“Essi o telephteos lepros” ("You the last leper.")

Inaugurated Sunday in the art Spinalonga-exposure intervention Costas Tsoklis (right at the second picture below), “Essi o telephteos lepros” ("You the last leper.")- View of Spinalonga with the characteristic spot of the intervention, at the first picture below.

Welcoming Prefect of Crete Stavros Arnaoutakis (speaking man at the picture below) said-among the others: "With great excitement and expectation, I am with you today at the historic archaeological site of Spinalonga. Fort, who was in the last 500 years, "theater" material facts inherent in the great adventure of the island of Crete, this unique site, surrounding us around, from the top of Oxas in Elounda, till the hard rocks above the t’ agnanti plate and the sea of ​​the lines of Sitia mountains - sometimes faint and sometimes brilliant as now, to define the look in their "own" our East.

The island of Spinalonga, preferentially located on the sea side a water-beauty-epic landscape, undoubtedly strategic advantages at times hard and direct contact with the surface was the dominant representatives of the Serene Republic of Venice in the 16th century, the crucial point chose to work with wonderful commemoration of the unique fortification architecture.

From the time of delivery of the Ottomans in 1715 and until 1898, has experienced successive phases of abandonment and acne, going to host the 19th century the settlement of up to 1100 people. But in the later history of the years of the twentieth century, from 1903 to 1957, was a leper colony, that place patients and exclusion tragic late residence pain and suffering of hundreds of fellow citizens who condemned the tragic fate of having the "sacred disease" of the season, Hansen's disease.

During the 20th century, a period filled with wars and totalitarianism, even while the Nazi death machine plague they set to extermination camps in all occupied countries transforming cities everywhere peaceful landscapes of hell, here in this small fortified island, those traverser the gate, they had no way back. (...).

In this silent memory of this place, to Spinalonga, an important archaeological site and already nominated the Region of Crete for the list of world cultural heritage of UNESCO, came today to inaugurate a great work of art, an art installation, an interactive spatial gesture that composition and treatment were the result of intellectual inspiration, body fatigues and diverse expression of Costas Tsokli, a great Greek and international artists and zealot declared the Word in all its manifestations.

The feeling of Costas Tsokli, vision as a composer today is not the answer to the political and social issues of our time. The artist does not convey messages, positions and makes no predictions. He is the man who tries to talk to goodhood to offer us communion in the area of ​​magic and the elevation of the human condition. His work attempts to install even with the ephemeral deeply personal, intellectual and sometimes 'automatic' art of writing, the mood and empathic understanding of another attempt. Here is this worth all that illuminates the human creativity, all that can motivate us, to form fields dynamically load and emotional feeling, to produce "meaningful places". The art of Tsokli, wants to build links with the truth, to oppose obvious to oblivion and the realization that brings the time and managed to link us to the hidden but substantial "face value" of our universe, which praise the existence and can to everyday moral epanathemelionei our universe. (...)

Try to hear the whispers of the wind while straddling the Aforesmenos’ lighthouse dusting and feed them with dry stone walls in her bosom, Elounda. Here in Crete, in the womb of the earth Zeus, who gave birth to the gods and El Greco and Cornaro, look so to find the signs and traces that moved early look and the later years in the inspirations of the great Cretan Renaissance. And he walked the streets that crossed over the years, Venizelos and Kazantzakis, overlooking the peaks that rebels hid in the possession of freedom, going to towns and villages that summer sang in musical Manos Hadjidakis and Theodorakis, below the Cretan possible light who greeted fondly eternal deposits excavated by Plato and Sakellarakis. On the island of Spinalonga, which Venetians fortified great builders and engineers, who hosted the fear in later years of the Ottoman and end with tears notisan abundant and dignity-that more silence and respect of our match-always the residents of a state of pain, alive by crossing their own Acherousia.

Dear friends, we invite everyone to join and browse the Spinalonga with your visual approach, reading and understanding the historical archaeological site with special care for 17 years has restore the Byzantine Antiquities 13th and the contraction of the arts Costas Tsokli work. Having always believed that there is no single-mode intake and evaluation for an artistic event like this will evolve in front of us until October. Unique vehicle is the artist's free will to serve it and his vision is for us to become socially and partners to that of the deposit. (...)