Laboratory of Dilemmas

Multi Channel Sound and Video Installation
Greek Pavilion
La Biennale di Venezia, 2017

Appointed by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports
Commissioner: National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST), Director: Katerina Koskina
Curator: Orestis Andreadakis

 

Laboratory of Dilemmas is a narrative sound and video installation based on Aeschylus’ theatre play Iketides (Suppliant Women), which poses a dilemma between saving the Foreigner and maintaining the safety of the Native. Addressing current global sociopolitical issues, the work deals with the anguish, puzzlement, and confusion of individuals and social groups when called upon to address similar dilemmas.

Aeschylus’ Iketides (Suppliant Women) raises the issue of a persecuted group of people seeking for asylum.

The Suppliants have left Egypt to avoid having to marry their first cousins and arrive at Argos seeking asylum from the King of the city. The King is then faced with a dilemma. If he helps the foreign women, he risks causing turmoil among his people and going to war with the Egyptians, who are after the Suppliants. But if he doesn’t help them, he will break the sacred laws of Hospitality and violate the principles of Law and Humanism, leaving the Suppliants to the mercy of their pursuers.

Laboratory of Dilemmas focuses on the play’s dilemma through the excerpts of an unfinished documentary in the form of found footage about a scientific experiment.

This experiment was never completed for unknown reasons, however the found excerpts of the unfinished documentary reveal today, after so many years, details of the experiment, as well as the hopes of the professor who envisioned it and the disagreements with his co-researchers.

The story is presented piecemeal through multiple video and sound sources inside a Labyrinth.

www.laboratoryofdilemmas.gr