VIGIL: 2XU

“2XU” is a performance-research project that unfolds in-between spaces and human-specific elements. The research practice highlights a set of tasks based on a communication archive made of texts, sounds, voices, movements, and videos of the Athenian sound/landscape and on interviews with local and international artists, activists, and other practitioners. This archive tends to form a “third” common language that will be practiced and re-approached, suggesting a collage of different phenomenologies related to the city. This notion of a “third language” is based on the writing of Ocean Vuong: “Two languages cancel each other out, suggests Barthes, beckoning a third. Sometimes our words are few and far between, or simply ghosted. In which case the hand, although limited by the borders of skin and cartilage, can be that third language that animates where the tongue falters.”

This “language” works as an adaptive mechanism to re-understand and rewire a newly perceived space. As a process of living bodies overwhelmed with chaotic and numerous stimuli and memories, a process that reincarnates and adapts between a personal and public space, rageful and aware. “A matter of now” and a matter of an honest approach to our coming-of-age journey.

Athens bursts with sensory, architectural, and physical chaos, multiplicity and complexity. Effort therefore arises as an adaptive mechanism and as a performative practice, creating a possible manual of survival, growth, and friendship in the urban cavity of Athens. Moreover, this survival effort seems crucially linked with Athens, as the city undergoes a rapid and violent change. The empowerment of a community engaged in loving and protecting the ecology of Athens from alienation appears to be central to our practice, artistic or otherwise.

Qualitative research methods (interviews) will activate participatory and city-specific practices to connect with a community and to create a sensory and honest “language” of resilience in chaos.

We have been living in Athens for a very long period of our lives. This is also where we met. For some, Athens represents a sunny and relaxing getaway: an ideal place where culture, good weather, and good food meet. For us, it is a different story. Daily roaming in its chaotic cavities, we are constantly searching for the shadiest and fastest way to get from one place to another, meeting all sorts of people on our way, who are also usually loaded and overwhelmed by the urban chaos, the heat, and the sociopolitical landscape of the country.

Our project “2XU” was developed in this environment. Once more, we were challenged to discover how to stand next to each other, how to walk next to each other, while also filming and watching for bumps on the pavement. In this multitasking state, and through the mediation of the cameras in our hands, we became aware of all the small tosses and turns our bodies made to keep themselves stable while also moving forward; of keeping oneself stable in order to be able to walk next to another body, moving forward along with each other.

Our methodology was transformed by these informal ways of relating to and discussing with one another, while exploring paralinguistic, verbal, and beyond-verbal communication. This attempt became a way to discover what gets us closer, in contact, and in solidarity, as well as what facilitates our sharing and opening up to one another. The editing process of our documentation was also guided by psychosocial dimensions that had surfaced through the process, particularly while revisiting and analyzing the videos for the first time.

Our interactions with the Onassis Fellows during the residency proved particularly valuable, offering us new perspectives on both our practice and our daily engagement with the city. Most of our meetings and editing sessions took place within the Onassis AiR spaces, which we were able to transform into a dedicated workspace and meeting hub. This environment supported our focus and enabled the in-depth discussions required throughout the process.

“2XU” came to be the start of a video installation and research project that unfolds in and in relation to the city of Athens and its inhabitants through the lens of our friendship, struggle, and solidarity as a way through the various registers of the chaotic urban and social landscape. Our initial exploration of this methodology was presented at the Onassis AiR Summer Open Days in the form of a seven-minute video loop, which reflected the randomness of moving and scrolling through the city.

The next phase of the project will involve engaging with the testimonies of others, weaving together a network of voices that reveal the collective experience of the city. By incorporating diverse perspectives, we aim to explore how individual narratives intersect with shared spaces, social dynamics, and urban life, allowing the project to evolve as both a documentation and a reflection of how connection, solidarity, and everyday interactions shape our understanding of a city and one another.