Video Art Miden has been invited to present a selection of Greek video art in the frame of the Spanish festival PROYECTOR in Madrid, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year with a rich program, taking place in various venues in Madrid from 7 to 18 of September 2022. Along with Miden, renown international festivals such as the collaborative festival network Loops.Expanded, FONLAD (Portugal) and PLAY (Argentina) participate in this year’s PROYECTOR with their selections.
Video Art Miden will present the video art program “Greece is a state of mind”, curated by Gioula & Olga Papadopoulou. The screening is scheduled for September 17, 2022, 17.30, at Sala Equis (Calle del Duque de Alba, 4, Madrid).
The title of the selection is a direct reference to the Greek official tourism campaign that was released just while exiting the coronavirus first strict lockdown. 7 well-known Greek video artists synthesize through their videos and their personal visions an alternative approach to contemporary issues of identity, culture, self-definition and self-placement in the world.
Participant artists:
Yiorgos Drosos, Anna Vasof, Makis Kyriakopoulos, Gioula Papadopoulou, Leda Patta, Margarita Stavraki, Nikos Giavropoulos
More info about PROYECTOR, as well as updates about this year’s events, can be found on the official website of the organization: https://proyector.info/project/17-09-2022-sala-equis/
Synopsis and artists’ bios:
Yiorgos Drosos, Black Sheep Escape, Greece 2018, 3.20
White and black, opaque and transparent, the internal frame and an obscure external space converse on a journey to the final exit, an escape which is feasible only by the opposite and the different, by collision and friction. The video focuses on what we cannot comprehend, on what is different, on what belongs to a group other than ours. In a region like the Balkans, where multiculturalism is a reality, the idea of being different in all its manifestations – culture, religion, sexual preference or gender – is a fact that cannot be skimmed over, perhaps because these different elements led to constant disputes and conflicts in the region. Therefore, black, which is unlike every other color, takes the form of all the features that are unknown to us, vitiates our own stereotypes as to the meaning of boundary, since its own boundaries lie in a different semantic space.
BIO: Yiorgos Drosos is a New Media Artist, video artist. He specializes in digital video, New Media, image and sound. He has created educational applications and has supported digitally two Museums, the State Museum of Contemporary Art and the Natural History Museum of Axioupoli. The core of his work is the correlation between time and space. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions. He works in the Visual Arts department of Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Greece.
Anna Vasof, Vienna Hit, Austria 2019, 2.07
“Vienna Hit” is part of a wider project by Anna Vasof, entitled “Hitting my Head on the World”. As Anna Vasof explains:
‘I visit several cities and I hit my head on different surfaces. A microphone, which is mounted on my head, records the sound of these head-beats. A camera, located off to the side, records each action. In this way, all is made visible: the action, the sound recording, the surface upon which I hit my head, and the urban ambiance of the location. I make one episode for each city that I visit. The titles consist of the names of the cities and the word "hit". For example, "Vienna-Hit" or "Berlin Hit". For each episode a music piece is composed from the head-beats. The music is also used to structure the video editing. Each episode is around 2 minutes long.
Hitting one´s head upon a wall is a worldwide known gesture. Desperate people who do not know what to do next might hit their heads against walls. This is not always literal. It is more often a metaphor for not knowing how to get around a strong sense of frustration. But if we observe this movement as an instrument, a hopeless action begins to transform into an absurd repetition. In the compositions, my head is played as instrument in multiple contradictory locations and creates an audiovisual urban "landscape" of the world.’
BIO: Anna Vasof is an architect and media artist. Born in 1985, she studied architecture at the University of Thessaly (2010) in Greece and Transmedia Art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna (2014). Since 2004 her videos and short movies have been presented in several festivals, some of them winning distinctions. She’s working on designing and building innovative mechanisms for producing critical and narrative videos, actions and installations. She works and lives in Vienna, Austria.
Makis Kyriakopoulos, What is a man without a shadow, Greece 2020, 3.19
In the video work "what is a man without a shadow", a digital morphogenesis is being used as a method, taking its inspiration from biology, and it is used to describe the process of the evolutionary development of organisms and polymorphic systems. In digital morphogenesis, new forms replace the former ones, through the logic of optimization, via an open system of states of constant interaction. These organized structures are turning radically into disorganized ones, creating general disorder. Images get gradually degraded, revealing entities that change the consistency of space and time, with an average entropy value, enabling new realities to be tested in a virtual space, allowing consecutively the evolution of the beings who strive to mark their existence in sequences that interact, passing from one situation to another, generating the genetic material of the project.
BIO: Makis Kyriakopoulos was born in Patras, Greece in 1975. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he also completed his MA in Digital Arts. He has presented his work in solo shows in Greece and has participated in several group exhibitions and festivals in Greece and abroad, such as: IBRIDA FESTIVAL, Forli, Italy (2019), 6th Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition / Hong-Gah Museum / Taipei, Taiwan (2018), STOCKHOLM FRINGE FESTIVAL | STOFF 2018, Summer Collection-Ospizio Giovani Artisti /Rome / Italy (2018), ART ATHINA 2018, KODRA 2017 (Thessaloniki / Greece), Bideodromo Festival / Bilbao / Spain (2016), and many others.
Gioula Papadopoulou, When I was the moon, Greece 2020, 5.57
A symbol of light and darkness at the same time, interwoven with romance, love, but also with the chthonic deities and magical powers, the moon, bright and seductive, has always attracted special attention from all people around the world. Its movement in the sky is a bright thread that connects us all and immerse us in a global magic.
It has been said since ancient times that witches had the power to influence the movement of the moon and bring it down to earth. In "When I Was the Moon", the moon becomes autonomous, descends to earth and wanders into familiar landscapes in a magical journey, an adventure that repeats itself forever, bouncing softly between the mountain tops and the sea.
The work was produced on the occasion of the art project & exhibition “Catageios”, scheduled to take place at “Pramantha Arte” contemporary art center in Calabria, Italy, in 2020.
BIO: Gioula Papadopoulou is a visual artist and art director/curator of Video Art Miden. She was born in Athens (GR) in 1974. She studied Painting at Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) & Conservation of Works of Art (TEI Athens) and holds an MA in Digital Arts (ASFA). Her artistic practice focuses on video art. As an artist, she has presented her work in many exhibitions, site-specific projects and video art festivals in Greece and internationally.
As a director/curator of Video Art Miden, she has organized/curated numerous screenings, exhibitions & events in Greece and has collaborated with significant festivals, museums and institutions globally, including: MOMus (Metropolitan Organization of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki), Biennale of Thessaloniki (GR), Re-Culture (GR), Now & After/ CCI Fabrika & Moscow Museum of Modern Art (RU), Videoforma/ Sergey Kuryokhin Center for Modern Art (RU), Cairo Video Festival (EG), Madatac (ESP), Espacio Enter/Tenerife Espacio de las Artes (ESP), [.BOX] Project Space & Visualcontainer (IT), Fondazione Puglisi Cosentino (IT), IFFR –International Film Festival Rotterdam (NLD), DAF (CHE), Strangloscope (BR), Torrance Art Museum (USA), Cologne OFF (DE) and many others.
Since 2020 she works as special teaching staff at the New Media Laboratory of the School of Visual & Applied Arts / Faculty of Fine Arts, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (GR).
Leda Patta, the view-er, Greece 2007-2015, 7.43
This is an old footage from a stormy winter afternoon at the small island Anafi where I used to live for a couple of years in the past. I added Melina's voice-over (6 years old) eight years later, using extracts and notes from Robert Elias Najemy's speeches.
BIO: Leda Patta was born in Stuttgard, Germany, in 1972. She studied Painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (where she won a scholarship for academic performance from the Greek State Scholarship’s Foundation) and Social Anthropology at Panteio University of Athens. Got her Master in Digital Arts at the Athens School of Fine Arts, as a scholar for postgraduate studies from the Greek State Scholarship’s Foundation.
Lived and worked in Athens, Anafi, Düsseldorf and Thessaloniki. Her work has been exhibited in several galleries and institutes.
Margarita Stavraki, Vows_Offerings for good health II, Greece 2020, 3.17
Man's need to keep close to him, "alive and in good health", what he loves, leads him to turn to forces beyond the natural. Somehow he sets up temples, shrines, composes hymns and prayers, offers sacrifices, offerings and vows. All of these are nothing more than the "implementation" of his faith, worship, and tendency to transcend the everyday and the natural, which contain decay, restraint, and death.
BIO: Margarita Stavraki completed her first studies at the Athens School of Fine Arts / Greece and at the Academia di Belle Arti di Brera / Italy. She holds a Master's degree in Fine Arts from Central Saint Martins / UK-Netherlands, specializing in New Media from the HGK Zurich / Switzerland. In 2000 she received the scholarship of the Association "Friends of Music" (Athens Concert Hall).
She participates actively on-site specific installations and presents video art works in exhibitions in Greece and abroad. She is a founding member and co-director/curator of Video Art Miden.
Nikos Giavropoulos, "Quarantine Self-portrait" No2, Greece 2020, 3.18
The rhythm, the connection with oneself prior to the internment.
The identification with oneself, during the internment.
The disorganization, dismantlement of the connection with oneself.
BIO: Nikos Giavropoulos is a visual artist, based in Athens. He has presented 15 solo shows and participated in various group exhibitions and festivals in Greece and abroad (Cyprus, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Poland, Turkey, Finland, Spain, Norway, Latvia, Australia, Kosovo, Korea, Senegal, USA, Denmark, Austria, UK, Italy, France, Sweden, India, Peru, Brazil, Holland, Germany, Russia, Bulgaria, China). As a curator, he was in charge for 7 group exhibitions in Athens and Thessaloniki. He has won 2 awards for best video art, one in Greece (Mediaterra festival-Fournos Athens 1999) and one in England (Greek film and video festival London 2013).