Meant to be experienced at night, Its luminous saying must be left a conjecture is a mixed-media intervention by Eleni Panouklia, that occupies select spaces of the complex of abandoned manufacturing units known today as Palaio Elaiourgeio (Old Oil Mill) of Eleusis, converting industrial ruins into an evocative earthy soundscape of dark paths and inaccessible sanctuaries—an allegorical “whole” sunk in darkness.

Beginning and ending in the backyard of the derelict factory, it consists of two cyclically communicating outdoor and indoor environments that entail separate—both collective and private—explorations to complete the work and activate the dialogue of light and dark that underpins its enigma. Its luminous saying must be left a conjecture immerses the viewer in a contrapuntally structured experience of darkness by combining a disorderly, pulsating landscape of powerful sonorous enclosure with a lonely ritual itinerary through the silent passageway of a long building, where an interactive lighting event awaits each viewer. Together, the two environments seek to affectively advance both timely critical and timeless existential realizations through distinct bodily and reflective enlightenments, or, better yet, “un-concealments” of the wholeness of being in darkness.

The work is dialectically shaped in response to the ruinous morphology of Palaio Elaiourgeio and the polysemy of Eleusis. As a rather hopeful artistic contemplation on the hidden harmony of the world, it also responds to the nightmarish darkness and disorder that underpin life in Greece since the recent crisis, while also expanding Panouklia’s interdisciplinary artistic preoccupations in light of Heraclitus’ understanding of the unity of opposites and his dialectic approach to the hidden truths of cosmic logos. With the support of NEON.