/thoughts on the/ aftermath of an explosion
2023/24 a video performance series by Eleni Tsamadia
A promise has been floating around the world lately. The promise of a big boom. This fantasy invites everyone to surrender and contribute to the accumulation of its power...
Until now its myth probably already surpassed its potential consequences. This promise feels like a new-age threat of biblical dimensions coming from the financially powerful towards the "misbehaved" not so powerful ones. Everyone is, thus, invited to participate to the nuclear keeper's will or everything explodes.
Is there anything left for us to do to avoid participating in this brutal play, breaking free from the circle of violence?
We can hide, transform and/or become the explosion - even death itself.
Hoping that by rehearsing it we will eliminate the dark admiration which pushes us to submit to this power dynamic of no escape.
The Vision of "aftermath of an explosion " is to run through the phases of grief and anguish that the behaviour of financially and military supreme causes inflicts to our collective mind lately with obvious and subliminal manners, estimating that by shedding light and shaping the unfamiliar (here simply with images) we can create reflexes and tolerance, so that we will be able to face contemporary brutalities and hopefully shape them towards the benefit and the peace of mind of us all.
Thoughts on the aftermath of an explosion is series of five videos namely
thoughts on the aftermath of an explosion : first hiding thoughts on the aftermath of an explosion : mirrored hiding thoughts on the aftermath of an explosion thoughts on the aftermath of an explosion : moth’s pas seul
thoughts on the aftermath of an explosion : moth’s corps de ballet
These videos are a story of reflection on life’s newfound contemporaneity impacts on us and this is how they should be interpreted, but whose reflection?
The artist‘s reflection was caught on camera trying to evoke the viewer ’s
ssssss s oooooo o oooo
ooooo
ssssssssssss
ssssssssssss.
Since information fluxes united the world every now and then, we witness atrocities of every kind, since we are bystanders which wasn’t always the case. What is left for us to do? The answer to this is probably very long and could often be very personal as well, but since art is here to suggest ways to view and understand images, let’s set some key points on the distance and proximity between the informative image and an incident of some sorts - a war crime to name an example.
The image inevitably is interpreted through the reference system of the viewer, often lacking vital information about the exact content, context and roots of the incident the images describe.
This constellation of points creates easy-to-manipulate and potentially
dangerous viewers that, by trying to work through the emotional impact
that information has on them, participate virtually in the worst possible ways
(at least most of the time).
This reversed bystander effect
that is being going on globally
and which peaked during pandemic is still peaking.
So probably we stand on the verge of a new sensual experience,
a post-phenomenological one,
that pumps elements from vision and creates anew something much bigger than just an image: an action.
This action ducts in a pond with other similar hypothetical experiences and creates a realm of their own.
Since this version of ourselves is being out for some time now, we have reached the perfect moment to experiment further with it.
The " aftermath of an explosion " video series suggests
a virtual death of the artist or even more specifically,
ongoing explosions of its virtual self,
until its pieces are so fragmented that become equivalent to moths.
Moths created from the artist‘s dwindled and multiplied body occupy the last two parts of the series
in which the post-mortem constitution has progressed so far
that creates the new
status quo.
We all have being pursuing Death’s aesthetic the last years, so the artist via the “Aftermath of an explosion” challenges us to rehearse it
by meditating and reflecting on our experiences hoping
that this rehearsal
will recreate a value for life
that has been missing from us
lately.
Until now its myth probably already surpassed its potential consequences. This promise feels like a new-age threat of biblical dimensions coming from the financially powerful towards the "misbehaved" not so powerful ones. Everyone is, thus, invited to participate to the nuclear keeper's will or everything explodes.
Is there anything left for us to do to avoid participating in this brutal play, breaking free from the circle of violence?
We can hide, transform and/or become the explosion - even death itself.
Hoping that by rehearsing it we will eliminate the dark admiration which pushes us to submit to this power dynamic of no escape.
The Vision of "aftermath of an explosion " is to run through the phases of grief and anguish that the behaviour of financially and military supreme causes inflicts to our collective mind lately with obvious and subliminal manners, estimating that by shedding light and shaping the unfamiliar (here simply with images) we can create reflexes and tolerance, so that we will be able to face contemporary brutalities and hopefully shape them towards the benefit and the peace of mind of us all.
Thoughts on the aftermath of an explosion is series of five videos namely
thoughts on the aftermath of an explosion : first hiding thoughts on the aftermath of an explosion : mirrored hiding thoughts on the aftermath of an explosion thoughts on the aftermath of an explosion : moth’s pas seul
thoughts on the aftermath of an explosion : moth’s corps de ballet
These videos are a story of reflection on life’s newfound contemporaneity impacts on us and this is how they should be interpreted, but whose reflection?
The artist‘s reflection was caught on camera trying to evoke the viewer ’s
ssssss s oooooo o oooo
ooooo
ssssssssssss
ssssssssssss.
Since information fluxes united the world every now and then, we witness atrocities of every kind, since we are bystanders which wasn’t always the case. What is left for us to do? The answer to this is probably very long and could often be very personal as well, but since art is here to suggest ways to view and understand images, let’s set some key points on the distance and proximity between the informative image and an incident of some sorts - a war crime to name an example.
The image inevitably is interpreted through the reference system of the viewer, often lacking vital information about the exact content, context and roots of the incident the images describe.
This constellation of points creates easy-to-manipulate and potentially
dangerous viewers that, by trying to work through the emotional impact
that information has on them, participate virtually in the worst possible ways
(at least most of the time).
This reversed bystander effect
that is being going on globally
and which peaked during pandemic is still peaking.
So probably we stand on the verge of a new sensual experience,
a post-phenomenological one,
that pumps elements from vision and creates anew something much bigger than just an image: an action.
This action ducts in a pond with other similar hypothetical experiences and creates a realm of their own.
Since this version of ourselves is being out for some time now, we have reached the perfect moment to experiment further with it.
The " aftermath of an explosion " video series suggests
a virtual death of the artist or even more specifically,
ongoing explosions of its virtual self,
until its pieces are so fragmented that become equivalent to moths.
Moths created from the artist‘s dwindled and multiplied body occupy the last two parts of the series
in which the post-mortem constitution has progressed so far
that creates the new
status quo.
We all have being pursuing Death’s aesthetic the last years, so the artist via the “Aftermath of an explosion” challenges us to rehearse it
by meditating and reflecting on our experiences hoping
that this rehearsal
will recreate a value for life
that has been missing from us
lately.
|
Aftermath of an explosion is a video-performance series of five videos created by Eleni Tsamadia. During and through the five videos, a transformation is taking place, the artist’s body is being transformed to the “aftermath of an explosion”. A transformation from the initial image that was captured on camera to a virtual composition via multiple edits on Final Cut.
The initial image is a shot of the artist, dancing with a plastic veil on the tunes of Claude Debussy’s “prelude to the afternoon of a Faun” at Semio Theater in Athens. Afterwords the original black background with a white body footage, was switched into negative with the use of a filter on the editing program. The use of a negative in photography and video means that the bright portions of the captured subject are reproduced as dark and the dark parts as light areas. So an inversion begun which created this ambient virtual result. While continuing the video-editing process ,always editing on the same musical composition and having as the final goal to create the event sequence of an explosion the artist started using mirror editing filters for the fragmentation of her self to begin. Inspired by the visual examples of nuclear mushrooms, the representations of angels and brain scans the artist starts to duplicate and triplicate herself aiming to reach a visual result similar to the above mentioned. An explosion but of which kind? An explosion of synapses firing in our brains? The explosion that overthrew the flight of Walter Benjamin’s Angelus Novus or The bright nuclear lights of the US? How different are those anyway ? The next video-editing step would be to create the fragments after the explosion but since the artist suggestion of The Explosion follows a more poetic approach and could read from a literal event to a brain scan or a “petite mort” the fragments that this undefined incident leaves behind are as well tokenized. The token of choice for the picture of the post explosion fragments is the moth. A moth created from the artist’s multiplied body (video 4) and a post-mortem ballet created from the multiplication of the artist’s multiplied body concludes the video-series. |
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Eleni Tsamadia she/her (b.1994) is an Athens School of fine arts Bachelor’s and Master’s alumnus and currently a student of Guglielmo Marconi institute’s on "psychological science and techniques "BA.
She is a performance artist and a researcher on the subject of art’s potential role as therapy. Since 2012 she has participated in various projects in Greece, in Europe and the US and exhibitions respectively. Currently she is based in Athens deepening on the topics mentioned above as well as working at her current video performance series.
The “aftermath of an explosion” is an ongoing project of self analysis of the artist. Using classical music milestones and visual manipulations to see through the defence mechanism that were build in her past, guiding herself to the road of psychical release.
I see my videos as Rorschach’s ink blots or a mantra they are aiming to mesmerise and therefore drag the viewer into a mental journey. Probably helping access inaccessible parts of our psychical experience and retrieve trapped memories experiences and so on, but this is just a speculation for now!
She is a performance artist and a researcher on the subject of art’s potential role as therapy. Since 2012 she has participated in various projects in Greece, in Europe and the US and exhibitions respectively. Currently she is based in Athens deepening on the topics mentioned above as well as working at her current video performance series.
The “aftermath of an explosion” is an ongoing project of self analysis of the artist. Using classical music milestones and visual manipulations to see through the defence mechanism that were build in her past, guiding herself to the road of psychical release.
I see my videos as Rorschach’s ink blots or a mantra they are aiming to mesmerise and therefore drag the viewer into a mental journey. Probably helping access inaccessible parts of our psychical experience and retrieve trapped memories experiences and so on, but this is just a speculation for now!
