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ALL SOULS DAY – PART II | Exhibition
April 5 – June 1, 2019, Rodeo Gallery Piraeus
#nøborders, Video Installation, 2019, digital video, colour, stereo sound, duration 3’ 14’’
“The moral crossroads that Menelaos Karamaghiolis’ moving image works generate expand the video space and introduce a new kind of realism the filmmaker has been constructing throughout the past decade, by mapping what is not central in the geography of the heroic. #no_border_films (2019) is the name of an Instagram account the artist has created for a group of video works to be part of, selected, organized and uploaded by himself over a period of time. The viewer is able to experience the video given the time frame that Instagram allows. The video #nøborders, contrary to the Instagram version, was viewed in its full length within the liminal space that was hosted by the gallery in order to turn Cloud space into materialized memory. It depicts a ceremony where a man with a phone camera is the centre point. The video is part of a larger project that started in a juvenile prison (and continues until today after seven years) making its filming a functional ‘tool’ for its protagonists to use and claim solutions to their problems.
We are watching him holding a mobile phone over the dead body of an old woman, unsure whether he is filming and slowly realizes that it is a tele-mourning ceremony alongside the actual one taking place in the room. It happens that as he has just been released from prison he is under a travel ban and is not allowed to go to Albania where the actual burial of his mother is going to take place. He is connected to his sister in Fier who mourns in this ceremony that is being performed for him in Athens.
The archival structure of #no_border_films will gradually transform over time, adapting to the material it will host, with the aim of breaking down all kinds of borders and limitations. Through this film, the protagonist hopes to obtain permission to travel to Albania and visit his mother’s grave.”
Sylvia Kouvali
ALL SOULS DAY – PART II, a group exhibition with Duncan Campbell, Menelaos Karamaghiolis, Serapis Maritime, Malvina Panayiotidi, Eftihis Patsourakis at Rodeo Gallery Piraeus