A selection from the 6th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, "Imagined Homes"
06 November 2017
13:00
Walter Solon
Ethics of Survival / HD-Video, single-channel installation, color, sound, 29'59', 2017
Courtesy: The Artist/Academy of Media Arts Cologne
I shot Ethics of Survival while visiting my family in Brazil. The whole shoot didn't take more than two days, my last two, before returning to Germany. The film is a concise portrait of my brother, Rudi. Other members of my family also appear in different "roles", in documentary or staged scenes. My "returning home" to Brazil is juxtaposed with two adversary concepts of homeland: the Germany that our ancestors had to leave in 1938, fleeing the Holocaust, and where I live now; and Israel, the Jewish national land where my brother wants to settle.
13:00
Ascan Breuer
Riding My Tiger – Trilogi Jawa III / Film, 41' 20'', 2014
The filmmaker on a candid journey to Central Java: he searches for the spirit of a tiger said to have haunted his mother's birth house. A number of stories have grown around it in course of time. Thus it recalls the history of the family's migration through time and space, as well as global political and economic conflicts past and present. By using the old art of Javanese shadow puppetry, Wayang Kulit, this film creates a new genre of documentary: a "magical documentary".
07 November 2017
13:00
Stefanos Tsivopoulos
Glow in the dark / 2 K, 16:9 video, color, stereo, 45΄35˝, 2016
Rakeem is a 25-year-old African-American man born in Georgia and raised in Alaska. He grew up in group and foster homes before moving to Portland at the age of 21 to pursue an acting career. He works several jobs to survive, but his main creative output is to perform as a drag queen at parties and clubs. The film investigates the ways in which race, sexual orientation, income inequality, and social mobility play a major role in defining and expressing oneself beyond stereotypes and categorizations.
13:00
Andri Tsiouti, Michalis Charalambous, Giorgos Stylianou, Stefanos Papadas
Anamones / video / documentary, 27΄05˝, 2016
This work was inspired by half-completed constructions, in particular the sometimes-rusty iron bars protruding from rooftops awaiting future development. In Greek, those bars are known as anamones, which can be loosely translated as waitings. Most of these bars will never serve the purpose they were intended. As we notice their existence in the urban landscape, the technical term anamones triggers an investigation into the deeper meanings surrounding the issue of family ties and relationships in a small, peculiar society like Cyprus.
