PROJECTS

DWELLING OF TIME

INTERACTIVE ART & SCIENCE PROGRAM

DWELLING OF TIME

A modular artistic, scientific, and educational initiative

Centered around the innovative residency project “Still Times, Emerging Selves”, which explores and processes the experience of time during the pandemic (launched during the 2021 lockdown and still ongoing), Art-in-Art is developing a multi-part artistic, scientific, and educational initiative.

This residency project acts as the “core” or matrix from which a series of satellite activities unfold, combining artistic, scientific, and educational dimensions.

The initiative aims to approach a subject of global relevance—time, as experienced by contemporary individuals—through a challenging yet essential lens: the interaction and collaboration between science and art. These two methods, these two “languages”, often remain incompatible in our culture. This project aims to build bridges between them—bringing them into real cooperation, mutual influence, and co-creation.

ARTISTIC AND SCIENTIFIC CORE PROGRAM ''STILL TIMES, EMERGING SELVES"

Within the framework of The Palm Tree Art Residency “Cosmogony” (2021–2022), the relationship between self and time during the COVID-19 pandemic was explored under the working title:
“Still Times, Emerging Selves.”

This project involved a creative interplay between a scientific (anthropological) and an artistic approach (poetry and photography) to the concept of time, unfolding between the written word and visual image, and between women—but also men and women. Two pairs—poet Maria Topali with photographer Marilena Stafylidou, and poet Anna Griva with photographer Panos Mazarakis—engaged in a virtual artistic dialogue through photographs and poems that reflect the temporal and spatial experience of the pandemic. Through the lens of reading and writing, they captured poetic moments, portraying inner and outer journeys through words and images.

Anthropologist Pinelopi Topali observed and documented the interactions between the artist pairs. She also engaged with them directly, offering reflective insights on the impact of observation itself. In a context of increased social distance, five individuals met through a computer screen, and by bringing together images and texts, they built bridges across the times and places they each inhabited.

The works produced—still in progress—are presented in the form of indicative video pieces:
ETERNALS by Griva–Mazarakis
STEP IN TIME by Topali–Stafylidou

Participating Artists: 
Pinelopi Topali – Assistant Professor, University of the Aegean 
Anna Griva – Poet 
Panos Mazarakis – Photographer
 Marilena Stafylidou – Photographer
 Maria Topali – Poet

Art Residency Venue: 
Palm Tree Art Residency, Akrotiri, Santorini

Residency Period: 
June – December 2021

EDUCATIONAL–ARTISTIC–SCIENTIFIC WORKSHOPS OF INTERACTION BETWEEN THE CONTRIBUTORS OF "STILL TIMES, EMERGING SELVES" AND UNIVERSITY FACULTY & STUDENTS

A. University of the Aegean, Department of Social Anthropology and History

Penelope Topali, Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of the Aegean and participant in the core project, along with four anthropology students from the same university, took part in two online interaction workshops with the poets and photographers of the core project. These workshops were held in October and December 2022. The creators presented the project in detail, and the workshops explored the convergences and divergences between scientific and artistic work. Common points of action and hybrid methodologies of coexistence and co-creation were identified.
Subsequently, after returning to their studies, the students completed their assignments based on their workshop experience.

The result is four videos that, while originating from the workshop’s themes, have developed into independent creative works. All four focus on the theme of time during the pandemic, approached from different perspectives, incorporating verses and images from the project’s poems and photographs, as well as interviews and new textual material.

Instructors: 
Penelope Topali, Assistant Professor, University of the Aegean 
Anna Griva, poet 
Panos Mazarakis, photographer
 Marilena Stafylidou, photographer 
Maria Topali, poet

Student Participants:
 Panagiotis Antonopoulos — video: FRESH DAY
 Eleni Yapraki — video: WITH TIME 
Rea Stamkou-Kosanovits — video: AS IF I HAD NO BODY Alexandra Trousa — video: CHRONICITIES OF THE PATRICIAN FIGURE

Workshop Venue: 
Online, in collaboration with the University of the Aegean team

B. NATIONAL AND KAPODISTRIAN UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS, DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGY AND GEOENVIRONMENT

Assistant Professor of Geology and Geoenvironment at the University of Athens, Paraskevi Nomikou, along with three students from the same department, participated in two in-person workshops held in October and December 2022. During these workshops, they interacted with the artist contributors during the project presentation. At the second meeting, they presented their own research work to the project team.

The students’ works focused on intertextual commentary on the poems, with or without the use of photographic material. Special emphasis was placed on the vocabulary of the natural sciences and the re-interpretation of words from the poems according to the terminology of these sciences, particularly geology.

Instructors: 
Paraskevi Nomikou, Professor of Geology and Geoenvironment, University of Athens 
Anna Griva, poet
 Panos Mazarakis, photographer 
Marilena Stafylidou, photographer 
Maria Topali, poet

Participating students:
 Froso Varotsou, work submitted in PDF format
 Areti Belka, work submitted in PDF format 
Elisavet Nikoli, work submitted in PDF format

Workshop venue:
 In-person sessions with the University of Athens team in a room at the Physical Geography Laboratory