In the exhibition Model Collapse, Maria Mavropoulou explores parallels between the human brain and artificial intelligence in terms of their decay process. The gradual loss of memories, as it manifests in cases of dementia or Alzheimer’s, is compared to the phenomenon of model collapse in artificial intelligence, where models are fed back with the data they’ve produced, leading to errors.
Following research on patients in the early stages of dementia, the artist documents personal stories and objects associated with their memories while conversing with artificial intelligence applications to comment on the distance between an individual’s contradictory subjectivity and the supposed objectivity of AI models’ data.
The exhibition is enriched by the dialectical relationship between the works and the archaeological findings showcased at the Archaeological Museum of Eretria, a par excellence repository of collective memory.
The work invites audiences to reflect on the significance of human memory and the role of technology in shaping our collective and individual identities.
The choreographic work Hounds of Madness focuses on the Chorus from Euripides’ Bacchae, highlighting its autonomous artistic entity. At the same time, it brings to the forefront the group of Theban women who have become autonomous in the mountains of Cithaeron, choosing the Bacchic cult as an act of opposition to patriarchal society, and reads it as the first historically surviving fictional record of self-determination of the female body. Hounds of Madness makes visible a group of femininities with sensory and motor disabilities, a group of women, that is, who remain invisible in modern Greece and are rarely given the space to exist both in society and on stage.
A multimedia work that bridges the historical trace with contemporary readings on the role of women as subjects of resistance and emancipation of the self-determination of their bodies, through a transcendent dance composed of a mixed group of performers, in a post-Bacchic universe.
*The performance will be accessible to individuals with visual and mobility disabilities. A tactile tour will be offered prior to the start of the performance for blind individuals and those with visual impairments.
Renowned musician and artist Konstantinos Bhta presents his new visual art exhibition and musical performance, curated by Kika Kyriakakou, the artistic director of Polygreen Culture and Art Initiative (PCAI), at “Pi”, Pikionis’ landmark pavilion in Delphi.
This new visual venture by Konstantinos Bhta in collaboration with PCAI engages in direct dialogue with the critical past of Pikionis’ architectural monument, the historical significance of the Delphi area, and the broader natural landscape and environment. The programme’s title is inspired by the first poetry anthology of postwar poet Nikos-Alexis Aslanoglou, Dyskolos Thanatos [Difficult Death, 1954].
The current exhibition by Konstantinos Bhta and PCAI, along with the live music performance accompanying it, inspired by poet Andreas Embiricos’ quote “Today as tomorrow and as yesterday,” converses with Nikos-Alexis Aslanoglou’s work and his artistic relationship with the past, memory, and the present.
An experiential event for children, with elements of dramatised documentary and narrative performance and with original music, revolving around the games in the neighbourhoods of Asia Minor, which “tell” in their own way the everyday life of the communities prior to the 1922 Catastrophe. Games that seem forgotten, played without ever being told, left to perish along with the hope for the return to the motherland.
The thread of collective memory unfolds through a story that travels in time, through playing with children games that were passed down by those who saw pain in refugee yards, along with the smile of a carefree childhood.
Stories of integration and rebirth in a new land as well as ways used to express resourcefulness, the grace and imagination of a people, will be presented with the help of contemporary audiovisual means and restored old toys.
Seventeen refugee settlements were integrated into Northern Evia. Four out of these transformed into separate refugee villages that took their names from respective regions of Asia Minor: Neos Pirgos, Neo Mousarli, Nea Egin, Nea Sinasos.
Refugees from Prokopi of Cappadocia, Makri and Livisi, Marmara, the region of Smyrna, Ardassa in Pontus, Michaniona in the area of Kyzikos in Propontis, and Yosgati in the far reaches of Asia Minor, settled in Northern Evia, bringing along their traditions and know-how, and breathing new life into the place.
A performance combining the screening of stories of present-day descendants of refugees and archival photographs with the live presentation of original compositions based on the rhythms and melodies of Asia Minor, attempts to capture the contribution of refugees to the shaping of this place’s new identity, taking the audience on a journey across a past yet recent space-time continuum.
What a sweet summer evening… Everything you need for a soirée, a reception, a garden party at least. This is how paradise must be like, don’t you agree? A place of recreation perhaps. A heavenly city. And then nothing.
At the Eretria Museum refreshment room, four visitors drink soft drinks, eat chips, and through the museum’s audio tour of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, they become connected to history, memory, the meaning of the city, cosmopolitanism, extermination and destruction. As time goes by, the questions from the loudspeaker, the songs and the dances alternate with the historical information, the meaning of Hellenism, History, the mythical cities, the conditions that changed the world, the literary narratives and the image of Smyrna.
Finally, what should one remember from the world memory? And what should one erase?