Newspaper Article “When digital Art talks for the city”

Places and people, experiences and events, myths and shadows. Every city has its memory, often ruined, but always present and decisive for the entity and the identity of a place. At every opportunity and by every means, memory either emerges or is underlined, because that’s the way it should be. And one such medium is art, which with the power of image or sound comes to narrate or even transform the memories of a city and finally deepen the memory.

In the city of Ioannina there will be digital art installations that will remind moments of its past and that will “record” narrative elements. The narrative elements came from oral stories recorded by students of Ioannina from their grandparents or other relatives, and which also received the appropriate documentation.

The article states that this particular project, therefore, takes the next step. Ten artists undertook the task to transcribe some of the stories in the urban landscape of Ioannina, in places connected with the narrative elements, such as the Castle, the lake, the former Papazogleios School, the historical center. Each artist with his/her own way. Spyros Papadopoulos, Panagiotis Vorrias, Maria Varela, Ioannis Kokkalis, Athina Pavlou-Benazi, Alexandros Psychoulis, Christos Vagiatas, Marilena Georgantzi, Thodoris Zafeiropoulos have already created them.

During this period, the installation of the necessary equipment takes place in selected parts of the city. All the stories will take place in open, public spaces, with the activation of the intangible narrative “museum” through a digital application.

The article concludes that the stories that the digital art installations will “tell”, concern various events, experiences and beliefs: from the declaration of World War II and the deportation of the Jews in March 1944 to the legend of Durahan Pasha, the frosts and the storms on the lake and its monsters.