The 2nd International for Contemporary Visual Media in Thessaloniki brought together established artists and emerging talents for five days of innovative visual exploration. Organized by the municipality and Aristotle University, it highlighted participation, experimentation, and new technologies. The Municipal Gallery was transformed into an immersive, interactive space. A landmark event for Europe’s contemporary digital art scene.
e
“What is affirmed in e —is the attraction to a form of narrative that would combine speech with characters and landscapes. In the case of e, three phases of this narrative are played out: before the catastrophe, which contains an element of insouciance, the suspended time where “it” happens, which is a paradoxical subjective time because the few seconds of the earthquake are experienced as an eternity by those who live through it, and afterwards, which is a time that bears the visible or invisible stigmata of the event and must be redefined, reinvented. The linearity of this story in three phases is only a surface effect, an abstract construction that can occur only with an external or remote distance, like that of the witness, the stranger, or with adequate temporal distance. It’s an effect of perspective, that is to say, a construction of the narrative where the vanishing lines and axes can come together at one or several points, and something of the diffraction or break can then be reconstructed. The installation set-up with three simultaneous screens demands that the viewer grasp multiple meanings: they must choose and associate the elements of a subjective montage in a threshold situation. The inherent incompleteness of the set-up is associated with enveloping elements such as sound, mixing natural ambiences, with strident birds and insects, and deep, almost tellurian frequencies. The movement of withdrawal in relation to the incompleteness of meaning is offset by other elements of the language of forms and sounds.” Marta Gili, Interview with Natacha Nisic, in Echo, Catalogue of the Jeu de Paume, Actes Sud, 2014
