Umwelt Trilogy

"Umwelt" is an art film by Ioannis Panagiotou. In this film, video art meets contemporary music composition, sculpture, and performance art. Three different memories of the artist's family from the Asia Minor Catastrophe are presented in the form of a trilogy and set in the UK. This multimedia video deconstructs and reconstructs lost memories and socio-political ghosts of the past. For this  trilogy, the artist has written music and collaborated with multiple musical ensembles and musicians from the United Kingdom and Lithuania. This includes the Edinburgh Film Music Orchestra, Plus Minus Ensemble, Red Note Ensemble, Danguale Lingyte, and the architect Dorothea Kalogianni.

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“Umwelt activates lost memories of the artist’s family through three different site-specific performances. The artist haunts for these memories and transforms everyday locations into uncanny places, haunted by ghosts of the past. The artist narrates the sense of horror that any narrative of a tainted ancestral past can carry. “Umwelt” is a study on the uncanny proximity between the real and the imagined, in a time that sees memories as access points to a sense of continuity. While the ambience of the experience is disorienting, it does not diminish the power of transmitted memory; a power that has lived on for 100 years in this instance, following subconscious roads and finally emerging as phantasm.” Wakanda Goudas, Art Writer