A line of poetry, a tune, the sound of a familiar voice are like a scent that instantly crosses the mind and recalls an entire world.
On the volcano island of Nisyros, surrounded by the sea where everything is born, dies and is reborn, already during Antiquity people came from all over the world to soothe and cure their pain in the healing baths.
24 loudspeakers are spread throughout the abandoned building of the thermal bath and play more than 140 Nisyrian voices that whisper, sing or chant two couplets of Nikos Gatsos famous poem I’m burning set to music by the great composer Stavros Xarchakos :
« I’m burning, I’m burning, throw more oil on the fire.
I’m drowning, I’m drowning, throw me into the deep sea. »
These two sentences are broadcast in the spaces along the central corridor, at night respectively bathed in red and in blue light.
This melody, which is very popular in Greece, floats in the air like a bark on the horizon, refusing to disappear. Echoes of fire and sea make up an incessant, paradoxical and yet familiar litany.
Does the notion of Catharsis still retain any meaning?

Jason Karaïndros, March 2017