Polyeco Contemporary Art Initiative supports artist Loukia Alavanou, who will represent Greece at the 59th Venice Biennale with a virtual reality 360 film installation, titled On the Road to Colonus. The exhibition will be curated by Heinz Peter Schwerfel and Giannis Arvanitis.
On the Way to Colonus is a 360-degree 20-minute virtual reality movie, presented in an installation that incorporates hybrid constructions with references to the emblematic and utopian Greek architect of the 1960s, Takis Zenetos, and his “anatomical seat” for digital projections and intangible environments. The film moves between documentary and fiction (docufiction) with the participation of amateur actors from the Roma community living in the hazardous waste disposal area of Thriasio Pedio, in the west of Athens, where, according to Sophocles, Oedipus passed (“Oedipus at Colonus”).
It is in fact the first Greek VR360 film production. The “Cloud Colonies” of Zenetos were depicted as places in suffocating atmospheres, in response to escalating uncertainties about the continuation of life on planet Earth. In this sense, both the “cloud colonies” and the Roma ghetto in which the VR film unfolds, which is literally built on “recyclable materials”, are both deeply ecological in terms of how they relate to “materiality”.
The 59th Venice Biennale will take place from 23rd April to 27th November 2022.