Novel
(2023)
author(s): Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
published in: Research Catalogue
Single channel digital video, with photography and text, 5' 41'', 2007
'Novel' is a half-photography, half-fiction digital video, which was inspired by my temporary dwelling in different cities during the period of a year. For my contribution to this catalogue, I briefly discuss the artistic process and thinking behind the project. In parallel, I reflect upon the possible theoretical links between visuality, narratives, architecture, and urbanism. I suggest that personal associations are definitive and significant in the ways we tend to occupy and subjectively interpret contemporary urban spaces.
After a lengthy process of collecting photographs and digital film footage, as well as selecting written material, some of it in the form of quotes, from my journal, I completed the video in 2007. My method was:
- I made preparatory sketches that I included in the video (film still 1).
- I used a montage technique I saw in one of Peter Greenaway's films: the separate 'window' on the top or bottom sides of the video (film stills 2, 4, 5) that denotes parallel action.
- I overlaid photographs (film still 3), a technique that allowed me to create the animating effect of the moving image, without using film footage.
In painting, the artist can make layers out of collaged material that might be unconnected or purposefully juxtaposed to the painting's subject. Using the above method, I asked the viewer to watch the video more like a moving series of paintings, rather than as a film.
The video, like my other video art work, was exhibited and archived under my artist's pseudonym, Betty Nigianni.
Written in 2012, the essay is a separate piece to accompany this exposition.
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Novel
(2021)
author(s): Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
published in: Research Catalogue
Single-channel video with text. Shown at: Online Exclusives, Afterimage Online, 2015. The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural CRiticism, 2007. 3rd Athens Video Art Festival, Athens, Greece, 2007. "Video as Urban Condition", Video-pool Archive, Austrian Cultural Forum, Austria, 2007. "Her Shorts", International Women's Video Art Festival, Plugged Art, USA.
