THE ALLURE OF THE VENEER193importantly, it is the assemblage the objects form to engage the viewer in a
series of considerations involving human/animal relations as sociocultural
markers of historical scenarios.
Graham Harman has proposed to focus on the productivity at stake
in considering objects as interconnected entities that gain significance
from their references to one another.^3 To Harman, mutual interrelation
does not exhaust the reality of each object. But one factor impossible to
ignore in Agrimiká is the heterogeneity of the objects configured as a
point of crisis. In Agrimiká, taxidermy skins propose a speculative chal-
lenge. They speak of an impossibility Harman would not agree with—the
impossibility to reduce objects beyond their materialities, to get to their
individual or shared truth, but also to successfully silence their historical/
cultural significance—one that is intrinsic to their material surfaces, con-
stitutes an elusive aura, and defines these assemblages as art objects rather
than simply everyday ones.
Objects have a tendenc y to w it hd raw to consciousness, Ha rma n cla i ms,
yet they also have a tendency to withdraw from one another. The inanimate
FIGURE 6.1 Maria Papadimitriou, Agrimiká, 2015. Courtesy T.A.M.A. (Temporary
Autonomous Museum for All) and the artist.