Catalogue > At random

Laboratory of Dilemmas is a narrative video installation based on Aeschylus’ theatre play Iketides (Suppliant Women), which poses a dilemma between saving the Foreigner and maintaining the safety of the Native. Addressing current global sociopolitical issues, the work deals with the anguish, puzzlement, and confusion of individuals and social groups when called upon to address similar dilemmas. Aeschylus’ Iketides (Suppliant Women) is the first literary text in history that raises the issue of a persecuted group of people seeking for asylum. The Suppliants have left Egypt to avoid having to marry their first cousins and arrive at Argos seeking asylum from the King of the city. The King is then faced with a dilemma. If he helps the foreign women, he risks causing turmoil among his people and going to war with the Egyptians, who are after the Suppliants. But if he doesn’t help them, he will break the sacred laws of Hospitality and violate the principles of Law and Humanism, leaving the Suppliants to the mercy of their pursuers. Laboratory of Dilemmas focuses on the play’s dilemma through the excerpts of an unfinished documentary in the form of found footage about a scientific experiment. This experiment was never completed for unknown reasons, however the found excerpts of the unfinished documentary reveal today, after so many years, details of the experiment, as well as the hopes of the professor who envisioned it and the disagreements with his co-researchers.

George Drivas completed an MA in Film and Media studies at the Freie Universitaet in Berlin, after doing his bachelor in Political Science and Public Administration at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. The artist makes films combining texts, videos and photographs. Through his camera, the artist seems to hide from his subjects. He focuses his narrative on the relation of the individual to society, addressing themes such as social integration, alienation, promisses, desillusion. He is the recipient of numerous awards namely the Best Experimental Film Award at London Greek Film Festival, London, UK (2010); Special Mention at “Strange Screen”, Experimental Film and Video Festival, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece (2009); 2nd prize at VII Media Art Forum, XXVII Moscow International Film Festival, Moscow, Russia (2006); 2nd prize at the Zebra International Poetry Film Festival, Berlin, Germany (2002) and Jury Award for Experimental Short Film at the New York Expo, NY, NY (2002). The artist’s work has also been featured as a Solo Show at the Galleria Nazionale, Rome, Italy, (2017) and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece (2009); as a Tribute to him at the Athens’s International Film Festival (2014), and as part of a group exhibition or festival among others in “ANTIDORON- the EMST Collection”, documenta 14, Kassel, Germany (2017), “As Rights Go By”, Group Show, Q21 International, MuseumsQuartier Vienna, Austria (2016), Festival du nouveau cinéma, Montreal, Canada, (2015), “future past – past future”, Group Show, Transmediale Festival, Berlin, Germany (2014), “Art Projections”, Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (2013), “Hybrid Stories”, Group Show, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece (2013), “Melancholy in Progress”, Video Art Exhibition, Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei City, Taiwan (2012), “FILE”, Electronic Language International Festival, FIESP Cultural Center, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2012), “Annual Exhibition”, Group Show, Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, USA (2012), “Les Rencontres Internationales: New Cinema and Contemporary Art”, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, “Polyglossia”, Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens, Greece (2011), “ECU”, European Independent Film Festival, Paris, France (2010); “Digital Wave”, Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Thessaloniki, Greece (2009); “Transexperiences Greece” at Space 798, Beijing, China (2008); “Young Greek Artists – In Present Tense” at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece (2008); “Les Jeunes Cinéastes D’aujourd’hui” at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2007); Media Art Forum, XXVII Moscow International Film Festival, Moscow, Russia (2006); Poetry International Festival, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2003); and Dactyl Foundation for the Arts and Humanities, NY, NY (2002). George Drivas’s work is part of the Athens’s National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) collection.