This piece is trying to capture the feeling of returning to a place you have left. The way memories resurface and mingle with the often changed reality. The feeling of liminality, as if your body itself half-belongs in a dream, while you try to grasp the facts of your surroundings. This piece is about Athens and my struggle to embrace change while holding on to the warmth of the past. 

Leeszaal in Rotterdam hosted on Monday 24 March 2025 a very important public moment.

 

Among the works exhibited was the second part of the project "Labels, but not for clothes".

 

What was presented in this installation:

A "game", demonstrating how systemic exclusion supports labeling, based on the actual directives of the latest US administration. [external application] 

A video piece with main source material TV ads from the 80's and 90's setting impossible standards that support stereotypes through repetition. The video presented (below) was silent and included footage of myself mimicking the repetitive gestures in these advertisements.

There is also a slower version of this video, that wasn't part of this exhibition but has its own charm and is a bit different, as it has sound but no footage of a person mirroring the moves and expressions they witness in the ads.

The bureaucratic, dark setting of the installation emphasized the bleak dystopia where decisions that reinforce systemic biases through repetition and exclusion, with or without words, are made.

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The umbrella project "Labels, but not for clothes" approaches the topic of labeling and stereotyping from different angles and calls for participation and has developed as a triptych.

 

The project had its first public moment in November, in the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, NL.

 

The purpose of this first part: To show the impact of exposure to biases and labels at an early age. In what ways do words shape us?

 

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The second part, presented in LeesZaal West in Rotterdam explored through a video piece and a web 'game' how stereotyping is systemically reinforced through repetition and exclusion.


The third and last part, identitours, a site-specific transmedia installation in Buitenplaats Brienenoord, was also my graduation project, and the one that took the discussion further, to what happens after being exposed to biases and stereotypes and in the creation of identity. It is tightly connected to the thesis Shifting Identities where the conversation unravels in some depth.  

As part of a bigger, collective project and following the subjective map of Rotterdam this project was adapted to fit the city of Groningen. Inspired as always by infrastructure, it grew to include Eemshaven and to pose questions regarding the cost of development and of our increasing needs in energy and data. Below is the video produced from footage of Eemshaven and the city of Groningen, juxtaposing liminal and gentrified (or on the verge of gentrification) spaces and the ever-expanding energy and data factories of Eemshaven.

 

An ever-changing mobile population
Our mixed paths
Our lost orientation
Making history that soaks into
An angry earth


A greedy machine is marching
From the end of the world
A new order
A dark mirror.
 
We remain

Stoic like oaks
Entangled
In deep rooted feeling

Or

Anchored like house boats
In half-deserted ports
Rocking with the waft
The ebb and the tide.

 

 

In a playful manner, the project also speaks about and celebrates the mundane but magical corners as met by the curious eyes of a stranger.

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Here are some pictures of the project in its natural environment: SIGN Project Space, commissioned and hosted the work from 26 September to 6 October 2024. The relevant object which compliments the video was created with SIGN's DIY approach in mind. It incorporates elements of temporality, temporariness, orientation as experienced from the viewpoint of the visitor, thoughts on the big issues of the city and 3D-printed GPS logs.

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A subjective, interactive map of the infrastructure of Rotterdam. Each layer of thread represents a different level of infrastructure and each pin is connected to a touch sensor that triggers different media files related to the city and displayed on the screen in the center. One of these files contains the poetic piece "Infrastructure". The piece aims at making the viewer conscious of the networks of infrastructure surrounding her and asks her to consider her position and role in an elaborate design where everything seems to be connected. 

The work, that was completed both as an idea as well as an object with the tireless help of Rosa and Victor, was presented in S/ash Gallery, Rotterdam, from 27 June to 2 July 2024, as part of the collective xpub Special Issue #24.

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This piece is part of a larger collaborative work, an interactive, infrastructure-related installation soon to be presented in the upcoming xpub group exhibition (27-30 June, S/ash Gallery, Rotterdam). I also like it as a stand-alone piece, so this is how I present it here. (Images and details regarding the installation will follow in another post.)

The poem is performative (improvisational reading) and list-based, simulating computerized speech: a form fitting the content. It makes visible the infrastructural networks that mirror nature in the organic way they form and expand. Despite their efficiency and our continuous effort to advance these man-made systems that sustain contemporary living, our dependence on them often leads to feelings of isolation and alienation, instead of fulfillment and unity. 

The imagery is a raw ffmpeg rendering of a busy city scene (Rotterdam), reduced to flickering pixels and shifting fragments. Buildings dissolve into patterns and this digital breakdown blurs and performs the boundary between technological grids and natural growth. 

Ultimately, Infrastructure invites the viewer to reflect on dependence, identity, and interconnectedness, inhabiting the fragile tension between systemic framework and lived experience.

 

Infrastructure Infrastructure Infrastructure

 

roads railways

bridges tunnels

water supply sewers

electrical grids telecommunication

do you communicate?

 

internet connectivity

do you feel connected?

commodities interrelated systems

services essential to enable sustain or

                                     enhance

societal living conditions

 

do you feel enabled? do you feel sustained?

do you feel enhanced?

 

hard infrastructure

physical networks

necessary for the function of a modern

industrial society

roads bridges railways

 

soft infrastructure

education

statistics

parks and recreation

law enforcement emergency services

 

Emergency Emergency Emergency

 

Infrastructure

synonyms

base framework

infrastructure as in foundation

noun strong matches footing groundwork

root support

do you feel supported? who do you support?

do you feel rooted? who do you root for?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ways In and Ways Out

 

"Desperation" was a thought inspired by the COVID-19 times, but it applies to every prolonged instance of trauma, that eventually becomes unconscious, and it takes time, distance and healing to realize its true dimensions.

As a piece, it incorporates elements from the past, such as a mysterious old recording I've been curious about for years and recently retrieved from an old mini-cassette recorder, and a footage of a place very deeply connected to childhood memories. It's more of a poetized thought than an actual poem, and although it's closer to prose I decided to follow the voice rhythm to create the written lines rather than doing it the other way round.

 

 

 

With "Care" I feel that I go back to the roots of my love for art. Music was in the beginning of it all and now it's time to reconnect with it in a manner that feels complete. "Care" was a poem in the making that I had forgotten about for a little while and when I found it again I saw that it was more of a micro-song. It could have taken many forms, and I can definitely hear me screaming the lyrics in a different version, but this is how it crystallized (at least for now). The visuals were also brewing for a while in the background, with ideas revolving around time-lapses and chalkboards.

Care

I don't want you to care for me

care is for the hospice of emotions

I want your voice to burn like love

turn away from the care-ful cold

where feelings go to die.

 

 

Metaphors never cease to amaze me. They are often better and conciser at getting the meaning of the most abstract notions across than a simple description of a situation. As flexible molds, they shape and embody our individual thoughts helping us make sense of our experiences in a collective manner. In this piece different metaphors come together to express a sense of womanhood compiled by different experiential states.

 

 

metaphors

Men
I had three pens lying around.
None of them really worked.

Emptiness
She started counting her ribs. There, in the middle of the forest. When she came back from her walk, she called immediately her doctor: “I need to have an X-ray asap; there’s something wrong with my insides.”

Mother
She was picking the hairs from the floor, one by one, or in tufts, if they were clustered. With a sense of urgency. The same sense of urgency she had when the phone rang. Wired landline. Darting from the kitchen, running down the marble corridor, sometimes deciding within seconds at the kitchen door which phone to run for, the one in the living room (closer) or the one in the bedroom (more private).

Back to hair picking.

She would often go in absurd bowed circles, like a weird alien dancer. She would let you talk and in the middle of a sentence she would fix her eyes on a corner and, already bowing, she would go there straight to pick up the hair.

What does depend upon hair? I often wondered.

Not anymore.

Voltaire
I will not spend another night with you in my life, but we can still text if you like.

 

 

 

You can read more about the poetry issues project here.