LIFE ARCHIVES
ALEX IOANNOU Age: 39 years old , 09 / October / 1979 Sex: Male Nationality: Cypriot / Russian Place of Residence: Cyprus
ABOUT ME T H U R S DAY 2 01 9 / 1 5 : 1 1 P M / M AY
So Alex, tell me a bit about yourself.
I was born in Moscow, Russia. My father, a Cypriot, met my Russian mother while they where both studying in East Germany, and then they moved to Moscow so my dad could finish his studies as a film director. We all moved to Cyprus when I was one year old.
What do you do for a living?
I work as a film maker. I mostly shoot short films, DJ after movies, commercials and music videos.
And what about any hobbies?
I love travelling. I love exploring new places. Every time I go to a new country my alarm usually is set earlier than any day in my normal life, just so I can uncover every corner of the place I am in. I specifically love exploring and taking pictures of abandoned places. It has now become an ‘official’ hobby, through which i meet interesting new people with the same passion from all over the world. I also love movies and music, they are a vital part of my everyday life.
AM
11:23
|
OCT. 29
1986
THE FISHING TRIPS WE D NE S DAY 1 9 8 6 / 1 1 : 2 3 A M / J U LY
How about a childhood memory of yours?
One of my most pleasant childhood memories is going fishing with my Russian grandfather. Since I was living in Cyprus, every summer my parents would sent me for two months in Moscow to spend time with my grandparents. They used to live in Fryazino, a small city just outside of Moscow, surrounded by forests and lakes. So it was an expedition we often took with my grandfather. We would collect the fishing rods and head on to the first stop, his ‘secret place’ which was in a public garden, if I remember correctly, where he would dig up with his hands a marked location where he kept the bait: worms in a can. I don’t remember how or why it was there specifically, but it was always a very interesting part of this experience for me. Then we would continue walking through forests and landscapes to reach the desired location and choose which lake and which corner of it we would spend the rest of the day. We had short folding chairs, thermos with tea, water and snack supplies. My grandfather also had his daily newspaper with him, that was always delivered to him in the mail. And we would sit for hours, talking, making jokes and just waiting for the popping cork to sink. A sign that a fish has taken a bite of our worm. I remember the view always being sunny and the fields full of green Russian summer. If we managed to catch a fish, it would be a small one, there were not any really big fish in these lakes. I would unhook it and put it in a plastic bag filled with water. We would carry the fish back home, proudly show it to my grandmother, and then put it in a bigger bowl, my new pet.
“AIRPL ANE!” M O NDAY 1 9 8 9 / 1 1 : 2 3 A M / N OVE MB E R
Tell me about a pleasant or unpleasant experience you had.
My bad experience felt really terrible during the time it occurred. Many years later, I had the chance to realize what really scared me, and it’s quite funny. Let me explain. I believe I was around 10 years old. I spent the night at my grandmother, like I often did when my parents were away on a trip or a night out. I remember being sick with fever or the flu. It was winter and there was an old school heat stove in the living room. I was next to it blowing my nose when a film started on TV. It was on a plane, and terrible things where happening. There was a mass food poisoning, the co-pilot’s body was becoming bigger and bigger to the point where his characteristics where stretching and disfiguring. A real horror movie. My imagination always ran wild as a kid, and such films were making me really scared, like another one where giant ants where invading the world. I was always thinking they were going to come out from every room in real life. So back to the plane movie, at one point I got so scared that I decided to go to bed, I didn’t want to look at this anymore! And I crawled in the sheets, got completely under them, but I couldn’t get this feeling off me. I was terrified. Even the next morning I still felt some of it’s after effects. Years later, I came across the same movie. I was now well in my teens or even older. And then the new shock hit: the movie was no other than ‘Airplane!’ a spoof comedy. The food poisoning was quite a gag in the movie, and the co-pilot that was growing bigger was… an inflated doll. To this day, I cannot understand what made me see this movie in such an opposite way. Was it a combination of fever and childish misinterpretation? I lost sleep over a spoof comedy that I translated into the scariest of movies.
THE H AT
Do you have an item that means much to you? A memorablia let’s say?
An item that means a lot to me is my Russian grandfather’s army hat. He was a lieutenant general for the Soviet Army. I always remember him as a tall, firm, authority figure, and the pictures of him in uniform truly show that. He is the closest I have been to an actual hero. A man who put his small contribution in helping preserve the life and world we inhabit by fighting off the nazis in the second world war. He was telling me stories of how they were fighting in cruel conditions in the Russian winter. He told me details of how his soldiers were not even allowed to urinate outside because of the low temperatures they were enduring. How it felt like a blessing when they were able to sleep inside the occasional barracks that came across them, where the temperature was ‘warmer’, only -25! He was a man who was loyal to his country. He was loyal to the ideas of Communism, but never to the party. He loathed how politicians used noble ideas to corrupt and take advantage of people. But his heart and whole life was revolved around the army. Even after he retired, he continued following closely everything related to it. When I served the army in Cyprus, he came to visit, and asked me a million questions about it. He was very proud to take a picture with me in my soldier outfit. He was truly the kind of man that we don’t really get anymore. When he passed away they gave him a civil funeral, which I thought was very wrong. He deserved a military one, he wanted a military one. Sometimes I open the closet and put on his hat, and just try to get an idea of what it meant to wear such a heavy, powerful item.
CHERNOBYL T H U R S DAY 2 01 8 / 1 1 : 2 3 A M / M A R C H Do have any experiences that changed you?
An experience that changed me, and one of the most unique experiences in my life, was visiting Chernobyl. I was always fascinated by abandoned places, and I was always fascinated by the story of Chernobyl. Both because it was such an important moment in recent history, and also because it hits rather close to home. I knew it was going to be a unique experience beforehand, but I was mostly ignorant about it. All I knew was that a nuclear accident happened, and now the city of Pripyat and the surrounding area is deserted and contaminated. I knew I was going to take a lot of amazing pictures of abandonment and see with my own eyes things like the ferris wheel that I have been seeing only in pictures for so many years. What I wasn’t prepared for was both a deeper learning about the tragedy that happened, and a connection with my childhood. I didn’t knew that after the initial accident so many thousands of people fought an invisible enemy, radiation, trying to avoid a second explosion, one that could wipe out half of Europe. With all the old and new information, my two day stay there was a bag of so many mixed emotions. Fear of both still a place that has pockets of radiation and fear of the historical weight the place carries. Sadness about all the lives lost during the accident, many many years after the accident due to radiation, and of all the lives that got ruined and exiled from there. And at the same time joy and excitement to be in such a unique location, a place of 50,000 inhabitants, now a ghost city and silent as a grave. But my biggest revelation there was on a personal level. The city of Pripyat, is a city trapped in time, where life stopped in 1986. Walking those streets was not only like walking in the past, not only walking in the past of a country that doesn’t exist anymore. The structure of the city was modeled exactly as the structure of Fryazino, the city of my grandparents. The way the buildings are numbered, where the postman leaves the letters, how the telephone centers worked, how the supermarkets where arranged, how the trees were planted along the side of the roads. Everything was the same and so familiar to me. But everything deserted, over grown by nature, with holes where windows where supposed to be. So it was like walking into a nightmare version of my own personal past. It was this visit in Chernobyl that made me truly realise that I have been on this earth for quite a LONG time. Up until then it was way back in my head this information of the ‘mileage’ of my life. Now it is very much in the forefront. I think subconsciously a lot of my decisions in life and how I handle situations the last year have their roots deep in the radioactive soil of Chernobyl.
A SUDDEN OPER ATION T U E S DAY 1 9 91 / 1 8 : 21 P M / F E B R UA RY
Do you have any scars that remind you of something that happened in your life?
A physical scar that I have that has some sort of interesting story, is my appendix scar. I was 12 years old when one morning the pain started and it was so unbearable that I couldn’t even go to school. My father took me directly to our doctor, who was also a friend of the family, and that same afternoon I found myself been taken with a wheel chair straight to the operation table. The anaesthetic kicked in and a few hours later I woke up… before they finished stitching me. Disoriented I said I wanted to pee, and the surgeon was rushing to finish the stitches while the nurse was trying to find the catheter. They managed to bring it to me just in time, but the first drop of pee landed on my still fresh uncovered wound, right at the end of the stitches, and a little circle was created. So my appendix scar for the next years looked like a thermometer: a straight line with a circle at the bottom. And all this because it seems anesthetics don’t last very long on me.
THE RITUAL
Are there any bad decisions you don’t regret?
I guess there are a lot of things that anyone would change from their own past, but since we don’t have a time machine, getting into a meaningful conversation of the matter is kind of pointless and sometimes brings unwanted melancholy. On a lighter note though, what I would do differently, would be to start collecting vinyl records from as an earliest age as possible! Music is always a part of my life that I can’t live without, and I especially like the ‘ritual’ of listening to vinyl. A lot of people debate whether the analog sound is better than the digital one, but that is very subjective to the preferences of each individual. But what you cannot do with digital, or even with a CD, is the process: you hold in your hands the physical copy of a piece of art. It’s big, the pictures are bigger, the artwork is more detailed. There is a leaflet with the lyrics, or a booklet, that just the sheer size makes it so much better, so much
more yours. And then it’s the process of getting the record out, placing it on the turntable, putting the needle on. You sit back on the couch and absorb the music while you explore the details of the cover. And there is more interaction. You have to get up, turn the record’s side and so on. Also sometimes when you buy a second hand record, you can find a hand written note on it, or a date of when it was being gifted to a previous owner. There is sometimes an interesting story behind a particular record. And even when you shop for records, it’s the process of digging up crates of new or used ones, I can get lost for hours in a shop. Even when I travel abroad, I just have to buy at least one record from each place, which propels a search for record stores and the less commercial ones, are usually such nice unique places. Makes each visit feel again, like a new story.
I GUESS THERE ARE A LOT OF THINGS THAT ANYONE WOULD CHANGE FROM THEIR OWN PAST, BUT SINCE WE DON’T HAVE A TIME MACHINE, GETTING INTO A MEANINGFUL CONVERSATION OF THE MATTER IS KIND OF POINTLESS AND BRINGS UNWANTED MELANCHOLY.