On a wildflower-lined gravel track off a quiet thoroughfare...
Biennale Arte 2024
10Despite our severed connection,
Marina Ashioti, Irini Khenkin, Alexandros Xenophontos

Two channel video installation, 8’45” (animation, CCTV footage, LIDAR scans of forest surrounding RAF Troodos Signals Station in Cyprus), stereo. Steel sculpture. Sound by Emiddio Vasquez. 3D LIDAR scanning by Cloudy Works.

2024




Photography by Ugo Carmeni 2024


This message is a house that is a watchtower that is a ghost ship that is surveillance software that is a Fata Morgana mirage, with stones placed where the living rose takes root: the erotic condition where our knowing negotiates rites, of metal and of meat.

A steel sculpture reminiscent of a pylon stands within SOUNDR and serves as a vessel, transmitting a chain of glitches and flickers of light across two channels to reach an unsettled spectre lingering in the periphery. The act of ghosting brings forth a moment of unrequited communication, here narratively reinterpreted as an attempt for communication between a ghost-hunting siren and her late lover.

Particles emerge from a seashell on the shore of the Akrotiri peninsula (a British-controlled military post) and disperse across the ether. They travel through sources of light recorded across a network of unsecured surveillance cameras, and through point clouds of the forest surrounding the island’s highest peak, home to RAF Troodos, the so-called “jewel in the crown of British intelligence”.

The video installation features animation sequences modelled after photographs uploaded on an online archive of military families residing in the “British Sovereign Base Areas” in Cyprus, converging with Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) point clouds and found surveillance footage, while fragmented utterances intercede electrophonic noise sources, blending with tones of spectrally encoded messages and material simulations.



Stills from video



Photography by Ugo Carmeni 2024