Mutations II. Moving Stills

The MUTATIONS II, is the second joint project of the seven partner cities of the European Month of Photography (EMOP), which inaugurated its presentation in November 2008 in Berlin and after a series of presentations in Bratislava, Paris, Vienna, Luxembourg, Moscow and Rome completes its presentation in Athens, being a part of the central program of this year’s Athens Photo Festival, offering the possibility to all international visitors to get in contact with the most modern presentation forms of the contemporary photographic production and video.

MUTATIONS II. Moving Stills focuses on the subject of contemporary photography and video art and presents European artists whose works move in the interstices between photography and video, combining both media. Jutta Strohmaier in her slow animation of still images play with temporal depth, and Peter Aerschmann, whose experiments with the moving and freezing of instant photo images show lonely figures caught up in infinite loops.

In Ori Gersht’s baroque-style “still videos”, movements are announced acoustically but held back until the grand finale, when the motif explodes to reveal its ephemeral nature.

Tuomo Rainio, on the other hand – the youngest of all participating artists – has devised his own computer programme to take the opposite approach: on a black screen, ghostlike shapes gradually appear in black-and white; slowly, eerily the movements of passers-by in urban space become discernible.

The need for increased integration of video art and space is emphasised by Olga Cherny- sheva and her work “Windows”, which provides a voyeuristic view of small, private scenarios, while Christoph Brech’s is an invitation to deceleration.