Graphic Stories Cyprus: Writing, the origins of Civilisation, 2017
Showcased in Cyprus, Nicosia
Few of the achievements of human wisdom can be compared to the creation of writing. This wisdom, which separated him from the rest of the living beings on the planet, began to transform its environment creating civilization, in its modern sense, around 5000 BC. when the first real writing was invented. By the term writing we mean the activity in which the content of a linguistic expression is encoded in such a way that another reader can rebuild, with a relative degree of accuracy, the precise phrase that has been written. While, from this point of view in the earlier, first scriptures the non-encoding of grammatical words made it very difficult or even impossible to reconstruct the exact meaning sought by the author, the great leap in the evolution of writing was achieved around the 8th century BC. by the ancient Greeks, who based on the Phoenician writing of the time, created the first real alphabet. Symbols, ideograms and images have given their place to the letters. Thought and speech converted to writing and the abstract gained substance. The sounds, the phonemes, the consonants, and the vowels of speech were codified, acquired form and imprinted by every means as a bequest for the next generations. The theme of the contest, "Writing, the origins of Civilisation", and the corresponding exhibition are actions that aim at highlighting and promoting the importance of writing in relation to culture, literature and arts, both locally and globally, as well as the importance in the evolution and future development of humankind. The creatives participating in the contest are invited to visualize their thoughts and ideas in relation to the contribution of writing in the creation of each and any civilisation and the role it has played in its development."
"Writing has become the “journal” of every growing and developing community. In a larger spectrum, has become the universe’s language in history; whether it be documenting, reciting or storing our world’s information. My concept of “Writing, the origins of Civilisation”, is to understand that with tools, using the most notably known writing tool, the pencil, has become the epitome of how we share our community’s cultures. I have included a pencil, with the center dissected and carved to reveal the inside anatomy; which ironically are many different civilizations of the past. The civilizations included inside the pencil play as a sort of story where in these everyday writing tools, whether we are aware of it or not include a whole history of our past groups and communities."
