Katerina Karoussos - Yoshikaze's New Artist-in-Residence

Yoshikaze is pleased to announce Katerina Karoussos as our next artist-in-residence.  She is currently a PhD candidate at Planetary Collegium.  Her residency starts from 20 May and ends on 5 August. We look forward to wonderful works she will be producing at the Yoshikaze studio during her residency.

NOETIC GRACE - FROM IMAGE TO IMAGO

This residency regards the process of “virtual vision” such as St. John of Damascus yielded, back in the 7th century. It refers to a course of action that disregards the conventional way of viewing as it entertains the idea of intellectual vision which is beyond any sensory origin. The intellectual eye gazes without any supporting images to the image itself as an endoscopic procedure. In this context the noetic awareness faces all of what can be seen and unseen as epiphanies.

The concept of virtuality has made once again its appearance after fourteen centuries when virtual environments made their appearance throughout the use of technology. But although virtuality has entered dynamically to alter the idea of time and space, the persistence to conventional visual schemata has not yet allowed the real shift of art/science/technology assemble to an authentic virtual vision that could open “windows” other than Alberti’s one.

Even if Second Life is a virtual life, it uses the same visual techniques that people use in the regimented life. The excess of images and their interpretation according to conservative Western principles, create a “déjà vu” environment.

In this two and a half month of ascetic residency I will unfold some of the basic concepts that seem to be juxtaposed between the early “virtual vision” of John of Damascus and that of the contemporary time. By that, the image can gain its notion of imago, thus the mechanism of the metamorphosis of a self and the ability to communicate with the unseen throughout an endoscopic technique.

Katerina Karoussos is an artist and researcher. Her research is based on the convergence of old and new media and especially between Byzantine and new media visual practices. From 1994 to 2003 she was the director and a co-founder of the Hellenic Center of Fine & Applied Arts. From 2004 since 2010 she was working at The Athens School of Fine Arts as a free lancer at the Fresco studio. She holds a Master of Arts from Middlesex University in Art & Technology Interdisciplinary Methods. From 2009, Karoussos is a member of Planetary Collegium (CAiiA) as a PhD Candidate under the supervision of Pr. Roy Ascott. She has participated in many international conferences (ISEA, Aber, Dimea, Consciousness Reframes Series etc).  Apart from her work as a Byzantine mural painter at Orthodox churches her work has been exhibited in various international media exhibitions (Athens, Japan, Madrid, New York, Frankfurt, Montenegro, Cuba etc)