MedPhoto 5: CLIMATE WARS
Critical Archives VI: We Can’t Breathe
Exhibition @ Contemporary Art Museum of Crete
Opening: 19TH January 2024
The Contemporary Art Museum of Crete and KOLEKTIV8 present the exhibition Critical Archives VI: We Can't Breathe, curated by Dimitris Kechris and Pasqua Vorgia, under the artistic direction of Maria Maragkou and Pavlos Fysakis, as part of the 5th Mediterranean Photography Festival (MedPhoto) which focuses on the critical issue of Climate Wars.
The MedPhoto Festival, firmly addressing controversial topics of our time, presents a dialogue on the climate crisis and the social and political conditions that contextualise it. Starting from the extreme and dangerous ways of exploiting natural resources and the widespread disappearance of ecosystems, it goes further to present works that prioritise concepts such as ecocide and climate justice, as well as works that bring to light phenomena such as the financialisation of energy, or focus on the disproportionate burden on countries in the Global South.
Critical Archives VI: We Can't Breathe brings into dialogue artworks, photographic series, documentaries, and books that illuminate the dialectic between social and natural ecosystems, that give visibility to alternative practices of harmonious interaction between human communities and non-human ecosystem life forms, or that tell stories of collective resistance against the new enclosures of the Commons, contributing to the development of a contemporary political ecology which includes eco-feminism and degrowth approaches. In selecting the specific works, MedPhoto also proposes perspectives that are critical of a view that treats nature as a sphere distinct from humans, and which by extension tends to represent it as an objectified landscape (a view historically intertwined with the colonial gaze). And at the same time, it continues to outline artistic practices that both highlight the inherent contradictions underlying the field of representation and activate the possibilities of imagining a different and viable future.
Participating artists:
Ursula Biemann, Evangelos Daskalakis, Sophie Gerrard, Petros Giannakouris, Marina Gioti, Kostas Kapsianis, Nikos Markou, Cristina De Middel & Bruno Morais, Giorgos Moutafis, Oliver Ressler, Zied Ben Romdhane, Jonas Staal, Ian Teh, Penelope Thomaidi, Michailangelos Vlassis-Ziakas
Photobooks by:
Mathieu Asselin, Makeda Best, Matt Dune, Mitch Epstein, Stuart Franklin, Fazal Sheikh
Artistic Direction:
Maria Maragkou, Pavlos Fysakis
Curated by:
Dimitris Kechris, Pasqua Vorgia
Co-organized by:
KOLEKTIV8, Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete
With the Financial Support:
Ministry of Culture
With the Kind Support of:
Municipality of Rethymno, Region of Crete, The J. F. Costopoulos Foundation, Instituto Cervantes, Embassy of Switzerland in Greece
Sponsors & Partners:
Minoan Lines, Menta City Boutique Hotel
info:
Opening: 19th January 2024, 19:30
Contemporary Art Museum of Crete, Rethymno
Duration: 19th January – 29th March 2024
https://medphoto.gr
https://www.facebook.com/medphotofest
info@medphoto.gr
