Αντηλιά/ Sunglare*, video, 8 min, 2012

For “sunglare” I edited and manipulated material that I had previously been recording daily, during 2011, in public spaces in the city of Athens.
The city, in the ‘world’ in which my project takes place, is shaken by a deep spiritual imbalance, the social system collapses, the social fabric breaks down and despair becomes a private affair with no way out.

The work proposes to the viewer to take the difficult position of the observer of a continuously changing emotional state, which is expressed through the bodily gestures of the people in the city’s public space.
From humiliation to despair/ from alienation to annihilation/ from social indifference to suffering / from abandonment to anger /from paranoia to paralysis etc.

*Sunglare: Sunshine is what I have always felt that characterizes my hometown.
Using the word “Sunglare” as the title of my work I wish to give a new meaning to the word, to express the reversal of a situation in which
the familiar becomes alien and unknown, the everyday life becomes aggressive and unpredictable, the joy of life dims and the act of wandering in the city is transformed into persecution mania.
The “sunglare” forces us to squint in the face of public images that become increasingly painful and inhumane.
It seems to be spreading like an epidemic, it makes people ill and blurs their mind.
They forget their names, what they did, what they have achieved, what they dreamed of or what they love.
People have been  trapped in a cruel and self-destructive city.
The Sunglare is no longer the warm light that could give strength and heal people. It is the merciless sign of an upcoming social havoc.

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