Territorial Poetics (II: unfolding) forms a site-specific walking performance for camera, where the artist walks, pushes and gradually unfolds a big piece of old paper-roll upon the railroad tracks of the old abandoned railway network of Peloponnese, during the morning twilight (06:15am) of August 5th 2019. The unfolding action of the artist re-inscribes an ongoing dialogue between the everyday mundane and the spiritual. The artist acts like a seed, an object, a ritualistic intention which unfolds and spreads out the potential. Based on Sisyphean semiotics and an auto-ethnographical approach of the personal and the collective, “Territorial Poetics” forms an ephemeral situation between site, body and repetition, making a spatial statement about the universal processes of effort, communication and journeying. The concept of such performance initiates from the poetic phrase “in the name of atonement, we re-inscribe every day”, taken from artist’s debut poetry collection entitled “Tundra” (2017); an enunciation which becomes spatial and embodied; weaving the poetic and the political upon stratified terrains.-Bill Psarras
CV: Bill Psarras (Dr.) (1985) is an artist, academic and musician. He is an adjunct lecturer at the Department of Performing and Digital Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Peloponnese. He has been a former adjunct lecturer at the Department of Audio & Visual Arts of Ionian University (2016-2019) where he also conducted his Arts-based Postdoctoral research exploring the intersections of walking performance, site and technology (IKY State Scholarship 2017-2019). He holds a PhD in Arts and Technology from Goldsmiths University of London (AHRC Scholarship 2013). He has also an MA in Digital Arts (University of the Arts London) and a BA/MA in Audiovisual Arts (Ionian University). His art practice includes site-specific walking performances, mixed media installations, video/digital art, experimental video and poetry; exploring the geopoetics and politics of the urban experience through memory, emotion and site. His works have been exhibited in international festivals of contemporary art, group exhibitions and cultural institutions across Europe and US (link). His interdisciplinary research has been published in international journals (Leonardo Electronic Almanac MIT Press, Technoetic Arts, IJART), conferences (i.e. ISEA2013), chapters in edited books and symposia in the intersections of contemporary art, performance and urban-cultural studies. Bill has composed music for documentaries and self-released a series of digital albums across rock and ambient spectrum. On 2017, he published his first poetry collection entitled “Tundra” (Pigi Publications) exploring the emotional intersections of art, geography and city.
Territorial Poetics (II: unfolding) forms a site-specific walking performance for camera, where the artist walks, pushes and gradually unfolds a big piece of old paper-roll upon the railroad tracks of the old abandoned railway network of Peloponnese, during the morning twilight (06:15am) of August 5th 2019. The unfolding action of the artist re-inscribes an ongoing dialogue between the everyday mundane and the spiritual. The artist acts like a seed, an object, a ritualistic intention which unfolds and spreads out the potential. Based on Sisyphean semiotics and an auto-ethnographical approach of the personal and the collective, “Territorial Poetics” forms an ephemeral situation between site, body and repetition, making a spatial statement about the universal processes of effort, communication and journeying. The concept of such performance initiates from the poetic phrase “in the name of atonement, we re-inscribe every day”, taken from artist’s debut poetry collection entitled “Tundra” (2017); an enunciation which becomes spatial and embodied; weaving the poetic and the political upon stratified terrains.-Bill Psarras
