This year, the annexM of Megaron-The Athens Concert Hall hosts, as resident, the artist and musician Athanasios Argianas, who curates a screening of short films and video works from the late 1970s up to this day.
Titled An Ear of Arms (around us) the screening celebrates an eclectic range of crossover works, films which are collaborations with musicians and composers, and which carry music or sound in the very core of their language.
Some of these films are shown for the first time in Greece, and two have been especially edited for this screening.
From Annea Lockwood s evocative audio compositions fusing field recordings of tiger purrs and electronics, to Aura Satz’s film about the British pioneer composer Daphne Oram, from the historical Speak by John Latham to the currently relevant The Love Life of the Octopus by Jean Painlevé with commissioned music by Pierre Henry for modular synthesizers, Chris Marker’s poetic haiku An Owl Is an Owl Is an Owl and the emotive Cat Listening to Music, the evening will pan a wide range of dynamics through the affective use of music always operating in the very core of the films themselves.
An excerpt of two chapters from Tai Shani & Maxwell Sterling’s My Bodily Remains, a special edition with the soundtrack from a recent live performance with a Gamelan Orchestra for London’s Southbank, operates as an epic coda an epilogue grounding us back to a human universe, after a detour in a world of animals and utopian machines.
Athanasios Argianas’ own Music Sideways, a vocal canon filmed through a kind of prismatic mirror, a prop echoing the structure of the music, and Hollowed Water (A Gesture 24 Times) complete the evening.
In the artist’s own words
The sequence is an eclectic journey from the early cinema of Jean Painlevé and his collaboration with composers, the poetic suite Bestiary of Chris Marker, himself a composer of his own soundtracks, and John Latham’s Speak to contemporary artists like Aura Satz, Tai Shani and sound artist Annea Lockwood.
Concentrating on a historically diverse range of film and video work for which a sense of musicality is not only key but woven into the core of the works, touching on ideas of score, translation and the effect of music, as its title An Ear of Arms (around us) suggests, implying an affective and compassionate ear, as well as a communal sensibility, a kind of listening hug.
The subjects of non-human perception (through Chris Marker’s Cat listening to music, Painlevé’s Octopus), a spectrum of sensibilities beyond discursive knowledge, emotion and affect as elements of an open matrix through which to experience non-hierarchical ideas of this world.
Athanasios Argianas
ResidentM 2024
Director
Anna Kafetsi
In the framework of annexM’s visual arts programme, Megaron-Τhe Athens Concert Hall launches ResidentM – its interdisciplinary artistic research residence programme.
For 2024, the invited resident artist is the distinguished visual artist and musician Athanasios Argianas.
The inaugural ResidentM 2024 is supported by Τhe J.F. Costopoulos Foundation.
The artist’s research, scheduled to be completed by the end of 2024, will aim to produce a new visual artwork with sound at its core, which will be exhibited in the spring of 2025 in the alternative space of Megaron’s Service Yard. The research phase of the residency includes visits to Megaron’s vast musical and building infrastructure facilities, its rich artistic archives, as well as contacts and collaborations with Megaron’s human resources (orchestras, choirs, musicians, technicians, producers, and others). It is accompanied by a programme of public events and activities that include screenings, talks, meetings with the artist, a blog, etc.
Athanasios Argianas
Athanasios Argianas (b. Athens, 1976, lives between London and Athens) is a multidisciplinary artist and musician. His work has received international acclaim and has been presented at the 30th Sao Paulo Biennial (Sao Paulo, BR ), Performa13 (NY, USA ), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna, AU ), Tate Britain, The Barbican, Camden Art Centre and The Serpentine Gallery Pavillion (London, UK ), Fridericianum (Kassel, DE ), EMST National Museum οf Contemporary Art (Athens, GR) and Fondazione Prada (Venice, IT ). Both his music and visual work have received numerous reviews and features in The Wire, Frieze, Flashart, Artforum Art Review and The Quietus, and he is represented by the Lo Recordings label (London, UK ).
