Xirómero/Dryland, that will be representing Greece at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, is an interdisciplinary collective work conceived by Thanasis Deligiannis and Yannis Michalopoulos, created along with the artists Elia Kalogianni, Yorgos Kyvernitis, Kostas Chaikalis and Fotis Sagonas. The Greek participation has been curated by Panos Giannikopoulos. The work consists of a piece of agricultural irrigation equipment which synchronizes the sound, video and lighting environments that make up the installation in real time. It investigates the experience of a village festival by following its course from the village square all the way to its outskirts, and to the surrounding land. More specifically, it draws upon the experience of the panighíria -local festivals- of mainland Greece, Thessaly and the area of Xirómero, in Western Greece, which lends the work its title.
The artists behind the work refer to water as a prism —a way of seeing and thinking with—focusing on its scarcity or abundance, on the need for it or waste of it, as well as on its social connotations. The exhaustion of resources is linked here to physical and financial exhaustion. The work navigates the political potential of sound and music and the impact of technology on rural landscapes and cultural diversity.
In between ritual and entertainment, the village festival conveys information and is charged with meaning. It is connected to agricultural work; it is born of – but also begets – the community’s internal time cycle which follows the pace of irrigation and other agricultural tasks. It helps the community form an image of itself. But at the same time contradictory notions coalesce: viewers become participants, on-stage becomes off-stage, the performative gives way to the everyday.
This incessant interaction between ‘representation’ and reality is reproduced within the work itself.
Xirómero/Dryland also utilizes the particular architectural features of the Pavilion of Greece to evoke by association images of agricultural warehouses or the religious architecture that is so often the backdrop of the panighíri. The watering equipment at the centre of the Pavilion delineates a circular perimeter that is the actual space of the installation. The work serves to transfer indoors the outdoor spot where the community comes together – the village square, the place of public assembly. As the watering system comes on, it sets a specific pace and marks the time like a clock or a cassette tape playing, suggesting specific routes for the viewers to follow, encouraging shifts in viewpoint along the way. Xirómero/Dryland steers clear of an aesthetic approach, emphasizing instead the emotional immediacy of the encounter with objects, sounds and images.
Observing gender relations in the context of the panighíri allows us to examine the various possibilities of presenting the self, the different versions of femininity and the manner in which the female body is either revealed or concealed, but also the ambivalent gesture of the subject who chooses to withdraw, opting for absence and its own exclusion from the festivities.
Xirómero/Dryland attempts to create associations between a geographically contextualized experience and the global condition; to facilitate shifts of perspective between dominant and marginalized cultural subjects which seem to open up a liminal space for the articulation of new meanings.
*Xirómero [ksirˈomero], a historic area of Aetolia-Acarnania, is known for its festivals. Today, it comprises one of the municipalities of the regional unit of Western Greece.
Research for the purposes of the installation Xirómero/Dryland that will be representing Greece at the 60thInternational Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia was commissioned by the Onassis Foundation and conducted in the context of the Margaroni Residency by Onassis AiR Fellows interdisciplinary artist and composer Thanasis Deligiannis and dramaturg and philologist Yannis Michalopoulos. The two of them brought together a team which includes visual artist and filmmaker Elia Kalogianni, photographer and documentary filmmaker Yorgos Kyvernitis, sound engineer and designer Kostas Chaikalis and visual artist and architect Fotis Sagonas.
The project and its presentation in Venice have been funded by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. EMΣT/The National Museum of Contemporary Art is the commissioner of Greece’s national participation and in charge of planning, production and promotion. Panos Giannikopoulos is the curator of the Pavilion of Greece.
Greece’s participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition ‐ La Biennale di Venezia is powered by Onassis Culture. The project is also supported by the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and the Athens-Epidaurus Festival. With support from ARTWORKS through a founding grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF). Also supported by NEON Culture and Development Organization and by Outset. AEGEAN is the official air carrier sponsor and the project has been placed under the auspices of the City of Xirómero.
THE TEAM
Xirómero/Dryland is an interdisciplinary collective work conceived by Thanasis Deligiannis and Yannis Michalopoulos, created along with the artists Elia Kalogianni, Yorgos Kyvernitis, Kostas Chaikalis and Fotis Sagonas.
Artistic Collaborators:
Fotini Papachristopoulou, Vassiliki-Maria Plavou, Marios Stamatis
Curated by: Panos Giannikopoulos
https://pavilionofgreece2024.emst.gr
Commissioner | Organization:
EMΣT | National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens
Head of Production, Pavilion of Greece, EMΣT | National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens: Yannis Arvanitis
Head of Communication & Press, Pavilion of Greece, EMΣT | National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens: Maria Tsolaki
Exhibition Production: Giorgos Efstathoulidis – Constructivist Exhibitions, Antonia Chantzi
EMΣT | National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens
Artistic Director: Katerina Gregos
Administrative & Financial Director: Athina Ioannou
PHOTOS
MORE ABOUT THE WORK
SPONSORS
Greece’s participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition ‐ La Biennale di Venezia is powered by Onassis Culture.
The project is also supported by the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, the Athens-Epidaurus Festival and the Greek National Tourism Organization. Support from ARTWORKS was provided through a founding grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF). Additional support was made possible by NEON Culture and Development Organization, by Outset and the Qualco Foundation. AEGEAN is the official air carrier sponsor and the project has been placed under the auspices of the City of Xirómero.
