IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRIMO PIANO LIVINGALLERY
SPHINX THEBES
FESTIVAL|GREECE
CONFERENCE CENTER OF THIVA
32200 THEBES, GREECE
Phone
0030 22620 277 54 / 0030 6976427129
A FERTILE CITY OR THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINXCurated by Dores & Rose Sacquegna
From
OCTOBER 4th to NOVEMBER 4th 2015
Opening
OCTOBER 4th at 7pm
It opens 4th October
at 7pm the opening of THE SPHINX THEBES FESTIVAL to the
Conference Center in Thebes (Greece). The Festival is planned
and coordinated by IAA Unesco Artists Constantine Angelou and Polyxene Kasda and it
is under the auspices of Hellenic Republic, the Greek Ministry of Culture, Education and Religious Affairs, the collaboration of the Athens School of
Fine Arts, the National Museum and
Municipality of Thebes. Sphinx 2015
is an artistic project in the urban and social life of the town of Thebes,
where artists specializing in different fields, from all over the world,
authors, scientists, directors and the public create by interacting with its
mnemonic elements, proposing solutions to “found the city of the future”,
the place we want to live in. Project Sphinx is centered
around the Riddle of Sphinx which Oedipus solved by answering:
“Anthropos”, a term which is an unsolved riddle in itself. The Riddle of the
Sphinx re-examines the meaning of the human being through his position in
space, time, history, that is, his identity.
In this context arises the project curated by Dores & Rose Sacquegna from Primo Piano LivinGallery in Lecce,
Italy, with the proposal "A fertile city or the riddle of Sphinx” divided
into three different sessions (GREEK WAVES, LANDGRAPHIE, CRYPTOGRAPHIE) on the
myth , the identity and the utopia, with the participation of very well-known
international artists and Greek directors.
showcases the video-reportage "WHY IS THE MEADOW WEEPING, MR. ANGELOPOULOS?
"produced by the Filmfabrik directed by ANASTASIA CHRISTOFORIDOU. The unbreakable bond between myth and contemporary
fiction is a treasure trove of
exciting and timeless images, especially
for a medium that works on the visual and
the emotional level. One example is
the film "THE REVENGE OF DIONYSUS" by DIMITRIS KOLLATOS - director
and producer of avant-garde
theater from the 60s - the dionysiac myth here is a word of subversion,
a voice of rebellion that tells the current
situation in Greece; the film was displayed at the 55°International
Film Festival of Thessaloniki
in 2014.The projection continues with the film "ALPHA" which tells
the Greek tragedy of Antigone,
daughter of Oedipus,
in a modern way; the film by director STATHIS ATHANASIOU, was crowdfunded,
produced in Greece and
distributed by Creative Commons.
The new social life, enters into new myths
because myth itself is able to get into it and
be transformed, adapting itself to
ever-changing forms of language that in
every age the human being is
developing to transmit his
ideas, his values and to translate and interpret the legacy of his past. Another example is the movie "THE
SUN AND THE WIND", by THANASIS NEOFOTISTOS, award-winning in numerous
festivals including Cannes
Avif 2014; Hellenic
Film Academy in 2014, and inspired by the Aesop
fable and from the poetry by
George Drosinis, produced by T-Short & NF-Films
in 2014. Time and space, both limited,
encase the freedom and independence of myth which in its incarnations on film
definitely does not lose the charm and power, like in the black and white film
"FAWNS" by THANASIS TSIMPINIS (produced by George
Chorevas and Avion Film Production in 2014), the movie won Winner Best Cinematography 20th Athens International Film Festival; The film unfolds between image and poetry, it tells a
love story between two homosexuals and about human relations. The two media come together, superimposing
the audio and the visual aspects. The watchword of humanity at the beginning
of the third millennium is integration and fusion of languages and messages, the myth
travels at high speed, creating connections, links
and unexpected scenarios like
"Η ΠΌΛΙΣ (THE CITY) -
A POEM BY CP CAVAFY ", by GEORGE TSIROGIANNIS; an interactive film based on this poem by CP
Cavafy, one of the most influential Greek poets. The film evokes ontological
contrasting scenarios where the computer and
internet recuperate a fundamental dimension of myth from
the oral dimension to narrative performance. The film "MATRIARCHY",
(produced in 2014 by the film "FOR ETERNITY" (produced by C. Georgiou for "Blunatic
pictures") and directed by ex-director of the Greek TV MARIA LAFI; the movie tells about a
love story set in the afterlife: the film was awarded the 4th Athens International Digital Film festival AIDFF and the Best Stage
Design and Art direction Drama Film
Festival 2014, Greece. The contemporary world is in a
context where identities themselves are put to work; simulations of freedom
where real feeling and thinking become productive power as in the case of the
comic film "CURE", by IFIGENIA DIMITRIOU which tells the
working life of employees in the Greek public sector; the movie deliberately
filmed in black and white won to the 3rd
PRIZE at San Francisco Greek Film Festival in 2015 and Athens International
Film Festival in 2014. All of us in our life we have ever dreamed of flying and
the story of Peter
Pan has flown
with the imagination the children. From directors EIRINI
STEIROU and ELIZA ALEXANDROPOULOU,
came out “Peter Pan Project: First Flight”; the movie
narrates Peter Pan’s first attempt to fly and at the same time, the eternal
human desire to beat gravity, overcome fear and doubt common reason. This short
film is part of a theatre performance directed by Eliza Alexandropoulou and
written by Danae Tanidou. The play was
officially presented in Eurotopiques Theatre Festival in Tourcoing France and
as a “work in progress” in Athens. The review
ends with the film "THE LINE
BUS", by PANAYOTIS KRAVVARIS
a production of the Greek Film Center
and Olympus Films in 2005, based on the story of a twelve year old boy who
decides to leave for the big city to create his future.
The thread that unites
these presences on display for LANDGRAPHIE is the LANDSCAPE with seven video-documentary by very well know artists of the LAND ART and
environmental art that operate with large temporary
installations in the landscape. The event opens with video documentary "OVER THE RIVER" by CHRISTO & JEANNE CLAUDE, conceptual artists known to the world for
the packing of large objects
and slices of landscape; the video documenting their
installation was created in two years
on the Arkansas River between Salida and Cañon
City, in Colorado. Another interesting
artist is 
the multidisciplinary
Peruvian artist GRIMANESA AMOROS
(based in New York | US), she works with installations involving architecture
and landscape, urban spaces and natural areas as "GOLDEN WATERS" at The Soleri Bridge between Scottdale and
Camelback Roads in Arizona and "UROS
ISLAND" presented among others during the 54th Venice Biennale for
Future Pass.
Really sensitive to environmental
practices is the American artist PAM LONGOBARDI, with video "GIANT SEA CAVE EXCAVATION"
and interdisciplinary action "PLASTIC FREE ISLAND", made
in Kefalonia at Ionian Center in 2014 in Greece. The action consists of
the removal of plastic objects
that pollute water and the beach,
to be transformed by the artist into
art installations. With video "ART IN ANTARCTICA", a project initiated
in 2005 by the Argentine
ANDREA JUAN, she creates magnificent installations in situations and
extreme landscapes (see also "NEW SPECIES"), the principle of
which is based on freedom, on the
impact of climate change, glaciers,
the oceanic and
atmospheric temperatures, the weather conditions of these empty spaces. The energy of
the earth, the rite of painting with pigments taken
on the sites of various
places in the world, is the modus
operandi of the great German artist ULRIKE ARNOLD, who since
1980 has traveled and worked on five
continents with site-specific
installations realized in quarries, on rocky
mountains, or, under extreme
conditions in the deserts. On
display with the video "THE COLORS OF EARTH," paintings
based on land, minerals
and stones, fragments
of meteorites create
impressive and cosmological works. French artist GILLES BRUNI - best known to
audiences for his large
installations created in the early days with Marc Babarit
in Europe and North America – he documents his works on landscape,
ecology of the place, people
and their history in the following videos: "THE ROTTING
IN THE UNDERGROWTH" on material reuse,
and "WASTE LAND", on the practices of landscape ecology in public spaces. This video-documentary review ends
with the video-performance
"ALCHEMIST" by Scottish artist RICHARD ASHROWAN (produced in 2010 in
collaboration with the performers
Alastair MacLennan and Sandra Johnston);
the film is a tribute to the medieval Scottish alchemist, astrologer and mathematician Michael Scot and
explores the qualities of the
landscape through alchemy, with Latin dialogues.
The movie participated in numerous exhibitions and won many
awards.
The session CRYPTOGRAPHIE consists of works of visual art
( painting, digital art, photography, collage,
video-installation, installation, live performance) and investigates
the urban and hybrid landscapes between MYTH,
IDENTITY and UTOPIA.
On exhibition the video-installation " CONVULSIONI
INTRINSECHE” by Italian artist ANTONELLA ZITO. The new
utopias are not at all unattainable
and distant, but
resemble more concrete
programs to transform the real or prophecies, often negative,
of disturbing scenarios
where the city is represented as a living
organism and lymphatic system in
the work "MY SOUL
IN MY BODY, MY
BODY IN MY CITY, MY CITY IN MY MIND ..
" by Italian artist MARIA LUISA IMPERIALI. Geometric structures intersect between matter
and color to define maps of possible future cities in the work "STRUCTURA 714" by Italian artist MARTA MANCINI.Space, time
and history are
identified in the work by DORES SACQUEGNA with “INDUSTRIAL
ARCHEOLOGY” (from floating worlds series), where the
human being is in the center of
the universe, able to recover the past, live the present and plan the future. Between past and future,
also, the work
by Spanish artist XAVI DE
JUAN-CREIX and COR FAFIANI (from Holland), with the
work "COLUMN OF THEBES",
calls the impermanence and the formal instability to respect the stability and solidity
of the preindustrial past. Thus human existence is drifting in a fundamental
spiritual uncertainty, reflecting the character and the restless provisional
cultural identity of modern and post-modern civilization . With
his installation "TO OVERSHOOT IN / CONTEMPORARY" Italian artist VITO SARDANO returns the idea of
the world with a size simultaneously,
through a process of cultural
hybridization, where objects,
concepts and values
become status symbols of
contemporary civilization consumption, fashion and new economics. With called "UNINHABITABLE", taken from the collection "After
the battle", PINA DELLA ROSSA, Italian
photographer show an attempt to return to the first material reality of
creation of Mother Earth. The literary
interest in the myth, the
frequent trips to Greece and the meeting with director Theodoros
Angelopoulos, led Italian artist GINO FOSSALI to develop a new research phase of
mythological subject, placing his work in the origins of time, for a
GREEK WAVES Theo Angeloupolos,
Stathis Athanasiou, Anastasia Christoforidou, Ifigenia Dimitriou, Dimitris
Kollatos, Nikos Kornilios, Panayotis Kravvaris, Maria Lafi, Thanasis
Neofotistos, Eirini Steirou & Eliza Alexandropoulou, Thanasis Tsimpinis,
George Tsirogiannis.
LANDGRAPHIE :Grimanesa Amoros (Usa),
Ulrike Arnold (Germany), Richard Ashrowan (Scotland),
Gilles Bruni
(France), Christo
& Jeanne-Claude (Usa), Andrea Juan (Argentina), Pam Longobardi (Usa).
CRYPTOGRAPHIE From Italy: Pina Della Rossa,
Gino Fossali, Maria Luisa Imperiali, Massimiliano Manieri, Marta Mancini, Vito
Sardano, Antonella Zito, Giovanni Lamorgese, Dores Sacquegna and foreign
artists Xavi
De Juan-Creix (Spain), Cor Fafiani (Holland), Marthe Keller (Usa).
