"Man, my child, is like water, nothing can stop him"
“The horror cannot be talked about, because it is alive”, says the poet. May it, therefore, be exhibited without falling into the trap of the terror loving TV news, without resorting to the easy thrill of a romance story? This question consumed us for an entire semester. How is it possible for all of us who live in Lesvos to attempt an exhibition on the refugee crisis, keeping the difficult balance between our emotions and our critical view? How is it possible and legitimate to manage in an exhibition a drama that continues to evolve in front of us? How can we put history in the museum at the same time that history is being written?...
Without a Knife and a Fork
Following the "tasty" content of the 2017 Greek Documentary Festival, which introduced the subject of food in cinema, the exhibition entitled "Without a knife and a fork", designed and implemented by the Museolab Laboratory, focused on the presence of food in Greek movies. It is a fact that the Greek cinema, apart from sounds and images, has always had its own smell and taste. The cinematic food, either discreetly or more tensely, helped to create characters, implied social differences and contributed in creating the outline of the Greek reality. The temporary exhibition organised within the frame of the Documentary Festival attempted to add these special tastes in the Thessaloniki Cinema Museum in small bites, "Without a knife and a fork".
Where is my beautiful Mytilene?
In October 1923, just three years after the death of Halim Bey, the ship Baris, in accordance with the Treaty of Lausanne, takes away his children and grandchildren from Mytilene. Almost a century later, all that remain from the Koulaxizes of Lesvos are some worn-out photos and a handful of petty things. Along with fragments of narratives intermingled with fairy tales. And, above all, people who want to remember. But memory is fragile....
Euforia
Euforia Project (European Films For Innovative Audience Development) was a project of transnational cooperation funded by the European Union. Whithin its frame, in 2016-2017, a series of actions under the title "Cinema Routes" was organised by the Thessaloniki Cinema Museum and the Thessaloniki Film Festival. Our laboratory, Museolab, took part in the Euforia project by materialising smaller projects in the city of Mytilene. Two individual documentary films were created, in which unaccompanied refugees under 18 years old participated. The first one, entitled "Mytopia", was created by a group of young refugees of the Mytilene Night School, and the second one, entitled "It's all Greek to me", was created by pupils of the NGO Iliaktida. Eleni Galani and Niovi Zorba, members of Museolab, contributed in their production as consultant directors, writers and editors. The main aim of the participants was to document "the other" as they percieved it while living in Mytilene, without capturing on screen the drama and the hardship of the people, but focusing instead on the dreams, the hopes and the life of each minor, no matter where one came from. These documentary films are the effort of the unaccompanied refugees related to the project to imprint on camera, with their own eyes, feelings and impressions combing their present with their past and their future.
Consultant directors/writers: Galani Eleni, Zorba Niovi,
Editing: Galani Eleni
Cargo
In 2017, during the Organising Exhibitions course of the undergraduate studies programme, the graduate students of the Cultural Technology and Communication Department designed and organised an exhibition from scratch. Its subject was the harbour and its role in daily life as a place where people, experiences, cultures and personal "loads" are gathered. The importance of its existence, its historical and strategic role, and -mainly- its contribution in all aspects of the daily life, were traced by the students. While keeping those in mind, they created an exhibition, through which they presented all the symbolical identities of the harbour.
"Home is.."
In 2017, a few weeks after the Manchester terrorist attack, we participated in the events "Our City, Our Home", of the International Institution for the Refugees "Refugee Week", after accepting an invitation by the MA Arts Management, Policy & Practice and the MA Art Gallery and Museum Studies, of the University of Manchester. As Museolab Laboratory, we participated in the exhibition "Home is..", we presented one of our documentary films related to the refugee crisis and participated in the organised round tables. In addition to the above, we helped to organise the numerous objects left by the local citizens in memory of the victims of the attack and thus realised, once again, that the museum action is not limited within the search for elegant interventions in the traditional museums, with which we are all familiar.
M_we are now unmuted
In June 2018, as part of the Museology Postgraduate Studies Programme, we attempted to present the city of Mytilene through its sounds and its music. The visitors were walking around a condensed but comprehensive version of the city, following the routes of their choice on a partially imaginative map on the floor, as if they were strolling around the actual city. The city's main landmarks, its special architecture, the various neighbourhoods and their people, the public spaces and other cultural features of the city were projected in a tree-dimensional sketch, through exhibits designed and created by the students. The main linking element of the whole exhibitional narration was sound: the soundscapes and the music of the city, on which the whole project was mainly based, a pioneering feature for Greek standards of exhibiting.
Thessaloniki Urban Maritime Transport Project
One of the most discussed issues among the citizens of the Thermaikos Gulf waterfront, in the Thessaloniki perfecture, is the Thessaloniki Urban Maritime Transport Project. The project was turned into an exhibition by the Museolab laboratory members, during the 83rd Thessaloniki International Fair (TIF), in 2018. The history of the Urban Maritime Transportation in the area, which goes back to the beginning of the 20th c., was presented, along with the views and opinions of all the Municipalities involved, as well as the under discussion report for the project, using appropriate design, soundscape and videos. In addition to the above, a digital questionnaire, that was periodiocally renewed, pesented the visitors' views on the matter, enhancing the content of the exhibition. Our work was installed in the booth of the Regional Union of the Municipalities of the Central Macedonia and the Municipality of Themaikos. Our exhibition on Thessaloniki Urban Maritime Transport was awarded for its design, among the 400 exhibition booths of TIF 2018.
"Under the Cobblestones ... Exhibiting May ‘68"
When we began, we were completely unaware of the challenges we would face. Affected by the numerous images and shots on TV and the internet, we falsely believed that we had to deal with an unsuccessful revolutionary outburst; one of those that one has to experience at least once, while a student, before entering "real" life. We thought that imagination and power might not have been able to come together, but the students of the Sorbonne University managed to leave behind them dozens of imaginative slogans. And the streets might have become less attractive through the decades, but one may not easily resist the beauty of all these negatives left behind by the reporters who found themselves in Paris at the time. On the other hand, most exhibitions, that are being organised at anniversaries, focus on that same thing: the fabricated image of an uprising which -among others- criticised "the society of the spectacle"....
