NO ONE WILL KILL YOU, ANY MORE THAN IF YOU WERE A CORPSE

The moral crossroads that Menelaos Karamaghiolis’ new moving image works expand the video space and introduce a new kind of realism the filmmaker has been constructing throughout the past decade by mapping what is not central in the geography of the heroic. The video is a simulation of a country in crisis, through the lives of a stray dog that wanders downtown amidst all the riots and protests, and another dog that lives safely in the suburbs.
No one will kill you, any more than if you were a corpse is a video in three variations that, with the use of a gaming device, the viewer can choose through which perspective he wants the story to unfold. A filmmaker claims fear staying alone in a pet cemetery and follows the gravedigger, who goes to pick up a corpse of a dog. Is this the case or is it that the invasive presence of the camera lens perpetually employs childish excuses so that it pierces uninterruptedly through every private moment?
The need for recording everything through a camera, the fear of death and the human burial customs are being harshly judged by a dog that questions its own death and creates a confusion in quest of its immortality.
Finally, the viewer has to choose which was buried: 1. the dog itself; 2. the small white dog from the fridge; or 3. a pillow.

Following All Souls Day I, an exhibition that first opened in Piraeus in January 2019, the second part takes a different shift by inviting a group of Athens-based artists to respond to this call through their practices that deal with the commemoration and elevation of the life of others, the unknown-to-us heroes of the everyday. All the works are framed through an open dialogue with Duncan Campbell’s video, that is pre-existing.

ALL SOULS DAY II, PSYCHOSAVVATO II
RODEO GALLERY
April 5 – June 1, 2019

Menelaos KARAMAGHIOLIS