The Portal or Let’s Stand Still for the Whales

The Portal or Let's Stand Still for the Whales

Kyriaki Goni

(Greece)
2020 – Video – duration 3 minutes 36 seconds

The Portal or Let’s Stand Still for the Whales ponders the question of intimacy in the time of a pandemic. In voiceover, the narrator follows two timelines: the struggle of humanity to adapt to the challenges of the pandemic and the thriving of other ecosystems due to the slowdown in human activity in the same period. Addressing an imaginary, future inhabitant of planet Earth, the speaker reveals the intensity of the environmental crisis – actually a humanitarian crisis – and the urgent need to take action. The work also touches on the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis, with the massive changes affecting human labour and communications, and the issues raised by biometric surveillance.

Recherche, Original text, Voice over, 3D-Animation: Kyriaki Goni
Sound: Walgesänge vom Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, CA/ USA

Kyriaki Goni

― Artist

Kyriaki Goni is an artist born and based in Athens. Working across disciplines and technologies, she creates expanded, multi-layered installations. She connects the local with the global by critically examining questions of surveillance, distributed networks and infrastructures, ecosystems, as well as human and other than human relations. Her work has been presented in solo and group shows at Aksioma (SI), The Onassis Foundation (US), Transmediale (DE), Trondheim Biennial (NO), Glass Room (US) and Melbourne Triennial (AU), among others. She is a Delfina Foundation alumna (2019) and an Artworks fellow (2018). She writes (Leonardo MIT; 49:4, Neural #65 etc.) and teaches frequently as part of her practice. With prior graduate studies in Fine Arts, Goni also holds an MA in Digital Arts and an MSc in Cultural Anthropology.

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