Editorial

struction is not subsumed beneath a pregiven
law and whose outcome is not delivered
by history. It is as if people have joined
with the animals and given up attending
to their health or fulfilment or perfection
of their bodies, in favour of exploring possibilities
of their soma possibilities not codified
in advance or determined by genetic
code but possibilities before the law. It is as
if they ignore what is given by the code prescribing
the development of their bodies
and expressed by the repeatable finalities
of beauty and symbol, and instead go back
before that inscription to examine the contingent
and the arbitrary characteristics
of their soma possibilities not codified in
advance or determined by genetic code but
possibilities before the law. It is as if they
ignore what is given by the code prescribing
the development of their bodies and
expressed by the repeatable finalities of beauty
and symbol, and instead go back before
that inscription to examine the contingent
and the arbitrary characteristics of their
soma. Couta’s collages are choreographies
of possible linkages and manifold
forces in which the figures are no less
built or constructed than the structures they
link. And this gives the buildings a live part
in a dialogue between the two. (Jonathan
L. Dronsfield)
yiannos economou
Born in 1959. After working as an accountant
for some years in London, he re-entered
and studied Fine Arts at the Kent Institute
of Art & Design, graduating in 1993. He
mainly uses video, but also film and photography,
as his media of expression. His
themes come from his personal milieu,
investigating time and space as experienced
in contemporary society, especially, in view
of escalating technological advances in shifting
ideological landscapes. He has shown
his work in solo and group shows in Cyprus
and abroad, and at international film festivals.
His latest short film, The Machine
Dream, won the best experimental film
award at the Cyprus Short Film Festival
(2005). He lives and works in Paphos.
In Yiannos Economou’s video Cross Country
Run it is a male figure that seems, at first
sight, to be the agent mapping the landscape;
as the runner meets with an endless
parade of landscapes, it becomes apparent
that not only is he not a surveying–colonising
eye but, rather, more of a Sisyphusean
body, performing an endless task or,
more fittingly, a Ulyssesean ghost, never
arriving – he was never bound for anywhere
in the first place. As his volume-less blue
profile struggles through the fragments of
landscape - often being eclipsed by them
- he comes to stand for an entire people’s
unending wandering into a known territory,
but towards an unknown destination.
(Antonis Danos)
In a dialogue with Dr Andreas Panayiotou
(currently teaching Social Sciences, Communications
and Cultural Studies at the
Frederick Institute of Technology) Yiannos
Economou specifies that Cross Country Run
is not really a tracking shot, nor is it a film,
for that matter.
It contours a running man photographed
in the 19th century by E.Muybridge, put
in a loop to give the illusion of movement.
But the eleven silhouettes remain static.
What really move are the images of scattered
objects photographed, videographed
or scanned in Paphos over a period of three
months. The man has been running for
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