ELLI ANTONIOU

The work POTENTIAL takes the form of a 3D video-installation, made on a game engine, where the artist Ellie Antoniou creates a claustrophobic environment, that represents the affective reality of the everyday. Emotions of claustrofobia, deadendness, meaninglessness, helplessness in a world that seems to be collapsing but at the same time keep going in an ever-changing, unbothered pace. Time becomes irrelevant. Dystopia is no longer a Hollywood scenario but an everyday confrontation with dystopian micro doses. Your body becomes irrelevant. Your body becomes absent.



Shocked by the reality we retract in our heads, floating into a sea of memories as we dramatically lose touch with our bodies by prioritising logic before sensation. Senses of the past become increasingly vital: smells, sounds, skin sensations, flavours are gems of the past that we hold on to. Sensations of embodiment from when the mind was still free and kindly nested inside the body.



An imaginary narrator meditates on the embodiment of our contemporaneity, our relationship with time as it has transformed due to technological change, the current inexhaustible feed of disturbing news, and the role that our senses play in an era of transmission through the increasingly virtual experience of the world. Images and text appear in an organically rhythmical pulse like breathing. The sound, fragmented, is made by various different sounds collected from exterior spaces. A video of a panic attack on numbness and hyperstimulation, balancing between serotonin addiction, adrenaline and utter neutrality to the horror of the everyday. Visual, sound, text and double projection create a dialogue between the self, the interior monologue, the inexhaustible information outpouring from all screens around us demanding our attention and engagement. The video exists at a skin level.



POTENTIAL is a speculation for the possibilities of the future based on current information of the present and past. Even though the future cannot be predicted, it is increasingly becoming difficult to make proximate plans. Potential energy is the state of energy before it transforms into movement. Every moment of the present is a potential of indefinite scenarios and yet we feel trapped, paralysed by reality, contained and tied to a structure which is self imposed, while at the same time utterly neautralised by horror. The state of potential is represented as a state of panic, comprehending the present as a state of potential rather as a predetermined state of events. The virtual space functions as an internalised space of the mind. The fictionalised space represents the body and the mind at the same time, while the inner space becomes a space for introspection.