IN TEMPE OR THE DALES OF ARCADY
Single-channel video, 15’, 4K, colour, sound, loop, filmed footage and AI-generated animation
2026
Comissioned by
9th THESSALONIKI BIENNALE OF CONTEMPORARY ART-Everything must change.RIS9
curated by Nadja Argyropoulou
23 May – 5 July 2026, Thessaloniki
Trailer
Set in the Vale of Tempe, a landscape tied both to Greek mythology and to the 2023 railway tragedy in Greece, the film brings extinct and endangered animals, whose fossils were found in this landscape, back to life through AI-generated animation based on footage shot on location. The animals perform gestures of mourning and appear in chronological order of extinction, becoming figures of collective grief that connect Paleolithic time, ecological loss, and contemporary political trauma. Whispered passages from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, set in Tempe, invoke myths of transformation, immortality, and violence. The title references John Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn, in which Tempe and Arcady evoke an unattainable vision of harmony and abundance.
In the area of Tempe, archaeological excavations over the past fifty years have uncovered numerous mammalian skeletal remains dating to approximately 30,000–45,000 years ago. Yet in classical Greek mythology, the Vale of Tempe was imagined as one of the most idyllic landscapes, where, at the foot of Mount Olympus, the gods were said to rest, bathe, and wander.
In 2023, a tragic railway accident in Tempe plunged the country into mourning and exposed deep political corruption. The victims’ families demanded the exhumation of bodies that had been buried in an attempt to erase evidence.
Through AI animation, the video brings to life a series of animals whose fossils were found in Tempe. These animals appear to mourn, tracing their existence from the Paleolithic era to the present. These species, extinct or endangered, are presented alongside footage shot on location of the Tempe landscape today. It is, in fact, this footage that generates the animated environments.
Two mythological references from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, both set in the Vale of Tempe, are whispered throughout the video. In one, Medea gathers herbs to prepare a potion of immortality; in the other, the goddess Diana transforms Actaeon into a deer, who is then devoured by his own hounds. The collective whispering functions as a spell at the moments when metamorphosis takes place.
The animals appear in chronological order of extinction, evoking a sense of collective mourning that spans tens of thousands of years. The title borrows a verse from John Keats’s poem Ode on a Grecian Urn, where Tempe is juxtaposed with Arcady, an imagined, poetic, utopian land that, since the Renaissance, has symbolized natural abundance and harmony: an idyllic vision of landscape often considered unattainable.
Credits
AI animation and sound design by Constantin Tzenos
Whisperings by Sofia Dona, Liz Flyntz, Lou Nikolaou Damaskinou, Hannah Monson, Ondina Quadri, Alexia Sarantopoulou, Zina Sarris, Dimitris Theodoropoulos
Studio recording by Onassis AiR
Sound recording by Leonidas Oikonomou
Special thanks to: Athanasios Athanasiou, Candice Breitz, Jacqui Davies, Alkis Hadjiandreou, Eliana Otta, Sylvia Sachini, Mounir al Shami, Poka-Yio, Onassis AiR
Links
eflux
9th thessaloniki biennial
Cover photograph by Olga Deikou and Fotis Vlachakis