Greek digital artist takes home prestigious Lumen prize
London-based Greek filmmaker, and animation and digital artist Katerina Athanasopoulou has been awarded the prestigious Lumen Prize, worth 3,000 euros, for her Athens-based film “Apodemy.”
“Apodemy” is an experimental piece on emigration created by Athanasopoulou for a 2012 group art project at the Akadimia Platonos park, the central Athens site whether the ancient philosopher Plato is believed to have taught.
A graduate of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the Royal College of Art in London, where she got her masters’ degree, Athanasopoulou was quoted by Welsh media as saying: “I thought it fitting to work with Plato’s hypothesis of the human soul as a birdcage, where knowledge is birds flying. I was fascinated by the ornithological term ‘zugunruhe’ which is the turbulent behavior of birds about to migrate, whether free or caged.”
On www.kineticat.co.uk/#Apodemy website the artists describes the film as:
“A flock of birds circles and moves a cage vehicle, seeking escape from a city half finished and abandoned, with roads interrupted by fragments of fallen statues. Those hands are simultaneously the pursuit of knowledge and also the heroes/leaders of the past that we have rejected but are still haunting us. In a time when Europe seems to be imploding, this is my portrait of Athens.”
Athanasopoulou is based in London and teaches at the London College of Communication.
The Lumen Prize is an international award founded by American journalist Carla Rapoport in Cardiff, Wales, and designed to celebrate art work that is created digitally – be it on a tablet, PC or mobile phone. This year, its second, it included 700 entries from 45 countries.
