Can we envision the future of a city through the prism of alternative interpretations of its monuments, contemporary and ancient? The 5th Onassis Fast Forward Festival - Athens focuses on Archaeology as a discipline which engages not with continuation and immobility but with rifts, discontinuities and transformations on the boundary between scientific method and fiction.
It is for the third time that the OCC invites the distinguished Lebanese pair; this time they are to present the project “Unconformities” in the Acropolis Museum, right after appearing in Centre Pompidou and receiving the Prix Marcel Duchamp (2017). “Unconformities” is a mixed media installation, an amalgam of soil and rocks, stories and secrets of three historic cities. Read more: http://www.sgt.gr/eng/SPG2136

Athens, Beirut, Paris: three cities haunt the two Lebanese artists, Joana Hadjithomas (of Greek origin) and Khalil Joreige. Through Unconformities, we descend to the substrata of these three cities: to what we can learn from the Athenian shale, the alluvial deposits of Kifissos/Cephissus, and the rich archaeological strata in Monastiraki, Kerameikos and Elaionas, from demolition materials in Martyrs’ Square in Beirut and the parafluvial Seine deposits in the wider Louvre area. “Digging into the past we discover the present,” say the two artists who have for four years been collaborating with geologists, archaeologists and historians to collect, reconstitute and exhibit findings of geological drilling.
The collaboration of the two artists with the OCC started in 2012, when as part of the Meeting Points 6 festival, they presented the performance-speech Aida, Save Me, based on an unusual incident during the premiere of their award winning film Α Perfect Day, in 2006 in Beirut: that was when a woman by the name of Aida recognised her missing husband, Antoine, from a newspaper clipping! In 2013, Hadjithomas and Joreige were among the artists invited by the OCC and The Cavafy Archive to draw inspiration from the Alexandrian poet’s life and oeuvre and produce a new work on C.P. Cavafy. Taking his poem Waiting for the Barbarians as a starting point, they produced their short film I’ve Looked on Beauty so Much (2013).
In collaboration with Acropolis Museum