Paradise lost. STOP. - Greek Video Art (ENG)

Video Art Miden Paradise Lost. STOP. [60 min] Curated by Gioula Papadopoulou

The screening program “Paradise Lost. STOP.” introduces 8 Greek artists, symbolically exploring the boundaries and the transformations of contemporary realities.

1. Theodoros Zafeiropoulos, King Kong, Norway 2014, 11.10 [Courtesy of Nitra Gallery]

“King Kong” is a video documenting a public action of artist Theodoros Zafeiropoulos in a Norwegian harbor. The work is part of “Quest of Query”, an ongoing, collaborative project initiated in Bergen, Norway in 2013. A bizarre rafter who confronts the laws of a harbor, “sailing” side by side to a giant ship has a clear socio-political symbolism.

Bio: Theororos Zafeiropoulos was born in 1978. He graduated with honors from the School of Fine Arts, Aristoteleian University of Thessaloniki (1998-2003) and from the MFA program of the School of Fine Arts in Athens (2004-2006). He graduated and honored with the Paula Rhodes Memorial Award from the MFA program of the School of Visual Arts, New York-USA as recipient of the Fulbright, Gerondelis and Al.Onassis Foundations scholarships (2007-2009). Participated in Skowhegan School of painting and Sculpture ME, USA (summer 2009). In 2013 he was resident artist in the Flux Factory in NYC and the USF residency program in Bergen, Norway. Currently he is completing his PHD research in the School of Architecture, University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece. He lives and works in Athens and NYC. He has presented his work in various solo & international group exhibitions in Greece, USA and elsewhere.

2. Thodoris Trampas, Amorphous Mass, Greece, 2015, 12.53

Balancing between conscious and unconscious, the absence of “those who never came” and the utopian hope that “they will come”, the video “Amorphous Mass” is a performative expression of existential issues that search to satisfy the primary need; the need “to be”. Thodoris Trampas combines performance art and installation in space. He searches the limits inside and outside the body; while it moves, it generates some pace, which affects its relation to the space, it makes natural sounds, which sometimes interrupt and sometimes connect the constant flow. He also uses items and materials of modern life, together with organic materials, such as soil and water. He changes the properties of the materials to give certain meanings to them, which are related mostly to the concerns of the human condition and, in general, of the today’s society. Through experiential reality, he aims to highlight a human condition as an endless effort to balance within an “area”, which is constantly changing in space and time.

Bio: Thodoris Trampas is a visual artist who has been working with performance art and installation in space. He was born in Devonport, Australia in 1991 and comes from Serres, Greece. He studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts. He has been selected from the ΜΑΙ (Marina Abramović Institute) and NEON (Culture and Development Agency) for Long Duration Performance 2016 in Greece, Benaki Museum. He lives and works in Athens and has participated in various group exhibitions in Greece and abroad.

3. Magenta (Katerina Sotiriou & Elena Timplalexi), Unstill Life – Exquisite Corpse, Greece, 2014, 2.25

“Unstill Life – Exquisite Corpse” explores the relationship between life, beauty, death and revolt. It attempts to reveal life as an artistic phenomenon, death as a continuing process, and question the in-between space between the two. The flower, an emblem of beauty and stillness in Visual Arts worldwide, has been chosen symbolically, to die with grace, like an actor onstage. The gradual death of a beautiful flower produces an ironic result. Its witnessed disintegration resembles theatrical action, but, at the same time, causes connotations about the failure of civilization to foster sustainability and threaten nature as we know it.

Bio: Magenta is an artistic collaboration between two artists, Katerina Sotiriou, visual artist, set and costume designer, and Elena Timplalexi, researcher, director and playwright.

Magenta was born from the need to explore visual arts, performance & media. Reconsidering structures and searching for new forms, flirting with immersion and distance, they seek new, innovative cross-genre hybrid visual and performative codes and concepts which invite the spectator to participate mentally and/or physically in their works.

4. Sofia Simaki, It will be a while yet, Greece 2015, 2.23

The video “It will be a while yet” is based on a studio action in which images of birds and flowers were burned. The sounds of mobiles and mac shutting down accompany the video sequence. The silencing of feelings and our inability to communicate them is the main theme of the original action and the video.

Bio: Sofia Simaki is a painter and sculptor. Since 2011 she has been cooperating with several theatre groups as an artist/set designer. She is a founding member of the art lab IRIDA and since 2015 she has opened her studio organising a series of artist’s dialogues under the title “Ghostwriter”.

5. Eva Zygouri, (Samuel Beckett’s) First love, Greece 2016, 4.15

This video-performance explores the body as a mean of expression and investigates guilt, loss, love, life and death within the personal and social realm. “Love is related both directly with the illusion of the mirror and the death threat”.

Bio: Eva Zygouri was born in Kalamata, Greece in 1980. She studied Graphic Design at AKTO and has a BA degree in Visual Communication and Fine Arts (Painting). She has been working with audio and video - performance. She has collaborated with musicians and was also a member of the group "Ultimatum" which explored the limits of politics & art through experimental sound installation. She lives and works in Athens.

6. Mary Zygouri, Sound of property, Italy 2014, 10.32

“Sound of property” is a video documenting a public performance that took place in 2014 in Cagliari, Sardegna (IT). The Tuvixeddu is the largest Punic necropolis in the Mediterranea and the remains of a cement quarry. An impressive giant Canyon, not accessible to citizens. A new community crosses the Canyon affiliated with the lightness and joy of participation. The "Sound of property" is a political performance, a “ritual” of a cathartic action in order to reactivate the site, creating new memories and producing new perspectives for elaboration in real time.

Bio: Mary Zygouri was born in Athens and lives and works between Greece and Italy. She studied at the School of Fine Arts in Athens and she holds a Master in Fine Arts from the Chelsea College of Art and Design, London. The artist addresses issues related to identity and crisis in contemporary culture. Her public actions and staged performances reflect on systems of power, surveillance, censorship, human rights and relationships between humans and the animal. Her videos serve as poetic accounts of her actions. Mary Zygouri has presented solo exhibitions & performances, mainly in Greece, Italy and Turkey. In 2012 she was awarded by ΑICA (Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art) Hellas.

7. Vicky Vassilopoulou, Scratch, Greece 2016, 10.56

Five dancers – five souls – five entities are stuck in an experiential situation of imprisonment, exploring through recurrent attempts the borders within. We watch them struggling inside familiar shadows, intimate behaviors and dysfunctional choices. The challenge here is one: that of reaching a changing point of their attitude in life, while they break free from the existential vacuum they feel. The time and space is the rehearsal Moment. An abstract & surrealistic narrative through dance, improvisation and experimentation with movement.

Bio: Vicky Vassilopoulou studied Physical Education and Dance, completing the professional ISTD programme. She has also participated in several dance seminars, self-improvisation events and choreographies. Since 2010 she has choreographed three major performances – “Game Over”, “Dance Banoptikon” and “Scratch”. Since 2012 she runs the “Dancevacuum Centre of Performing Arts” where a variety of classes, seminars and performances take place on a weekly basis. Her work mainly focuses on Dance and Self-Improvisation.

8. Panagiotis Voulgaris, Vessels, Greece 2012, 5.07

The video documents a project that follows a floating microscopic building travelling at the rivers and the seas across Europe from the Aegean Sea to Danube River, from Athens to Berlin, Budapest and Vienna. A network of “Vessels” is placed in public spaces, at the banks of the rivers or at the sea and becomes a constellation of travelling places that implements a virtual map, a vast interconnected zone across the continent in a research for a humanistic, social and pedagogical ethos. This journey becomes ontological at this difficult and transitional period we are experiencing, setting questions on what we are today, the way we perceive our cities and their our- future. Are these people inside “Vessels” travelers or intruders? Trapped or nomads?

Immigrants who hope for the future? Are they capable of extending – communicating their spaces?

Is this a manner of inhabiting? Is this a definition of space by the experience of its “dis – spacement”? Is this a transcultural displacement?

Bio: Panagiotis Voulgaris is an Athens based artist with studies at Fine Arts and Architecture. He holds a Master of Arts (Distinction) from the School of Architecture and Visual Arts at the University of East London and also a Bachelor in Fine Arts from Middlesex University. He commenced his studies at the School of Sculpture in Tinos, Greece. He was awarded with the Motorola award for young Artists in 2002. His work, both in the theoretical and practical field, is articulated through an extensive research on Art and Architecture history, seminars and dissertations, alongside with creating large scale installations, interventions and actions at the public space and the landscape.

Photography and video art are also used as mediums to document and exhibit his projects.

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Video Art Miden Miden* is an independent organization for the exploration and promotion of video art. Founded by an independent group of Greek artists in 2005, it has been one of the earliest specialized video-art festivals in Greece and builded an international festival identity, presenting an annual video art festival for a decade. Since 2015, Miden continues its work changing its form to a more flexible and broadened event programming, setting as basic aims to stimulate the creation of original video art, to help spread it and develop relevant research.

Through collaborations and exchanges with major international festivals and organizations, it has been recognized as one of the most successful and interesting video art platforms internationally and as an important cultural exchange point for Greek and international video art. It also provides an alternative meeting point for emerging and established artists and a communication hub between artists, organizations, festivals and art spaces around the world.

Miden screening programs have traveled in many cities of Greece and all over the world, and they are hosted by significant festivals, museums and institutions globally. (*Miden means “zero� in Greek) Info: www.festivalmiden.gr www.facebook.com/festivalmiden e-mail: festivalmiden[at]gmail.com