Venice Biennale | 60th International Art Exhibition
April-November 2024, Giardini, Greek Pavilion

Xirómero/Dryland is an interdisciplinary collective work conceived by Thanasis Deligiannis and Yannis Michalopoulos, created along with the artists Elia Kalogianni, Yorgos Kyvernitis, Kostas Chaikalis and Fotis Sagonas.

About the work
The Team
Music/Sound
Sponsors
Press excerpts
Installation photo gallery
Visitors & the work / They said
The Greek Pavilion

About the work

Xirómero/Dryland is conceived as an immersive installation that fuses together its varied elements – an agricultural irrigation machine and found objects; sound, video, light, and all the equipment these entail (speakers, monitors, luminaires, and so on) – into a singular spatial and temporal composition, intersecting as well with the building of the Greek Pavilion itself. It enters into discourse with agricultural environments, technological impacts, cultural otherness and the very walls of the pavilion to generate a multi-sensorial experience.

The artists chart a course from the heart of a countryside settlement out to the very fringes of the rural landscape that surrounds it, encountering public squares and concrete expanses, the panighíri (Greek rural feast) and its associated economy, musicians and farmers at work, fly-posters and audio cassettes, electric power and amplified sound, food and dancing, children and trees, farmland and tractors and rain, watering machines, soil and cotton crops, and the absence of a woman along the way.

Xirómero/Dryland composes a hybrid reality, putting together fragments from different parts of rural Greece; from the mountainous and arid Xirómero to the large fertile plains of Thessaly, and from the legendary region of Kalavryta in the Peloponnese to the villages around the town of Arta in Epirus. The mountains of Xirómero and the plains of Thessaly have as many contrasts as similarities: no tourism, a vivid folk culture with panighíria with heavy, slow music, where in the past people could end up in rough fights, and farmers that try to cope with economical difficulties and the climate crisis.

The installation runs as a 20′-long composition in an 8-hour-long loop, with the irrigation machine cueing in realtime all elements as it slowly rotates on its axis. As it is rotating, it gradually contracts its large water tube to eventually drop its water canon down on the floor. The cued elements are: 32 channels of audio (12 high-definition speakers, 10 authentic 70s horn-type speakers, 10 car speakers), 7 channels of video (3 projectors, 3 TV screens, 1 LED screen) and theatre lights of different kinds, such as 14 HQI lights, 3 moving heads and 6 ETCs . The installation includes objects that are found outdoors and are part of the panighíri setting: plastic chairs, concrete pavement blocks, industrial working lights, posters, a large analogue mixer as a tribute to the sound engineers and the musicians of the panighíri, all around the irrigation machine installed in the middle of the pavilion.

The artistic research for Xirómero/Dryland was commissioned by the Onassis Foundation, initiated and directed in the context of the Margaroni Residency (2022 & 2023) by the Onassis AiR Fellows transdisciplinary artist & composer Thanasis Deligiannis and dramaturge & philologist Yannis Michalopoulos. The two of them brought together a team which included visual artist & filmmaker Elia Kalogianni, photographer & documentary filmmaker Yorgos Kyvernitis, sound engineer & designer Kostas Chaikalis and visual artist & architect Fotis Sagonas.

“The sound and auratic presence of “Xirómero/Dryland” destabilize any division between reality and its representations.” e-flux Criticism, from an article by Jace Clayton

The music and sound of Xirómero/Dryland is a 32-channel composition consisting of various sources found in a wide sonic spectrum: from archive recordings from the 70s and 80s, to field recordings of the farmland at night and under the summer sun, to recordings of irrigation machines, the sound of rural feasts from afar, to getting closer to the village squares they take place at, recording folk musicians live, conducting studio recordings with singers the artists collaborated with, to electronic sounds and originally composed music, up to amplified and live processed sound in the pavilion, and the sounds of the installation’s irrigation machine working with water. There were 14 L-Acoustics speakers (including 2 subwoofers), 10 horn speakers and 10 car speakers installed throughout the pavilion’s building.

This sonic world was gradually composed along with all the other elements of the installation, leading to a meta-composition in which the artists have included all available art mediums throughout the creative process, avoiding illustrative results. Combined with an unmediated approach towards the material, the very materiality of all elements, including the technological equipment, articulates the work’s performativity.

The music includes the traditional song Yannos (voice: Kiki Margaroni, clarinet: Kostas Zafiropoulos) and the songs Travmatías stin aghápi (music: Giorgos Koros, lyrics: Lakis Tsolis, voices: Natasa Tsakiridou, Lina Alatzidou, Dafni Nikolaou, Christina Kemanetzidou) and Vathiá Spiliá mes ta vouná (music: Vassilis Soukas, lyrics: Yiannis Chalkiadakis, voice: Kiki Margaroni, clarinet Vangelis Soukas). The song Travmatías stin aghápi was recorded at Studio Praxis in Athens.

In the installation, throughout the composition, there is a female voice heard belonging to Deligiannis’ mother, Ioánna Goússiou. She is sharing the following testimony (in Greek) on belonging through her body and communal dance, while trying to remember:

it was that year in Tsepelovo when I
we had stayed over for Assumption Day
to watch the panighíri
to experience the panighíri
it was
remember?
one… you know, where that little square was
over in Tsepelovo
and there was a cafe
and that’s where the panighíri was taking place
so at some point, I danced right at the front
and I hear an old man next to me, saying

– Whose is the one dancing at the front?
– Ah… she’s not one of ours | says another old man next to him
– Ah… isn’t she one of ours? She looks like one of ours!

that is… I danced  (the very last chord of a folk song interrupts the narration)

——————

I can’t recall a man ever dancing the Dailiana
it was
the steps are different
more specific and sort of… milder
it’s not like men dancing the tsamiko
say, they stomp their feet
it’s more…
Dailiana is different steps than the typical tsamiko
it’s more…

The Team

Artists:
Thanasis Deligiannis, Yannis Michalopoulos, Elia Kalogianni, Yorgos Kyvernitis, Kostas Chaikalis, Fotis Sagonas

Artistic collaborators:
Fotini Papachristopoulou (artistic advice during the simulation and on-location work phases)
Vassiliki-Maria Plavou, Marios Stamatis (design of catalogue & communication material)

Light design: Stephanos Droussiotis
Design and coordination of audiovisual installation: Stavros Nikolakopoulos
Technical advisor for mechanics design and construction: Manos Vordonarakis
Lighting technician and programmer: Yannis Lavvas
Installation technicians: Yannis Nikolakopoulos, Nikos Bila, Nikos Sarafoglou
Assistant technicians for mechanics construction:
-Architect: Themis Istatiadis
-Automations: Ilias Kazais, Dimitris Ovadias
-Workers: Plywacz Tomasz, Starowicz Krzysztof, Pavel Nowak, Piotre Nowak, Ali Lotfolahi
Electrical installation: Ioannis Misaillis
Exhibition Production: Giorgos Efstathoulidis – Constructivist Exhibitions, Antonia Chantzi

Cultural mediators / Pavilion invigilators: Theodora Giannopoulou, Anastasia Papastefanou, Aspasia Patrozou, Maria Michelaki, Tijana Stefanović, Adileily Olivares Jiménez, Polina Dmytrenko

Curator of the Greek Participation: Panos Giannikopoulos
Commissioner | Organisation: ΕΜΣΤ | National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens

Sponsors

Greece’s participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia is funded by the Hellenic Republic – Ministry of Culture. Xirómero/Dryland is powered by Onassis Culture and supported by the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, the Athens Epidaurus Festival and the Greek National Tourism Organization. Support from ARTWORKS was provided through a founding grant from Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF). Additional support was made possible by NEON Culture and Development Organization, by Outset and the Qualco Foundation. AEGEAN is the official air carrier sponsor. The project takes place under the auspices of the Municipality of Xirómero.

We would like to specially thank the Amsterdam-based company I/O for their support and the offering of parts of the installation.

Photos ©Thanasis Deligiannis.

Era of Images · 60th Venice Biennale – Part I
National Greek TV, ERT3 & Ertflix, Katerina Zacharopoulou (28.01.2025)
Available on demand here (GR) (making an account on the online platform Ertflix is free)

WATER, CYCLES AND TRANSFORMATION AT THE VENICE BIENNALE
Arte al Día, from an article by Mercedes Abella (11.10.2024)
Read the full article here (EN)

(…) The Greek Pavilion, titled Xirómero / Dryland, focuses on water as a contested resource and a symbol of division. The sound and video installation explores how water scarcity exacerbates geopolitical tensions and territorial conflicts. The agricultural character emphasizes the disparity between shared identity and private ownership, utilizing the cyclical nature of water as a continuously contested resource. The theme of irrigation brings up the conflict of drought, providing a global read to the installation.

Here, water is not serene but unrestful. An object of competition, water represents survival. Throughout the video works and the installation of agricultural objects, the sense of community is contrasted to water as a barrier. This provides an essential shift from the particular to the universal, the located to the foreign. (…)

Foreigners Everywhere
e-flux Criticism, from an article by Jace Clayton (30.05.2024)
Read the full article here (EN)

[…] The Greek Pavilion provides a welcome dose of underexplained estrangement, both in the context of a biennial that privileges legibility-by-categorization and in our present era of declarative politics. Composer Thanasis Deligiannis and playwright/philologist Yannis Michalopoulos brought together a multidisciplinary crew to create “Xirómero/Dryland,” a brute affective choreography for farm equipment, audio, video, and lighting. An enormous piece of agricultural irrigation machinery occupies the pavilion’s center. Periodically it will clunk and rotate a few degrees, as its crane-appendage affixed with a loudspeaker shudders up or down. Every now and again the machine expels water onto the floor. Its acoustic mechanical sounds blend indistinguishably into the (prerecorded) sound design. Less frequently, overhead fluorescents snap on for a few minutes at a time—a reverie disruption like accidentally turning on the lights at a party. Projections and screens are relegated to a supporting role here, in contrast with at least a half-dozen video installations elsewhere in the Biennale, which feature a person of color dancing in colorful clothes against a monochrome background. The sound and auratic presence of “Xirómero/Dryland” destabilize any division between reality and its representations. […]

“Foreigners everywhere”, but somehow familiar
ΒΗΜΑgazino, from an article by Marilena Astrapellou (21.05.2024)
Read the full article here (GR)

[…] However, we also had queues at the Greece stand, albeit on a smaller scale. The Greek proposal “Xirómero/Dryland”, conceived by Thanasis Deligiannis and Yiannis Michalopoulos with co-creators Elia Kalogianni, Yorgos Kyvernitis, Kostas Chaikalis and Fotis Sagonas, curated by Panos Giannikopoulos, was accompanied by most of the conceptual intentions of its creators, a frequent occurrence in modern Greek art. It was inaugurated to the sound of clarinet, with an offer of plenty of tsipouro and the presence of the Deputy Minister of Culture Christos Dimas, as well as the director of EMST, Katerina Gregou, and before we crossed his threshold we had a doubt as to how its ambitious intentions would be expressed. However, the truth is that the huge irrigation machine brought from Thessaly and located at the center of an exuberant installation, which includes video projections, soundscapes, objects such as posters of the unknown festival priestess Kiki Margaroni, plastic chairs, the peeled paving slabs of a square, is itself a huge heart that beats so hard it gives life to a venture that ultimately pulsates with energy. Because in the way it moves, it spits water and leaves around it the footprint of a small lake created by the small leak, it says a lot about our national misfortune – on the one hand the depletion of natural resources due to mismanagement and indifference, on the other the overflow of dried up lakes and the sinking of settlements into watery graves due to extreme weather events. And all this while the paneghíri (Greek rural festivity) continues, not only metaphorically but also literally, as a search for connection with tradition, with the solace and security offered by a sense of community, continuity and belonging.

Dryland / Pavilion of Greece at Venice Art Biennale 2024
VernissageTV, Youtube video (20.05.2024)

Artworks are a mirror reflecting the world situation. A report on the top 5 pavilions at the 60th Venice Biennale
Brutus, from an article by Wakapedia (17.05.2024)
Read the full article here (JP)

[…] The exhibition was inspired by the experiences of the Xirómero region, a region facing the Ionian Sea in Western Greece, and the traditional Greek festival of Panighíria in Thessaly.

Inside the pavilion, it was a little dim, and the inanimate, exposed concrete walls and ground reminded me of a warehouse. The most striking feature was the agricultural sprinkler installed in the center of the pavilion. The device rotates like a clock in a circular motion at a constant pace, and water flows. As if in sync with the immersive “performance,” surrounding sounds, videos and lighting were added. It is as if water, which is essential for life, as well as agriculture, forms and maintains the rhythm of life and social connections.

Furthermore, if you look carefully around, you will notice plastic chairs piled up in a corner, a screen showing a row of temporary terraces reminiscent of a festival, and a mobile phone screen capturing a lively festival scene. As we, the audience, are guided by the unique rhythm of the pavilion, we become a part of their story as we move forward.

The agricultural sprinklers in “Xirómero/Dryland” start to rotate, and the screen in the back projects images as if in response. By placing water, which is essential for life, at the center of the theme through local cultures, such as festivals and agriculture, this work also refers to the scarcity, abundance, waste, and social meaning of this important resource shared worldwide. Furthermore, it explores new cultural values ​​by focusing on the impact that surrounding technologies have on rural landscapes and cultural diversity.

Knowing Where You Are
arterritory, from an article by Juriaan Benschop (13.05.2024)
Read the full article here (GR)

[…] For the Greek pavilion, Thanasis Deligiannis and Yannis Michalopoulos collaborated with four other artists to conceive a work centered around a traditional village festival known as the panaghíria. The focus extends from the festivities to life in rural communities more broadly. In the center of the pavilion is a giant hydraulic machine like one used in the heartland of Greece for irrigating the land. This machine regulates the intervals at which it releases water through pressure. Water scarcity in some regions, coupled with recent flooding events affecting communities, has turned the management of water into a political issue. The yearly village festivals underscore the continuity of life and community spirit through dancing, feasting, processions, and fireworks. However, as the artists observe, hospitality is not extended to everyone, and traditional lifestyles clash with current views on gender and identity. Rather than offering a complete narrative or documentary, the collective work presents a cryptic and sometimes poetic image of a part of Greek reality that remains largely invisible to outsiders. […]

Thanasis Deligiannis, Yannis Michalopoulos – Xirómero/Dryland
The Greek pavilion, Venice ★★★★☆
petitpoi, article by Pierre d’Alancaisez (EN) (01.05.2024)

It’s Sunday in the village. Every week, the Greek state broadcaster sends a camera crew to record the harvest festivals, crochet-making displays, and wedding rituals of a rural locality. The programme has been running for decades. The nation’s hamlets anxiously wait their turn in the spotlight, knowing that the camera can turn milk maids and grocers into celebrities. Each wants to showcase their custom, more ‘diverse’ than in a contemporary art curator’s wet dream.

But it is wet and dark in Xirómero. Arriving on location in this Western Greek region, the crew found the pavilion deserted. A sound and light show synced with the movement of agricultural equipment makes for an eerie trace of past revelries which still play out on screen installations, posters, and stacks of plastic garden chairs. The famous Greek hospitality has turned into dystopia, sustained only by tricks of technology.

This display is aesthetically rich and pleasurably hard to parse. Recent Greek pavilions lamented the nation’s financial and political woes, which were in part caused by the very ideologies that now try to ‘diversity’ the OG city-state. If the Hellenic Republic tried to find the ‘foreign’ in Wester’s civilisation’s cradle as per this Biennale’s dictum, it drew a blank and missed even itself.

“For the farmers, the “ecological sensitivity” of the city is not a priority, but their reality”
Lifo, from an article by Alexandros Diakosavvas (24.04.2024)
Read the full article here (GR)

[…] In the impressive Gardens of the Biennale, on the island of San Marco, just two stops by the vaporetto from the famous square of the same name, is the Greek Pavilion that hosts this year’s Greece’s national participation. We have been hearing a lot about “Xirómero” of the creator of interdisciplinary works and composer Thanasis Deligiannis and the dramaturg and philologist Yannis Michalopoulos – ever since it started as The Margaroni Residency, a research project for the study of the paneghíri and musical culture in the Greek countryside, supported by Onassis Culture. The results of the research were adapted to a single project chosen by a Greek national committee to represent the country at the Venice Biennale, with the participation of the visual artist and cinematographer Elia Kalogianni, the photographer and documentarian Yorgos Kyvernitis, the sound engineer and sound designer Kostas Chaikalis and the visual and architect Fotis Sagonas, and under the curatorial care of Panos Giannikopoulos. […]

“This project was chosen before the theme of this year’s Biennale was announced, because national pavilions have a particular selection process” Thanasis Deligiannis begins to explain to me the day after the opening when I ask him to connect their project with this year’s themes. “Of course, because there is a strong element of community in the work, the question arises as to who belongs and who does not belong to this community: to whom does the dance belong, who will stand up to dance first or second, how will the stranger enter this community, what does this strict local cultural code mean. Because we researched a whole world, we also met immigrants working at the crops surrounding the villages.

There are shots in the work of people’s feet being washed, they are immigrants using irrigation water. And from the moment you talk about water, about Thessaly and about Xirómero in particular, the environmental approach is present. I come from Thessaly and I still remember an uncle of mine coming to my grandfather’s house asking if he could draw water to irrigate his crops in the summer, because every well was running dry. Over the years, the water table drops. On the other hand, there is a village in the area of Xirómero, Archontochóri, which for a long time, until very recently, had no running water, only cisterns that collected water from the rain.”

“There is a reality that the ecological trend often ignores: the mass methods of agricultural exploitation, monoculture, the way of watering with machines like the one we have in the project, may seem stressful for nature, on the other hand these ways have allowed the increase of production and the increase in farmers’ income, something that cannot be ignored when one has elementary social sensitivities”, adds Yannis Michalopoulos. “I’m not sure that the urban perspective of what is ecological, what depleted resources, is present in this project. Our question is how elements that were necessary for the economic and social development of these populations led to a further exploitation of natural resources and a great improvement in their conditions. One must not forget that the villages we went to were settlements created after extensive drainage works, in fact near places that were intended for agricultural exploitation. That is why they have a clear layout plan. They were made precisely so that farmers could get to and from the fields.

What we are primarily concerned with is not to make a criticism of resource depletion, but to say how ways such as a more industrialized irrigation allowed greater production, or how subsidies allowed, at least for a certain period, a higher standard of living. It is worth asking what weighs on such a scale. I’m not sure that the “ecological sensitivity” of the city is a priority for the local population, but rather their reality. Locality has this meaning: festivals are cultural products created at a certain place, where they are dominant. Traditional music has always been a matter of the countryside. As far as the international condition is concerned, I personally do not believe that in the context of the dissemination of contemporary art it is sincere to expect that one can do something about these problems. It seems naive in my eyes, when one participates in a national representation, to try to make the revolutionary. Actions that change things come from a base that acts somewhat autonomously. We, for better or for worse, in this condition wear a hat, the colors of which we do not agree with, and wearing this hat one must be conscious of what one says, for he can, if he want to say or do as he pleases, take off that hat.”

At this point I mention to them the inability of my Dutch interlocutor, the day before, to connect the watering machine with the concept of the festival and her question about the nuclear position it holds in the installation. I finally ask them what they want to be left to the international viewers, who are not familiar with all these images so familiar to the Greeks.

“It’s about what each visitor seeks to see when they come in. We had people who were moved, one gentleman was crying. Others saw it more distantly but liked it and some simply opened the curtain and left. As if they were scared when they saw the machine. Something that makes the public quite happy to learn is that the water used by the machine is recycled. Many people ask me if it is an “artist’s work” or a real machine. Anyone can create whatever narrative they want. We didn’t want to make a work that first engages your critical thinking, but that you feel something first and start to tell yourself what is happening to you in the pavilion” says Thanasis Deligiannis.

“Indeed, the irrigation machine has ended up being a core element of the project. Thanasis has this memory of playing with such a machine as a child. In the phase of experimentation and testing, in the framework of the Margaroni Project, the irrigation machine was an object of the outdoor space that we brought inside, as well as the pavement plates, the lights, the sounds. From the very beginning we imagined in the center of the Greek Pavilion the machine as a playful comment on the sacred object, the Epitaph, the seen and the unseen in a temple, on what one can see in a rural warehouse. Whether this gesture is understood is not among our concerns. If one observes the course of the machine, it does define time – as in reality –, it does synchronize what is happening in a sometimes specific and sometimes random way, so the challenge was to make it really functional, just like the recycling of water. We trust the emotional immediacy of the objects, I think the visitor feels what is happening. We conceived an installation for this particular space. The viewing experience and the approach are part of the work: the way one enters, the way one exits. The point of contact that I find most interesting, in relation to the other pavilions, is that the distinctiveness of our proposal, and probably the main selection criterion by our national committee, lies on the fact that our team really comes from different fields and creates something rather performative in the visual arts. This was probably original for Greece. But it is an element that returns to many pavilions, either as a multimedia installation or as a walking experience. Rather, we are asking a question that I don’t know if it can be answered so easily. It is enough for a creator to wonder if the work they make is registered consciously or unconsciously in a more general movement of inquiry or a direction in art. To what extent a more personal experience is possible to become the object of narration and be presented in a more honest way. Certainly in our work there are both approaches found. On a deeper level, it speaks more about the absence of a figure, rather than the environment from which this figure is absent. But this will probably be better experienced by the visitor” concludes Yiannis Michalopoulos.

Euronews at the Venice Biennale: The Greek Pavilion and the paneghíri as a memory and experience
Euronews, from an article by Yorgos Mitropoulos (24.04.2024)
Read the full article & watch the video report here (GR)

[…] Thanasis Deligiannis points out: “I come from the countryside. I grew up in Larissa in a family of farmers and traditional musicians. So I grew up in the rural festivals, in their traditional music, in the fields, among the irrigation systems, as in this installation. This was a life experience for me which I decided, together with Yannis, to further explore. In other words, to create a team which would document this agricultural culture and test all the material, which we would collect in a large “factory”, to make something we didn’t know what it would be. We didn’t know if it would be a documentary or a performance, a concert or an installation. So we ended up with something very hybrid. This very work is a child of that research.”

“Thanasis had the courage to propose us to work together on his own ideas and to share these ideas, experiences and travels with us. This sharing was spread to many members of the group and we traveled together. So to the primary experiences and ideas of Thanasis were added the newer ones, those that took place during the research, in which the freedom with which we did it, thanks to the Onassis Foundation, is very important. This is how we created an evolving work, which is set up again and again in every space, just like the paneghíri. So the team recreates a new project every time. This project in Venice is a small child, as Thanasis mentioned, of the larger Margaroni Project. We both want to say that it is a successful example of how an interdisciplinary project and a team that comes together succeeds, despite the difficulties. It creates a single work with meaning, which unites the meaning and experience of one, but also the feelings of many”, adds Yiannis Michalopoulos.

Four more people were soon added to the artistic team. Together they traveled to Xirómero and Thessaly, recorded video and sound and tried to capture the atmosphere, the way of entertainment, the agricultural work, the role of women and life in the countryside. The hybrid installation presented in Venice summarizes their many months of research on this unique ecosystem, which is the Greek paneghíri.

[…] In the 20-minute loop of projections inside the pavilion, the viewer participates in a paneghíri that no one has ever been to, visits a quarry and the mountains of Xirómero, with the help of video installations, sounds, lighting fixtures, which are coordinated based on the irrigation machine in the center of the hall. The artists have succeeded in creating an experience, a festival memory, aimed primarily at reminiscence and emotion. In other words, the visitor is invited to reconstruct the universe of the festival, to decode the elements he recognizes, according to his own history. The work, and more specifically, the videos, the clarinet and the folk songs that are heard, bring up moving experiences and memories of participating in a collective ritual, in an essential manifestation of Greek culture.

[…] Giorgos Mitropoulos, Euronews envoy at the Venice Biennale, reports: “The central exhibition of this year’s 60th Biennale is entitled “Strangers Everywhere”. It includes 331 entries from around the world. The artists mainly focus on issues of nationality, identity and inequality. The projects are divided into two sections: contemporary and historical projects. On the other hand, in the nearly 90 national pavilions, artists focus on the climate crisis, war, gender issues, colonialism and the destruction of the planet.”

Xirómero – A look at the Greek Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia
culturenow (23.04.2024)
Read the full article here (GR)

Drawing upon the experience of the panighíria -rural feasts- of mainland Greece, such as in Thessaly and the area of Xirómero, “Xirómero/Dryland” is a hybrid installation that embarks on a visual examination of the human experience within the ecosystem suggested by the Greek feast, from the center of a rural settlement to the ridges of the surrounding agricultural landscape. It consists of an agricultural irrigation machine which synchronizes in real time the sound, video and lighting environments that make up the installation. Utilizing tools and means from various artistic fields, a functional watering machine is transferred to the Greek Pavilion space as a central part of a spatial composition further comprised of a video installation, sound environments, lighting fixtures, and the element of water. After two years of research at the Margaroni Residency, after a commission by the Onassis Culture to Thanasis Deligiannis and Yannis Michalopoulos, the artistic team created an installation the haunts the visitor, as the condition and the experience of the rural feast, of this Greek celebration, eventually reminds us that people celebrate to remember but also to forget, through the 20′-long trip inside Xirómero/Dryland.

The sound of a church bell that welcomes the audience at the pavilion, an agricultural irrigation machine at the centre of its space, video projections, TVs, LED screens, vintage horn speakers, an analogue sound mixer, white plastic chairs, posters of a famous Greek feasts’ singer, testimonies about the rural feasts written on the wall. All these are what the visitor encounters in the Greek Pavilion, which is flooded by the sounds of folk clarinet, passing agricultural vehicles, motorbikes that rev up, folk songs and electronic music.

In its 20′-long loop of projections, the spectator “visits” a Greek rural feast to which no one ever went, a quarry and the mounts of Xirómero, while watching church chandeliers that spin, fest lights, splashes of water, plastic toys, 3D rotating objects and vans with feast posters on them. The water that leaks from the irrigation machine is mirrored on the cement floor and everything changes dimensions. While the work is inspired by the agricultural culture and the way farmers organise these feasts and take part in them, with am irrigation machine at the centre rotating and giving cues to all elements of the work to start and stop, creating counterpoints, it is eventually a work made with the logic of a dream. The visitors are invited to recompose the world of the installation, to decode its elements according to their own experience, and to create their personal path of celebration and loss.

The artists mention: “Between the traditional feast, the urban basement gatherings blasting with clarinets (the so-called ‘klarina’), the fields, the agricultural warehouse, and the church, lie the lives, voices, and imagination of traditional musicians, as well as an entire world that goes hand in hand. There are, of course, those men, but mostly women, who have ceased to be a part of this ever-updating world. After all, their centrifugal path has defined our endeavor’s outline. Its substratum is the experiences and memories of one of us, who, as a child, watched and listened to the feast at night from afar and other times rested on the hose of a watering machine while it was being unrolled in a field in the Thessalian plain. With these thoughts in mind and the primary intention of setting an open process of artistic research in motion, we began exploring in the Margaroni Residency the human experience of absence and presence in the ecosystem forged by the Greek ‘panighíri’ (feast). We traced the route from the center of a rural village to the outskirts of the agricultural landscape surrounding it. We began from the village’s square, where the feast is initially set up, over the slabs and cement, from the feast and its economy, its working musicians and farmers, the poster, the cassette, the electricity, the sound amplification, the space, the food, the children, the tree, the rain, the field, the tractor, water, the watering machine, the soil, the cotton, and the absence of a woman. To make this journey possible, quite a few of us have gathered in the province, on the streets, and in former industrial spaces, where we tried out actions and materials, but also convened online, discussing 3D models, as we needed to include all or some of those elements that have an emotional value for us in the Greek Pavilion in a way that leaves an open space for absence to speak. In relation to the aesthetic treatment of the objects that make up the installation—a gesture of unmediated performativity nonetheless—the significance of the overall composition is accentuated: the interior of a building shell resembling externally a church that has perished its dome and has lost all its wall iconography recalls now a rural warehouse, where the agricultural irrigation equipment now dispels the agony of national representations. A shift of perspective between dominant and marginalized cultural subjects takes place, which seems to open up a liminal space for the articulation of new meanings. Driven by sound and materiality, we seek in ‘Xirómero/Dryland’ a multisensorial experience, suggesting an allegoric geography that listens to the feast and sees the water.”

top menu