Can Philosophy Exist? by Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni

Photography with sound and net art, drawing, found folk sculpture with digital drawing, readymades, 2012, 2020, 2021. Accompanied by archival material. The exposition exposes the question of what is artistic research. Usurping the essayist format, which is traditionally associated with research in say the area of philosophy, the exposition formally operates on different levels. I selectively included visual art research material from my own artistic archive, as well as anonymous material that's readily available from the internet and in film archives. In this way, I wanted to emphasise the role of archiving and using archives in the artistic process, as an element of artistic research and artistic production that might involve remediation. Taking that we live in a largely theoretic culture, which means that we use external information systems for storage and retrieval of written, visual and other material, the implication is that art is part of this theoretical system. Moreover, I specifically problematise the notion of value in relation to the visual arts by using the popular media figures of the counterfeit and the impostor. I suggest that some artworks operate as philosophical provocations of the archive. "The artwork just exists", as Frank Stella argued.

Look from a to i. What's the story?

h i

h7 i8

"In 1981, the French philosopher and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard published his thoughts on the relationship between images and reality, arguing that in contemporary society the image (more specifically signs and symbols) had replaced reality. This process of replacement took place, according to Baudrillard, in a succession of four distinct phases wherein the image slowly transformed from a faithfull copy or reflection of reality into something completely alienated from reality. In this final stage, the image is a pure 'simulacrum' with no relation to the real world whatsoever - no longer a copy of an 'original' but a sign or symbol with no 'original'". Jordana Moore Sagesse, "Screens, Stereotypes, Subjects". Basquiat, Boom for Real, Munich, London, New York: Prestel, 2020, p. 235.

We live by the mode of referendum precisely because there is no longer any referential.

Jean Baudrillard, Simulations, 1983

The pieces are shown in the order I was making them from 2020 until 2023.

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