ARTWORKS IN
SUMMER NOSTOS FESTIVAL
STILL HERE TOMORROW

What do we really share when we co-exist in the same space? How is our identity extended through our relations with others?

The exhibition STILL HERE TOMORROW begins with the idea of the poetics of relations and unfolds as a rhizomatic map with multiple connections among the works. The title functions affirmatively and constitutes a necessary assertion against the conditions of precariousness. Coexistence, exchange of ideas and creative tensions become a means of resistance to uncertainty. The 45 artists in the exhibition propose narratives that dispute the conditions of the present as they open up the debate to the future.

Painting, sculpture, video, photography, performance, installation, new media and sound works activate spaces in the building of the National Library of Greece and the Southern Walks of the Stavros Niarchos Park. The exhibition spaces are seen as an open archive of arguments. The works put forward distinct narratives, converse with one another and with the venue itself, live together without losing their autonomy, and at times question the very structures in which they have been placed.

The artists focus on research and experimentation, while their theoretical explorations are accompanied by persistent renegotiations of both form and material. The construction of history and nature, which is symbolically linked with the spaces where the exhibition unfolds—in the Library and the Park respectively—challenge our present social condition.

With these works, the artists explore the potential of personal narratives and reflect on the role of digital and physical archives, the expectations and the challenges of technological evolution, while questioning humans’ relationship with other forms of existence and the individual’s relations to the community. They employ elements from everyday life in order to approach the ‘uncanny’, and return to past mythologies in order to create different ones for the future. They rethink the concepts of ownership, automation, work, production and identity, discerning their exclusions and delineations, thereby imagining tools to both disrupt and break free.

Screenings:

The 15 filmmakers awarded by ARTWORKS present here their works of fiction, documentary and animation. This group of promising artists have already been distinguished for their short films at international film festivals, and many of them are preparing their first feature films.

The film screenings program at the Summer Nostos Festival provides an opportunity for each of the filmmakers to express their personal perspective on contemporary cinema. Defying the challenging conditions they face each day, these directors and producers respond to universal issues in their own ways and with fresh perspectives.

Familiar landscapes become places for analysis, focal points in which unexpected relationships and interactions unfold. From summertime Athens, we are brought to a wintry scene in Ikaria, to the borders of Ecuador and the Amazon, as well as imagined, fictitious worlds. Indeed, many of these cinematic visions take place beyond geographic limitations. The films’ themes include family, gender, sexuality, identity, brewing social issues, political unrest and individual as well as collective memories.