Elsewhere is a Negative Mirror, pt II
Experimental video + prose essay, 5'41''
Exhibited at Onassis AiR, 2023
Performance Lecture at Bozar, 2023
Performance Lecture at Bozar, 2023
"Elsewhere is a Negative Mirror pt II" is a short meditation on an imagined city in the form of a text and visual essay. The work was developed during my tailor made fellowship at Onassis AiR in 2023. It is a continuation of the work "Elsewhere is a Negative Mirror pt I", that started in 2022 during my participation in the residency "Alexandria Urban Imaginaries", organized by Mucem and Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto.
Composed of film footage taken in Athens, Alexandria, and Marseille, it draws a fragmentary cartography of desires and experiences, contradictions and symbiosis that arise from urban landscapes.
The video engages with myths of ancient glory, romances of the Mediterranean, and fantasies of a stable present. It reassembles slippages and discontinuities of our dominant imaginaries into narratives that offer new connections and possibilities of solidarity.
It asks; How do we navigate political desires and embodied territories? How do we interact with fragments of imagined worlds—fragments that sometimes cut sharp, while others envelop us softly?
The city’s multiple fictions, beginnings and ends, swell beyond confines of desire, denial, and territory, be it in their past, present, or future articulations. The city is never complete.
Composed of film footage taken in Athens, Alexandria, and Marseille, it draws a fragmentary cartography of desires and experiences, contradictions and symbiosis that arise from urban landscapes.
The video engages with myths of ancient glory, romances of the Mediterranean, and fantasies of a stable present. It reassembles slippages and discontinuities of our dominant imaginaries into narratives that offer new connections and possibilities of solidarity.
It asks; How do we navigate political desires and embodied territories? How do we interact with fragments of imagined worlds—fragments that sometimes cut sharp, while others envelop us softly?
The city’s multiple fictions, beginnings and ends, swell beyond confines of desire, denial, and territory, be it in their past, present, or future articulations. The city is never complete.
On the horizontal map, the one that projects territory on a surface
the city stretches linear across the coast
it moves concentrically around its inner fold
it borders water South, East and West.
There is a vertical map of the city
The vertical map reveals the city desired and the city denied
the city stretches linear across the coast
it moves concentrically around its inner fold
it borders water South, East and West.
There is a vertical map of the city
The vertical map reveals the city desired and the city denied
