In their wake ... (2004)

When I was there, you had already left (2005)

10.34 AM (2005)

The image unfolded (2007)

Sevan Boys (2008)

Diego Garcia (2010)

In their wake ..., Installation shots, Fournos Center for Digital Culture, Athens, 2005

In their wake… (2004) 7 mins loop (Two-channel audiovisual installation)

In their Wake, a two-screen digital audio-visual installation is a collaboration between Aikaterini Gegisian & Ella Bissett Johnson. The central image is that of two women sitting in an empty café overlooking a busy urban scene for the duration of a whole day. This image of stillness is fragmented and weaved into an elegiac sequence. Stillness is transformed into movement. The sound of an urban environment floods the space and surrounds the two women. The installation explores current issues of geographical, temporal and mental displacement within the metaphor of internal and external space. The viewer is caught in a perceptual game between real space, image and sound.

Aikaterini and Ella started working together during their degree at the University of Brighton when both developed an interest in narrative fragmentation in audio-visual installation work and its engagement with a mobile audience.

Funded by Mersey Film and Video, University of Brighton and The Arts Council England

Direction, editing and production: Aikaterini Gegisian & Ella Bissett Johnson
Director of Photography: Mark MacEwen
Performers: Agapi Gegisian& Aikaterini Gegisian

Courtesy of Kalfayan Galleries Athens-Thessaloniki

Video Stills from In their wake ...

When I was there, you had already left. Installation Shots, Chelsea College of Art & Design, London, 2005

When I was there, you had already left (2005) 5 mins 48 secs loop (Two-channel audiovisual installation)

The installation was developed from material collected on a journey in the areas of Turkey that my grandparents were born and had to abandon. Two visual sequences are projected onto screens that are suspended in space. One is the repetition of a short shot of a couple looking with persistence at the camera. The other juxtaposes a voyeuristic look on a lone figure waiting at the bus stop to images documenting details of the landscape. The soundtrack blends the narrative of a female character with the actual sound recordings. The story moves between past and present and is told in a quiet, melancholic and internal tone.

The narrative structure of the work follows the movement implicated in the title, of an action always coming after an original event, a past following a present. In this manner, the image always follows after the retelling of the memories linked to its existence. The residues of memories, of events and of a culture are blend with images, spaces and experiences that come to displace them. The work constructs the landscape of memory.

Produced with the support of Selcuk Aykan, Leleg Institute Project - Turkey, Arts & Humanities Research Council - England

Direction, Production, Camera, Editing and Sound - Aikaterini Gegisian
Location Assistant and Guide - Konca Aykan

Courtesy of Kalfayan Galleries Athens-Thessaloniki

Video Stills from When I was there, you had already left

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10.34 AM, Installation Shots,B.I.G. Contemporary Art Project Space, Athens, 2006

10.34 AM (2006) 3 mins (Digital Video)

10.34 AM is the third part of a trilogy of films that examines how the digital scrolling of images affects perception and narrative. It is set in a supermarket, the time is 10.35 am. It follows the movements of an invisible female character as she goes about her daily activities. The supermarket shelves scroll continuously becoming the screens that reflect her various emotional states.

Direction, Production, Camera, Editing and Sound - Aikaterini Gegisian

Courtesy of Kalfayan Galleries Athens-Thessaloniki

Video Stills from 10.34 AM

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The image unfolded, Installation Shots, Action Field Kodra, 2007

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Sevan Boys , Installation Shots, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Greece

Sevan Boys (2008) 7 mins (Digital Video)

Sevan Boys was filmed in August 2006, during a workshop that took place in Lake Sevan in Armenia, during the 5th Gyumri Biennale. The footage was shot on a trip Aikaterini Gegisian and Lizzie Calligas took to an unfinished hotel, which was left abandoned when the Soviet Union collapsed. Filmed with a handheld camera, the installation focuses on Aikaterini’s attempt to communicate with a group of young boys, while Lizzie Calligas follows her with another camera.

‘The curiosity for the unknown, the anxiety for the future and the desire for communication obtain a greater intensity through the image of the deterioration of something which was never completed, as well as through the simultaneous recording of their long and close-up shots.’
Maria Tsantsanoglou (from the exhibition catalogue “And Now? Visual Arts in Greece 3”, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece)

Direction, Production, Camera, Editing and Sound - Aikaterini Gegisian & Lizzie Calligas

Courtesy of Aikaterini Gegisian & Lizzie Calligas

Video Stills from Sevan Boys

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Production Stills from Diego Garcia


Diego Garcia (2010) 16 mins (Digital Video)

Diego Garcia is an artist’s documentary, which looks at the deportation of the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean (now the site of one of the biggest American military bases in the world) by the British Government to Mauritius.

The film juxtaposes text extracts from the Chagossian’s High Court testimonies, which collectively portray the islands as a paradise lost, with a camera that continuously wanders in the Mauritian landscape.  These testimonies become the starting point for looking at Mauritius and the Indian Ocean as a complex set of relationships and act as catalysts in unravelling the hidden traces of history inscribed in spaces.

The film takes the form of a journey where landscape becomes the central character. Blending different narrative voices, such as the collective voice of the testimonies, the observational eye of the artist with ambient voices and sounds, the film comments on shifting geographies, on the myth of paradise and on the ways we inhabit a globalised world.

Directed by: Aikaterini Gegisian
Director of Photography: Mark MacEwen
Editing: Andy Moss

Made with the support of Chagos Refugee Group
Olivier Bancoult, Lisete Talate, Rita David

Funded by
Arts Council England
Contemporary Art Center of Thessaloniki (State Museum of Contemporary Art, Greece)
PARTage Residencies, Mauritius

Developed through Picture This’ Small Wonders Scheme

Courtesy of Kalfayan Galleries Athens-Thessaloniki

Production Stills from Diego Garcia

Production Stills from Diego Garcia