artists burning to express:
Costas Beveratos
Katerina Christidi
Dionysis Christofilogiannis
Dimitris Dokatzis
Sophie Hjerl
Maria Ikonomopoulou
Eleni Kotsoni
Peter Lind
Maro Michalakakos
Eva Mitala
Petros Moris
Kosmas Nikolaou
Yiorgos Taxiarchopoulos
Philippos Theodorides
Giannis Theodoropoulos
Katerina Christidi
Dionysis Christofilogiannis
Dimitris Dokatzis
Sophie Hjerl
Maria Ikonomopoulou
Eleni Kotsoni
Peter Lind
Maro Michalakakos
Eva Mitala
Petros Moris
Kosmas Nikolaou
Yiorgos Taxiarchopoulos
Philippos Theodorides
Giannis Theodoropoulos
text by Yannis Constantinidis:
Costas Beveratos created a work consisted of three parts: the first part expresses his personal opinion and position regarding the game Thierry Geoffroy has modulated. The second part refers to the artist’s relationship with the projects’s participating artists. Kostas is seeking a common point of collaboration. The third part of his work is about the audience’s involvement: Kostas suggests an emergency form that the visitors have to compile in order for them to become part of his work. The artist realizes that this third part is contradictious and dangerous enough as there is the possibility the whole process to become bureaucratic. However, the aim of his work is to point out that the basic thing in projects as the ER is to reveal a common point of viewing things instead of just acting. For him, this is more powerful than any other stimuli that could motivate the artists to participate.
Katerina Christidi collected the two photos of her work while she was riffling yesterday’s newspaper. Although these two photographs were scattered all over the newspaper she was surprised by their resemblance. In the first photo, the prime minister, accompanied by local politicians, inspects on the burned area. In the second photo the leader of the opposite party does exactly the same accompanied again by the same escort. As this is not a coincidence, Christidi is impressed by the fact that the politicians identify themselves with the same campaign proposed by their image makers. Although this dramatic situation, they keep on implementing their pre-election program. It seems that their presence there was totally fake. It seems that they would prefer not to be present at all. The artist believes that the political leaders should suggest a restitution agenda instead of showing themselves off. Thus she decided to burn their faces, cut them of from the photos and put the one close to the other.
Dionisis Christofilogiannis’ diptych painting depicts a microphone connected to a dog’s mouth. The dog bites the cable in order to cut it off and to disconnect it from the microphone. The work refers to the current pre – election campaigns that are transmitted both by the television and loudspeakers, installed in central city spots. The artist expresses his anger and fatigue about all this continuant and flat pre- election bubble.
and a sensation of rage as a result of the continuant contact with the pre election fight.
Dimitris Dokatzis, uses images from the city’s everyday reality. Pictures that he himself took wondering around the city: two pre-election campaign posters and a scene from a central take away café. In these specific pictures, Dokatzis, quotes military commandments as comments. These comments are widely used in the news and in videogames and introduce doses of sarcasm and irony for current political scene. Moreover the artist presented a video to comment on the way the viewers are ruled from the empowered media. His purpose was also to draw a parallel line between terrorism and media predictions of impeding threats.
Sophie Hjerl’s work entitled “Hostages” refers to the recent incident of South Korean citizens captured as hostages. According to the artist the multitude of messages one receives thorough information channels is confusing because it contains too many contradictions˙while falsely appearing as an in depth analysis. Spectators end up by feeling like hostages themselves hold by the media. Her work is a computer print made from different layers of images focusing on representing the state of confusion and emprisonment of a spectators mind and feelings that lead him to apathy.
Maria Ikonomopoulou’s work is based on a newspaper article about a girl in Peloponnesus whose mother burned alive. The girl stated in the article that since her mother lost, she started to write down in her diary the names of all the people that she lost. The above information helped the artist to visualize the victims of this catastrophe as real persons with actual names and specific lives. She succeeded, in other words, to impersonate the ambiguous idea of “victim”. Ikonomopoulou believes that these victims have to attain a name in order to exist. Otherwise, they will be forgotten and apathy will take the place of mourning. She cut off the victims’ manes in small pieces of paper to personalize and re-approach the tragic event.
Eleni Kotsoni constructed a kind of “spontaneous” wall newspaper, where she stuck 4 letters that she also sent to archaeological services in various areas of Peloponnese that were destroyed from the fires. In these letters she recommends to offer voluntary work. She chose archaeological services because she considers them friendlier state services “it’s as if they are found outside the realm of the state machine” she declared. The basic idea of this particular work is to exchange the working time she would invest in the making of a work for Emergency Room, with a more valuable voluntary offering of work. In other words, she refers to the significant swap from the artistic involvement to the practical involvement (her voluntary offer) in an emergency case.
PeterLind is an artist from Denmark that has participated in all Emergency Rooms around the world. His work is made of two pictures he has taken the previous day, in a standard commercial flight from Copenhagen to Athens. They show a view of the aircraft’s cabin where he was traveling in. He added subtitles on these pictures that say: “yesterday me and a few others burned 50.000 l. of fuel”. His work speaks for itself, as it refers to a continuous emergency situation, where official data detects 20% of the CO2 emissions are due to the fuel consumption of airplanes
Maro Michalakou produced a work associated to Russian reporters who when they become obnoxious to the Russian government and to its secret services, they get imprisoned for an approximate two year period in “gulag” in Siberia, and are obliged to take psychotropic medication. If after their release from the “gulag”, they continue to publish irritating articles, a death sentence is issued against them. Maro’s concern is the inhumane abusive practice of death sentencing to innocent people and the subject of “death” itself. Therefore, she focuses on the phrase stated in the article: “the older KGB agents impose these means that reigned throughout the soviet period: propaganda, censorship and repression”. This article was published in the event of the murder of reporter Anna Politovskayia.
Eva Mitala’s painting refers to a term that recently has been frequently reappearing and popularized in the Greek media: “asymmetrical threats”. The term has been “introduced” by the minister of public order. Mitala’s work shows the very same minister affronting a fox represented in vivid vermilion color (the fox looking like it’s in flames or is a flame). Irony and sarcasm are targeting the government’s effort to imply that wildfires in the Peloponnese area had been a well staged act of terrorism.
Petros Moris expresses with his work the measures taken by the government, inasmuch with the dealing of the damage from the fires in Peloponnese as with the programming of the country’s future defense system in relation to such dangers. His work is a digital print that represents a fantastic defense “hyper-system”. The exaggeration in the design of the system functions as an ironic allegory. This allegory aims to show that all the governmental defense programs that where announced give birth to the danger of undermining secure rights.
Kosmas Nikolaou made an optical puzzle from ads and legends that have appeared in newspapers the previous day. His work shows the artist’s humorous outlook and refers to the flush of images and shower of information taken in by the reader from the press. It also refers on how all this abundance and intertwining in the projected information blur the importance and the meaning of the daily news. Therefore apathy becomes a repentless choice for the reader of the newspaper.
Giorgos Taxiarhopoulos was not in Greece, and showed his work through his representative. The idea arose when he was traveling from Athens to Japan, with a stopover in Heathrow airport. The title of the work is “Heathrow or Seethrough, International measure for dignity”. It refers to the fact that in international airports, the value of the dignity of an individual goes up in smoke when one goes through the cold and faceless, strict control check. Similarly, the plane disappears from the digital print (it has been removed with a blade), since it has lost its purpose as a means of transportation and has been in effect transformed into a storage space of information concerning people. Nevertheless, this information remains at the disposal of the state and can be used often times in a non-legitimate way.
Giannis Theodoropoulos made a work which represents how various news get mixed up and give different confusing meanings. He steers his attention at the fires still taking place in mount Parnon and considers it as an example of news that should provoke much fury to activate and coil up the people. Nonetheless, the headline finally loses its significance, because of confusion and diffusion which generally exist in news reports, ensuing apathy from the people.
Philippos Theodoridis’s work is evoked from an article about neo-liberalism, and how this economical system blocks the way in which mega natural catastrophes are dealt with along with other huge crisis. The article focuses on how governments are found before a turning-point that are made to support and give the upper hand to the state institutions rather than private investors. For instance, in a reverse course than the one observed up until now. His intention is to refer to the recent fires of Peloponnese and to pinpoint that the rescue of forests and of the populace could have been efficient if the government had previously reinforced the state machine rather than enhancing liberal politics.
Erufilli Veneri considered a study about cesarean operations that was published in yesterday’s paper. According to the study, more than 50% of pregnant women in Greece give birth with cesarean, whereas the respective average of the E.U. fluctuates to 15%. The article aims to view the issue of the corruption of gynecologists who almost oblige Greek women to give birth with cesarean, so as to collect an extra monetary profit to their wage since the procedure entails a fee. Her work (2 digital prints) is impregnated by anger, since she considers it outrageous that someone could make a fortune by means of another’s health. Her work functions in consulting women on being more careful and informed about these issues. The work is acerbic to those mainly responsible with this issue: doctors.
artists' interview video:
atmospheric video:
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