16/12/23, Ελευσίνα, Αθήνα
Døcumatism and the project Mystery 69 Greekies at the 1st IN SITU REALITIES – Eleusis Documentary Festival, featuring film screenings, video installations, a public discussion, and a workshop
Døcumatism participated in the first IN SITU REALITIES – Eleusis Documentary Festival with film screenings, video installations, a public discussion and a workshop. The festival presented documentary films inspired by Eleusina and the surrounding areas, alongside significant collaborations with filmmakers and artists, as part of 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture.
Films and video installations created by the Døcumatism collective as part of the Mystery 69 Greekies project were presented, together with filmed documentation of the project’s public actions. A workshop exploring the project’s artistic practice was led by Menelaos Karamaghiolis together with Stavros Triantos, Sotiris Vougiatzis, Louiza Orlof and other members of the project.
The workshop explored the ways in which the moving image can function as a starting point for public actions, visual artworks, and the activation of abandoned public spaces in the area through artistic processes centred on the environment and on the troubled coexistence of history and the present in an environmentally burdened region.
Following the screening of the films, a discussion took place between director Menelaos Karamaghiolis, filmmaker and visual artist Eva Stefani, the audience, and the participants in the project. The discussion focused on the ways in which the document and documentary filmmaking can function as an awakening force for their protagonists, creators, viewers, and the landscapes in which they unfold.
Mystery 69 Greekies
The cinematic documentation of unknown and invisible places, stories, and protagonists becomes the starting point for a multimedia project that engages with critical social issues through in situ artistic events, like visual art, music, dance and video, in difficult-to-access spaces, with screenings and public actions that give a platform to vulnerable social groups.
At the heart of Mystery 69 Greekies are the abandoned and injured stray animals of the wider Thriasian Plain, which, despite their visible disabilities, are remarkably popular for adoption abroad: the greekies. The term takes on an allegorical dimension, encompassing anyone who feels isolated or abandoned.
During the preparation, filming and presentation of the Greekies films, site-specific public actions were created that brought abandoned spaces to life through stray films featuring stray protagonists. These actions were filmed and became part of an audiovisual archive.
Film screenings, music and dance performances, and public dialogues involving unexpected encounters unfolded as public “mysteries” throughout Eleusis, redefining the notion of homeland through artistic processes: at times as a place of origin, at times as a destination and place of residence, and at times as a concept capable of embracing and protecting those who feel stray and abandoned.
Through unexpected artistic interventions, through Mystery 69, the Greekies intervene in the city: teenagers from refugee camps who become volunteers during natural disasters in Mandra; an Afro-Greek musician who, together with his group, enriches Greek traditional music; Eleusinians who redefine the notion of the “foreigner” through dance interventions in the city, in remarkable collaborations with contemporary visual artists.
At the end of this process, one might be left wondering: “Is my art also my homeland”?
