Goethe-Institut Athen in collaboration with the Benaki Museum present the media art exhibition Home/s in the framework of the project ArtUP! Media art in Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey.
What does it mean to ‘feel at home’ and where is home nowadays? Which habits tie us to it and how do we perceive them? In times of economic recession and sociopolitical change when technology and constant connectivity play a seminal role, these questions come again to the forefront.
For philosopher, media and technology theorist Vilém Flusser, the notion of home is primary in the most contradictory way. Whatever we perceive as our home ‘enables us to recognize the world’ but at the same time it prevents us from really seeing it. ‘Unconscious habits’ confine us and unavoidably allow little room for changes. But this can only be realized, according to Flusser, only when we take a distance from our habits and we find ourselves – possibly when no other choice is left – in a new, unfamiliar environment. Coming to our times, the sense of belonging, implies not only a home or a homeland; it also relates to the multiplicity of networks we have come to inhabit and to the urban environment we more and more reclaim.
The exhibition Home/s aims to re-examine the notion of ‘home’ through 17 works of media art from Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey. Focusing on language, communities and public space as well as on networks, technology and algorithms, the participating artists comment on the current reality and raise new questions. How does technology affect and capture our habits? Are the innumerous connections built among citizens from different countries in periods of insurrection the new home for the many? How have issues such as migration and mobility been changed in recent years? Works based on personal recollections as well as collective projects come together to stimulate a dialogue about the essential need of belonging in today’s networked era.
