INTRON
an installation
by ATHANASSIA KYRIAKAKOS and
DIMITRIS ROTSIOS
at the 50th Venice
Biennale 2003
Vernissage: June 12, 13
and 14, 2003
On View: June 15-November 2, 2003
Commissioner: Marina Fokidis
Produced by: The Department
of Visual Arts of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture
Intron, an installation
developed by artist Athanassia Kyriakakos and architect Dimitris Rotsios,
will be the project for the Greek Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale, which
is on view June 15 through November 2, 2003. The Commissioner of this year's
Pavilion is Marina Fokidis, an independent curator and critic based in Athens,
Greece. Kyriakakos and Rotsios' installation will be related to and focus
on the general theme for this year's Biennale, Dreams and Conflicts.
Intron
will transform the Greek Pavilion into a site-specific installation, measuring
120 square meters. Within the unique structure, visitors will experience a
set of audio-visual recorded confessions and various descriptions of dreams,
which have been taken from a diverse pool of geographic and ethnic backgrounds.
These confessions are to be projected from within an architecture structure
that will echo the form of a digital topography.
The artists will
present two conflicting yet parallel explorations of how dreams can function
and be revealed in real time. The aim of this approach is to provide a spectrum
of meanings where one can find an infinite number of similarities. Kyriakakos'
contribution is one of tradition and nostalgia. She allows the viewer to relate
to specific personalities and viewpoints of contemporary society and culture.
Rotsios will explore the physical aspect of a dream through digital and mechanical
technology, providing the vehicle necessary to view the audio-visual component.
He will be creating a virtual public space devoid of familiar features but
with futuristic connotations.
In many ways,
the environment that is being created by the artists will be a place for Biennale
visitors to reflect, rest, and/or meditate. In effect, it will be an escape
from all that is going on outside, in the Giardini, Venice and beyond.
What is the
space where a dream takes place?
by
Marina Fokides, Commissioner
A 'scattered
material' consisting of vague notions and disjointed meanings that succeeds
to substantiate the 'real' experience of repressed wishes or the virtual realisation
of deeper visions…
A journey in
the future and the past at the same time, full of memories, everyday stress,
talks, events and reverie…
An international
Biennale liberated from any short of cultural stereotypes orchestrated to
serve the web of the market…
In an age when
contemporary culture is influenced by digital networks and a mechanical approach,
this space turn out to be increasingly discernible. The wavering traits of
a dream seem to have become, in addition to material for predictions, psychoanalysis
or magic, a 'truly existing place' where the disjunctive 'or' of a certainty
can be replaced with the conjunctive 'and'. Just as the space where telecommunication
takes place, and through it our passions, conflicts, relationships and confrontations,
dreams seem to be unfolding in a field of social interaction where everything
is redefined with a minimum degree of inertia. And if 'virtuality' is described
among other things as 'a way of exploring new forms of truth,' the space of
dreams may well represent a similar process.
The general title
of the 50th Biennale of Venice inspired the choice for the Greek participation.
A choice that seems symptomatic, at one sense, as it does not attempt in any
way to sum up the contemporary art scene in Greece, but rather not accidental,
as it seems to follow a parallel quest to this year's field of investigations.
Two relatively young artists, Athanasia Kyriakakos and Dimitris Rotsios, search
to move out of the conventional context, to cross the boundaries within which
we live or believe we live, as they try to mould the 'space of dreams'. A
set of ideas, each of them already had, is combined and activated in the Greek
pavilion within a work which coincides with an almost etymological interpretation
of two words in the title: 'dreams' and 'conflicts'.
From the viewpoint of the basic need for communication, which epitomizes the
largest part of Athanasia Kyriakakos ' work, a 'dream' is a route.
It is a 'symbolic' journey to the past and also a physical travelling from
country to country, from one person to another, in search of a personal path
through the discourse of memories. The process of collecting dreams is activated
every time she changes place, evolving slowly and assuming various guises
within her oeuvre. She approaches people in the hope that they will take part
in a long discussion which began around a kitchen table one morning many years
back, when she was six years old. Passers-by become active participants as
their confessions invade her conscience and are formed as a dream of her own,
a new work of art.
Dimitris Rotsios,
on the contrary, seeks the bipolar relation between memory and experience
by seating in front of his computer. Through his overall work, which refers
to an unspecific area between real and virtual, he studies the ability of
the 'machine' to generate meaning when it brings opposing relations into contact.
Focusing on spatial expression, he starts by 'freezing' a moving system, a
set of free forms which, contrary to Cartesian logic, has no predetermined
constants. His spaces, like those of dreams, convey diverse and often conflicting
possibilities. However, being totally free of everyday references, they follow
a path of correlation with the dream, which is different of what we usually
experience, proclaiming Rotsios as the architect of a world for millions of
stories, imminent as well as already existing.
A compilation
of familiar situations -whose meaning has been distorted in the most violent
way since what triggered them is now forgotten, as Freud describes dreams-
is presented in a space which, although totally impersonal at first sight,
contains the 'experience' of contemporary universe. The viewers wander in
an environment, which provides a set of emotional and kinaesthetic potentialities,
and determine their own way in which they will experience it. The aim is for
nostalgia to go hand-in-hand with high-tech, the tangible with the intangible,
the unconscious with the consciousness of current change, the past with the
future, where everyone can perceive their position in the present and add
his or her personal dimension to the conflict between what is still here but
on the way out and what is about to come.
Assuming that
'identity' is not a comprehensive concept which could be translated into a
specific set of conceptual and visual characteristics, this year's Greek participation
is not an export of domestic products for consumption; such a proposition
would not reflect contemporary Greece, anyway. Through their joint work, Athanasia
Kyriakakos and Dimitris Rotsios describe what usually eludes the 'mapping
of the world' as attempted by major international shows in one way or another.
Using the metaphor of the 'dream', they 'curve the virtual' in order to create
a topography which manages to emphasise changeability, desire, timelessness,
conditions that appear to be removed from reality, by fully incorporating
them.
An accessible 'oneiric' sculpture that one 'has' to experience with particular
physical proximity.
Athens,
Greece, 24th March, 2003--
Marina
Fokidis- commissioner of the Greek participation at the 50th Venice
Biennale- is an independent curator and critic based in Athens, Greece. She
is a founding member and the co-director of Oxymoron, a non-profit organization
founded in 2000, dedicated to the promotion of contemporary visual art in
Greece and on an international level. During its short history, Oxymoron has
emerged as both a haven for and a springboard from which artistic and intellectual
discourse develops into art productions for the public realm. Since 1997,
after completing her postgraduate studies in Curating at Goldsmiths College
- University of London, Fokidis has curated several group shows of international
and local contemporary artists both in Greece and abroad. She was also one
of the curators for the first Tirana Biennale and is a frequent contributor
to the art section of major newspapers in Greece and Flash Art International.
Since this year, she is a member of the Association International des Critiques
d' Art.
The Greek
Pavilion representation has been made possible through the generous support
of the Department of Visual Arts of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture.
Media
Contact: Alexandros J. Stanas
T. +30 210 3217730 , F. +30 210 3317799, M. +30 6936697000
Email: info@oxymoron-art.com
6 Evmorfopoulou St.
10553 ATHENS, Greece
