Utopia / Dystopia
(2011)

Audio Visual Performance with Maria Glyka and Jim Hobbs

As part of the last days of the Utopia Project Archive 2006 - 2010 at the Institute for Contemporary Greek Art, in Athens, Greece, Jim Hobbs, along with Maria Glyka and Vassilis Vlastaras, will create a temporary installation of works that play off of each other, focusing on themes of utopias.At the center of this will be the first (looped) screening of Utopia/Dystopia, a short 16mm film, shot on location while Jim Hobbs was a guest artist at Utopia & Nature 2010 in Reythmno, Crete.

Filmed in black & white and colour, single frame by single frame, the film denies the idealistic and bucolic view of the Greek island and instead frantically shifts between positive and negative imagery of barbed wire, fences, animal bones, dead plants, transmission towers, broken bells, abandoned architecture, and disused portals.

Upon Hobbs' film projection, Vassilis Vlastaras will be playing live with moving images and pictures creating a link with past Utopias while among the sound of the 16mm projector and old radio frequencies Maria Glyka will be singing along Utopias texts.

Institute of Contemporary Greek Art (ISET)
Athens

Friday, January 28th, 2011.