISLAND_ BUILT EVENT I
In the post-digital age, one can perceive a sort of resistance and lack in the semantic and material function of location. On the one hand, the physical location as the recipient of events (speech and construction) continues to resist its elimination by the immaterial website. On the other hand, the website bestows universal scope to local incidents, despite the fact that it is often characterized by the lack of an apodictic reduction of local events (speech and construction) to events with a general power.
The selection of an uninhabited location, an island, as the most extreme version of obscurity, prohibition, and forgetfulness, encompasses the expectation that it would lead to an experimental treatment of this resistance and lack. Such a treatment might take place by suspending the identity of the location, as well as by searching for the generalization of this suspension, based on the intentional formulation of chance <>.
Therefore, on the borderline of momentary memory and the oblivion of the mythological, historical, and recent events on the island of Youra (Cyclops’ cave, the destruction of the monastery, ecological protection and wild goat hunting, immigrants shipwrecked in December 2001), there develops a platform of “poetic” creation with the project: BUILT EVENT, first approach: the suspension of identity.
It is on this platform that the project BUILT EVENT takes place. It is a live construct of events and initiatory paths. It has a beginning and an end that flank a live, non-representational procedure, which, nevertheless, is distinguished by an imitative character, in line with the Aristotelian concept, i.e., a poetic mimesis of the eidos (form) of events rather than their representational images.
This procedure begins at the very moment the e-mail with the construction text of the project ISLAND BUILT EVENT 1 goes out, while the text itself is simultaneously posted in the Architecture Department of the University of Thessaly.
The initiatory process has various parallel levels—there could be more or less—of consecutive live events. These themselves have a parallel chronological succession, yet their structural interiors are linked creating the narrative plot of the project: ISLAND BUILT EVENT 1.
The first level of events takes place every Tuesday in the Architecture Department of the University of Thessaly, where specialists are invited to present thematic units on occurrences the mnemonic space of the island already contains ( shipwrecked migrants, shipwrecks in general, marine parks, political exiles).
The second consists of a presentation, every Tuesday, of speeches and constructions by students taking part in the project, which also incorporates instruction.
The third level of events takes place, approximately every fifteen days (on Wednesday afternoons) and consists of Theoretical explorations: Art—orality—technologies—communications, philosophical thought on the concept of the island, architecture—cinema—travel.
The fourth level contains initiatory voyages (performative paths) to the islands of Trikeri (where women were exiled during the Greek Civil War) and Youra:
First voyage to Youra (A. Antonas, F. Oraiopoulos) via passenger ship and chartered boat,
first voyage (performative path) to Trikeri Island (T. Sakellaropoulos, A. Antonas, F. Oraiopoulos, University of Thessaly architecture students), via coach and chartered boat,
second voyage (performative path) to Youra (A. Antonas, F. Oreopoulos, University of Thessaly architecture students), via passenger ship and two boats,
third voyage (performative path) with guests (Greek and foreign employing multiple approaches—philosophy, science, architecture, art), students from various Schools (Patras, Athens, Volos) on the chartered vessel ODYSSEΥ.
The third trip to Youra includes speeches and discussions, an exchange of views, and constructions.
One last journey (performative path) may take place to present, as a type of gift to the Island, constructions and activities.
The construction of events may continue randomly and unexpectedly up to the last voyage marking the approximate end of the project.
Every event consists of a set of micro-events, with a structural, unstable, incomplete and initiatory character, as a sort of platform, or possible requirements-conditions, whose goal is to set in motion intentional formulations of new speeches and constructions after a direct and live contact with the location itself, whenever possible.
The structure of the above events appears to have an analogical relationship (similarities and differences) to the structure of theatrical activities. The built event lacks the enactive narrative of the text and roles, since each individual presents his personal action and viewpoint at the moment he realizes it for one single time only.
If all these events are created by the presence of specific individuals aiming to formulate speeches and constructions for the suspended identity of the island—something that aspires to approach a type of ontology of the specific location—one must add here the speeches and constructions of all those who did not experience the location directly, as well as the absent speeches and constructions of all those who were invited and were unable to respond, as well as those of all potential absentees during the construction of the suspended identity of Youra Island. However, the latter will never occur, and thus the identity of Youra Island will be permanently suspended. Nevertheless, the project ISLAND _ BUILT EVENT of Youra is contributing to an alteration of its suspended identity. The question is in what direction and to what hidden depths? One possible answer would be to describe—as much as possible—its plot, down to the slightest common trace that may link the internal structure of the events that constructed this type of project with speeches and constructions. In a project of this eidos (form), the production of speeches and constructions, and their organization, in the form of an exhibition and a book, cannot but constitute a type of residue, which will remain from the actual initiatory production procedures of the events.

[ Filippos Oraiopoulos ]