Muscat, Oman / Sharjah, UAE / Nicosia, Cyprus / Damascus, Syria / Beirut, Lebanon, Jaffa, Israel / Alexandria, Egypt / Thessaloniki, Greece"Roaming Images" researches the conceptions of the image along with the ideologies and geo-cultural climates that fostered them. Having as a point of reference not a nostalgia for the long-lost high culture, but the actuality of past cultures for contemporary art theory and practice across the globe -particularly in Eastern Mediterranean and the greater Middle East- the project adopts a critical stance toward the present. The research of image within our theoretical framework moves beyond the sterile adherence to the aesthetic creed of a homogenizing modernism and alternative (post)modernisms. Our aim is to investigate the conception of the image in an international setting, and this already requires a critical engagement with the worldly and the world-wide, perhaps on the basis of what has recently been coined 'planetarity' -a prospective and informal “enlightenment” movement- to move away from traditional 'universalisms' and 'globalisms'. We invite artists, scholars, writers to contribute to this goal. Artists and scholars meet in different event-stations for exhibitions, interventions, lectures, roundtables, workshops, guided tours and other consciousness-raising events, inviting the public to meet, interact and exchange ideas.
"Roaming Images" includes: The Roaming Images Exhibition (curated by Iara Boubnova) The Roaming Images Routes (curated by Sotirios Bahtsetzis, includes a series of projects in various cities, along the route linking Muscat (Oman) to Thessaloniki (Greece), in collaboration with local partner institutions, correspondent curators, local artists and scholars) Parallel events: Stereotypes. Photography as a Means of Creating Subverting Stereotypes (curated by Lena Athanasopoulou) Iconic Architectonic. Architecture & Visual culture from the Middle East (conference) IntroductionThe initial idea behind “Roaming Images” was born from a discussion with a group of collaborators and friends during a visit for professional reasons to IMARET. IMARET is a magical place: a Muslim monument located on European territory, recently renovated thanks to the passion of Anna Missirian-Tzouma and her dream to keep the place and its spirit alive – a spirit which materializes the bonds between the Greek and Arab cultures. Walking around IMARET, one can discover several examples proving the exchange of images, to which the project refers.
The proposal that was born from that discussion fitted perfectly to the aims of the “Focus Middle East” program of the MMCA, as well as to the framework that later incorporated it: the “Cultural Crossroads” initiative of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the 3rd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art. Everyone at the MMCA, the President and the Artistic Director, the Artistic Committee, the curators and administrative team supported the project from its very beginning and contributed to its realization in multiple ways, thanks to that admirable team spirit that permeates the Museum’s operation. Our meeting with Sotirios Bahtsetzis, a long time collaborator, who at that time happened to be working on a relevant subject in preparation for a conference, was decisive towards the molding of the project’s theoretical framework and “field work” – that was to become the “Roaming Images Routes”. A bit later, in early 2011, Iara Boubnova was invited to curate the “Roaming Images Exhibition”. Her advice regarding our overall approach and the selection of artists and works to be presented were, as expected, a great addition. Our first trip to the Middle East took place in December 2010, after a meeting with Maryam Al Zadjali, Director of the Omani Fine Arts Society, during a professional visit to Berlin. Together with Sotirios, we had the opportunity to get acquainted with the works of several interesting artists based in Oman; we selected Hassan Meer as the artist who would represent the Omani arts scene in the project. “Roaming Images” was underway. The trips to the Middle East were many; so were the e-mail and Skype conversations with the various curators, artists and institutions from the area, all of whom creatively contributed to the result, bringing in the last piece(s) of the puzzle. The scenarios of what was yet to become materialized often changed or were subverted and redrafted because of practical issues and concerns. Meanwhile, this open, flexible process revealed how significant the whole endeavor was. The exchanges and discussions with everybody who we met along the way, their sincere reactions and approach underlined the fact that greatness is hidden in ordinary, everyday stories. Somewhere along the way, great turbulences occurred in the area. Some collaborations were abruptly terminated, to the disappointment of everybody involved, others were postponed. Meanwhile, the Greek crisis became deeper and deeper. We started discussing if and how we should react, take a stand, while the project unavoidably continued its course, in spite of the unfavorable circumstances and against the odds. We decided to proceed keeping in mind that we had an obligation to be modest and even more substantive. Our approach had spectacular response. While many things were happening in the Middle East, small-scale satellite events were organized in Thessaloniki: in February, curator Tal Ben Zvi gave a talk at the MMCA presenting the Israeli-Palestinian arts scene; in March the scientific workshop “Iconic Architectonic - Architecture and Visual Culture from the Middle East” took place at the Centre for Dissemination of Science and Technology Museum “NOESIS”, with the participation of architects and experts on visual culture from Greece, Spain, Israel, Jordan, Iran and Turkey. In November, the exhibition “Photography as a Means of Creating or Subverting Stereotypes”, organized by the School of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in collaboration with universities from Greece and Israel, will take place at the Thessaloniki Centre of the National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation, curated by Lena Athanasopoulou. So far, “Roaming Images” has “roamed” in Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Oman, Sharjah-United Arab Emirates, Syria and of course Greece. It has collaborated with institutions –ΑΙΝ non-profit association (Damascus), ARTos Foundation (Nicosia), Bidoun Projects, Palestinian Art (Jaffa), Maraya Art Center (Sharjah), Mass Alexandria (Alexandria), Ministry of Education & Culture of Cyprus-Cultural Services, Omani Fine Arts Society (Muscat) and Zico House (Beirut). And of course with artists and curators: Klitsa Antoniou and Gabriel Koureas (Cyprus), Tal Ben Zvi and Hanna Farah-Kufer Bir'im (Palestinian Art, Jaffa, Israel), Rola Khayyat (Beirut, Lebanon), Delphine Leccas (Association IN, Damascus, Syria), Maryam Al Zadjali and Hassan Meer (Oman), Giuseppe Moscatello (Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, UAE), Sarah Rifky and Wael Shawky (Mass-Alexandria, Egypt). For their valuable help, we would like to thank Petros Dymiotis and Louli Michaelidou from the Cultural Services of the Ministry of Education and Culture of Cyprus, Manuela de Leonardis, Giannis Melachrinoudis, Giorgos Kosmidis and his excellent team at Diapason. Our gratitude goes to the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism for the valuable support and especially to Antigone Kotanides for her faith in the project; also to the curators Sotirios Bahtsetzis and Iara Boubnova; and to all the artists, curators and institutions who trusted us and contributed their time, ideas and creative input, as well as to the ones to be added to the list in the future. Lydia Chatziiakovou & Christos Savvidis Directors, ArtBOX.gr Arts Management Directors, MMCA On the Curatorial Premises of Roaming Images
New technologies for visualizing the formerly ‘invisible’ and for creating and conveying images have resulted in a unique deluge of images during the twentieth century. From the graphical user interface of our computers to equipment and instrument displays, to the screen of our smart phones –all these images, which according to media philosopher Vilém Flusser are termed astechno-images– knowledge communication of all kinds is increasingly visual. In design, engineering, science, education, medicine, the humanities and the social sciences, we witness an increasing pervasiveness of the image. Images are seen as a way of speaking and of thinking, not in words but in pictures, figures and other artifacts captured by optical devices and offered to our eyes by various techniques of visualization. “Roaming Images” researches the various concepts of image and visuality, with the latter being the socio-cultural and medial dimensions of seeing, along with the ideologies and geo-cultural climates that fostered them.
Which are the methodological-philosophical premises of such a curatorial investigation? From Vilém Flusser’s pioneering media theory in “Philosophy of Photography”(1983) and “Into the Universe of Technical Images” (1985) to W.J.T. Mitchell’s concept of a “pictorial turn” in “Iconology” (1986) und “Picture Theory” (1994) and, along similar lines, Gottfried Boehm’s term “iconic turn,” a new thinking –a sight seeing– has become visible in contemporary discourse in the humanities and the social sciences. Indeed one of the most inspiring developments of the last few decades is framed by a bend of thinking that proposes the primacy of the visual, observing that far too much attention has been given to cultural research divided along linguistic lines and focused on text-oriented discourse (following Richard Rotry’s “linguistic turn”). Actually this new epistemological paradigm discharges “aesthetics” from the philosophy of art reconstituting the original meaning of the word as formulated by its originator Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. The philosopher described in 1750/58 aesthetics as a “scientia cognitionis sensitivae,” thus founding a general epistemology of the sensible.[1] Moreover questioning the ontological status of images advances to the pivot of the historical self-conception of philosophy.[2] Drawing on Hans Jonas we could say that homo pictor seems to be the most precise description of the species known as homo sapiens.[3] This new paradigm enables us today to think about strategies of visualization, visual culture and visuality throughout history. Visual culture describes those elements of human cultural production that are perceived and interpreted primarily through visual means, while also denoting a multi-disciplinary field of study of those visual products, whether they reside in popular culture, material culture, science, or the arts. Addressing the contemporary and the recent past not only through disciplines traditionally associated with the research of images produced within the arts, such as art history, but also through a variety of epistemologies within the humanities and the social sciences, our philosophical aporias are no longer posed as long-established, epistemological inquiries based on texts but as visual dispositivs. Visual dispositivs are often hybrid constructions that have discursive, iconic and operational parameters, this is to say they are neither semantics nor machines or images, but all of the above.[4] This thesis assumes a new understanding of the image beyond the presence/representation split and the subject/object dichotomy, which both underlay a platonic concept that seems to habitually direct our thinking. The function of images to picture something is not ascribed to the performance of a subject, culture or technical media and operations, but seen in connection with a reality, which precedes images and depends on it, so that it induces its own images by its own means.[5] Images are often thought of as images of something… To understand images as visual dispositivs means to reject such an allegedly self-evident notion of a pre-existing world. Images are not copies or reflections of reality. On the other hand they aren’t simulacra that in Jean Baudrillard’s sense substitute the signs of the real for the real. They constitute prime ways of world-making. Indeed it was always in moments of rupture in the understanding and use of the artificial image, such as the debate on iconicity during the Byzantine iconoclasm (a major political crisis of authority and ideology), the Islamic prohibition of imagery (not an initial aniconism, but rather a skepticism against specific types of images, e.g. hand-made or depicting animate creatures), or the Protestant, notably Calvin’s, moral conflation between the image and the image-maker that major aesthetic, geo-cultural and political shifts happened. Going back to these moments of rupture and emergence is an effort to understand the genealogical roots of our contemporary political and cultural situation. The developing iconicity of the Internet and its impact on contemporary life (from social networks to stocks on Wall Street) might anticipate such a rupture. This kind of research is therefore in its scope global, focusing not on the cultural domain of the West, but on a cross-cultural production of knowledge. Clearly icons, brand images, logos and visual media like television, the Internet and film have become the new global language — a language that everyone with access to popular media speaks. Therefore the notion of image —and the understanding of its various specific cultural backgrounds— becomes the universal vehicle that tells us the story of how we speak, how we think and even envision the future.Visual examination of human culture means in effect to depart from the standpoint of a West-European and North-American hegemony and focus on its blind spots. Most significantly the heritage of Arab civilization plays a crucial role in this kind of investigation on cultural crossroads and its various historical, political and social implications.The historical ground of these crossroads is evident. It is well known that through translations and methodic interpretations of philosophic and scientific works into Arabic, the legacy of knowledge of the antique Greek civilization was studied, developed and passed on to medieval Christian cultures by Arab intellectuals such as Averroes and Maimonides. They prepared the occident for the arrival of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. From the Arab discovery of Algebra —named after the mathematician Al-Khwārizmī—and algorithms, which are essential to the way computers process information, to the foundation of the mathematical theory of vision and modern optical science by Ibn-al-Haytham, also known as Alhazen —to be further developed in the age of Kepler and Descartes— modern technical media of universal communication have their point of departure in geographies other than what we today call the West.[6] But even simple technologies and cultural practices associated with them —such as the fork, toothpaste, sugar, coffeehouses, gardens, carpets, perfumes, fountains and libraries— that have traditionally been associated with European manners are actually cultural imports from what we today think of as the East.[7] In this regard “Roaming Images” analyzes, with a cross-disciplinary approach and through the eyes of contemporary artists, the material registers of the cultural production of significant places of the Arab world, keeping an eye on the way they relate to memory and its politics in our day. Obviously this rubric moves us beyond the sterile adherence to the aesthetic creed of a homogenizing modernism and various postmodernismsoften directed by archaeological or ethnographic interests. The Arab world has often been the place where colonial power has been exercised and fantasies of exoticism have been projected. Post-colonialist thinkers recognize that many of the assumptions, which underlie the “logic” of colonialism are still active forces today, both outside and within the cultures affected by it. Can an artistic elaboration of the concept of visuality contribute to such a discussion? Or to put it differently, can the study of images and their usesunveil the stereotypes, topics and idiolects that direct such a hegemonic understanding of both culture and history? Does the current declaration of a ‘universalism’ actually mask the overt visual and audiovisual —and actually effective and imaginary— imperialism of a dominant status quo and its nonsense spectacularization? What is the connection between visual regimes and political, ideological or religious systems? Is it so, that because belief systems and religions have moved from the secluded private domain into the public sphere of visual communication (from various American Televangelists to TV messages of fundamentalist suicide-bombers), they should be only seen as machines of mass distributed self-repetition?[8] Would that mean that the only thing that will survive such a development within an imminent world of visual- religious- and cultural hybridization would be just the digitally reproduced medium (image), but not the message (religious, cultural or scientific opinion)? Or is it so, that the image, understood as visual dispositive will absorb all our past logophonocentric discourses offering a new and truly universal understanding of human knowledge, belief, and behavior? In “Roaming Images” contemporary artists, scientists and scholars search for and document the traces, the ‘images’ of various cultural genealogies, highlighting them as the cross-cultural links beyond dangerous dichotomies: geographical, political, religious or historicist. In this regard the project seeks to raise historiographical questions about ‘world pictures’ that take the multiple intersections between academic disciplines and cultural practices into account, and use them for enriching our understanding of modern creativity, variation, and change. This epistemological endeavourto investigate the power embedded in images, textures, sounds, and symbols can only be based on the genealogical research of the technological-media a priori of cultures and either its hidden or explicit ideologies. How does this power set to work, and how did it set-to-work historically? How does this power function today? What is the discursive potential of images and which might be the dangers deriving from an uncritical adoption of their power? “Roaming Images” wants to propose a new, perhaps unorthodox movement towards the construction of a truly open public space for autonomous world-citizens as an ideological counterpoise to the ‘universalism’ of contemporary, financial and political, or thoroughly epistemic and cultural globalization. Artists were and still are in the forefront of such an epistemological and political quest. Dr. Sotirios Bahtsetzis art theorist, curator Notes [1] Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Ästhetik (Latin-German), Meiner, Hamburg 2007, Vol. I, p. 10. [2] Emanuel Alloa, Das durchscheinende Bild. Konturen einer mediallen Phänomenologie, Diaphanes, Zurich, 2010, p. 29. [3] Hans Jonas, “The Nobility of Sight: A Study in the Phenomenology of the Senses”, in Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology, Harper & Row, New York, 1966, pp. 135-156. [4] see Wladimir Velminski, Form, Zahl, Symbol. Leonhard Eulers Strategien der Anschaulichkeit, Akademie Verlag, Berlin, 2009, p. 18. [5] Johannes Grave, Arno Schubbach, “Begriffe des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Ästhetik. Zur bildtheoretischen Relevanz der Philosophiegeschichte,” in Johannes Grave, Arno Schubbach (eds.), Denken mit dem Bild, Fink, Munich, p. 164; translated from the German. [6] Hans Belting, Florence and Baghdad: Renaissance Art and Arab Science, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. [7] Ilija Trojanov, Ranjit Hoskoté, Kampfabsage. Kulturen bekämpfen sich nicht. Sie fließen zusammen, Heyne, Munich, 2009. [8] Boris Groys, “Religion in the Age of Digital Reproduction,” in: Boris Groys and Peter Weibel, Peter (eds.), Medium Religion. Faith, Geopolitics, Art, Walther König, Cologne 2011, p. 9. |
Muscat, Oman 
"2138 Miles Away", video by Kalin Serapionov, commissioned by the MMCA, curated by Iara Boubnova, music by Olivier Lenoir, Samarkand from Dubai Eklektic (Compiled And Mixed By Dj Ravin And Dj Nicholas Sechaud)
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Roaming Images ExhibitionROAMING IMAGES (of hope…)
The new decade started a year after the mark. It was ushered in by what the world media labeled “Τhe Arab Spring” without much care for such a premature simplification. Nonetheless, the events on Tahrir Square and elsewhere triggered hope that not only the countries undergoing drastic transformations but also the whole world will reinvent itself. This is the new hope of our time and it is “roaming” the world through visual images like it has never happened before. We cannot predict yet what will happen but we can say that the world is taking a new shape and the process is based on a new form of global equivalence – concepts and practices, experiences and energies, motivation and justification are flowing all new directions; the so called East is not only transforming, it is also challenging the so called West to redefine its basic notions... The new world taking shape is visible in an all new visual reality – images are roaming across squares, borders, fences just as much as they are roaming (or migrating, as we would say just a year ago) across web domains, internet protocols, data channels, techno gimmicks and firewalls of governmental obstruction; video clips are dominating the internet providing a kind of visual unity the world has never seen before; a peaceful protest, recorded by a cell phone in an amateur video clip and posted online, is the main tool for change and that is a challenge and a reality that visual arts need to address. The exhibition “Roaming Images” is focusing on this new world view and visuality, which came to life in the short time after Tahrir Square; this is the visuality of the new “agora” – the new universal public space that became available to all willing and needing to be there. Although there are few works that reflect directly on the actual events of 2011, the show as a whole attempts to reflect on the context created by visual artists before and after 2011, which makes it possible to say that there was anticipation for such a change, there was hope that the world will start moving in new directions. The title of the show – “Roaming Images”, is in English. This is not the mother tongue of any of the participating artists though all of them have a good level of command over the lingua franca of today’s (art) world. One might argue that in a similar fashion the visual culture of today is something like the English language – it is a common denominator that makes things easier to approach without having any special value in itself. The show investigates the visual links and relationships between the cultures, the peoples and the artists of the world through visual images – images of wonderment and exoticism, of critique and enlightenment, of irony and belief, of transgression and inversion, etc. In one way or another, in one visual mode or another, these images (just like their amateur counterparts) are stripping reality of its “sacred” aura provided by the specificity of location. They are roaming the spaces of exhibition halls and biennials just like their amateur counterparts are roaming the screens of smart phones, netbooks and i-pads. They are the main source of information in today’s world. No matter how hard the TV presenters (or curators) are trying to infuse these roaming images with their commentary and interpretation, it is the visual image that impresses the viewer and makes him/her remember and (maybe) reflect… The idea of the show is to provide an instantaneous cut across the complex layers of relationship between east and west in this new situation where their traditions are changing places and exchanging notions, languages, concerns and agenda. For instance, in a swift reversal now it is the Greek (European, supposedly affluent) crowds demonstrating on the streets of Athens and Thessaloniki because of economic reasons. At the same time the masses of people in the Arab world are demonstrating for more democracy, social justice, freedom of speech and congregation and so on. The visual representation of either one though runs along identical channels – Al Jazeera TV broadcasts, Facebook posts, Blackberry messaging, i-phone videos and photos, Twitter and so on. In this way the world is becoming unified in its tools for action and dissemination. In this way the image of the invented enemy is harder to sustain. On the other hand, exoticism becomes a two-way street for casting the other in a suitable way. Historically, cultures have worked out various ways of not only getting to know each other but also of getting used to each other. The negative way is war but even war, let’s say the Crusades, is a form of close contact that may have entirely innocuous effects – Western Europe for one, became a lot more civilized (and cleaner) after its dramatic clash with Muslim culture at that time. Not to mention the development in all fields of knowledge after the same period of contact that we call the Renaissance. Commercial interaction, political decisions, dynastic marriages, cultural “travels” as much as migrations of ordinary people then as well as now, are some of the peaceful ways of getting used to each other. Migrating people, no matter what the initial cause for moving away from the home culture, take along a load of traditions, values systems, visual habits and visual literacy, among others. At first contact with the new “home” they recognize those local signs and visual contexts that remind them of their own. Later they tend to introduce this recognition into their own interpretation of those “images” that are initially foreign. Well, this historically valid and extremely complex matrix and actual processes is now reduced to “zero” level of relevance because of the new visual unity of the world; the unity, which is brought about by the ever increasing speed and mass of images roaming the world through the screens of people’s digital devices. For good or bad the patterns of visual expression and image recognition are becoming somehow global and mutually intelligible. For good or bad the visual Tahrir Square is here to stay. In the Lida Abdul video “The White House” (2005) the white paint covering over the ruins of a house is a basic metaphor for life and death, destruction and construction, survival and hope against all odds. The viewer can only guess at where the house is or why it is in ruins. The ruin however is unmistakably associated with trauma, difference, and the past; the white paint could be both a sign of inertia and ignorance of the past, or a drive to overcome the trauma, to refresh, to become temporarily blind in order to go on. The poetic and somehow desperate monotony of the process of painting is becoming a beautiful metaphor; the meaningless labor is a symbol of new hope. “I can’t Work like This” (2007-08) by Natascha Sadr Haghighian is at the opposite end of the spectrum – monotony of physical labor produces a statement of refusal: “I can’t work like this” could be read as “I can’t live like this” anymore. The textual work is composed of nails hammered into the support surface and it’s hard to avoid the association with either simple construction of meaning (physical activity transformed into intellectual one) or the more poignant reference to the suffering on the cross. Either way, the monotonous repetition of unacceptable conditions of work and/or life is being addressed in a powerful yet simple way. Imagine that you are a tourist in your own home... The short video by Adel Abdessemed titled “Dio” (2010) is a reversal of the familiar Euro-centric gaze which tends to make exotic anything it considers to be of different nature – take for example how Westerners perceive veiled women. In this work a tourist-like character has come across a ritual that he/she obviously finds to be strange and has filmed it in a simple cinematic way. In the video a procession of young men are carrying huge wooden crosses across some city’s environment. To the dominant Catholic Christian, European gaze that is a normal practice. For a variety of other Christian denominations such practices are not so common though their meaning is obvious. And of course, the world news media is usually showing ritualistic practices from other (then Christian) religious and cultural contexts in an exotic way… Here it’s the opposite – the subject of exotic rendering is the “civilized” West. Luchezar Boyadjiev’s installation “5 Views to Mecca” (2007) is also about the re-orientation of the gaze, the re-directing of the visual interest and interaction. It consists of a bench positioned in the space so as a person sitting on it would be facing the direction of Mecca and 5 photographic images from the cities of Dubai and Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. The central image is not a view to Mecca but a view to a green arrow indicating the prayer direction, the kibla that is found in all hotel rooms there. Following this arrow, though not being a Muslim, the artist built his installation around its meaning for him – in all of the other photographs his eye and the lens of the camera are pointing in the direction of Mecca. The rational view to the world is oriented North and South, East and West. Here the view is an indication that even the basic geographical system of orientation is as much a product of tradition and cultural convention as any other. However, the views to Mecca in this case are revealing sights that are simultaneously ordinary and exotic, old and new, local and global just like any other roaming image is nowadays. Bouchra Khalili’s video installation “The Mapping Journey Project” (2008-10) goes a step further in exploring the ways in which people’s migration is not only a painful illegal process of relocation, adaptation, lack of acceptance and hardship of fitting in, but also a context where the unofficial ways of “transporting” cultures and images are made visible. Ultimately, the mixing of images and cultures is a process triggered by the human necessity to move in search for a better life, world, etc. Tracking the routes taken is like tracking the process of mutual infiltration between cultures. “As If I Don't Fit There” (2006) by Mounira Al Solh is a documentary video work about people who reject their professional status after emigration. The work deals with the situation of one’s own impossibility to fit in. On the surface it may seem that the sense of discomfort to be “in one’s own skin” is triggered by the foreign territory and culture. In fact this is only the starting point as the problem is human and universal, though not common in the Western tradition – rejecting the gift of creative talent is a necessary step of re-orientation in order to fit in. In his installation “The Dreams I Still Have for Us” (2003) Panayiotis Michael attempts to defuse the tensions existing in a drastically separated world. His experiences are from life in the divided island of Cyprus though his work implies any other place where people could be but are never allowed to become even a moderate form of “We”, a community of humans signified by the “Us” in the work’s title. This work could be seen as an exercise of garden design or a research into the super inventive ways that people have of separating each other through fences; it is a critical statement on how isolationism is designed. “Orientalism” (2010) by Leila Pazooki is a neon sign that visualizes in Arabic the term made famous by the influential writings of Edward Said. His book from 1978 under the same title was one of the starting points of post-colonial studies and even today it is a major reference for describing the problematic relations between the West and the East. By translating and objectifying the title of the book in Arabic lettering, the artist is re-appropriating something lost –no matter how radical the book was (and is…), still, it was written in English, the language associated with the colonizing gaze of the book’s target of critique. On the other hand, the neon sign, one of the ultimate tools for visual advertisement, is as universal as any other roaming image or media. The work is focusing on something dividing us and yet, in its simplicity and irony it becomes a ground for shared humor. “Commitment” (2011) by Kiril Prashkov is a large-scale textual slogan whose letters are made from crumpled Greek and other newspapers. The text reads: “We will fight for your rights to the last drop of your blood”. This is a critique on the ethical motivation behind peace missions and “just” wars. With this simple and ironical reformulation of a slogan many people will find strangely familiar, the artist is deconstructing the whole discourse of intervention “in the name of…”. The work is ironically questioning the underlying agenda of such actions that are always legitimized by good intentions but are never simply productive. One of the bloodiest encounters between the West and the East still referred to even today in the media as well as in the popular language, was the Crusades. The official Western version of the history of this period and event rarely mentions any other point of view other than that of the organizers of the Crusades. Even the point of view of the European peoples whose lands and countries were invaded by the Crusaders is not given the right to voice in that history. Let alone the voice of the Muslim “enemy”… And yet this was a time of great exchange of ideas and mixing of cultures that is unique for both sides. In his work “Cabaret Crusades” (2011) Wael Shawky refers to this dramatic period in our shared history of conflict and exchange. The work presents the personal and artistic point of view of the Muslim other about the Crusades in the form of an intricately directed, staged and filmed puppet show. The work is presented here as an installation of preparatory drawings, movie stills and props. The artist is not only reversing the vision of history familiar to Europeans – the film and the other material tell a simple yet tragic human story; he is also claiming that the visual language of the European heraldic tradition is heavily influenced by Muslim art. The roaming of images, it seems, has started a long time before the digital era... Babak Golkar’s work titled “Negotiating the Space for Possible Coexistences” (2009) is a based on a classical gesture of cross-pollination between visual languages, forms and concepts that have their origin in different cultures and traditions. The dream of contemporaneity seems to be realized here as a utopian merger between the high technology of current architectural structures and the domestic context of privacy, intimacy, belief. Skyscraper-like objects, reminiscent of the kind of architecture found in the UAE (and looking much like minarets too), are growing from the patterns of an Oriental carpet, which itself is a reminder of the rich background of the traditional Muslim and Persian cultures. The semantic field opened by this work refers not only to roaming images and concepts but also to a much wider spectrum of ideas, some of them too inflammatory to even consider here… While the previous work is based on material travesty, the self-portrait images of Eleni Mylona from the cycle “Virtual Conversations: Tahrir Square; Misurata; Syntagma” (2011) are an exercise in travesty between various identities and a masquerade of possibilities to become at least a bit like the Other. This is achieved by an intricate game of attributes to hold, to wear or to put over one’s head – with their help the artist is “stepping” into what she considers to be somebody else’s visual identity. The work is full of humor which is directed both ways – towards the self of the author as well as towards her perceived “target” of engagement. This is an act of reaching out while at the same being a comment on the visual similarity between events in the world of today. The cycle of drawings by Aidan Salakhova titled “Persian Miniatures” (2011) refers to Islamic miniature art while at the same time deconstructing the cliché about the role given to women in Muslim culture and society. Starting from her own ethnic and cultural background, yet staying within the framework of feminism, the artist is melting down a number of visual references to make a powerful statement – in this cycle faces of women are not visible, they are more than veiled; in this cycle women are doubly not represented because the work stays within the visual language of a tradition that prohibits human images in general. In the two-channel video installation titled “2138 Miles Away” (2011) the artist Kalin Serapionov is tracking visually and in relevant detail the context where “Roaming Images” was shaping as a project. Just like the curator of the show and after her specific invitation, the artist is visiting for the first time a certain territory/country/culture that is distant and unfamiliar although related through its historical past. Using the lens of his video camera Kalin Serapionov is trying to navigate between his European visual experiences and the new cultural codes; he is observing fusions, figuring out traditions, indexing similarities and marking differences. The result of this “video observation” could be seen as the notes of a modern explorer who, unlike his predecessors from the 19th c., is not using descriptions with words but is counting on the capability of visual languages to be recognized. There is a wonderful expression in English that describes the unofficial and impossible to control flow of human communication: “word of mouth”, which knows no boundaries; it transgresses languages, cultural barriers, and political divides; “word of mouth” does not acknowledge either geographical or economic restrictions. Most importantly, it is self-regulating and cannot be easily controlled by any power anywhere. Unfortunately this expression has no easy transfiguration in terms adequate to the visual domain… We can only approximate its full range of meaning and operational regimes by coining expressions such as: “roaming images”; “visual gossiping”; “rumors of the eye” and so on. On the other hand, unlike the rather non-material realm of verbal communication, the visual unity of the world is ever more easier to grasp, to “see” and to experience – there is the Internet, there are the movies, there is the TV and the Turkish soaps, there are the billboards and the new architecture of globalization all over the world, there is finally and most currently the media visual world where both the Greek protests of 2010 and the Arabian Spring of 2011 coexist as strange counterparts or maybe partners in the world after 2001, 2008 and so on. And then again, unlike 10 years ago, there is now the CNN and the Al Jazeera live coverage of world events one can choose from… In one word (of mouth), we are living in a world which is defined by its visual reality in an ever faster and all encompassing rhythm. The world of today is inscribed in the visual regimes of communication and representation. This world enjoys a kind of unprecedented visuality, which is not only shared by everybody but more importantly it is produced by everybody, everywhere, all the time. In this world the meaning of the expression “here and now” has acquired such global coverage that surpasses anything we have known so far. We are living in a global visual agora... Iara Boubnova Curator |
Thessaloniki, Greece |
The Roaming Images Routes
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Muscat, Oman |
Roaming Images Routes: OMAN
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Muscat, Oman |
Roaming Images Routes: SHARJAH, UAE
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United Arab Emirates, Sharjah
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Roaming Images Routes: CYPRUS
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Nicosia, Cyprus |
Roaming Images ROUTES: SYRIA
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Damascus, Syria |
Roaming Images Routes: LEBANON
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Beirut, Lebanon |
Roaming Images Routes: ISRAEL
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Israel, Jaffa |
Roaming Images Routes: EGYPT
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Alexandria, Egypt |
Parallel Events
Photography as a Means of Creating or Subverting Stereotypes
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National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation - Thessaloniki Centre |
ICONIC - ARCHITECTONIC
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Science Center and Technology Museum (NOESIS) Conference Centre |
