Christos Panagiotou is an artist and researcher at the Lab for Animation Research (LAR), at the Department of Fine Arts, Cyprus University of Technology. He is a Ph.D. in Communication. His interests revolve around the notion of space as a Topological entity and how its structure is related to discourse and narratives. He examines the Möbius structure as a topological manifestation of psychological and political discourses and narratives.
About the exhibition:
Modernity is associated with quantification, measurement, structures, and, ultimately, a simulated, linear, and delimited edifice of the temporal and the spatial dimension. Clocks through machinery record time in sequential units of moments: milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, centuries. Space is also divided into linear, delimited, measurable units. Consumerism: machines manufacture units of products that we buy in units with units of value (price) to separate ourselves, to be “unique.” Modernity is a colossal machine ruled by an ordered quantity of units situated in space and time, a numerical plane of existence. No wonder statistics – and Google – is the new God. When we quantify the spatial and temporal dimensions, we restructure them as linear entities; Reality becomes the sum of dissociated temporal and spatial units bound together through a rigid scaffold set by machinery.
Once we delineate space and time, the concept of limits also arises. Limits separate entities and delineate units; limits justify where the Self starts and when it ends when the Other begins and where the Other stops. A linear perception of the Self also occurs in the temporal dimension. Limits separate who I am, who I am not, and whom I want to be in a linear temporal progression. Limits that quantify and justify the notion of property, and limits that demarcate whole nations – boundaries – the Self and the Other, limits of time – timetables, schedules – and Identities about who we are in time and space are formed, because after all, in Modernity, there are clean-cut temporal and spatial limits that separate in units the Self from the Other.
In this photography exhibition, I use the topological properties of the Möbius strip to restructure space within photographs non-linearly, thus subverting the notion of spatial linearity within the photographic image. Möbius strip has no orientation and no limits, no borders. I also refer to the aesthetics of M.C. Escher and Arnold Böcklin.
Once we delineate space and time, the concept of limits also arises. Limits separate entities and delineate units; limits justify where the Self starts and when it ends when the Other begins and where the Other stops. A linear perception of the Self also occurs in the temporal dimension. Limits separate who I am, who I am not, and whom I want to be in a linear temporal progression. Limits that quantify and justify the notion of property, and limits that demarcate whole nations – boundaries – the Self and the Other, limits of time – timetables, schedules – and Identities about who we are in time and space are formed, because after all, in Modernity, there are clean-cut temporal and spatial limits that separate in units the Self from the Other.
In this photography exhibition, I use the topological properties of the Möbius strip to restructure space within photographs non-linearly, thus subverting the notion of spatial linearity within the photographic image. Möbius strip has no orientation and no limits, no borders. I also refer to the aesthetics of M.C. Escher and Arnold Böcklin.
** The exhibition is based on my research about “space and time in artificial environments,” done in the context of my work as a researcher in the Lab for Animation Research
* The Exhibition will be until the 5th of February.
