Didn't Mean to Keep You Waiting

'Didn't Mean to Keep You Waiting' is an attempt to unearth the remaining fragments of an ordinary man's story from the early 20th century and restore the paradox of communication that takes place through a suicide note.

'Didn't Mean to Keep You Waiting' (working title) is set between Athens and Folegandros from 2020 to the present day and follows the traces of a suicide case of the early 20th century. The educator of Folegandros, after being hospitalized for a month in the Municipal Hospital of Athens suffering from tuberculosis and not wanting to transmit the disease to his family, commits suicide on May 5, 1901, in the central hotel 'Byron'. He leaves behind two suicide notes, one open and one sealed. “Didn't mean to keep you waiting” ventures into a heterochronic visual approach to a man's last response to the world, one that takes place through delivering a message that inevitably remains unanswered, as its author has now passed away.

The motivation for the creation of the project was my involvement with the suicide note of Stylianos Balmetakis, which emerged from the research of the Academia Romantica -an experimental learning and interdisciplinary structure based on primary research attempting to penetrate and transcend traditional fields of artistic discourse- gathering 200 letters of suicides from 1821 to 2021. By collecting evidence from the letter published in the press, I attempt to unearth the remaining fragments of an ordinary man's story and restore the paradox of communication that takes place through a suicide note. In this way, I want to respond to a gesture that has been left in silence.

I encountered this story early during the COVID-19 pandemic at a time of great uncertainty. We were all experiencing deep isolation and detachment from the social fabric, while also facing an intensified sense of individual responsibility for the potential transmission of the disease to those around us. The personal experience of isolation and the responsibility I felt, as did many others, to protect those around us brought new questions to the surface and allowed me to relate the teacher’s story to this contemporary context. The illness itself, the sense of exclusion and grief, and the weight of responsibility—both for ourselves and for others—create a connection between two eras, giving Balmetakis’ story a haunting resonance. The project reveals the timeless human condition of what we do when faced with the unknown.

On an island where no one can recall the educator’s story nowadays, my research turns to the few archives documenting his presence on the island, using them as benchmarks to unfold a metaphorical narrative that delves into the complexity of human existence, the moment when life becomes unpleasant, and its prolongation renders it futile. I use the photographic medium to find a language to talk about an immersive act that often renders us awkwardly silent when we encounter it, and to create a space of free reflection around it. How can we stand in the face of the absurd and create an experience of the world open to both its beauty and its brutality?

Stylianos Balmetakis' tuberculosis and his suicide represent wider moral crises and internal conflicts. Rather than attempting to reconstruct the events, I embraced high abstraction and fiction as ways to personally deal with absence and missing parts. Through traces, symbols and staged scenes around the main character of the story, I explore the social dimensions of illness and representations of shocks of the body and matter. The work confronts mortality, referring to the specific act of suicide as a means of communicating with others rather than an end in itself. The visits to Folegandros are not only field research on the place and the traces of Stylianos Balmetakis, but also a systematic attempt to connect with its residents - especially with elderly people - who may be descendants of those who knew the educator. I use the aesthetics of evidence—such as archival documents and artifacts—serving me as anchors, providing authenticity and a sense of historical context to the lived experiences that inspire this work. The surreal elements and staged imagery allow me to transcend the limitations of linear storytelling, crafting scenes that are both rooted in reality and rich in metaphor.

'Didn’t Mean to Keep You Waiting' is my imaginative interpretation of Balmetakis’ mental condition and the emotional space he may have inhabited while deciding to end his life, leaving his students and family in a state of ‘waiting’. This phrase, for me, encapsulates his emotional weight, not explicitly expressed in his suicide letter, but mostly felt through the silence and the aftermath he leaves behind.