Works and Projects

BioGeoMetries | Therianthropes | Lessness | Sonitus Urbanitatis | The Morphing Aphrodite | Sissyphus | Difficult Journeys | The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Prostitute | Living With Colours | Dancing Landscapes | Fear Is A Man's Best Friend | Afternoon Echoes | Home | Camera Travels | Forest Loops | Still Lives | Pyrkos | The Machine Dream | The Liquid Reality | Cross-country Run | | One Day At The Quietest Sea | 2000 Miles (and thirteen years) | In between | Early Videos | Ars Moriendi

BioGeoMetries

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The photography exhibition "BioGeoMetries" by Yiannos Economou, follows the video installation Therianthropes, shown in Nicosia in May 2022, to an extent the video "Lessness" 2020, and the exhibition "Sonitus Urbanitatis" in Paphos, December 2019, dealing with the dangerously dysfunctional relationship between humans and nature. The photographs were initially taken as visual research on this theme, developing, as it progressed, into an autonomous project.

The architectural urban environment, denoting stability, and balance is juxtaposed with the fluidity of the environments of other lifeforms, and more specifically that of the migratory arctic terns. The geometric rationalisation of anthropogenic space reveals a desire for order and control, not only for nature but for humans too, in contrast with the turbulent and chaotic ocean surface and atmospheric winds, where the birds spend most of their time. In between these two lies a third topos, that of the human-made ruins, which undermines the illusion of invincibility and timelessness of our species and creations.

The photographs were taken over a period of ten years in Iceland, Hungary, Bulgaria, England, Greece, and Austria.

Curated by Dr. Nadja Stamselberg

All photographs are limited editions of 10, printed giclee on paper.

If you would like to acquire a print please follow the link, GeoBioMetries Details, or contact the artist.

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THE BOOKLET

I THINK WHAT I SEE.

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I think as I move through space, as I direct my gaze through the camera, I change positions and angles, I focus on objects and set the exposure time, as my body, extended by the lens, changes points of view and scope of vision, I think with my body, like octopus think with their tentacles.

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The camera is an extension of the eye, and the eye is an extension of the brain, and all, organic and inorganic parts, are entangled into one entity.

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These photographs are like drawings, drawing as research or as a way of thinking. None of these images are preconceived yet nothing is accidental.

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One could assume that since these are depictions of spaces and not actions, the luxury of time and the careful choice of position and angle is available. But moving through space is equally pressing, the opportune moments arise and disappear equally fast. Photography without lighting sets, tripods or models, is always instinctive.

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Modern neurology has shown that there is more than one pathway of vision, not only the one we know about but also a more primitive one which our conscious does not register. It is a faster and more accurate circuit that is running hidden below the surface, it is the one that helps us drive cars, play tennis, and catch balls on air without thinking. And click the shutter button of the camera at the right moment, with our index finger, the virtuoso of our five digits, as any pianist or video gamer will testify.

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This is a direct refutation of the idea that we are outside the world looking in, deciding which choice to make, of the Neoplatonic Christian idea, that we have a mind-like or soul-like thing that is somehow inside us like a gas in a bottle, totally different from that bottle in some way, and that it is a sort of puppet master pulling the strings.

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I SEE WHAT I THINK.

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In pristine shiny, translucent, contemporary architecture, with no tangible surfaces, no wear and tear, no signs of the passage of time, I see a projection of invincibility and eternity.

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In the Euclidian adherence to straight lines, regular shapes and curves I see the post-agricultural sapiens’ desire for order and control.

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But the will to control nature means to control humans too.

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And chaos is also a kind of order, only a more complicated one.

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The migratory arctic terns travel more than any other bird or animal every year, covering about 90,000 km per year, from the arctics to antarctica and back, spending most of their time above the everchanging, protean, surface of the ocean. They are insecure, clumsy, and aggressive in their solid nesting grounds, but comfortable and elegant on air, they even sleep while flying, taking advantage of the atmospheric currents. .

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So there are two different bio-geometries

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the solid, anthropogenic, regulated architecture,

and the turbulent and unpredictable one of the wind, the atmosphere and the surface of the ocean.

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And an in-between state, that of the decaying human stains on the planet, to remind us that solids too obey the laws of turbulence in the very long run.

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Whichever way we try to evade temporality,

immersed in upward looking,

immaculate,

celestial structures,

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we know we are fragile.

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and uncanny encounters with the earth, the soil, the compost, confound us.

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Of those cities will remain what passed through them, the wind!

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