They shoot new media art when it grows old, don’t they?
People, institutions, and practices in the transitional decade of the 1980s.

The first one was that many artists who had used new technologies to create their works from the 1960s onwards were, for various reasons, absent from the canonical texts of Greek art history. The second obstacle was that the texts that could be described as canonical, in that they sought to include all or a part of the history of art in Greece, were very few. Furthermore, while in the last decade, there has been an abundance of texts on the recent history of art in Greece, I began to notice a third obstacle as I pursued my own research to identify artists excluded from canonical texts: a certain ambivalence on the part of institutions, art history, and, especially, artists themselves towards artworks created with new media. This meant that the absence of references to these works was not invariably the result of rejection, the inability of institutions to support exhibitions, a lack of know-how or theoretical background among critics of the time, or because they were the works of unknown visual artists. In addition to all these reasons, many artists kept those works out of the core of their oeuvre and did not regard them as autonomous artworks at the time; some were never even exhibited.

Through a number of different routes and through systematic research for my doctoral dissertation, I began to notice a series of events that formed an alternative narrative of the history of new media in Greece.2 This new narrative begins in the late 1960s with the mathematical-technological allusions of Pantelis Xagoraris and with the sculptor Theodoros’ critical engagement with new mass media in his Manipulations series (1973–1982). Several artists also kept their significant experimental audiovisual works separate from their general practice and would often present them to select audiences many years later. This was very much the case with Aspa Stasinopoulou’s films, some of which were shown 30 years later.3 Equally, Dimitris Alithinos’ films and videos, made in the 1970s, were presented for the first time in his retrospective exhibition at ΕΜΣΤ | National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, in 2013.4 Likewise, the politically engaged work Bouboulina (1981) by Leda Papaconstantinou and Carole Roussopoulos has been shown only once to date.5 This ambivalence is present in the way Theodoros describes his work Tele-manipulation, part of “The Creators” series produced by Giorgos Emirzas, without actually calling it a work of art: “The two films (parts 1 and 2) form a diptych, there are analogies in the way they have been put together as well as contrasts. Although they are ‘documentaries’ of my work, their plot is such as to constitute an expression analogous to that of the works being presented.”6

As was also the case with the mythical, oral narratives in the experiments of Nam June Paik, Andy Warhol, and Wolf Vostell, which have been constantly contested, rewritten, and reinterpreted, the first-ever experiments in Greece are claimed by many artists who regard themselves as pioneers in the use of video. All such claims can be regarded as valid, but they involve perspectives on artistic practices structured by different terms, interpretations, and hierarchies. As is often the case in the history of technological media, there is scarce documentation and critical references on the first artistic uses of video. Several original artworks have also been lost or destroyed due to indifference, a lack of technical know-how, or shifts in audiovisual technology.

Yioulia Gazetopoulou’s work is a case in point. She is often mentioned as one of the first artists to use video technology at an event at Polyplano Gallery in 1977–1978.7 In most cases, this is mentioned as something having happened in the recent past, yet no contemporary reference from that time, with details about the space and the performance itself, is available.8

Similarly, there is scant evidence regarding Mit Mitropoulos’ Mail Art exhibition at the Gazette bookstore, where, among the exhibits, he presented a television screen tuned to show static at all times except the hour of a television show on the exhibition itself. This gesture, which is part of Mitropoulos’ overall telecommunication artistic practice, is dated to 1978, but references to it appear several years later.9 The same applies to the Face to Face installations that were presented in Salerno, Italy, and at the exhibition Artcom in Paris in 1986, as well as at the V2 Center in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands, in 1989. In this series of installations, two individuals communicate face to face through different levels of remote audiovisual communication technology, including slow-scan image transmission via telephone line or a two-way cable television circuit. The visible part of the installation, each time, consisted of two television sets displaying two faces speaking to one another.10

In 1981, Leda Papaconstantinou, in collaboration with Carole Roussopoulos, produced the video Bouboulina on the island of Spetses. In this video, women from different generations speak about Bouboulina as part of the island’s living history. Through targeted questions, episodes from Bouboulina’s life unfold in parallel to the contemporary everyday lives of the island’s women. The film belongs to the style of Carole Roussopoulos’ engaged documentation, with images of Bouboulina overlaid on those of the participants as they go about their everyday activities, such as embroidery, the camera often focusing on their hands as they speak.

In the early 1980s, video equipment was rare and expensive, especially compared to film, which was more widespread and persisted as the norm for documenting artistic activity in Greece. Nevertheless, video possessed two distinct characteristics that made it highly desirable for artists: first, a television monitor could be placed in an exhibition space alongside other visual artworks, unlike film, which required its own dedicated dark space; and second, video could be used in the exhibition space straight after recording, whereas film had to be processed. Aris Prodromidis made use of both advantages in the recording and presentation of the installation/performance Act III, which he carried out in 1981 at the exhibition Environment–Action, organised by the Association of Greek Art Critics. In this work, Prodromidis turned the spotlight on the figure of the artist by staging his everyday life in his studio, surrounded by his equipment and work. Part of the performance was recorded on a video set on playback during the artist’s absence from the space.11 The same year, Prodromidis held a mixed-media exhibition, Anamorphosis, at Medousa Art Gallery, featuring mostly anamorphically transformed photographic portraits. The exhibition also included his first autonomous video, titled Anamorphosis (1981), which showed anamorphic distortions of his face on a reflective, distorting surface.

In 1983, Angelos Skourtis, in collaboration with Li Likoudi, presented the composite performance National Garden, in which the artists placed rectangular coloured plexiglass and canvases marking viewing points in the National Garden of Athens. During the show’s opening, a flautist led visitors from the National Garden to the Desmos Art Gallery for the continuation of the exhibition, which included photographic collages, photographs from the intervention, and a video. In the video, titled Metaplasis (1983) and described in the press release as a “body art performance”, foliage was projected onto naked bodies. In this work, the use of video enabled projection of images from the familiar device of television, allowing it to function as a commentary on the technological mediation of the experience of nature, which was also the theme of the performance.12

The first documented hybrid video-performances also took place during the same period. In 1983, Nikos Giannopoulos collaborated with dancer Nena Papageorgiou and pianist Thomas Sliomis to present the performance Before 1984 or Illusions at Polyplano Gallery. The 45-minute performance was repeated 15 times in the gallery that had been arranged like an apartment: one section was taken up by the piano, while the choreography unfolded mostly in another section as the audience moved freely through the space. The walls of the rooms were covered with mirrors with rounded corners to resemble television screens. Among them, actual television sets played random advertisements, music videos, or closed-circuit images from a video camera operated by Nikos Giannopoulos. The performance was a comment on the crisis of personal identity in an environment saturated by mass media and information. This critique was expressed through Nena Papageorgiou’s choreographic dramaturgy, in which she abruptly assumed different stereotypical roles. The network of screens, mirrors, and Giannopoulos’ camera enabled observation from every angle in the space.

In 1985, Marianne Strapatsakis presented a series of paintings on reflective metal surfaces at Medousa Art Gallery. With the intention of capturing the temporal element of light reflection in her works, she began work on the video Vital Pulses (1985), in collaboration with musician Thanasis Zlatanos. This work was first presented as part of an installation accompanied by a live musical performance by Zlatanos at the Praxis Festival of the Goethe-Institut Athen in the same year. Later, a single-channel version of the video was presented as an autonomous work of art in the first group video exhibitions at Studio Videograph in Thessaloniki and at the 1st Document exhibition at Gallery F in Athens in 1986.

The first private television channels began broadcasting in Greece in 1989. This was a landmark event that abruptly and radically changed the mass communications sector in Greece, while also bringing major transformations in culture and, of course, in the field of audiovisual production. The field was further transformed during the 1990s by the following factors: the establishment of the first private foundations (such as the DESTE Foundation); the emergence of a younger generation of artists who created, exhibited, and sold video artwork; and the gradual turn of a previous generation of artists, who had fought for the visibility of the medium, to other professional fields made available in education and the new private television channels. Special mention should be made of the operation of Fournos Centre for Digital Culture from 1992 onwards, which enabled the emergence of a systematic discourse on art and technology during a period of globalisation.

With today’s theoretical tools and a broadened understanding of what constitutes an artwork and artistic practice, and freed from the allure of technological novelty, we can proceed to a different evaluation of new media art between 1970 and 1990. This will allow us to place it within the wider framework of art history and the histories of new media, both locally and globally.