The Greek artist discusses the interplay of technology with humans and nature that underpins her work, the influence of philosophy, botany and geology, and how she weaves these together with analogue and digital art to create powerful multimedia installations.

My first encounter with the work of Kyriaki Goni (b1982, Athens) was at the 2022 Biennale Gherdëina, an art festival in the Dolomite region, which last year explored issues of personhood across all life forms, animal, vegetable and mineral, plus transhumance – how the relationship between animals and plants shapes landscapes over time. I was profoundly moved by Goni’s installation, The Mountain-Islands Shall Mourn Us Eternally (Data Garden Dolomites) (2022).

From the darkened side-room of the gallery in Ortisei in which the main piece, a CGI animation, was situated, the calm “voice” of a hybrid plant, in the role of oracle, emerged. Aided by drawings, graphs and simulations, it related the slow and inevitable retreat of plant life higher and higher up the mountain slopes, because of global warming, with the ultimate destination being extinction. This is a botanical fact – and the Dolomites has its own rare species, Saxifraga depressa, that can now be found only near the top of its vertiginous rocky outcrops. But in the animation, Goni blends these facts with powerful but plausible fiction, the story of secret “technoshamanic interspecies communities”, preserving their digital memories in plant DNA.

Η συνέχεια εδώ.