HACKATHENS 2020: WHAT COMES AFTER

Widespread isolation, empty streets, houses full of people, major urban regeneration projects, masks and plastic gloves, lack of touch and the ‘sexy no 6,’ teleworking and new forms of cohabitation, five-feet physical distancing, and long-lasting anticipation for a future to come. What is left behind after all this and what does this new year hold for the city of Athens?

HackAthens 2020 has completed the first stage of its digital quest for Athens’ next day, presenting five works that explore through various perspectives the question of our collective imaginary concerning a tomorrow that has been indelibly marked by a never-ending pandemic. The works were selected following an open call by the Onassis Stegi and were collectively developed through the close collaboration of the selected creators both with the project curators and with each other. They are presented on Ars Electronica 2020 “In Kepler’s Garden”, the most important digital media festival internationally, where Onassis Stegi participates with its own online “garden” under the overarching title Stories of Athens. The works will be available from September 9th 2020, without cost or time limit, on https://www.onassis.org/whats-on/hackathens-2020. On Friday, September 11th, at 18.00, the artists will take part in an online discussion on the Onassis YouTube Channel. (https://youtu.be/9H1gqDdzNZg).

Videos, digital apps, binaural recording techniques, 3D stereo sound, VR games, and poetry awaken the imagination, stimulate the senses, and invite us to reflect upon our lives in a city, i.e. Athens, that changes perhaps faster and more unexpectedly than ever.

Curators Angelos Varvarousis (an urban planner teaching at the Autonomous University of Barcelona) and Prodromos Tsiavos (head of Digital Policy and Development of the Onassis Stegi) note: "It’s not a party. It’s a celebration. Or, at least, that’s how we fantasized it would be ‘after.’ While in HackAthens 2019 we asked, “to whom Athens belong?”, in the 2020 version we are seeking its collective utopia”.

“HackAthens 2020 is not just another digital space for creative expression in times of physical distancing, but rather an active laboratory of experimentation with new collaborative forms, community building, and collective action. The works presented at HackAthens 2020 regard digitalization as a reality sitting atop Athenians’ bodies, thus modifying the way we exist as individual and collective subjectivities. Not their form but rather their content is what turns them into representative works of the hybrid – digital and physical – Athenian reality. The outcome of this collective effort transcends a linear juxtaposition of individual works created during quarantine, composing in fact a multifaceted yet unified exploration of Athens in the future.

The HackAthens’ creators employed a variety of means aiming at a multisensory experience of the future city. Although the pandemic is the converging point of the works that constitute the HackAthens 2020 first stage outcome, the project groups’ themes and research are part of a broader consideration regarding our social future. Climate crisis, artificial intelligence, digitalization and disembodiment of human subjectivity, urban isolation and individualization, sharing economy, conflicts over the city’s public space and commons, and increased social surveillance are trends that intensified during the pandemic, yet predated it. The HackAthens 2020 works attempt to highlight these trends, either with a realistic and scientifically accurate approach, or employing sci-fi plots, sarcasm, and provocative humor."

With “Solo” – an imaginary app they designed – Vasileia Dereli and Marialena Vyzaki wonder if loneliness possesses time, an aroma, a texture, and how we lead ourselves alone towards a new truth. In “Realität”, Evita Skourleti depicts – uniquely and in under five minutes – the process of reappropriating one’s partner, making symbolic use of the figures of Mr and Mrs Freud (Nikos Kouris and Elena Topalidou) set inside an Athenian yard. With their radio drama “If the Delivery Girl Is Hot, Wake Me Up”, Lotus Eaters use humor to transport us into the world of a young woman, into her dreamy thoughts and stirrings in Athens under lockdown. With his mockumentary “Home / Work”, Paris Selinas introduces us to two women who, in the stress of lockdown, decide to turn their apartments into shared spaces for living and working. And with “The Great Bar in the Sky”, Christina Chrysanthopoulou and Olga Chatzifoti offer up a gaming adventure set inside some “other” Athens, that functions somewhere between dystopia and utopia, surrender and resistance.

Credits

HackAthens 2020 Curators: Angelos Varvarousis, Prodromos Tsiavos

Ars Electronica Garden Athens Production Coordination: Heracles Papatheodorou

HackAthens 2020 Production Coordination: Katerina Varda

Commissioned-produced by: Onassis Stegi

The works in detail

The Great Bar in the Sky (2020)

Christina Chrysanthopoulou, Olga Chatzifoti

Interactive narration

Duration: 15΄ – 60΄

Creators’ Note

“The Great Bar in the Sky” is a fictional, interactive story in digital format, set in an alternative version of Athens, where history took a different turn after the Covid pandemic of 2020.

Inspired by real life events, governmental decisions during and after the pandemic, as well as the flux in our everyday life, and extrapolating to not-so-distant-extremes, “The Great Bar in the Sky” aims to provide users with an unfamiliar vision of Athens, in order to invite self-reflection on our own tangible condition.

By entering the digital world, the player/user – a real life local Athenian – becomes a visitor/tourist in alter-Athens, and is encouraged to piece together the history and modus operandi of this place, by the qualities of the public urban space, and the oral stories of its inhabitants.

Curators’ Note

What will the new urban planning of the pandemic look like? Will it be enough to wear masks and plastic gloves, or will we need ‘exoscaffolds’ and ‘social distancers’ in the not-so-distant future? Through their interactive videogame specifically designed for HackAthens 2020, Christina Chrysanthopoulou and Olga Chatzifoti attempt to provide us with an image of another Athens, which hovers between dystopia and utopia, submission and revolution, aiming to provoke our consideration on important issues concerning our common future.

Credits

Design & Graphics: Christina Chrysanthopoulou

Design & Coding: Olga Chatzifoti

Commissioned-produced by: Onassis Stegi

https://www.onassis.org/el/whats-on/hackathens-2020/great-bar-sky-christina-chrysanthopoulou-olga-chatzifoti

Home / Work (2020)

Paris Selinas

Video

Duration: 14΄ 20΄΄

Creator’s Note

The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated precarious and individualized forms of work like micro-tasking and telework. At the same time, housing in Athens, in the iconic form of the so-called ‘polykatoikia,’ might nurture potential responses behind its concrete walls. “Home / Work” is a short fictional documentary, and a work of design fiction. The scenario focuses on two friends who perform telework, a telephone worker and an English teacher, each one renting a flat in Athens. In an attempt to tackle the isolating nature of telework, they decide to live together in one of the flats, and work from the other. With the passage of time, the workspace has slowly transformed into a social working collective. Through the casual everyday interactions, they are exposed and contribute to each other’s work, maintain physical aspects of labor, experiment with spatial interventions, and stand in solidarity in times of struggle. By balancing between proposition and provocation, “Home / Work” aims to enact reflexivity on the latent potential of the city and its people.

Curators’ Note

Is it possible that the house may replace the office, the workplace, or even the school? Is teleworking our future? And at what cost? How do we imagine these changes in the context of the Athenian ‘polykatoikia’? The supposed slowdown of the quarantine period was followed by a huge change in the way we live and work. This mocumentary, devised by Paris Selinas, follows the lives of two women who cannot bear the lockdown’s burden, and decide to turn their flats into shared living and working spaces. The work is critical on these changes and considers the pros and cons of this ‘new normality.’

Credits

Script: Paris Selinas

Directed by: Pavlos Stamatis

Cast: Theoni Dourida, Dioni Vougioukli, Anna Giarmeniti

Creative Team: Theoni Dourida, Dioni Vougioukli, Louiza Karageorgiou, Paris Selinas, Pavlos Stamatis

Sound Engineer: Sotiris Laskaris

Production Assistant: Irene Stamati

Editing: Pavlos Stamatis

Music: Michalis Despotopoulos

Commissioned-produced by: Onassis Stegi

https://www.onassis.org/video/home-work

If the Delivery Girl Is Hot, Wake Me Up (2020)

Lotus Eaters

Video

Duration: 25΄ 10΄΄

Creators’ Note

In times of fear, we often turn to lust for comfort. It is an instinctive reaction, one that is inscribed in our senses: the shivering of the skin, the accelerated heartbeats, the wild desire to cling to each other, to confirm that we are still alive. The tricky aspect of the current crisis is that such a bacchanalian closeness in prohibited.

But, how can they police desire?

Based on the above, “If the Delivery Girl Is Hot, Wake Me Up” features a young woman, who walks around the neighborhoods of Athens during the pandemic, and fantasizes love stories with attractive female strangers, as she struggles to cope with the stress and isolation she feels employing humor and eroticism.

Using binaural recording techniques, the work creates an ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) experience. This technique of recording and reproduction is perceived by the human brain as a 3D stereo sound sensation.

Listening through headphones, the audience hear every bit of action as if it were happening around them: whispers, moving objects, speech, soundscapes, melodies. Thus, the listener has the impression that the actors’ voices are personally addressed to them, transporting them to a place between sleep and awakening, which is the ideal condition for fantasizing.

Curators’ Note

Health issues dominated the discourse during the pandemic, scarcely interrupted by debates on the economy. But how did the young people experience this period? And, also, how did the LGBT+ community experience it? How do fear and confinement effect on lust and sexual desire? Are they inactivated or intensified? An original radio drama driven by an ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) experience, Lotus Eaters’ work aims to transport us to the dreamy world of a young lesbian woman, and her intimate thoughts during the lockdown in Athens, as well as to the next day when at last “bars are open again.”

Credits

Text: Marilou Vomvolou

Voice-overs: Marilou Vomvolou, Penny Eleftheriadou, Caterina Sisinni

Sound Design & Binaural Recording: Manolis Stamatiadis

Production Manager: Katerina Liatsou

Commissioned-produced by: Onassis Stegi

https://www.onassis.org/video/if-delivery-girl-hot-wake-me

Realität (2020)

Evita Skourleti

Video

Duration: 5΄

Creator’s Note

“Do not worry,” she told him.

“Do not worry for now. Everything is done properly, even if it is nobody’s achievement. And the colors that merge on top of the sky, they will become one as well.

That’s why I’m telling you, do not worry for now.

We have lived together too many hours like this. As friends, as spouses. Lovers, like strangers.

And all things became one. Asparagus with cream, salt into water.

And red wine, warm.

And us, still warm. Still beautiful and young.

Since life entails courage, let’s celebrate it. It also entails fear; to take it seriously.

Its little ones, its pieces, small bits of it; these too, let’s celebrate them seriously.

Do not worry. You have me and I have you, now and forever.”

Curators’ Note

The quarantine was a period of high tensions for many couples that experienced the ‘tyranny’ of being so close for so long. However, for several others the quarantine became a period of rapprochement and emotional reawakening. Evita Skourleti depicts in a unique way how one reappropriates their partner, and uses the symbolic figures of Mr. and Mrs. Freud (Nikos Kouris and Elena Topalidou, respectively) for that purpose, with an Athenian yard as a background.

Credits

Written & Directed by: Evita Skourleti

Cast: Nikos Kouris, Elena Topalidou

Original Music: Mihalis Kalkanis

Production Assistant: Nikolas Borovas

Sound Engineer: Panagiotis Rizopoulos

Costumes: Lascaris

Costumes Desigh: Antonis Niflis, Christos Niflis

Hair & Make-up: Roula Lianou

Commissioned-produced by: Onassis Stegi

https://www.onassis.org/video/skourleti-realitat

Solo (2020)

Vasileia Dereli & Marialena Vyzaki

Video

Duration: 10΄ 43΄΄

Creators’ Note

“Solo” is a presentation of the same-titled digital application, which is addressed to those who have experienced, and are yet to experience, universal urban isolation.

The app’s R&D process is based on research and reflection upon the relativity of time, the fundamental significance of human touch and smell, the debated boundaries between real and metaphysical, and thus the question of whether remaining in the current condition or moving forward to another.

Does loneliness have time, smell, and texture? Or is it characterized by the complete absence of such qualities? Can we digitize emotions?

Can we experience time through the time of literary works? Does the clock get hacked?

Is skin an autonomous desire machine with its own intelligence? Does the skin have its own agenda? And if so, can we hack it? Is loneliness just the flesh boundaries, or something more than that?

How can we digitally reproduce smells?

How do we lead ourselves towards self-awareness?

And if we become light, if we disembody ourselves, if we move to another dimension, will we still be solo?

Curators’ Note

People-digits, or people-desire machines? Does loneliness have time? Does it have smell and texture? “Solo” is a video artwork based on a Vasileia Dereli and Marialena Vyzaki’s idea about an app that will contribute to coming in terms with a universal urban isolation. The app calls for experiencing the relativity of time awareness, as well the importance of smell and touch, which becomes apparent through their absence. It calls for reflecting whether our new algorithmic existence leads us towards a gradual loss of our physicality, and dares to pose the metaphysical question of ‘here’ and ‘hereafter’ at the heart of our choices.

Credits

Concept & Development: Vasileia Dereli & Marialena Vyzaki

Direction & Editing: Vasileia Dereli

Script: Vasileia Dereli & Marialena Vyzaki

Graphics: Petros Maipas

Cast: Marialena Vyzaki, Stamatis Kotouzas, Myrto Christou

Voice-over: Xenia Vitos

Recording Studio: “The Cave” by Ekelon

Sound Design & Music: Lip Forensics

Motion Graphics: Ekati Sagia

Subtitles: Marialena Vyzaki

Commissioned-produced by: Onassis Stegi

https://www.onassis.org/video/solo

All the works were created during one-month period, as part of the “HackAthens 2020: What comes after” project.

HackAthens 2020: What come after | Online presentation

From September, 9 2020

Find the works on onassis.org

HackAthens 2020 | Discussion with Participating Artists in the context of the exhibition “Ars Electronica Garden Athens: Stories of Athens”.

Friday, September 11, 2020 | 18:00 (EEST)

Watch the discussion live on Onassis YouTube Channel

https://youtu.be/9H1gqDdzNZg