The 7th International Video Poetry Festival organized in Athens / Greece in self-organized theater Embros by the Institute for Experimental Arts supported by Void Network and Moving Poems . The festival (14-15 December 2018) was a blasting gathering of video artists, poets, musicians and a great crowd of people who love and supporting contemporary poetry and underground art.
We would like to thank all the international artists who participated as also visited the festival offering great inspiration.
Let’s see the outstanding video poems of this year as also photos from the second day of the festival Live Performance Stage. Poets and musicians reading and performing contemporary poetry, video art and soundscapes. Each one of the poets performed with a different way using experimental sounds, atmospheric voices, optical illusions and theatrical performances in a wonderful show of creativity and cross-platform collaborations.
Mbyja rapégüyto (Map to the stars) by Pedro Jaén Rodríguez SPAIN
This work shows how loss is the path to discovery. In a cryptic and poetic way, he tackles different themes that end up fitting together like the pieces of a visual puzzle. From the human nature of migration, whether on an individual and personal scale or on a global and interplanetary scale; even the idea that poles as opposed as religion and science, tradition and evolution, superstition and reason, end up leading to the same destiny and seek the same truth.
What started as a simple idea, led to an ambitious project with more than a year of writing, exhaustive documentation on NASA, simulation of gravity 0
After the loss of her mother, a girl arrives at an orphanage. Outside, the greatest discovery awaits.
In The Circus of You Cheryl Gross USA
by Moving Poems
Cheryl Gross’ animated films for poems by Nicelle Davis are the focus of this month’s Swoon’s View column by Marc Neys at Awkword Paper Cut. I realized I’d never shared In the Circus of You, so this seemed a good opportunity to do so. Neys writes:
You want to take your time with these. The poetry is clear and Nicelle’s voice works smoothly with the music. At first I thought these were too literal, yet I couldn’t stop watching them over and over again. Cheryl’s illustrations are just stunning and they allow the audience to comprehend and recognize the significance of the words. But it’s the way she weaves drawing after drawing combined with typography around the soundtrack that reels you in. You feel surrounded by the images, overwhelmed by each pen stroke. The drawings appear to be simple, but are alive and full of detail.
In the Circus of You serves a dual purpose as a poetry film and a trailer for a poetry collection of the same name, with animations of four of its poems: “Down the Trapeze of Bird Bones,” “The Clown in My Gut,” “I Know How to Bark,” and “Entering the Big Top of the Self Requires Help.” According to a page at the author’s website,
In the Circus of You morphs cultural clichés into living language again. This collection deals with themes of sanity, motherhood, monogamy, creative impulse, appropriation, and self-creation to create a sideshow of abnormalities that define what it is to be human. Poet Nicelle Davis and illustrator Cheryl Gross create a grotesque peep-show that opens the velvet curtains on the beautiful complications of life. The poems and images in this collection create a novel in a verse where dead pigeons talk, clowns hide it the chambers of the heart, and the human body turns itself inside out to born again as a purely sensory creature.
The Book of Hours: Glitter by Jane Glennie UK
Jane Glennie is an artist and typographer who works with installation and poetry
Jane exhibits her work nationally and internationally, and manages and curates projects with other artists, including the Arts Council England funded event Engage with Art, and the London 2012 Olympics ‘Inspire Mark’ project Whatever Floats Your Boat with Slough Museum. Following a long career as a freelance graphic designer, Jane set up Peculiarity Press to publish ‘A New Dictionary of Art’ by Robert Good and is currently artist-in-residence at Reading College.
The worst thing by far by Janet Lees ISLE OF MAN (GB)
Janet Lees is an award-winning poet based in Douglas. Representing the Isle of Man, she was one of 72 Commonwealth nation poets to feature in BBC Radio’s Poetry Postcards project. A founder member of Poetry Unlimited IOM, she won the Olive Lamming prize for poetry in 2012 and was runner-up in 2014. Her work has been published in a wide range of poetry magazines and anthologies and her poetry films selected for several international festivals and prizes, including the Aesthetica Art Prize and Filmpoem.
Janet holds an MA with distinction in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and is an experienced workshop facilitator – for example, she runs community creative writing workshops at The Hub in Port Erin. She is passionate about the benefits of creativity and is currently exploring the links between the arts and wellbeing through the study of creative writing as a therapeutic practice.
Aimai Je un reve by Michalopoulou, Pantazis and Touloumis Greece
Abanico Malagueño by Blas Payri & Rafel Arnal SPAIN
What Remains by Gareth Sion Jenkins and Jason Lam AUSTRALIA
Kaboom studios are the united front of artists Jason Lam and Adam Synnott. They have a rich history in design and media,
What Remains explores the uneasy zone between pleasure and pain; love and possession; connection and abandonment. We open up and another infiltrates virus-like, gets beneath our skin, modifies our form, redirects our bloodstream.
We would like to thank the poets who travelled to Greece and present their video poems at the festival
Adele Myers from UK
Adele Myers is a Filmmakers and Artist. Currently teaching Filmmaking in
Originally based in Manchester UK, Adele has worked with various creative
In 2010 she founded the Manchester based film training and production network Bokeh_Yeah! producing numerous production workshops, film projects, talks and screenings. She moved to Fujairah UAE in 2015 to work in formal education but still spearheads the occasional outreach programme within Bokeh Yeah! Films have been made in China and Zimbabwe from workshops on poem films delivered there
Helen Kay from UK
Helen is a quirky poet from a onesie free household. Her debut pamphlet, the Poultry Lover’s Guide to Poetry (Indigo Dreams) reflects her chicken obsession. More recently she has been
Lucia Sellars from Bolivia
Lucia Sellars is a poet, an environmental scientist and a quiet observer. She currently lives in the UK, arriving from New Zealand, Chile, Peru and Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia. She published a pamphlet at 18, after winning the Premio Joven Contest in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. She has also published in small magazines such as The Response (Fabrica Art Gallery – Brighton), Cronopis (Barcelona) and Alba (London). She started to perform in Oxford in 2014 at The Catweazle, and was part of Poetry Can F* Off, by Heathcote Williams in 2015. Her video-poems have been projected at the Athens International Video Poetry Festival 2016. She writes in both English and Spanish.
Marcin Jagnus POLAND
He participated to the festival with the video poem Not to Trample and he was an excellent visitor and participator of the festival.
Multimedia Live Poetry Concert
The poets created a rhythmic atmosphere in the theatre collaborating with
Lokatola
Οι λοκατόλα είναι μια αθηναϊκή κολλεκτίβα που συλλέγει τα απομεινάρια της πόλης και τα ανακυκλώνει σε ποίηση, κλάμα και θόρυβο. Δίνει την ίδια σημασία στην κομμώτρια της γειτονιάς και τον Σαίξπηρ, στην καψούρα και στην καθημερινότητα, στον πειραγμένο κλασικισμό, στο αβάν γκαρντ και στο ποστ κονσέρβατιβ. Εκτίθεται με λόγο, φιλμ, κιθάρες, θέρεμιν και ελεκτρόνιξ. Αργά. Μήπως προλάβουμε να νιώσουμε και τίποτα.
Lokatola is an Athens avant garde art collective combining and recycling city ruines, noise and crying into poetry.
Tasos Sagris & WhoDoes
The poet and theatre director Tasos Sagris into
Sissy Doutsiou
Sissy Doutsiou performed 5 poems from her new book «Glory Days». The music was composed by War, Van Fog and an Old Friend.
Lefteris Vasillopoulos
Ο Λευτέρης Βασιλόπουλος είναι ποιητής και μεταφραστής. Διάβασε μεταφράσεις από την νέα ανθολογία με τίτλο «ΑΝΤΙΜΕΤΩΠΗ ΜΕ ΤΙΣ ΗΠΑ» Βορειοαμερικανική Ποίηση του 21ου αιώνα που κυκλοφόρησε την ημέρα του φεστιβάλ από τις εκδόσεις Κενότητα. Μετάφραση / Ανθολόγηση: Λευτέρης Βασιλόπουλος
Lefteris Vasilopoulos is a poet and translator who introduced us his new poetry anthology “Facing US- N
A very special event of the festival was the presentation of 3 poems of Agnes Marton by contemporary classical music composer Vasiliki Legaki
Two Performances took place at the 7th International Video
Spirals by PartSuspended- Hari Marini with Efi Dementi London
Ecstasy #1 by the Institute for Experimental Arts
More than 150 people visited the space of the performance: Ecstasy #1. The 8 performers offered us an astonishing experience with a performance that took place in the dark room of the upper floor for more than two hours in a very deep, intense and ritualistic atmosphere. Combining hard-action body performance with written poetry and distraction of taboos the performers created a strong existential experience for the amazed audience.
– Created by Sissy Doutsiou – Performers: Dimosthenis Halkias, John Voulgaris, Panagiotis Ber, Konstantina Baka-Fili, LU, Ifigeneia
