Sound of Oblivion
Related Works
Where do memories go when they are lost? Are they still where we left them, if we don’t recall them? In this room, as private and irrevocable as our memory, objects animate a series of scenarios. A memory floods the room, another struggles to disclose itself, another one leaks back and forth in time. The idea of the ‘other’ hovers between what has already passed and what is reminisced every time. We never recollect events and spaces as such. We always enliven recollections in our own way. Through constant evocations that seek to perpetuate the existence of the ‘room’, memories converse with space and time, as well as with a part of ourselves. Either as past, forgetfulness or loss, they always contain something that is already gone.
The fulfillment of a last wish leads Filippo to a retrospection from the mountains of Epirus to the recent past of the year 1945. His meeting with his history revives the memory of a whole village, unfolding the relations and the bonding of two peoples against the commands of an era, which is not as far as we think.
The short documentary focuses on the preparation of the solo performance "EVA", performed by the dancer and performer Evangelia Randou. The project is based on her personal experiences and has been created and staged by her. The film reveals the moments when the dancer works with her body, experiments, creates and improvises. The documentary is a portrait of the dancer herself, but also of the work she creates.
The compositional method is based on the incorporation of sound material of cultural background into an electroacoustic piece. By drawing a linear narration, my aim was to demonstrate a unity, an imaginary community, which characterizes the Romani culture, despite the hybridic, complicated and diverse traditions deriving from the various European and Asian countries its people live in. A central question behind the making of this piece is what kind of role can a civilization have today, when the concept of space is eliminated by time- a key element in the dynamics of capitalism. What are the cultural consequences of the so-called annihilation of time and space, as materialized and tangible dimensions of social life? Are historical tradition and the search for roots promoted and reorganized as simulacra, imitations or/and museum culture, thourgh the demonstration of a partly deceptive past?
The current project is a digital, interactive, audiovisual application that can be used either as a virtual installation accompanied by a simultaneous projection of its content in the physical space or be distributed as an executable digital medium on any computer, compatible with its technical specifications. It examines the flow of information, its creation, collection, storage, interpretation and utilization through perceptual mechanisms that mutate -enhance or degrade- with the available tools of digital reality and its transformation from a sequence of serial, adjacent and referential values to one unified context, what is usually interpreted as meaning or significance. The participants of this reality are called upon to engage at the degree of signification that expresses them better, ranging from a purely perceptual and empirical viewing to a frantic clarification of everything included.
When the observer is standing in front of a work of art and is trying to comprehend it, they are consciously entering a recognition process. This is achieved because the brain recognizes the relationship between some shapes or colors in the piece of art and, automatically, recalls them from memory. This procedure creates the necessary conditions for the creation of new neural synapses. Using these facts?, the artist suggests an audiovisual performance that includes an interference of audio to the visual aspect? in real time.
