Exhibition Overview
Forever Informed

LED Screen, Photography by Ugo Carmeni 2024

…a parked black van scans its surroundings for personal devices to send out a thumbnail from the account of a recently deceased person. Captioned “OMG! Have you seen this?!”, it reaches three unsuspecting acquaintances. In disbelief, the first recipient takes the bait and clicks the link. The second fails to see the notification as it drowns in a sea of information debris. The third—no longer friends with the ‘sender’ and unaware of their passing—sees the message and opts not to answer, effectively ghosting them.

So our ghost story goes, and so it echoes: On which side of the screen lies the ghost?

Photography by Ugo Carmeni 2024

RECEPTION
Red Polished (Glitch) Ware, Andreas Andronikou and Irini Khenkin, 2024
Tyre Track, LLC, 2024
Beacons and Pillars, Haig Aivazian, 2024

On the right to be forgotten (part 1): Wayback Machine to Sun City, LLC, 2024

From this seemingly benign anecdote, Lower Levant Company, Endrosia Collective and Haig Aivazian sidestep the superstitious provenance of ghosts to consider the present socio-technical and material forms of ghosting.

The exhibition title “On a wildflower-lined gravel track off a quiet thoroughfare…” is derived from the opening sentence of a 2019 Forbes article that exposes a spyware operation run out of a black van. Parked along an inconspicuous wildflower-lined street in the coastal city of Larnaca, the operation becomes an entry point into the geopolitical histories of transmission and interference that render Cyprus an ‘antenna island’ for clandestine operations, covert transmissions and intelligence interception across the wider region. Drawing from contemporary forms of ghosting to excavate sedimented histories interpreted through sculptural and audiovisual interventions, the exhibition nods to the paranormal and the archeological alike; a reminder that unresolved historical grievances always return to haunt the present.

Assuming the parafictional device of an ambiguous shell company named Forever Informed, the pavilion’s premises set in motion varying intensities and materialisations of “ghosts in the machine”, its façade vouching to provide “smart solutions to weak signals”. It is unclear whether the company’s facilities have been recently vacated, yet to be moved into, or set up for covert activities. Traces of its vision are left on view in the form of anachronistic gestures, connecting a past carried by raw materials – terracotta, sand, copper, concrete – with elusive ambitions for a quantifiable future.

Photography by Ugo Carmeni 2024

CANAL
Organ, Rafailia Tsiridou and Emiddio Vasquez, 2024

The welcoming reception room falls apart, dissolving its own fiction, while a message blinks in Morse code “Tomorrow morning you will see” and a severed cable leaks out of a missing ceiling tile, channelling the undulating tones of water and wind travelling through pipes that peer in from the canal. Below, a wildflower with its seeds scattered tempers the white glow of artificial light.

Photography by Ugo Carmeni 2024

OFFICE
AVRION PROIN EN NA DEIS / TOMORROW MORNING YOU WILL SEE, Alexandros Xenophontos, 2024
I stay oriented towards you, weak as you make me, Niki Charalambous and Doris Mari Demetriadou, 2024

The enclosed courtyard that runs through the space turns into a copper slag-lined ‘thoroughfare’, with horn speakers diffusing high frequencies recorded across sensitive locations in Cyprus. Ceramic horn speakers sprout to conjure a mode of listening that reorients attention to the land, subterranean activities and modes of extractivism.

Photography by Ugo Carmeni 2024

THOROUGHFARE
Crossover Frequency Spectrum, LLC, 2024

Vibrations emanating from the end of the path beckon towards SOUNDR*, a dark cross-section of transmissions from Cyprus and Lebanon, where light disperses darkness and time refracts across three vessels. A steel-mounted diptych sees a chain of particles oscillating between memory and future transmission; a city plunged in darkness is animated by a force that floods it with a red glow and rattles it with throbbing frequencies; a video game appears from behind a flipped desk, trailing behind a blue gorilla wreaking havoc in a luxury development, and turning against the very edifice that brought it to life.

*Named after Sounder, a codename for a joint British/American surveillance station in Cyprus which has been revealed as a key site for mass communications monitoring and interception in the Middle East.

Photography by Ugo Carmeni 2024

SOUNDR
Despite our severed connection, Marina Ashioti, Irini Khenkin, and Alexandros Xenophontos, 2024
You May Own the Lanterns but We Have the Light,
Episode Two: Eyeshadow Dark as Night, Haig Aivazian, 2024
Gaming Tower, LLC, 2024

A multilingual publication co-authored by the artists delves further into the ghost (hi)stories and infrastructures that form the bedrock for many of the artworks. In parallel, the Vigil Workspace, an invigilation residency taking place throughout the duration of the Biennale, further activates these inquiries to think through the imperativeness of remaining vigilant today and the forms that vigils can take to guide us through the present – reanimating notions of invisible labour within the art industry to hold a space for reflection and remembrance.

Across these configurations, ghosting, as the paradoxical act of withdrawal and persistence, begets its own form of vigilance, demanding an adjustment of attention; a recalibration of the senses; a commitment not only to staying with the problem of ghosts, but to drawing alliances with them and, entrusted with their agitation, dismantling and building worlds anew.

Lower Levant Company
Peter Eramian
Emiddio Vasquez

Haig Aivazian

Endrosia
Andreas Andronikou
Marina Ashioti
Niki Charalambous
Doris Mari Demetriadou
Irini Khenkin
Rafailia Tsiridou
Alexandros Xenophontos

Organiser

Commissioner
Louli Michaelidou

Production Manager
Charles Gohy

Project Manager
Ioulita Toumazi

Graphic Design
Doris Mari Demetriadou
Andreas Andronikou
Miquel Hervás Gómez

Exhibition Architecture
Alexandros Xenophontos

Technicians
Jean-Frédéric Gohy
Erwin De Muer
Riccardo Clementi
Kwinten

Publishers
Archive Books
Cyprus Deputy Ministry of Culture – Department of Contemporary Culture

Supporters
psi foundation
Pylon Art & Culture
The Kerenidis Pepe Collection
Niki Hadjilyra

Acknowledgments
Iwan Arjanto
Alexis Charalambous
Elpida Frangeskidou
Svetlana Goncharenko
Gaetano di Gregorio
Byron Macrides
Konstantina Michael
Faysal Mroueh
Dirk Versluis
Cloudy Works