GRZINIC: KLONARIS& THOMADAKI exhibition in Ljubljana

[Marina Grzinic]

MARIA KLONARIS and KATERINA THOMADAKI, Paris

EXHIBITION IN LJUBLJANA

Stranger than Angel/Dissidents Bodies: Conjoint Twins and the Intersexual Angel

Exibition of Photographs, video, installations

At Cankarjev dom, Main Gallery, Ljubljana; the exhibition is on view 
until 3. November, 2002

Opening 17.September, Tuesday, at 20 p.m.

Curators Marina Grzinic and Nina Pirnat Spahic



Maria Klonaris' and Katerina Thomadaki's work addresses important 
questions of gender, reproducibility, equality and difference. Their 
intermedia practice is centered on "dissident bodies" as the conjoint 
Twins or the intersexual "Angel." These nomadic bodies force us to 
see defamiliarizing modes of perception, new paradigms of memory and 
loss. Klonaris and Thomadaki produce eroticized, emphatic and longing 
(dis)figurations of the body deeply rooted in the social and natural 
environment. Exile and alterity are the main positions of the 
politics of the body they develop. Their path is a query about the 
position of the human within sexual, physical, spiritual 
relationships. Their work tends to provoke both a confrontation and 
contact between visualized bodies and the spectator's body.

Klonaris and Thomadaki create an immersive mental space, where the 
human body - intersexual or female - meets with the outer space. 
Their visual models do not originate from an opposition to other art 
works, and do not directly refer to pictorial inventions, but react 
to technologies' transformative potential. What was pioneeringly 
anticipated in their work since the mid 80's, was the rethinking of 
the (post)industrial, modern human through new technology. Their 
juncture of art, culture and politics reflects how artists, 
intellectuals and activists intervene within culture and politics in 
a critical way trying to make visible and to reverse the capital 
logic.
Marina Grzinic

MARIA KLONARIS AND KATERINA THOMADAKI are media artists and 
filmmakers, curators and theorists of Greek origin. Established in 
Paris since 1975, they produce films, videos, multi-media 
installations, performances, photographic pieces, sound and texts. 
Leading figures of the French experimental film scene since the late 
70's, they introduce the concept of "Cinéma corporel" (Cinema of the 
Body) and produce subversive works on body, female and androgynous 
identity, sexuality and the unconscious. Retrospectives of their 
films and expanded projection works have been presented at the 
Pompidou Center in 1980, at the Donguy Gallery, Paris in 1985 and at 
the Cinémathãque Française in 1992. Their work has been largely shown 
in museums, galleries and festivals in Europe, North America and 
Japan. In 1985 they co-found A.S.T.A.R.T.I. for Audiovisual Art, an 
interdisciplinary project crossing technologies, theories, and 
artistic practices. They conceive and curate the large scale 
international exhibition-conference "Rencontres internationales Art 
cinéma / vidéo / ordinateur" in 1990, 1994, 1998. They have published 
numerous articles and books and are the editors of Technologies et 
imaginaires (Dis voir, 1990), Mutations de l'image (A.S.T.A.R.T.I., 
1994) and Pour une Ecologie des media (A.S.T.A.R.T.I., 1998).

Katerina Thomadaki is Maître de conférences associé at the department 
of Visual Arts and Aesthetics, University Paris I-Sorbonne and a 
researcher at the Collãge Iconique (Inathãque de France), and at the 
Centre de Recherche sur l'Image (Ecole doctorale, University Paris 
I-Sorbonne). Klonaris and Thomadaki have participated in a lacanian 
"cartel" at the Ecole de la Cause Freudienne in Paris (1980-82), they 
have been radio producers at the Atelier de Création Radiophonique, 
France Culture (1982-1995) and they direct workshops in various 
alternative or institutional spaces (women's groups, psychiatric 
institutions, art schools, etc). 
<http://mkangel.cjb.net/>http://mkangel.cjb.net