Research Catalogue

About this exposition

The exposition includes reworked video excerpt from the 'Glass Cities' two hour-long video art installation, with film footage and photography from three different cities, London, Athens and Venice. The original work was created for Elica's live music performance, shown at the Small Music Theatre, Athens, Greece, in 2007. The aim of the process of making the video art was to remain and explore the surface of things when addressing historical changes. I used banal and seemingly unconnected photographic and digital film footage for this purpose and effect. The 'lure' is the film still: neither photograph, nor film, a notion that has been inadequately theorised in visual art history and theory. Following a historical materialist approach, I employ the artistic theme of dead cities. Venice is a dead city in the visual arts modernist tradition. A dead city is a city that fails to change. Venice is actually slowly sinking, because it can't manage the rising water levels. In this context, I briefly trace Venice's economic history of the flourishing academic arts in the Baroque period, its Murano glass industry evocative of the ancient arts and crafts, and its inevitable re-invigoration by virtue of the Venice Biennale, the well-known international art and architectural exhibition. I named the original video art after John Smith's experimental documentary about London 'Slow Glass' (1988-91). In the film, one of the narrators describes the liquid composition of glass - "even when it's hard, it's still a liquid" - which is a metaphor for the process of change. Since I made the video installation, but also this exposition, I found out that my ancestor, a great grandfather, who was originally from Italy, might have been an Italian Jew and that this might have been the reason he left Italy in the nineteenth century to travel to and settle in my native Greece. The research video could be taken as a reminder of the factual, global rise of antisemitism in the twenty-first century; in Italy represented by the extreme right-wing, neofascist political group Forza Nuova. The country that has seen the most prominent rise in antisemitic ideology is the United States of America.

type	research exposition
keywords	photograph, Video art, peripatetic painting, sequence, lure, dead cities, baroque, Art Installation, exhibition, marxism, materialism, History, antisemitism
date	29/03/2023
last modified	14/02/2026
status	in progress
share status	public
copyright	Z.P.Nigianni
license	All rights reserved
url	https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2054897/2054898

name	photo roll 1 cr
copyright	Z.P.Nigianni
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	pdf

name	photo roll 2 cr
copyright	Z.P.Nigianni
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	pdf

name	photo roll 3 cr
copyright	Z.P.Nigianni
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Video Excerpt (Glass Cities)
copyright	Z.P.Nigianni
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	video

name	Study4
copyright	Z.P.Nigianni
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Study3
copyright	Z.P.Nigianni
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Study2
copyright	Z.P.Nigianni
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Study1
copyright	Z.P.Nigianni
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Photo 2007
copyright	Z.P.Nigianni
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	pdf

name	Film still
copyright	Z.P.Nigianni
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Film still GC
copyright	Z.P.Nigianni
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	glass cities 1 - courtesy of Elica
copyright	Z.P.Nigianni and Elica
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	glass cities 2 - courtesy of Elica
copyright	Z.P.Nigianni and Elica
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	glass cities 3 - courtesy of Elica
copyright	Z.P.Nigianni and Elica
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	glass cities 4 - elica
copyright	Z.P.Nigianni and Elica
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

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Glass Cities : Venice Revisited (last edited: 2026)

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