Never Cross the Same River Twice
Never Cross the Same River Twice (Chapter 2: Transhistorical Investigations) embraces expansive videographies that aim to foster new forms of transnational and collective assembly. Curated by French-Togolese independent curator Kisito Assangni and Greek-British curator Ariana Kalliga, the exhibition forms a time-shifting survey of performances converging between video, film and installation. Initiated as a travelling research project in 2020, the exhibition connects two borders that unfold in tandem, tracing the recent video practices of 11 international artists selected by Assangni and six contemporary Greek video artists invited into dialogue by space52, Athens.
The selected video works act as sites of visual contestation; cinematic aesthetics with narratives that re-remember; they reclaim histories and ancestries; decolonize both the mind and the imagination. Referencing Heraclitus’ river, which conceived identity as an ever-evolving and fluctuating entity, the title of the exhibition is a call to invent new grounds in place of entrenched environmental, political, and regulatory systems.
From a ‘coming community’ to a planetary escape, the exhibition opens up uncanny spectral exits to new geopolitical imaginaries. Accompanied by a parallel series of bi-weekly screenings and talks, including a night organized by the Athens School of Fine Arts (LAB12), Never Cross the Same River Twice aims to expand and densify the interconnected motifs weaved through the exhibition program; history, ancestry, ethnography, spirituality, memory, colonization, Afrofuturism, feminism, diaspora, identity, globalization, consumerism, myth.
Participating Artists Part I: Monica de Miranda, Moataz Nasr, Emo de Medeiros, Harold Offeh, Longinos Nagila, Ahmet Öğüt, Gilivanka Kedzior, Marinella Senatore, Daisuke Takeya, Sammy Baloji and Lazara Rosell Albear
Participating Artists Part II: Valentina Karga, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Mary Zygouri, Ariana Papademetropoulos, Eva Papamargariti and George Drivas
When? Where?
12 June - 25 September 2021
space52
Kastorias 52
Athens