Never Cross the Same River Twice | Chapter 2: Transhistorical Investigations
Curated by Kisito Assangni and Ariana Kalliga.
Participating Artists Part I: Monica de Miranda, Moataz Nasr, Emo de Medeiros, Harold
Offeh, Longinos Nagila, Ahmet Öğüt, Gilivanka Kedzior, Marinella Senatore, Daisuke Takeya,
Sammy Baloji and Lazara Rosell Albear.
Participating Artists Part II: Valentina Karga, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Mary Zygouri, Ariana
Papademetropoulos, Eva Papamargariti and George Drivas.
Exhibition Opening: 12th of June
Never Cross the Same River Twice embraces expansive videographies that aim to foster new forms of transnational and collective assembly. Curated by French-Togolese independent curator Kisito Assangni and Greek-British curator Ariana Kalliga, the exhibition forms a time-shifting survey of performances converging between video, film and installation. Initiated as a travelling research project in 2020, the exhibition connects two borders that unfold in tandem, tracing the recent video practices of 10 international artists selected by Assangni and 6 contemporary Greek video artists invited into dialogue by space52, Athens.
The selected video works act as sites of visual contestation; cinematic aesthetics with narratives that re-remember; they reclaim histories and ancestries; decolonize both the mind and the imagination. Referencing Heraclitus’ river, which conceived identity as an ever-evolving and fluctuating entity, the title of the exhibition is a call to invent new grounds in place of entrenched environmental, political, and regulatory systems.
The participating artists tackle subjects that challenge us to reflect on the changing world in which we live, reconstructing and reclaiming lived-realities and public domains. Exploring the limits of film as activism, several of the works reflect what Argentinian scholar Walter D. Mignolo termed the, ‘epistemic disobedience and decolonial freedom,’ needed to rebuild non- colonial futures.
From a ‘coming community’ to a planetary escape, the exhibition opens up uncanny spectral exits to new collective and geopolitical imaginaries. Accompanied by a parallel series of bi-weekly screenings and talks, including a night organized by the Athens School of Fine Arts (LAB12), Never Cross the Same River Twice aims to expand and densify the interconnected motifs weaved through the exhibition program; history, ancestry, ethnography, spirituality, memory, colonization, Afrofuturism, feminism, diaspora, identity, globalization, consumerism, myth.
Never Cross the Same River Twice is supported by the NEON Organization and the Polyeco Contemporary Arts Initiative (PCAI).
Project Advisor: space52 Founder, Dionisis Christofilogiannis Communications Coordinator: Dimitra Michail Raftopoulou
Design: Pantelis Vitaliotis-Magneto & Virginia Russolo
Public Program Guest Curators: Argyro Nicolaou, Samantha Ozer, Evi Roumani (LAB12, Athens School of Fine Arts), Menelaos Karamaghiolis
Address: space52, Kastorias 52 - Athens
Duration: June 12- September 25, 2021.
Opening Hours: Open to the public on weekends 10:00 a.m. - 13:00 p.m., 19:00 p.m. - 22:00 p.m. Open on weekdays only by appointment.
Contact: +306977041634 | info@space52.gr
