Photos: Ugo Carmeni
On a wildflower-lined gravel track off a quiet thoroughfare…
…a parked black van scans its surroundings for personal devices to send out a thumbnail from the account of a recently deceased person. Captioned “OMG! Have you seen this?!”, it reaches three unsuspecting acquaintances. In disbelief, the first recipient takes the bait and clicks the link. The second fails to see the notification as it drowns in a sea of information debris. The third — no longer friends with the ‘sender’ and unaware of their passing — sees the message and opts not to answer, effectively ghosting them. […]
So our ghost story goes, and so it echoes: On which side of the screen lies the ghost?
From this seemingly benign anecdote, Lower Levant Company, Endrosia Collective and Haig Aivazian sidestep the superstitious provenance of ghosts to consider the present socio-technical and material forms of ghosting.
The exhibition title “On a wildflower-lined gravel track off a quiet thoroughfare…” is derived from the opening sentence of a 2019 Forbes article that exposes a spyware operation run out of a black van. Parked along an inconspicuous wildflower-lined street in the coastal city of Larnaca, the operation becomes an entry point into the geopolitical histories of transmission and interference that render Cyprus an ‘antenna island’ for clandestine operations, covert transmissions and intelligence interception across the wider region. Drawing from contemporary forms of ghosting to excavate sedimented histories interpreted through sculptural and audiovisual interventions, the exhibition nods to the paranormal and the archeological alike; a reminder that unresolved historical grievances always return to haunt the present.
Assuming the parafictional device of an ambiguous shell company named Forever Informed, the pavilion’s premises set in motion varying intensities and materialisations of “ghosts in the machine”, its façade vouching to provide “smart solutions to weak signals”. It is unclear whether the company’s facilities have been recently vacated, yet to be moved into, or set up for covert activities. Traces of its vision are left on view in the form of anachronistic gestures, connecting a past carried by raw materials — terracotta, sand, copper, concrete — with elusive ambitions for a quantifiable future. The welcoming reception room falls apart, dissolving its own fiction, while a message blinks in Morse code “Tomorrow morning you will see” and a severed cable leaks out of a missing ceiling tile, channelling the undulating tones of water and wind travelling through pipes that peer in from the canal. Below, a wildflower with its seeds scattered tempers the white glow of artificial light.
The enclosed courtyard that runs through the space turns into a copper slag-lined ‘thoroughfare’, with horn speakers diffusing high frequencies recorded across sensitive locations in Cyprus. Ceramic horn speakers sprout to conjure a mode of listening that reorients attention to the land, subterranean activities and modes of extractivism. Vibrations emanating from the end of the path beckon towards SOUNDR*, a dark cross-section of transmissions from Cyprus and Lebanon, where light disperses darkness and time refracts across three vessels. A steel-mounted diptych sees a chain of particles oscillating between memory and future transmission; a city plunged in darkness is animated by a force that floods it with a red glow and rattles it with throbbing frequencies; a video game appears from behind a flipped desk, trailing behind a blue gorilla wreaking havoc in a luxury development, and turning against the very edifice that brought it to life.
A multilingual publication co-authored by the artists delves further into the ghost (hi)stories and infrastructures that form the bedrock for many of the artworks. In parallel, the Vigil Workspace, an ongoing invigilation residency taking place throughout the duration of the Biennale, further activates these inquiries to think through the imperativeness of remaining vigilant today and the forms that vigils can take to guide us through the present – reanimating notions of invisible labour within the art industry to hold a space for reflection and remembrance.
Across these configurations, ghosting, as the paradoxical act of withdrawal and persistence, begets its own form of vigilance, demanding an adjustment of attention; a recalibration of the senses; a commitment not only to staying with the problem of ghosts, but to drawing alliances with them and, entrusted with their agitation, dismantling and building worlds anew.
*Named after Sounder, a codename for a joint British/American surveillance station in Cyprus which has been revealed as a key site for mass communications monitoring and interception in the Middle East.
Artists: Lower Levant Company (Peter Eramian, Emiddio Vasquez), Endrosia (Andreas Andronikou, Marina Ashioti, Niki Charalambous, Doris Mari Demetriadou, Irini Khenkin, Rafailia Tsiridou, Alexandros Xenophontos), Haig Aivazian
Commissioner: Louli Michaelidou
Production Manager: Charles Gohy
Project Manager: Ioulita Toumazi
Graphic Design: Doris Mari Demetriadou, Andreas Andronikou, Miquel Hervás Gómez
Exhibition Architecture: Alexandros Xenophontos
Technicians: Jean-Frédéric Gohy, Erwin De Muer, Riccardo Clementi, Kwinten
Publishers: Archive Books, Cyprus Deputy Ministry of Culture – Department of Contemporary Culture
Supporters: psi foundation, Pylon Art & Culture, The Kerenidis Pepe Collection, Niki Hadjilyra
Organiser: Cyprus Deputy Ministry of Culture – Department of Contemporary Culture
Acknowledgments: Iwan Arjanto, Alexis Charalambous, Elpida Frangeskidou, Svetlana Goncharenko, Gaetano di Gregorio, Byron Macrides, Konstantina Michael, Faysal Mroueh, Dirk Versluis, Cloudy Works
Co-curated by the artists
The Cyprus Pavilion Biennale Arte 2024
Location: Associazione Culturale Spiazzi, Castello 3865, 30122 Venice
Duration: 20/04/2024 – 24/11/2024
https://foreverinformed.com/
https://cyprusinvenice.org.cy/