Stefanos Tsivopoulos

Untitled (The Remake)
2007
Video, 13’

Following a long period of research in the archives of the Greek National Television (ERT), Stefanos Tsivopoulos discovered a 16mm film footage belonging to the very first days of the Greek television in late 1960s and showing a rare scene of newscasters preparing for the evening news. The short 16mm film is from the period of the military junta in Greece, a period in which television was developing rapidly, and being used as a major propaganda tool of the Georgios Papadopoulos regime. Tsivopoulos renders this material on two levels: on one side he uses actors, props, costumes etc. in order to reconstruct the historical era by studying the original footage. On another level, he juxtaposes his own reconstruction with propaganda footage from the dictatorship era. Most of the footage features nationalist-driven parades and re-enactments of moments from Greece’s long history. Tsivopoulos uses the unofficial and unregistered moment from the past, taking place in the backstage of a TV studio, as a metaphor over the involvement of media in the development of History.

“In the course of working on some of my most recent projects dealing with news, archives and mass media images, I have progressively developed an interest in how subjects of war, history, culture and politics are analyzed and represented by mechanisms of fiction- and documentary film. The dual power of the image – to generate documents and to create works of visual art – is at the center of my research. By intervening on the one hand in archive material, and cinematic language on the other, I focus on how these two different systems of representation can stand critical on issues such as History, Politics, and Culture. Central for my practice is the research, collection and analysis of archived photographs, newsreels, film archives and other historical imagery which constitutes part of our collective memory. These documents are taken out of their historical context and used in my work in a reverse mode: instead of serving their original purpose, they are deployed to tell a new story.” (S.T.)

Stefanos Tsivopoulos (1973, Prague, CZ) is a Greek artist who lives and works in Amsterdam and Athens. He recently completed a two-year long residency period at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam and is currently an artist-in-residence in the Project Studio Berlin, supported by the Dutch Fonds BKVB. Recent shows include: 1st Athens Biennial; 1st Thessaloniki Biennial; the Deste Prize, Deste Foundation; Museum Het Domein; Townhouse Gallery Cairo; Museum of Contemporary Art Athens; Trafo Gallery Budapest; Montevideo Arts Institute Amsterdam; Centre Photographique d’lle-de-France Paris; Manifesta Foundation Amsterdam; Coffee Break Liverpool Biennial. Upcoming shows include The Greenroom curated by Maria Lind and Hito Steyerl in CCS Bard Institute New York and a solo show at the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, curated by Ana Nikitović. During 2009 he will be an artist-in-residence at the Platform Garanti in Istanbul.