Social Sculpture | Sphinx festival

the hidden Thebes festival

The Sphinx festival is an independent and ambitious artistic proposal seeking to lay the groundwork for a " new city", which is made possible through a change in the emotional map of the city's inhabitants. The change will come through a vertical dive into time and place, in search of culture's reservoirs, which will be the starting point for creating a new identity, in sync with the ontological-existential bases of humankind, conditions of creation and freedom, who are now asleep.

Sphinx is an artistic project in the urban and social space of a city, where artists of different specialties from around the world, writers, scientists and audiences, create, by interacting with the mnemonic elements of the city and by proposing solutions for the "founding of a city of tomorrow ", that is, the space in which we want to live in - a concept of "social sculpture".

The Festival consists of a group of artistic mainly activities that integrate the perception of art - with social practice, trying to bring art into the life of the city as well as life into art, reversing the idleness , social apathy and inertia that cause rdecay inthe present time , trying to to unite the actions of the restless citizens in order to bring forth tothrough various interactions a change in the future of the city. The Festival itself is treated as a "social sculpting" experiment, aiming to awaken human consciousness an in today's decline.

We consider this versatile project as a holistic approach towards the artwork, a work that concerns the very society and the city, where, coordinated and within a general context, multiple "plastic" events occur. The artist's creativity is no longer an isolated work of art but a holistic design of this grand act based on four axes: artists - citizens (as creators of society and history), real space - virtual space (internet).

SPHINX 2018 |

OEDIPUS TYRANNUS

"I'm looking for myself

desiring my happiness? "

I'm looking for myself (wishing my happiness)?

Can we build a better future or are we trapped in a dead end?

Is man a cursed being, as the Oedipus of Sophocles says? Is the search for meaning misleading?

In our time we experience the constant loss of self-continuity, our constant identity as a relationship with the world as it was formed in classical thinking. The tragic man who lived his humility before the fate moved into the idle toolkit of an endless transformability within a world that is constantly changing and unstable.

Thebes is the mythical place that, according to the ancient literature, all these above-mentioned questions about the meaning and impasse of the human being-culture have been initially drafted. At this year's festival we are not looking for a given identity, but we ask the question whether this identity in a hybrid world is now feasible. "We live as Oedipus comments Freud" - Can the person have a meaning, can he look for happiness on the horizon of the new impetus?

The intent of the Sphinx festival is to highlight ancient philosophical questions that "challenge" the modern world. In a sense of practice and wider policy, we try to try out a kind of "social sculpture", by interfering with collaborative projects, in social transformation. Through this theme we are looking for the potential of modern, individual and social foundations that are scattered by contemporary pluralist and imaginative centers of power.

This project developed open visual interventions throughout the city - works of public sculpture in the form of ephemeral installations, land art, happenings, performance, outdoor video art screenings and what else can be proposed. We wanted the site of the mythical city to be transformed for 20 days into an example of social incitement, personal exploration, a place of wonder and a sensitive cry, call and protest.

During the Sphinx festival, three major artistic proposals were developed:

a. A series of individual projects that will be placed at selected locations within the city. (map of the city, see ).

b. The Sphinx itself as a creator presented the changing art installation entitled "Oedipus - Lost Messages", referring to the dimension of human identities over time and the dilemmas that constantly run the human substance.

c. The Sphinx Festival continued its collaboration with the local student community by including in its program the exhibition: "Happiness is in my city. I am my city. " Here, the children under the pretext of the myth, were invited to imagine the contemporary problematic dimension of human happiness and its search at a collective or individual level.

Performance time for artists: 2 JUNE - 9 JUNE 2018

Running time for students: 24-28 MAY 2018

Selection Committee

Konstantinos Angelou

Tzimis Efthimiou

Argyro Koutsibela

Social Sculpture Motivator

Konstantinos Angelou

Organizational committee

Maria Aggeli

Konstantinos Angelou

Elias Gavrielidis