Lying upon a Rock
A documentary about Lazaretto, the desert islet near the city of Corfu that functioned for centuries as a quarantine station as well as a place of execution for political prisoners during the Greek Civil War. The identity of the place is approached through fragmentary testimonies and original sources.
Spyros Kavvadias, Dimitris Gkrintzos, Andreas Vouliakis, Margarita Chalakatevaki
Related Works
This artwork consists of multiple videos of scrolls down found in well-known social media, which were taken by smart phone and are displayed in a horizontal layout and continuous flow. On a second reading and as the viewer moves away from the individual information, he or she realizes that the Greek flag is formed in the video. The artwork seeks to ask questions about the ever-increasing use and abuse of social media in Greek everyday life. Being sometimes means of communication and information and sometimes tools of manipulation, social media make people concern and strongly influence society in its entirety, while the posts of their multiple users are now an integral part of our modern (digital) public space.
"Construction" is the documentation of the process of a rehearsal performed by contemporary dance and acrobatics company "Ki omWs kineitai" during the preparation of the group to participate in a theatrical play. It took place during the second lockdown in Athens in a climate of general uncertainty regarding the planning and performing of live performances. In "Construction" the return of the bodies to rehearsal conditions, the need for communication and reconnection and the memory of sharing with the spectators that still gives hope are recorded in a spontaneous and fragmentary way.
The quarantine's experience time has functioned as a humanized time. Its previous social barbarity was imprisoned in the familiar cage of my soul and became my creation time. Each day was my friend, an eternal circular and dynamic present, a consciousness without conflicts. It was like an eternity that is experienced differently every moment. An unprecedented form of stillness gripped me and perpetuated in many abstract fragments which finally formed the new texture of my existence, in this peculiar isolation. I became from the carcass of time I was before, its qualitative disintegration… Reality was distorted and experienced illusively. The time from the alienation that was before, was transformed and became the cover for the scratched truth of myself. This kind of time my conscience had dreamed to live.
One week in ten minutes is a video in which the recording of unboxing, the act of opening the boxes, confronts the viewer with the repeated search in empty boxes that contain absolutely nothing. Each box is the promise of a gift which is to come, promising a gift whose dispatchment is always deferred.
This is the first video of my audiovisual installation entitled "Riot Strike Riot". The audiovisual installation entitled "Riot Strike Riot" is based on the political repression and social disorders of recent years with a focus on Greece, but also with influences from abroad. The installation has presented from a subjective point of view, the socio-political image of today through audiovisual digital media, interactive systems, and objects.
The project composes a series of random artifacts relating to art and design history, used either ας decorative or utilitarian artifacts, turning them into a non-definitive object [bouquet] floating in space.
