in collaboration with Moritz Metzner and Campus Novel
commissioned and co-produced by the Athens Biennale OMONOIA AB5to6

Subjective docu-fictional essay approaches Omonoia square ("concord square" in Greek), one of the most crisis- and poverty-stricken areas in Athens, as a possible social heterotopia. Questioning the usual media representation of the Greek crisis, it is based on interviews with locals & explores their personal topologies and alternative visions of Omonoia.

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The site-specific project “Same Time Tomorrow” could be described as a video palimpsest. It is based on a documentary research and interviews with the inhabitants of the Omonoia square and its surroundings – one of the most crisis- and poverty-stricken areas in the center of Athens, in the direct vicinity with banks, empty hotels and ancient excavation sites, whose name ironically means in Greek “the Concord square”.

The urban surroundings of the Omonoia square offered the setting for an improvised script and a site-specific video piece. The project engages with personal topologies and stories of the locals in connection to the identity, and, as a reaction to them, moves within the coordinates of the everyday life of contemporary Athens and semi-conscious media projections. Locations of personal and historical meaning served as a material for the development of the two obsessed characters, searching for one unifying moment of “omonoia”, and of a collective fictional narration. It reflects the social conflicts and disappointments, but also the search for the identity and the desire for new social visions of the Greek people and of the new generation of Europeans.

Using the cinematic as a means of engagement with the unknown place and people, though consciously avoiding graphic documentary images, we aimed to question the common perception and the marginalizing notion of the Greek crisis. Instead, we wanted to look at what other possible stories and scenarios, real and fictional, are connected to this place, usually associated only with the crisis. How much our perception of a place and people is influenced by our media and film references – and at the same time, what these references allow us to see beyond the facade of everyday life, crisis and exoticizing stereotypes.

SAME TIME TOMORROW (IN SEARCH OF OMONOIA)

HD-Video, Farbe, Ton, 15 Min.

in Zusammenarbeit mit Moritz Metzner und Campus Novel, koproduziert von der Athens Biennale OMONOIA AB5to6 

Subjektiver dokufiktionaler Filmessay, der den Omonoia-Platz („Platz der Eintracht“) als mögliche soziale Heterotopie betrachtet. Basierend auf Interviews mit Anwohner*innen untersucht er persönliche Topologien und alternative Visionen von Omonoia und hinterfragt gängige mediale Darstellungen der griechischen Krise.

Das ortsspezifische Projekt kann als Video-Palimpsest beschrieben werden. Es basiert auf dokumentarischer Recherche und Interviews mit Bewohner*innen rund um den Omonoia-Platz – einem der am stärksten von Krise und Armut geprägten Orte im Zentrum Athens.

Die urbane Umgebung diente als Setting für ein improvisiertes Skript und eine ortsspezifische Videoarbeit. Das Projekt verhandelt persönliche Topologien, Geschichten und mediale Projektionen und reflektiert soziale Konflikte, Identitätssuche und neue Visionen der griechischen Gesellschaft.

Durch den Einsatz filmischer Mittel als Zugang zum Unbekannten, bei gleichzeitiger bewusster Vermeidung klassischer dokumentarischer Bildsprache, hinterfragt die Arbeit marginalisierende Narrative der Krise und eröffnet alternative reale und fiktive Erzählräume.