Xirómero/Dryland

Xirómero/Dryland, the project that is representing Greece at the 2024 Venice Biennale, is an interdisciplinary collective work conceived by Thanasis Deligiannis and Yannis Michalopoulos created along with artists Elia Kalogianni, Yorgos Kyvernitis, Kostas Chaikalis and Fotis Sagonas, and Artistic Collaborators Fotini Papachristopoulou, Vassiliki-Maria Plavou, and Marios Stamatis. The Greek participation is curated by Panos Giannikopoulos.

The work consists of a piece of agricultural irrigation equipment which synchronises a sound, video and lighting installation in real time. It investigates the experience of a village festival, drawing on the experience of the panighíria—local folk festivals—of Thessaly and the area of Xirómero, in western Greece, which lends the work its title. The work navigates the political potential of sound and music and the impact of technology on rural landscapes and cultural diversity. 

In between ritual and entertainment, the village festival is charged with content and meaning. It is connected to agricultural work; it is born of—but also begets—the community’s internal time cycle which follows the pace of irrigation and other agricultural tasks. It helps the community form an image of itself as well as maintain social cohesion and connectivity.

Xirómero/Dryland also utilizes the architectural features of the Pavilion of Greece to evoke images of agricultural warehouses or the religious architecture that is so often the backdrop of the panighíri. The watering apparatus at the centre of the Pavilion delineates a circular perimeter in the space of the pavilion.

Water—as a central point of reference here—is seen as a prism through which to reflect on issues of scarcity or abundance, as well as on its social connotations. As the watering system switches on, it sets a specific pace and marks the time like a clock suggesting specific routes for the viewers to follow. Inside the Pavilion, viewers become participants, on-stage becomes off-stage, the performative gives way to the everyday. This incessant interplay between ‘representation’ and reality is reproduced within the work itself. 

Xirómero/Dryland attempts to create associations between a geographically contextualized experience and the global condition; to facilitate shifts of perspective between dominant and marginalised cultural subjects which seem to open up a liminal space for the articulation of new meanings. 

*Xirómero [ksirˈomero], an area in the prefecture of Aetolia-Acarnania, is known for its festivals. Today, it comprises one of the municipalities of the regional unit of Western Greece. 

The project and its presentation in Venice is funded by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. 

Commissioner/Organisation

EMST | National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens
Head of Production, Pavilion of Greece: Yannis Arvanitis
Head of Communication and Press, Pavilion of Greece: Maria Tsolaki
Exhibition Production: Giorgos Efstathoulidis—Constructivist Exhibitions, Antonia Chantzi

EMST
Artistic Director: Katerina Gregos
Administrative and Financial Director: Athina Ioannou

Research for Xirómero/Dryland was commissioned by the Onassis Foundation and conducted in the context of the Margaroni Residency by Onassis AiR Fellows: interdisciplinary artist and composer Thanasis Deligiannis and dramaturge and philologist Yannis Michalopoulos. The two of them brought together a team which includes visual artist and filmmaker Elia Kalogianni, photographer and documentary filmmaker Yorgos Kyvernitis, sound engineer and designer Kostas Chaikalis and visual artist and architect Fotis Sagonas.

Press enquiries
For all media enquiries, please contact Maria Tsolaki.