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Event Category: Visual Arts / Performance

Giorgis Zarkos: Three Stones, One Display Window, and an Imprisonment

Giorgis Zarkos, a writer from the inter-war period generation, submits one of his short stories for publication in the Great Hellenic Encyclopedia in the late 1920s. The story is indeed published, but under someone else’s name. After trying in vain to rectify this injustice at his own expense, he ends up breaking the shop window of the publishing house “Pyrsos” three times.

This action, along with his unconventional character, leads to him being placed under “watch” at the Public Psychiatric Hospital of Athens (Dafni), under DA’s orders. His experience of being confined in Dafni for 54 days, as recorded by he himself in his books, sheds light on the bleak conditions of psychiatric institutions and their inmates.

The performance Giorgis Zarkos: Three Stones, a Shop Window, and a Confinement, which will be presented at the Castle of Patras, explores the writer’s personality and oeuvre, as well as his conflict with the literary, cultural, judicial, and psychiatric establishments of his era. 

*Contains graphic descriptions

Otherlands

ATOPOS cvc presents Otherlands a site specific exhibition at the archaeological space of
Heraion, Perachora, in the framework of the program of 2024 of the Ministry of Culture
“All of Greece, One Culture”. Otherlands serve as a space of critical encounter with
the Other; sculptures by Petros Moris and sonic fiction by Jeph Vanger and Savina Yannatou
intertwine, in a resonance of everything that exists and has existed in the land, human and
non-human bodies, archaeological remains and geological materials.

Exploring lost stories and connections of pre-archaic history and mythology while maintaining a
direct connection to the subterranean, Otherlands is an interrogation of otherness in deep
time, as a structural component of conflict at both the social and intercultural levels. Deep time
is kept by the drift of the tectonic plates and fossil traces of stone-eating animals in the
limestone columns of the archaeological space. Within deep time we are able to reimagine
historical and contemporary conflicts as we give in to slower processes of making and
unmaking.

The River / Voicing Water

The exhibition explores the concept of conflict through water’s transformative power. Highlighting the dynamics of its unifying function, it connects two cities, Thessaloniki and Rome, while inviting visitors to an experience that includes all senses.

The River, a grand-scale mosaic by Christina Nakou, is presented within a soundscape. The installation draws inspiration from the Roman mosaic floors in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki. Through this traditional art form, it attempts to demonstrate handcrafting as an experience of lived-out time, sound as the vibrant imprint of the process, as well as the importance of touch in our connection with the natural world and other people.

The exhibition opens with two performances by Anna Pangalou, titled Voicing Water, which explore the mythology of water, giving voice to the present moment. The mythological narratives about fountains are connected to hydraulic technology, its role in creating musical instruments, and the natural flow of water. 

+THLIPSIS

The exhibition +THLIPSIS explores the concept of inner conflict, as it is manifested in a wide array of contrasts, such as the “principle of pleasure” versus the “principle of reality”, theory versus action, faith versus the instinct governing the human body, the causality of the natural environment versus the inclination to discover and be curious,  discipline versus negation, as well as the natural versus the metaphysical.

Eight artists interact with the conceptually, emotionally, religiously, and socially charged site of the Convent of Ursulines. It is a complex developed in the 19th century, a pioneering project for Greek standards, which served as a social, intellectual, and educational centre in Tinos for decades. Its desolation sparks the challenge to restore it both locally and nationally, not only to reveal its local history, but also to highlight its visceral connection to the major cultural hubs of the time and, by extension, to the European cultural scene. 

A Software’s Biography

A Software’s Biography is the new multimedia project of visual artist Giorgos Drivas. It includes the projection of his new video work, which was produced using Artificial Intelligence programmes and will be presented with a live music accompaniment, especially composed with the help of similar AI programmes. It features and visualizes an individual’s effort to regain his lost memory, and by extension, to remember the life he has suddenly forgotten. It revolves around an audiovisual conversation with an intelligent software, which is used to retrieve digital audiovisual data from the past and reactivate the memory of a person searching for his lost identity.

Constellations Exploding Anew

When George Seferis visits Cappadocia in 1950, some three decades after he himself left as an immigrant from Vourla in Smyrna, his birthplace, he is impressed by the fragments of previous civilizations he found there. He visits the frescoes he finds in the cavernous churches, sensing the fragility of a place that has been a refuge for many cultures in times of war and persecution, recording his observations in the form of a diary. Instead of focusing on the clash of cultures and hostilities, he seeks answers in the figures of the frescoes and in the figure of the popular craftsman who captures ‘with clumsiness, but also with all the coolness of spontaneous gesture’ an authenticity that may have been lost in religious iconography through its gradual standardisation. The collective, and in his case personal, trauma creatively gives way to the observation of a source of human strength that points to the common root of existence outside of ethnic divisions.
How can the creativity found in these forms of spontaneous and symbolic production be translated into the present? Are folk art production and its echoes a vocabulary capable of incorporating historical and social resonances? Could folk art correspond to a sense of identity rooted in the primordial and the universal, as opposed to national identity?
The group exhibition Re-exploding Constellations traces the interactions and divergences between two cultures meeting within an existing geographic context, while extending beyond it through the narratives of the materials themselves and the connections proposed by the participating artists. Through six installation-artworks, the artists present their own interpretations drawing on the study of styles, traditional art forms, material and immaterial rituals, historical and anecdotal narratives.
Parallel activities
Folktale workshop for children by Filia Dendrinou (4/7 at 11.00)
Guided tour of the exhibition with the curator and artists (4/7 at 18.00)
Narration of folktale by Filia Dendrinou (4/7 at 19.30)