Chave

LOUKIA ALAVANOU, 2023

Artist

Loukia Alavanou

 

Title

Chave

 

Date

2023

Medium

VR360, 3D stereoscopic with stereo sound, 5’36”

Credit line

Loukia Alavanou, Chave, VR360, 5’36”, PCAI Collection

 

Commissioned by PCAI

Object label

CHAVE (meaning “child” in Romani) is a 360 film that has been the product of a spontaneous audiovisual workshop for children between 6 and 10 years old, organized in the heart of one of the most ghettoized Romani settlements in Aspropyrgos that is ‘implanted’ next to the largest dumpsite West of Attica. The children, whose families struggle to be considered as Greek citizens by the state and whose dwellings lack comforts required in order for their basic human needs to be met, managed to transform their dystopic and gloomy shanty town into a community of houses in the sky, their windows sticking out, as if trying to reach the stars, creating their own utopic “cloud colony”. Virtual Reality has been met with great enthusiasm by the Romani kids and although many of them are not even registered in public school, they proved that their technological skills and imagination have immense potential.