Onassis Culture at the 59th Venice Art Biennale
The VR film “Oedipus In Search of Colonus” by Loukia Alavanou represents Greece at the International Art Exhibition – Venice Biennale, supported by Onassis Culture.
Still From “on The Way To Colonus”, Vr360, Loukia Alavanou, 2021 Produced By VRS, The First Edition Of The Film Was Powered By Onassis Culture And Is Part Of The Onassis Collection
Onassis Foundation is the main supporter for yet another year of the official national participation of Greece at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, from April 23 to November 27, 2022.
Inside the Greek Pavilion, one of the Giardinis most iconic points, the artist and Onassis Foundation scholar Loukia Alavanou invites the audience to travel through time and space with a 15-minute 360-degree VR film viewed inside built domes with posture chairs – based on the designs of the late architect Takis Zenetos. The exhibition is curated by Heinz Peter Schwerfel.
The film and installation “Oedipus In Search of Colonus” links the cultural heritage of classical Greece – specifically the work of the playwright Sophocles – to today’s social realities by showing the desperate existence of Roma communities in the settlement of Nea Zoi, west of Athens.
Working with a film team and using futuristic technologies, Alavanou cast Roma as actors in the third play of Sophocles’ Oedipus cycle. This film and an accompanying sound installation are presented in a dramatic yet intimate atmosphere within the Greek Pavilion, which becomes a self-reflective island in the middle of one of the world’s biggest international exhibitions. Art an impossible place. U-topia.
A first version of the film, “On the Way to Colonus,” powered by Onassis Culture is now part of the Onassis Collection.
“I’m deeply interested in the theatricality provided by such a medium. Antonin Artaud, if I’m not mistaken, was the one who introduced the term ‘Virtual Reality’ associating it with the notion of a ‘theater of cruelty.’ And I think one can find many aspects of the certain cruelty in the way that I work.”
The centerpiece of Loukia Alavanou’s installation “Oedipus In Search of Colonus” is a 15-minute VR360 film that transposes Sophocles’ almost 2500-year-old drama, “Oedipus at Colonus,” into the present and tells the story through a combination of docufiction, video clips, farce, and the latest VR technology.
Infamous for his horrible deeds, at the end of his life Oedipus is banished from Thebes, and he comes to Colonus to die. For the first time in his tragic life, he goes against the will of the gods. In the face of their resistance, he chooses Colonus as his resting place, a sacred site consecrated by the gods.
In Alavanou’s version, which is filmed in a shantytown inhabited by Roma, an off-screen chorus tells the story. All the roles are played by Roma, amateur actors. Their biggest problem is identical to that of the aged Oedipus. Like him, the Roma who today live to the west of Athens in an area not far from Colonus also struggle against their fate. Often lacking any form of citizenship, these nomads are prevented by the Greek authorities from being able to choose a burial site close to their last place of residence.
“Oedipus In Search of Colonus” is the first VR film shot in Greece that tells a cohesive story. It was filmed using a complicated 360-degree technology, which enables the viewer not only to see but actually experience through their head movements the entire scenarios of interior spaces and drone flights over the settlement. In addition, the sound design is directional, which, like the image, also responds to the movements of the viewer.
Inside the neoclassical architecture of the Greek Pavilion, Loukia Alavanou is building hemispherical domes of various sizes, in which there is space for three to five posture chairs based on the designs of the Greek utopian architect Takis Zenetos, who died in 1970.
The entire pavilion is kept in semi-darkness, creating a simultaneously theatrical and mysterious atmosphere, which is enhanced by a sound installation played on loudspeakers hidden from view. The sound work includes fragments of the film’s narrative as well as music by Roma. Exhibition staff lead visitors to the individual chairs for viewing the film.
As part of the Onassis Culture support, 30 VR headsets are provided for viewing the film.
Still From “on The Way To Colonus”, Vr360, Loukia Alavanou, 2021 Produced By VRS, The First Edition Of The Film Was Powered By Onassis Culture And Is Part Of The Onassis Collection
VR, AR, and XR (Virtual Reality/ Augmented Reality/ eXtended Reality) are of an ever-increasing use and importance; not only in the field of cultural and creative industries, but also in a wider context as technologies that greatly affect the ways we create, build social relationships, trade, produce, and do business.
Onassis Foundation, constantly oriented at fostering disruptive innovation, supports through all its programs the creation of innovative and critical works related to extended reality and meta-verse. Supporting research related to VR, AR, and XR through the scholarships program and encouraging new research in the respective fields, Onassis Foundation has already granted over the past five years more than 80 scholarships in related subjects to the world’s leading universities.
Since January 2020 the Onassis Foundation has founded ONX Studio at the Fifth Avenue, Midtown Manhattan, NYC, along with New Museum and New Inc., aiming to support creative teams working with extended reality. The ONX Studio accelerator has already hosted 18 creative teams which have produced works that have been presented at Sundance, Tribeca, Ars Electronica, Venice VR Festival, as well as in numerous other festivals and exhibitions, while works produced at ΟΝΧ are presented over the past years at the annual digital exhibition organized by the Onassis Foundation at Pedion tou Areos park, midtown Athens. From January 2023 the ONX incubator, ONX Lab, will start operating in Athens and will support creative people from across the globe willing to work in Athens and produce world-class projects in the field of disruptive innovation technologies, with emphasis on extended reality and the use of AI in their work.
ΟΝΧ Lab will be in close dialog with ONX Studio in New York, but also with the other activities of the Onassis Foundation: both in its artistic and educational program, and the Onassis AiR, its international Athens-based artistic research residency program, as well as the innovative research activities of the digital hospital jointly developed with the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center and the under construction Onassis National Transplant Center.
The interdisciplinary and transatlantic nature of the ONX program reflects the wider Onassis Foundation’s critical and pluralistic approach to the extended reality.
Loukia Alavanou is an artist supported by the Onassis Foundation through its activities in various stages of her artistic development, and an exemplary model of the way that extended reality related work can be facilitated. Alavanou has been an Onassis Foundation scholar, whereas the institution was also the leading producer of her 360-degree VR film “Oedipus In Search of Colonus” and supports her participation at the Venice Art Biennale, representing Greece in 2022. Moreover, for the years 2021 and 2022, Alavanou is a fellow artist at ONX Studio, the international joint initiative between Onassis Foundation and New Museum in New York focused on AI and extended reality.
Still From “on The Way To Colonus”, Vr360, Loukia Alavanou, 2021 Produced By VRS, The First Edition Of The Film Was Powered By Onassis Culture And Is Part Of The Onassis Collection
The construction of the national giardinis begun in 1907, when Biennale Arte gave countries the permission to present national artistic proposals independently. The Greek Pavilion was built in 1934 by architects M. Papandréou and Brenno Del Giudice. The rhythm of the pavilion is neo-byzantine and served as a reminder of the ‘greekness’ of Byzantium, a crucial matter at times of national Balkan antagonism. In the recent editions, artists such as Diohandi (2011), Stefanos Tsivopoulos (2013), Maria Papadimitriou (2015), George Drivas (2017), Panos Charalambous, Eva Stefani & Zafos Xagoraris (2019) have represented Greece at the Venice Biennale. Exhibitions at the Greek Pavilion are commissioned by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports.
Who is Loukia Alavanou
Artist
Loukia Alavanou
Curator
Heinz Peter Schwerfel
Assistant Curator
Phaidonas Gialis
Research Advisor
Yorgos Tzirtzilakis
Associate Curator
Yannis Arvanitis
Architectural Concept
AREA – Architecture Research Athens
Architectural and Installation Design
Korres Engineering
Sound Designer
Manolis Manousakis
Production Advisor
Christina Pigaki
Executive Producer
Despina Mouzaki
Production Coordinator
Olga Hatzidaki
Commissioner
National Gallery of Greece – Alexandros Soutsos Museum (represented by Professor Marina Lambraki-Plaka, Director of the National Gallery)
The exhibition is organized with the support of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, with the National Gallery of Greece – Alexandros Soutsos Museum as implementing organization. A first version of the film, “On the Way to Colonus,” powered by Onassis Culture is now part of the Onassis Collection.
