Interested in crossing different forms of knowledge, Mazen Ashkar believes that art can approach substantial questions, touch on personal and collective paradigms of thinking and being. His works attempt to re-consider conversational values of essential elements through rethinking the utilitarian mindset, in order to fulfill his existential authenticity and accept the full weight of his freedom in light of the absurd on this moving rock, because he has nothing better to do.

The Breadth Of 104.5° is an ongoing series exploring water and notions that it associates. Layers of meaning are constantly being created and modified, interwoven with the tools and technics of every age, and reproducing its inexhaustible symbolism. The project floats between the molecular and the spiritual, the earthly and the cosmic, highlighting and questioning narratives of fiction, truth, and what could live in between them.

Esther Arribas works across the fields of performance, choreography, moving-image, and education. In her practice, collaborative relations act as platforms to focus on the porosity of diverse methodologies evolving into a continuous mutation. The temporality of an encounter addressed as a collaborative mutation opens the door to raise political questions regarding the technologies of knowledge and subjectivity production.

'Corporeal Soft Questioning' is a practice and a long-term project for suspending time longer in the “as yet unthought” (Manning 2016). Through different performative encounters (currently through screens) the practicing bodies give each other the opportunity to be an open live question, a constant mutation rather than a thing. Contemplating, waiting together. Moving with impossible ideas. Aiming to radically attend to the moments before we can nod and rest.

Leonie Brandner loves spaghetti, preferably served with piping hot tomato sauce. Her work is situated at the fringes of the everyday: the oh-so-common, the made to function, and the not-exactly-all-too practical. Brandner works with objects made from ceramics, papier-mâché, and wood, alongside stitching and storytelling. The things she makes chronicle personal experiences of mundane worries, catastrophes, wonder, and joyfulness in and among the hope and dreams for a better future. The resulting installations brim of the stories that make up life and are at least partially intended to taste like a generous plate of pasta smothered in red.

'Feeding Cats and Gods with Oranges and Athenian Stories' is a collection of stories stitched together, emerging from a time of personal trauma. "The stories were collected in the streets of Athens to be brought back to hospital, where my loved one had to undergo an emergency operation.”

Georgie Brinkman is a British artist whose work questions the impact of sociopolitical conditions on ecosystems. Treading a precarious ground between science-fiction and science-fact, her works frequently weave contemporary folklore from scientific reports. To tell these tales she often resurrects extinct species, and casts non-humans as protagonists, ultimately questioning what it means to be human in a time of profound environmental change.

‘First it sleeps, second it creeps, third it leaps’
Once upon a time, the world grew roots and hovered in suspended animation. When a mysterious Ogham Stone and an omniscient talking tree offer an insight into the true cause of the Covid-19 pandemic, it becomes clear that a solution to the crisis must come with sacrifice. A record of some of the most devastating and downright bizarre epidemics throughout history, ‘First it sleeps, second it creeps, third it leaps’ serves as a reminder of the fragility of both human existence, and belief.

Serene Hui’s practice is characterized by conceptual and minimalistic installations. Through juxtaposing and converging dissimilar situations, the works raise questions like how does one respond to, or what could one possibly get out of, the moment of conflict, estrangement, or resistance. Her works reconsider the typologies of material and established systems of knowledge. A deliberate selection of quotidian objects, images, and texts in her installations evokes unexpected affects, liberating the concealed tension between subjects and their socially preconditioned relations.

A series of top-ten Google search results will be transformed into poetic verses – revealing not only specific ideologies that are shared by countless others within a common geographical location but also sentimental phrases that reflect millions of queries entered into the world’s most popular search engine. The work is a fragment of a larger research that probes into questions about where facts, images, history, data, archives, and dreams meet in this era of post-truth.

Lena Longefay considers her practice as a composition, a constant process of shaping, gathering and sharing. By focusing on discrepancies and looking into details, she aims at thinking with logics of togetherness, resistance and care, always with fun and love, through food, traditions and narration. She works with installations gathering drawings, objects, writing, food and masks animated by lecture performances.

Attempt #1 of applying Simone Weil’s quote into real life :

“As the people are forced to incline their desires towards what they already own, beauty is made for them, and they are made for beauty. […] The people need poetry and bread alike. Not the poetry locked out inside words ; this one as itself, can’t be of any use. They need the substance of their everyday life to be poetry itself.”

It probably got messy.

Giath Taha is interested in mixing diverse artistic disciplines to connect theory. Taha explores the relation between the physicality and immateriality of visual memories. His research considers the complexity of political networking in the framework of capitalism and consumer culture. Taha’s works combine photography/video with alternate materials such as objects and site-specific installation to contextualize his artistic practice.

In the haunted house
One door closes and another opens
He sees me!… Very well
He is always there, too close.
‘Move towards me my friend
I will tell you a ghost story
I am haunted…’

Julianne Martínez Hernández is a Colombian female artist working with electronics and digital media. Her practice revolves around color and light theory, and the creation of introspective spaces that invite the spectator to enter a space of abstraction, self-reflection and an altered sensorium. Martínez Hernández currently focuses on the culture of violence and the victim’s language in contemporary Colombian literature, and the portrayal of the female gaze on violent situations and censorship. Her work is characterized by large immersive light installations.

Soliloquies on solitude
Using two contemporary Colombian novels: 'Delirium' by Laura Restrepo, and 'Social Strata' by Juan Cardenas, Soliloquies on solitude is an immersive light and sound installation that explores and experiments with the language, social relationships, and emotional hardships of the characters in the books. It also looks at Colombian identity surrounding the culture of domestic violence in families of the middle class.

In her practice of installations, wall sculptures and drawings, Monastirioti collects breaths as the main element to investigate the relation between technology and society; whilst creating narratives through the dynamic entity of this human function based on political, social and economic structures. She is influenced by Ray Kurzweil, the American inventor and futurist whose theory proposes Technological Singularity as an event of the immediate future.

Upload, refresh and lost in translation
As we are currently forced to live in closed environments during this pandemic, we are affected in different ways; each one of us by the air around us and the miscommunication through the online interaction. The invasive technology becomes the reality as time and air, almost stands still. As body and machine are integrated, we manipulate the so-called reality whilst we crave for intimacy. This is a conversation about the uncanny alienation through the archetypal act of love.

Leos’ work is based on sound recordings, often intimate accounts of friends. He creates images and sequences from these materials, mostly films.
In the past 2 years, Leos became interested in travel narratives. He started to go back and forth between North Africa and Europe, to show that some can move anywhere while others are quickly trapped. Reflecting on this movement, or migration helps to depict a certain kind of queerness.

“Now I can’t travel anymore. Flights are canceled. People who need to run away can’t move, and those who didn’t want to leave may not have a choice anyway. I’m trying to call people I know. I want to know how they feel, if they’re safe. Did the arrival of the pandemic make things worse? Some may already know what life under quarantine is like.”