Link to the full short film
Last night I had a very strange dream.
I was alone. As if the earth opened up and swallowed them all, nobody was there. For some reason, I thought it was true; I accepted it quickly; I was alone in a desert landscape.
I still don’t know if it was really like that or if they were all hiding...
After days at home, I decided to go out.
You see, I had the whole world for me... I had to enjoy it!
Lies!
Loneliness had crushed me; I went out, and I was desperately looking for someone to contact with. My thirst to meet something alive had driven me crazy.
Suddenly, I found myself walking on a mountain.
I recognized it; it was the mountain near my house.
It’s funny… I didn’t use to go there in the past.
A bright square got my attention. I started following it, chasing it.
The game almost made me forget the absolute silence which was chasing me all this time.
How strange are the mirrors... They are hanging on our walls silent, still, ruthless...
Nothing can escape them, not even the slightest spot of insecurity.
It will hit their surface and reflect everywhere, capable of destroying everything in its path.
And yet!
Incredibly addictive ...
How do they manage to magnetize your gaze? It gets lost inside them. It seeks confirmation. It seeks to meet the one who knows you best. He is waiting for you every time on the other side, even if you are always so rude to him.
And yet, if I wouldn’t see my face, I would say that someone else is in there ...
He tells me: Come! Let’s walk together.
I needed this companion more than ever.
Our step was immediately synchronized. This unexpected friend filled the void in my stomach and muted the noise of silence from my ears.
I wouldn’t let him get lost like the others ...
I promised to go every day to that mountain, set the mirror and look for him ... Anyway, the thought of meeting him had stuck in my mind like a melody you can’t stop singing…
...
I once read somewhere ‘that if you want to reach the essence of the things, you have to get away from them. You have to get out of the enclosure that covers them and get away from the material barrier surrounding them. And as the distance grows, you will be inside them.’
Sometimes we are so absorbed in our thoughts, so focused on our problems that we are closed inside our heads, and our eyes look out, but they only see inside us. Our body wanders around the space on its own like it is set on autopilot.
I wander… Is it an exclusive characteristic of humans to see the world from the inside out? As if everything is moving around him?
It’s hard to keep believing that you’re the most important when you’re all alone, and there’s no one else like you.
I think now I know why I found myself in this place ... Here used to come all those who got bored of the others. A good day, probably a morning of a working day, you could walk here without meeting anyone to disturb you.
I wander… How long can one survive alone ... after all, I think loneliness is nothing but disguised weakness. Without the others, those that look and behave like you, you are weak... you are in danger of disappearing ...
This is a multilayered work which started as a collection of "altered realities", evolved as an exhibition of the collection through a video walk and ended up as a short film about loneliness.
This collection of scenographic experiments carried out during the spring and summer of 2020, when the first wave of Corona virus hit the world. In this bizarre period, with all economic activity brought to a halt and Athens in strict lockdown, Ymittos mountain was one of the few places left for Athenians to escape to and breathe.
The film unfolds in two parallel layers, a video walk, and the documentation of it. During the video walk the spectator is guided to follow the movement of the video and wander around the landscape while he is attending a storyline.
The story is about a dream situation, where the world is suddenly empty of people and a girl, the only person left, desperately looks for someone to communicate. She finds herself in Ymittos mountain, in Athens, where she tries to escape loneliness by playing with a mirror.
The final film captures the loneliness experienced both by the protagonist and the participants of the video walk, in a reality that is dominated by social distancing.
