“The earth contains successive layers of things and history. We are surrounded not only by the living world, our ancestors are buried in it, and with them their stories. Coexistence is holistic and raises the question of how we can live and coexist henceforth with the current successive crises, mainly climate change, that pervade all the problems (economy, inequality, etc.) of our time.”

OUR Maria-Thalia Karras she is not only the curator of the central exhibition “Being as communication”, which opens today within 8th Thessaloniki Biennial of Contemporary Art. As a historian sensitive to issues of ecology and sustainable development, she bases her reflections on the coexistence of the living and the dead in their practical and philosophical dimensions. Taking its title from the work of the theologian and Metropolitan Ioannis of Pergamon, known as Ioannis Zizioulas, he attempts through art to “redefine life as a society, as well as coexistence as a tool to overcome multiple crises.”

By choosing pioneer artists, Greek and foreign, with an almost active ecological attitude (Gianfranco Baruchello, Piero Giraldi, Vaso Katraki, Agnès Varda), as well as contemporary artists whose art inevitably reflects the problems of our time, he creates a political exhibition. with local and at the same time global problems of mankind. Organized by MOMus, it offers an art itinerary through ten different locations (museums, monuments, historical sites) where the works of 28 artists and creative teams open a dialogue both with the history of the city and with the 25th Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, which adapts the thematic focus Biennale through a special tribute.

“I didn’t dwell on the broader notion of ‘Geoculture’ — the theme of this year’s biennale — but focused on artistic creations that shed light on the fog of uncertainty and gloomy predictions to ask myself how we can live on. in terms of symbiosis and methods that go beyond the logic of human sovereignty. Coexistence appears as a process, but also as a possible solution, sometimes practical, in an era of multiple crises, as a reaction to the dichotomy of absolute indifference or absolute despair, but also as a response to the logic of endless and debilitating, for all earthly resources, unsustainable development”, Maria-Thalia Karras explains “K”..

women’s garden

The artists’ innovative creations, including nine new productions, explore the impact of human activities on ecosystems, as well as possible scenarios for sustainable and orderly coexistence. A garden in Turkey tended exclusively by women for generations in the movie Flames Amngk Stones. Archive of the pioneering artist Gianfranco Baruchello (1924-2023) from the Agricola Cornelia farm he cultivated while exploring the cycle of production and economy. Photo diary of Chinese Zeng Bo about his symbiosis with nature on Landau Island in Hong Kong. The study of the shape of the cross as the beginning of sculpture and its symbolic dimension in the works of Kostas Roussakis “Two Thieves: Love Your Neighbor as Thyself”, the installation “I saw the moon rise both from the left and from the right”. Side of the Sky by Pakis Vlassopoulou on prison systems, Pakistani artist Hira Nabi’s video installation How to Love a Tree are some of the stops on the visual route: MOMus Contemporary Art Museum, Eptapirgio. , Islakhan, Museums (Archaeological and Byzantine), Geni Mosque, Glass Pavilion “Sculpture Garden” (beach), MIET, Pasha’s Gardens, Concert Hall (M2).

“Being like communication” is not only an ecological proposal, it is at the same time the joy of mutual life, mutual support and inclusiveness as a life position. He urges us to take stock and focus on the practices of synergy, understanding, care, love,” explains M.F. Kara.

Inventing the Future

Artists, he explains, “are capable of imagining ways of coexistence that we cannot imagine. They open up conversations, they look to the past to invent the future, they show us rays of light that, if we are open, we can follow.” The Haramada photographs are the work of Wessel (James Bridle and Naveen G. Dossos), who collaborated with AUTH students to create a recycled pavilion while reviving the schools in the former orphanage, now the Islahane Cultural Center. . Superkiosk invites visitors to share their knowledge of sustainability and community issues by drinking tea from herbs they have planted, using desalinated thermal water to grow them.

But how to talk about symbiosis, about our relationship with the future, in environments and cities whose “synergies” of the past have almost disappeared, using the illustrative example of Thessaloniki, the curator of the exhibition asks. The COYOTE campaign brings them back from obscurity with scholarly texts written in Greek, English, as well as the forgotten languages ​​of Thessaloniki (Latin, Ottoman Turkish) on posters that have been placed in the central exhibition areas. Two sculptures in the atriums of the two museums (Archaeological and Byzantine) by the Turk Cevdet Erek “Two Courts in Thessaloniki” communicate and function as architectural palimpsests of the city, while Phoebe Yiannisis’s Black Bones sound walk at the Archaeological Museum’s outdoor exhibition tells stories of coexistence with our dark land .

Performance ‘#thehead | Transformation into an Animal” by Panos Sklavenitis is postponed, today’s opening ceremony is canceled due to three days of mourning, however, the screening of the film “Foragers”, a special tribute to the “Geoculture” Documentary Film Festival, opens at Olympiana today (18.00). Ten films from around the world with ideas and practices that involve rethinking the relationship between the species that coexist on the planet, explore the concept that links the cultivation of the land with culture as a set of resources and practices available to man for understanding. world and act in it. In Zuman’s introductory film, Man (which is also an installation at the Museum of Byzantine Culture), combines documentation with fiction, captures the conflict between the Israeli authorities and Palestinian farmers with ironic humor. Under Israeli law, the collection of akkoub (a type of artichoke) and za’atar (thyme) is banned, bringing hundreds of Palestinians caught red-handed for collecting endemic plants to trial.

Exhibition duration: until May 21.