Giorgos Papadatos: Currently

Dark Transitional Archive

Dark Transitional Archive is part of the ongoing series Transitional Monuments (2012–), a body of installations that challenges the stability, sacredness, and teleology of the monumental form. The work approaches the monument not as a material vessel of memory, but as a condition that reveals the politics of violence, displacement, and erasure underpinning what society chooses to remember.

The black fabric form—an opaque, suspended mass—functions as a reminder of an event not yet resolved. Its shape evokes an accumulation of memory-material: something that contains but does not disclose.

On the floor, frames display not images but black paper — a “non-archive” in which absence is more revealing than representation. Only one frame contains an actual historical document: a record of British financial support for the Greek Civil War. The so-called archival anxiety of power — the need to secure memory while simultaneously threatening it — emerges here as both an aesthetic and political gesture. The archive guarantees nothing; it remains a trace, a deficit, a latent silence.

The installation constructs a spatial condition in which memory becomes unstable, where the monument does not commemorate but risks itself, and where the archive does not certify but destabilizes. It forms a suspended moment of historical interruption — a temporal threshold where public memory is stripped of its grand narrative and returns as residue, shadow, and material ghost.

Dark Transitional Archive operates as an archive composed of erasures: a dark materiality that recalls what has been effaced rather than what has been preserved. It is a site where memory is implied rather than inscribed — where history is present only as the threat of disappearance.

The Guards of Water

Research readings of collective practices of water management.

An interdisciplinary research project, by Counterpublics, on the collective practices and protocols of managing water as a common resource, and the productive, cultural constitution of local society and the landscape around them.

With the support of Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Department of Intangible Cultural Heritage

and Intercultural Issues, 2024

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ΟΙ ΦΥΛΑΚΕΣ ΤΟΥ ΝΕΡΟΥ

Ερευνητικές αναγνώσεις των συλλογικών πρακτικών διαχείρισης των υδάτινων πόρων.

Case study: «Το σηκωμένο αυλάκι», Κυριακοχώρι Φθιώτιδας

Διεπιστημονικό ερευνητικό εγχείρημα του Counterpublics πάνω στις συλλογικές πρακτικές και πρωτόκολλα διαχείρισης του νερού ως κοινό πόρο, και την παραγωγική, πολιτισμική συγκρότηση της τοπικής κοινωνίας και του τοπίου γύρω από αυτά.

THE STAIRCASE - Giorgos Papadatos - 2024

SAMIR, MATALON AND THE STAIRS Giorgos Papadatos 2024

THE STAIRCASE – Giorgos Papadatos – Video, dur. 8:23 – 2024

The Staircase (or Samir, Matalon and the Stairs) is a hybrid video-essay (docu-fiction) that explores the relationship between dwelling, memory, and displacement through the lens of urban space and the “in-between.”

Samir works in a shirt-making workshop in Patissia. He lives in the abandoned rooftop room of Esthir Matalon. To climb the service staircase he uses specially modified shoes. His face is his home. He moves between loss and survival, between two narratives that coexist within the same space. He is an ambiguous, performative figure who unifies body, space, and identity.

The service staircase functions both literally and symbolically: its descent and ascent map the passage from the public sphere of labor to the private sphere of dwelling—even though that dwelling is also a non-place. It operates as a threshold-space where different historical and social narratives intertwine: post-war memory, migration, and the experience of assimilation in the city.

The notion of eudaimonia is approached as a fragile, almost utopian condition within the urban environment. Eudaimonia, as a desiring force and an imagined horizon of life, acts like a thin layer that softens conflict and coats memory—just as the city itself overlays its own traces through time.

A continuous act of reconciliation with the city and its history. A fleeting euphoria within decay—a form of existence that, even momentarily, surpasses trauma.

SAMIR, MATALON AND THE STAIRS Giorgos Papadatos 2024

Η ΣΚΑΛΑ – Γιώργος Παπαδάτος – Video dur 8:23 - 2024

Η ΣΚΑΛΑ ( ή Samir, Matalon and the Stairs) ειναι ένα υβριδικό βίντεο-δοκίμιο (docu-fiction) που εξετάζει τη σχέση κατοίκησης, μνήμης και μετακίνησης μέσα από την οπτική του αστικού και του ενδιάμεσου χώρου.

Ο Samir, εργάζεται σε ραφείο για πουκάμισα στα Πατήσια. Ζει στο εγκαταλειμμένο δώμα της Εσθήρ Ματαλών. Για να ανεβαίνει τη σκάλα υπηρεσίας έχει ειδικά παπούτσια. Το πρόσωπο του είναι το σπίτι. Κινείται ανάμεσα στην απώλεια και την επιβίωση, ανάμεσα σε δύο αφηγήσεις που συνυπάρχουν μέσα στον ίδιο χώρο. Είναι μια αμφίσημη επιτελεστική φιγούρα που ενοποιεί σώμα, χώρο και ταυτότητα.

Η σκάλα υπηρεσίας λειτουργεί τόσο κυριολεκτικά όσο και συμβολικά: η κάθοδος και η ανάβασή της αποτυπώνουν τη διαδρομή από τον δημόσιο χώρο της εργασίας προς τον ιδιωτικό χώρο της κατοίκησης — ο οποίος όμως είναι και μη-τόπος. Λειτουργεί ως τόπος-μεταίχμιο, όπου διαφορετικές ιστορικές και κοινωνικές αφηγήσεις συνυφαίνονται: η μεταπολεμική μνήμη, η μετανάστευση και η εμπειρία της αφομοίωσης στην πόλη.

Η έννοια της ευδαιμονίας προσεγγίζεται ως μια εύθραυστη, σχεδόν ουτοπική κατάσταση μέσα στην πόλη. Η ευδαιμονία, ως επιθυμητικό στοιχείο και φαντασιακός στόχος ζωής, λειτουργεί σαν λεπτό στρώμα που απαλύνει τη σύγκρουση και επιστρώνει τη μνήμη – όπως η ίδια η πόλη επιστρώνει τα ίχνη της μέσα στον χρόνο.

Μια διαρκής πράξη συμφιλίωσης με την πόλη και την ιστορία της. Μια ευφορία εντός της φθοράς — μια μορφή ύπαρξης που, έστω και στιγμιαία, προσπερνά το τραύμα.

SAMIR, MATALON AND THE STAIRS Giorgos Papadatos 2024

// 10.000 WINDMILLS // From Werner Herzog to the energy commons - Counterpublics 2024

12 Holes

Walkthelaw, Performative walk, Οrganized by Counterpublics @ H(e)avens, Athens, Saturday 09 December 2023

The mole and the city, ROI Synoikismos Chalandri Athens 2023

The other’s stage, Drakopoulos Park Athens, 2023

Giorgos Papadatos, The other’s stage, Where the wild things grow 2023

THE CIRCLE COMMUNITY , Eight notes on a collective

ritual, 2022

// THE CIRCLE COMMUNITY //
Eight notes on a collective ritual

An interdisciplinary research project by Counterpublics on the collective rituals "Kykles" and "Kangelari" of the communities of Tzoumerka, as an example for the study of the transformations and transition processes from the performative action to the creation of protocols that define the community and create the public space.
An extended decoding of the field records, archival, bibliographic and empirical evidence that define the conceptual scheme circular dance - community - subcommunities - identity politics - public space.

With the support of Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Department of Intangible Cultural Heritage
and Intercultural Issues, 2022

SEVEN CAUTIONARY TALES FOR ENERGY COMMONS, 2022

A video essay by Counterpublics (Constantina Theodorou and Giorgos Papadatos), 2022
Part of the research project “ Energy as commons “ consisting by an ongoing theoretical research, an installation, workshop and a video essay, firstly presented in HKW as part of New Alphabet – Commonings 2022.

The video essay, starting from the title reference to the utopian radical practice of Superstudio «12 cautionary tales for Christmas» , explores through a concept mapping the issue of commoning and sharing renewable energy recourses, activates imaginaries about energy sharing rituals, social -spatial implications of energy as a common resource, and raises issues of climate justice, energy communities protocols and governance. Rather drifting through concepts than following a linear narrative structure, “Seven cautionary tales for energy commons” combines short performative actions with, archival footage, text and narration by Elinor Ostrom, Silvia Federici, Ivan Illich, Ashley Dawson and others.

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Giorgos Papadatos, Big red stage for minor action, 2021


Giorgos Papadatos, Big red stage for minor action, Soft Protocols, Counter Publics, 2021

Giorgos Papadatos, Big red stage for minor action, Soft Protocols, Counter Publics, 2021

Vocabulary of Washing

Giorgos Papadatos, Vocabulary of washing, 2021

Minor Rituals 2021

Giorgos Papadatos, Minor Ritual 1, Public Graveyard, Kerameikos, Athens, 2021

Giorgos Papadatos, Minor Ritual 1, Public Graveyard, Kerameikos, Athens, 2021

Stages for minor actions 2019

Stages for minor actions, wood, photo prints, fabric, dimensions variable, 2020

No-one has ever lived in the past. No-one will ever live in the future. The present is
the form of all life.

With this aphorism, the A60 in Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville epitomizes the supremacy of totalitarian power that occurs through dehistoricization, through the collective loss of the ability to organize the past and the future, through the rupture of being as a historical continuity and a future possibility.

The present is the form of all life, photo print, canson paper, 20x30cm,2020

This is how the rule and hegemony are established, in solid modernity, as introduced by Bauman.

Solid modernity excludes potentiality, it envisions only final solutions. Of course in the case of Alphaville the final solution is positive with the triumph of poetry.

In liquid modernity, on the contrary, the present is an intermediate, the shaping of power relations happens through a constant negotiation; it is a constant failure and at the same time a constant pursuit. With this as a starting point, the installation negotiates the concept of the intermediate time-space.

Stages for minor actions is a recent “chapter” of an ongoing project Notes on a Transitional Monument (2012-) launched with a collaboration with Société Réaliste. Its basic conceptual axis explores the constituents of the concept of a monument as a statement of power. It seeks to minimize and undermine them by focusing on the paradoxical relationship of the terms transition-monument.

It is spatially materialized through site-specific installations consisting of fragments, random finds, photographs and texts organized in flexible and unstable modular structures. In each new assemblage of them, the memory of the former is partially reconstructed, as a comment on history, as a continuous construction.

In this version of the project, the "transitional monuments" are stages using the dual meaning of the word in English, (performative platform) and (step of a process). They are accompanied by visual instructions that have the role of incomplete, allusive scores, scripts for possible (or not) action.

The final form of the installations is therefore under negotiation until their final viewing, but also during the exhibition, in an attempt to explore the intermediate space, the transition space that the conflict opens up, which itself constitutes a monument in and of itself that is constantly in the process of becoming.

Giorgos Papadatos, The present is the form of all life, wood, photo print, sting, 20x30cm, 2020

Notes on a monument to unintentional profoundness 2018

Giorgos Papadatos , Everything saved must be lost , (Memorial on accidental profoundness) , wood ,fabric , photo , folders , dim variable , 2018

Giorgos Papadatos, Everything saved must be lost , installation, wood, textile, alluminium, dimensions variable, 2018 detail

Notes on an outcast monument 2017

The main conceptual axis in the artistic practice of Giorgos Papadatos is the exploration of the human condition and the ways it is determined by the mix of social and historical institutions.

Papadatos makes a caustic comment on the arbitrary, often contradictory logic behind the concepts of authority, economy, functionality and productivity. Using various media, the artist builds ephemeral structures, undermining and ultimately deconstructing the notion of monumentality and by extension that of authority.

Eschewing all manner of lyrical approach, the form of his installations tends towards rationalism. He does not seek to charge the viewer emotionally. His installations often work as a grid in which space not only interacts but becomes part of the in-situ artistic intervention. In this way his works act as an arbitrary, non-functional and non-habitable platform, demonstrating and censuring the conventions of the concepts under scrutiny, reorganising their forms or creating ecosystems with the potential for intermediary or transitional experiences, social spaces and historical intermissions.

His Transitional monuments series is a project in progress since 2012, consistent in its conceptual field and method of production.

The final form of the artist’s installations often remains negotiable until their final viewing. They have been shown in different versions and thematic approaches that constitute chapters in the same story and adapt themselves to the in-situ circumstances. The comprise photographs, drawings, small sculptures, fragments and adaptable wood structures that operate in a modular way. Texts and aphorisms often convey an ironic, metaphorical mood in the works of Papadatos and are directly linked to historical events by way of critiquing what transpired. A typical example from the series is the Notes for a banished monument, in which the phrases written on shards from vessels make a clear reference to the practice of ostracism in ancient Greece. The work traces the oxymoron in the fact that while contemporary society needs and extols critical thinking as a narrative, at the same time it neutralises and ostracises it as a practical possibility.

The works in the Transitional monuments series act as latter-day, ephemeral ‘popular’ monuments without the ‘heavy’, ‘fixed’ form of historical monuments that are symbols of institutional leadership. Clearly referencing Zygmunt Bauman (Liquid Modernity, 2000), these fragile structures criticise and subvert the monumental expressions of power in an attempt to explore the intermediary, transitional space.

Artemis Potamianou, Theorimata, Deductive and Axiomatic systems, AICA - EMST 2018

Translation from Greek Tony Moser

Giorgos Papadatos, Notes on an outcast monument 2017

Transitional monument for the future (Repubblica di Napoli in grayscale)

Giorgos Papadatos, “ Transitional monument for the future (Repubblica di Napoli in grayscale), 2016

The work is an altar-monument (altarino) dedicated to a city-circumstance in which I happened to traverse one of my three youths and to which I have no wish to return.

The monument is aesthetically optimized. Without the baroque realisms which this city deserves (grey is perennially safe and never ludicrous).

And naturally is is transitional and ephemeral like all honest monuments.

It moves between two basic principles. The text by Paolo Virno The horror of homelands and part of the film Youth by Paolo Sorentino, who is the same age as me, where the double appears of the retired Diego Maradona, a monument of himself, doing soccer practice with time's ball and answering that he belongs not to youth but to the future.

So, then, using as tools the concepts of monument-youth-horror of homelands, with the aid of the deified Diego Maradona and with the help of the small oxymorons which make up our present, the work aspires to function subversively, even ironically, in relation to the concepts of return-memory-homeland- pubescence etc and think of the future which is the homeland of us all.

Giorgos Papadatos, Nice Athens, Feb 2016