Video :

Vital Space is built on the belief in the power of art to change the world. It is a participatory platform for all those who believe that an artistic perspective can help civilise, humanise and, even, rationalise the debate on the current confluence of environmental and economic crises. The platform functions as an open invitation to artists, scientists, activists, theorists, historians etc. to contribute diverse viewpoints from which to look again at the mounting problems regarding Humanity's relationship with Nature and with itself.

Vital Space aspires to create a deeper awareness about the most pressing issues of our time and to discern how art can be used to reach and influence a wider audience across the world. Acting as a cross-media art platform on which to pose questions concerning globalization and the plight of the environment, Vital Space creates a dialogue regarding the most vital issues of our time and how these can be addressed and expressed through art.

Vital Space revolves around two main axes: (a) the creation and production of visual art works, and (b) the initiation of research programs, conferences, publications and the formation of educational and media products designed to reach and influence a wide and diverse audience. Vital Space is a non-profit organization founded in 2010 by artist Danae Stratou and economist Yanis Varoufakis.

"SILENCE IS NO SILENT"

Trailer for silent film festival on March at Goethe Institut & Camp! - Athens
Audio-video synthesis&construction : studio19st-multimedia team

/// Music programming, sound recording, mixes:
Costas Bokos (Studio19).
/// Video camera, editing & titles animation:
Vasilis Kountouris (Studio19)
/// Technical co-ordination of production: T.P.T. (The Perfect Team)
/// Production: S19st Production Team 2012.

Studio19st - © 2012

CITY PARTICLES | Video installation | In collaboration with Vasilis Kountouris | 2011

A 6 Channel Video installation by Danae Stratou in collaboration with Vasilis Kountouris - Studio 19st (2011).

The images used in this video were all taken by Danae Stratou during her 6 month stay in Istanbul in 2010 for the purpose of realising her project Vital Space (Humanity) - Istanbul. During her stay she regularly flew over the city by helicopter. All the images used in this video were chosen from the aerial shots she took during those flights in order to depict that multi layered differences of the city. Paths connecting order and disorder, centre and suburb, privilege and dispossession, formal and informal. The wider Vital Space project is a response to the challenges posed by Globalisation and its discontents; by the plight of the environment; by the ebb and flow of massive migration movements. A momentous urban expansion is spawning the planet’s largest cities, as wave upon wave of migrants abandon the countryside and the periphery. Meanwhile, the surrounding economic wastelands are emptied of people and left in a state of ecological fragility.

Presented at the Eleventh Plateau exhibition. Curator Sozita Goudouna.
Venue: Association of Greek Archaeologists. Oct. 21st - Dec. 11th, Athens, Greece (2011)

Organized by: Out of the Box Intermedia.

"The Soma The Psyche The Spirit The Self " by Danae Stratou

The Soma The Psyche The Spirit The Self is a video installation projected on two facing freestanding walls. It comprises two counter-opposed projections, mirroring one another, and depicting the figure of a Shaolin monk, in his traditional orange robe, moving in from a distance. The two images differ only in that the one is a slightly more ethereal version of the other. The Shaolin monk’s movement is choreographed based on the Tai-Chi form. The space between the two projection screens is energized by the synchronized movements, as he approaches, slowly moving closer and closer toward his ethereal self (in the opposite screen). The energy builds up as the movement becomes increasingly faster, and the choreography shifts seamlessly from Tai-Chi to Kung-Fu. The video is shot in front of the main gate of Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, circa 1936.

Exhibited at:

Bida 2005 - Bienal International del Deporte en el Arte. Curators: Marta Moriarty, Tono Arean, Sania Papa, Christos Savidis. Locations: Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Kaftatzoglio Stadium, Thessaloniki, Greece & Las Atarazanas Reales, Seville, Spain.

Open Plan 2008 - Art Athina. Curator, Bettina M. Busse. Participation with Zone-D Gallery. Athens, Greece.

ICESONGS SQUARED | Video installation | In collaboration with Vasilis Kountouris | 2012

ICESONGS SQUARED comprises a video & sound work which emerged from the site-specific installation ICESONGS created by Danae Stratou and presented at La Verriere, the exhibition space of the Fondation d' Enterprise Hermes, in Brussels in 2010.

The most powerful element of the project was the astounding soundscape which had generated from sounds coming directly from the Antarctic Ocean emitted by the icebergs as they form on Antarctica's edges, they collide against each other, squeeze out into the open sea, sail away and finally melt. These sounds, captured by water microphones1 that are lying on the seabed of the Antarctic, are now used by researchers for monitoring Antarctica's melting ice shelf. Dr Alexander Gavrilov2 and Dr Jason Gedamke3 were kind enough to convert4 a large number of samples from their recordings, on my behalf, of the shifting icebergs' sounds and to share them with me for the purpose of this project.

The final composition of ICESONGS, kept intact in ICESONGS2, is a 20' minute long soundscape comprising 7 "sound-waves". These have been synthesised by transforming and fluctuating the speed of 7 of the original - specially converted - recordings so that they vary in pitch and timbre and in this way reflect the rich range and diverse qualities of the sounds produced by the travelling, braking, colliding and melting of the icebergs.
These Iceberg's songs coming from deep within the Antarctic Ocean are like voices coming out of an imagined landscape, at once familiar and alien, so powerful that they compelled me to attempt, in collaboration with sound and multimedia specialist, Vasilis Kountouris, to create a visual imagery that could potentially accompany the soundscape and thus form a new autonomous work. The result of this collaboration is the video/sound work ICESONGS2 .