ABOUT
Hello dear visitor,
My name is Evi Stamou and I am a filmmaker and video artist based in Greece.
This site is designed to give you an idea about what I do and what I’m interested in. Under the ‘portfolio’ section you can find brief presentations of my short films, video art pieces and visual art projects. Some of my work in other media – mainly writing and sound – is represented too.
No distinction is made between professional and personal projects, between commissions and pastimes, as I feel there should be none.
Other corners of this site will be a bit more fun to explore: ‘Notes and sketches’ is a section I intend to fill with oddities like field recordings, dream recollections, random photos, a video diary, and whatever else I can think of as I go along. ‘Inspiration of the day’ is where I want to store the stuff that keeps me going, to have it handy in case I need it. See if you can find in there anything you might like.
‘News’ are just news: ongoing and upcoming exhibitions and screenings, photos and catalogues, notifications and interviews and other updates about work.
If something in my site will manage to intrigue you, feel free to reach me through the information provided in the contact page.
ARTISTIC PRACTICE
I have a mainly cinematic background, having studied filmmaking at the Hellenic Cinema and Television School Stavrakos. In the immediate years after my graduation, I redirected my interest towards experimental and expanded cinema practices. Those formative experiences fueled a desire to explore in more depth the aesthetic boundaries between traditional cinematic forms and the evolving landscape of visual art.
The non-systematical combination of elements from different artistic fields and practices informs my broader approach to creative work, which is firmly and strictly rooted in chaos and improvisation. Constantly emerging and promptly discarded, the ephemeral technological wonders in the audiovisual field are the fetishized Muses that spark my inspiration: chance meetings with old and new mobile phones, webcams, microphones and consumer camcorders provide me with the elusive sound/image quality and erratic behavior that I need in order to replicate the mental picture of the outside world that I carry in my head. The more challenging aspects of what I do consist – as I see it – in mastering the unreliability of the little sensors that are supposed to document objective reality and in balancing the adequacy of my responses when faced with an untamable subject matter.
Watching and listening closely to the imperfect exchange between these two equally unreliable and equally inadequate systems of perception – the machine’s and my own – is what drives my artistic practice, while providing the necessary enjoyment and solace that one can usually only find by expressing their creative self.