Technologies of Peace: Art and Transition in Contemporary Europe (1989–2026)

 A Machine That Dreams the Sky,  2025

Wood, metal, acrylic paint
132 × 98 × 45 cm

In post-conflict countries, the journey towards lasting peace involves a multifaceted approach that extends beyond political, economic, and security measures. Artistic practice and cultural experience play a pivotal role in healing societies, fostering reconciliation, and building a shared sense of identity and community.   
The exhibition Technologies of Peace: Art and Transition in Contemporary Europe (1989–2026) aims to explore the concept of peace, the tools of peace and how they are deployed through an artistic lens. The exhibition will focus specifically on the period between 1990s to the present day, and through the lens of artistic practices will draw parallels between Ireland’s complex political history with those of our European counterparts that have had similar trajectories in transitioning from post-conflict into democratic states of peace and stability.
Within peace and conflict research, the study of peace has received far less scholarly attention than the study of war and violence. Moreover, among the studies that pay particular attention to peace, a negative peace conception, which equates peace with the absence of direct violence between formerly warring parties, has generally dominated. Consequently, peace itself is under conceptualised. 
The period from 1989 to the present day has been marked by significant political and social changes in Ireland, particularly in the context of the conflict in the North of Ireland and the subsequent peace process. This project seeks to reflect on these changes through the lens of artistic practice and cultural expression, situating Ireland’s experience within a broader international context. By examining how free expression, identity management, and cultural practices have evolved in post-conflict societies, this project will offer insights into the role of art in peacebuilding and democratic development.
The IMMA Collection will form a central part of the exhibition with key works from Frances Hegarty, Willie Doherty, Cathy Wilkes, Alastair MacLennan and Sandra Johnston. The Dwell Here residency programme at IMMA will also provide a focus with artists such as Amanda Dunsmore.  Curated by Mary Cremin, IMMA Head of Programming, and Johanne Mullan, IMMA Collection Curator. 
Participating artists: Marina Abramović, Ileana Arnaoutou, Nika Autor, Aleksandar Battista Ilić in collaboration with Ivana Keser and Tomislav Gotovac, Ursla Burke, Alán Carrasco, Jasmina Cibic, Lana Čmajčanin, Fábio Colaço, Phil Collins, Willie Doherty, Rita Duffy, Amanda Dunsmore, Petros Efstathiadis, Andrea Geyer, Igor Grubić,  Đejmi Hadrović, Petrit Halilaj, Anthony Haughey, Frances Hegarty, Saskia Holmkvist, Sanja Iveković, Sandra Johnston, Dragana Jurišić, Šejla Kamerić, Barbara Knežević, Siniša Labrović, Nicolas Lambouris, Latent Community, Manolis D. Lemos,  Glenn Loughran, Alastair MacLennan, Goshka Macuga, Petra Matić, Emily McFarland, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Petros Moris, Locky Morris, Alban Muja, Mairéad McClean, William McKeown, Vlad Nancă, Eleni Odysseos, Claudia Pagès Rabal, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Karol Radziszewski, María Ruido, Edita Schubert, Paul Seawright, Driton Selmani, Indrė Šerpytytė, Slavs and Tatars, Mladen Stilinović, Bojan Stojčić, Anne Tallentrie, Kostis Velonis, Vangelis Vlahos, Cathy Wilkes, Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor.

Flight Condition

Flight Condition, 2026

40 χ 30 L χ 32 Η cm, 

Wood, plywood, metal, gesso, acrylic

The group exhibition "Opt out!"of contemporary art is organized and curated by Stella Christofi in a collaboration with M.A.M.A Contemporary with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture of Cyprus, Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. Cypriot, Greek, Viennese and artists based in Luxembourg will participate with paintings. sculptures, video art, site specific installation, photography. 
The term “Opt out” implies a state of exception that exists in the Schengen area. The exception is a decision, it can be the decision of an individual, but it concerns the decision of a country that can nevertheless choose the areas of cooperation. Τhe artists from different cultures will meet at Valentiny Foundation to transform the concept of "exception", "refusal", "border" in their own way, shaping a new political space. Liminal space emerges as a realm of openness and indeterminacy, where fixed classifications begin to dissolve and the distinctions between interior and exterior, the known and the unknown become fluid. Rather than functioning as rigid points of separation, borders operate as transitional zones that enable interaction, negotiation and transformation. In this context, space is understood as a dynamic and relational process, continuously produced through movement, encounters, and ongoing change.

Curated by Stella Christofi

Participating artists: Nikos Charalampidis, Stella Christofi, Serge Ecker, Makis Faros, Yioula Hatzigeorgiou, Antonis Kanellos, Fabien Neissius, Vicky Pericleous, Karin Pfeifer, Giasemi Rapti, Danae Stratou, Nikos Synnos, Ektor Theoulakis, Kostis Velonis, Sula Zimmerberger.

Place: Valentiny Foundation Shengen
26/8/2026-20/9/2026

Una profezia di Lichtenberg

Una profezia di Lichtenberg

«Il nostro mondo diventerà così civile che sarà allora ridicolo credere in Dio, come è oggi credere nei fantasmi. Poi, dopo un certo tempo, il mondo diventerà ancora più civile. E continuerà sempre più in fretta il processo che lo porterà al vertice supremo della civiltà. Toccando il culmine, il giudizio degli esperti ancora una volta si capovolgerà e la conoscenza raggiungerà la sua estrema trasformazione. Allora – e questa sarà davvero la fine – crederemo soltanto nei fantasmi».

Giorgio Agamben, 20.1.2021

Rings of Ash

RINGS OF ASH
    For Cristina Campo

It’s my voices that are singing
so the others can’t sing—
those figures gagged gray in the dawn,
those dressed in the rain like desolate birds.

There is, in this waiting,
a rumor of breaking lilac.
And there is, when the day arrives,
a division of the sun into smaller black suns.
And at night, always,
a tribe of mutilated words
looks for refuge in my throat,
so that they won’t sing—
the ill-fated, the owners of silence.

Alejandra Pizarnik

Saint Jerome in His Study (After Antonello da Messina)

Saint Jerome in His Study (After Antonello da Messina) 2025

Oil, acrylic , oil pastel and chalk paint on canvas

150 x 150 cm

#AntonellodaMessina #SaintJerome #painting

an ode to boundaries

 Mary Jean Chan  

A star, a stool and a long conversation with gravity

A star, a stool and a long conversation with gravity

2005 · Wood, acrylic · 40 × 33 × 83 cm

#SouthbySoutheast #emst

South by Southeast

Kostis Velonis, Life Without Democracy, 2009

South by Southeast, curated by Katerina Gregos, marks a significant new chapter in the evolution of EMΣT's collection. Bringing together 50 artists from more than 20 countries, the exhibition reflects a collection policy introduced in 2021 that repositions Greece within a broader cultural geography spanning the Balkans, Turkey, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Mediterranean.

The exhibition proposes a shift away from the traditional Western European narrative that has shaped modern Greek identity since the 19th century. Instead, it presents Greece as a vital crossroads between Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Near East—a region historically defined by mobility, cultural exchange, migration, and layered identities.

The title, South by Southeast, playfully echoes Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, signaling a symbolic reorientation from an exclusively Western perspective toward a more plural and interconnected understanding of Greece's place in the world. This approach acknowledges the country's deep historical and cultural ties with its neighbouring regions while remaining firmly rooted in its contemporary European identity.

Focusing on the Mediterranean, the Balkans, North Africa, and the Near East, EMΣT's collection seeks to uncover shared histories, overlooked connections, and diverse artistic voices. Rather than attempting to be encyclopedic, the collection embraces a clear regional focus that reflects Greece's unique geopolitical and cultural position.

At a moment marked by migration, geopolitical conflict, and shifting global alliances, South by Southeast offers a timely reflection on identity, belonging, and cultural exchange. More than an exhibition of recent acquisitions, it presents a vision of the museum as a space for rethinking inherited narratives and imagining new forms of cultural dialogue in an increasingly interconnected world.

ARTISTS

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Diana Al-Hadid, Monira Al Qadiri, Athanasios Argianas, Lynda Benglis, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Chryssa, Bia Davou, Navine G. Dossos, Eirene Efstathiou, Stelios Faitakis, Apostolos Georgiou, Ivan Grubanov, Artan Hajrullahu, Mona Hatoum, Giorgos Ioannou, Emily Jacir, Sven Johne, Konstantin Kakanias, Dionisis Kavallieratos, Bouchra Khalili, Panos Kokkinias, Jannis Kounellis, Ange Leccia, Nate Lowman, Rabih Mroué, Eleni Mylonas, Jennifer Nelson, Gabriel Orozco, George Osodi, Adrian Paci, Leda Papaconstantinou, Maria Papadimitriou, Malvina Panagiotidi, Rena Papaspyrou, Antonis Pittas, Walid Raad-The Atlas Group, Thomias Radin – Alexander Brack – Matthias Meisen, Michael Rakowitz, Serban Savu, Nedko Solakov, Sphinxes, Thomas Struth, Lina Theodorou, Costas Tsoclis, Vangjush Vellahu, Kostis Velonis, Vangelis Vlahos, Eirini Vourloumis, Akram Zaatari

https://www.emst.gr/en/articles/south-by-southeast

The Body That Cannot Find a Place: Giulietta Masina and Awkward Grace

As I was writing recently about the European version of physical

comedy with a focus on the practices of Giulietta Masina’s almost

“animistic” physical acting, I found myself, almost unconsciously, in

a nexus of ethical and philosophical issues that belong to the hard

core of Continental thought, to put it somewhat bluntly. And there, a

dominant motif began to emerge—that of a nomadic life—as a

fundamental condition of existence in the cinematic record of

postwar Europe.

Soon, however, it became clear that this ceaseless wandering is not

limited to its social dimension, but gradually transforms into an

ontological condition.

Yet when the condition of displacement is viewed through the lens of

a Catholic visionary such as Simone Weil, as well as a mind trained

in Catholic theology such as Martin Heidegger, it takes on the

dimensions of a grand narrative both within and beyond Federico

Fellini’s dramaturgy.

If Jewish-born Weil describes uprooting (déracinement) in terms of

social and spiritual deprivation, and if Heidegger—the thinker of the

forest paths that lead nowhere—sees in homelessness

(Heimatlosigkeit) the realization of authentic “dwelling,” then

Masina, who has nowhere to stand, prepares us to accept this

“exile.” [1]

When I revisited Masina’s roles, I was left with a feeling that wouldn’t

easily fade: that one can endure not having roots anywhere: from

the desire of dwelling to an ethic of vulnerability through the

acceptance of a suspended existence, devoid of meaning and

purpose.

Masina familiarizes us with the idea that homelessness is our

fundamental condition. That not belonging anywhere is perhaps the

most honest way to exist, something that would resonate with the

“bucolic” thinker Heidegger, the philosopher of dwelling.

In this context, a reference by Pope Francis takes on particular

significance. In 2024, in a video message for the seventieth

anniversary of Fellini’s La Strada (1954), he drew attention to the

scene with the “useless” pebble. [2]

The acrobat-clown Il Matto tells Gelsomina that nothing in this world

is useless; a pebble has a purpose too, even if we cannot know it.And if that isn’t true, then nothing has meaning—not the stars, nor

even ourselves.

And, indeed, Il Matto, a figure reminiscent of the Christian “holy fool,”

serves as a messenger in a precarious professional class of street

performers. Gelsomina, in La Strada, is violently thrust into

adulthood as a wandering entertainer in the paternalistic

environment of the bandleader Zampanò, while Cabiria, as a sex

worker in Le notti di Cabiria (1957), is a constant victim of human

relationships. Both, through their frustrations, yearn for a meaning

not attained as knowledge but as a faith that makes their lives

bearable.

In Masina’s universe, everyone is on the losing side, even the

miscreants and the exploiters. The world is in flux, and all the

characters are, to a greater or lesser extent, adrift and uprooted.

However, Masina’s physical gestures, in their vulnerability, are

transformed into manifestations of a deeper moral choice, becoming

an expression, almost a stance. Her body is not merely another

comic body among the countless film productions that define a

farcical aesthetic, but a body whose poses, exaggerated

movements, and facial expressions are connected to the

traumatized European landscape. Just as this world, in its

harshness, seeks to ostracize misery, in the same way Masina,

through her comical postures, persists and resistw. Even if the world

throws you out of the frame, there is a way to stay in.

The history of Europe is reflected in Masina’s deceived and misled

body, exposing the very meaning of the Neorealismo movement in

an Italy where the bodies on screen—no longer heroic but deceived

—suffer from poverty, defeat, and the struggle to survive. [3]

What does it ultimately mean to represent political changes—from

Mussolini’s regime to democratization—through bodies in Fellini’s

dramatic comedies?

First, Fellini’s version of slapstick differs from the classic mechanical

comedy of silent film because the cultural context has changed. It is

the same timeless material of the visual gag—the body that

stumbles, falls, and survives—but with a different spirit and in a

different place. [4]

Guillieta Masina has something familiar about her, something

reminiscent of Chaplin’s Little Tramp or Buster Keaton’s clownish

innocence—and, indeed, in a context where physical movement is

presented as a mechanism for survival.However, the “plasticity” of the slapstick body—from Mack Sennett’s

American comedy productions to the documentary-style tortured

body of neorealism—shows us that it is not merely rubber that

returns to its original state, but also a wound that endures.

In this sense, Masina embodies a form of cinematic “other” that

cannot be assimilated exclusively into a typical cinematic character

on the sets of Cinecittà or Hollywood. Unlike the roles she

embodies, she establishes a relationship of responsibility with us.

Her physical flexibility does not merely elicit laughter, but exposes us

to a politicized body—a victim that seeks some kind of response. We

no longer laugh at her fall. Her roles establish a strange connection

with us, which may be uncomfortable, because it seeks something

that feels like a relationship of responsibility.

Masina, in Fellini’s universe, is under the influence of an aesthetic of

deviation. Whether as a street clown or as a sex worker, she will

never return to the conventionally virtuous path of normality;

deviation is a method of perception, a way to understand the world

beyond the illusion of straight lines, of the need for conformity and

balance. Her oblique path does not seek reintegration into a straight

line of life, but establishes a different way of being: an existence that

is constantly exposed to a world that offers no place for her.

Feminist and queer theorist Sara Ahmed describes

heteronormativity as a system of alignment, where “straight ahead”

is not a neutral direction but a social imperative. And here Fellini,

although he does not speak in the terms of contemporary gender

studies, helps us read the body differently: as a queer body that

deviates from the natural straight line, and reveals that the straight

line was constructed from the very beginning. “The lines we follow

are lines that have already been drawn by others.” [5]

Deviation does not concern personal clumsiness or eccentricity. but

an embodied experience of exclusion. It is the proletarianized

femininities—Gelsomina, Cabiria, Giulietta—who constantly

stumble upon boundaries and turn toward a world that is not made

for them and that does not await them. Even in Giulietta degli spiriti

(1965), where she plays an urban woman caught in a state of

unstable subjectivity, she is overwhelmed by imaginary figures,

spirits, and desires that create a parallel universe to reality, but do

not fully integrate into it.

Masina’s body constantly encounters surfaces that resist,

relationships that veer off their course, promises that crumble—and

yet, amidst this almost ritualistic failure to align, she persists.

Her face doesn’t fit anywhere. The world is unbearably sure of itself.

She appears before us as an elf, tender and yet out of place. But hergestures, the subtle shifts of her gaze, her moments of

awkwardness or carefree joy act as cracks. From there emerges a

laugh in the form of a moral revelation.

Thus, Masina’s contribution to Fellini’s cinema allows the issue of

uprooting to be reframed in different terms. If postwar Europe

experiences a state of historical “homelessness,” Masina’s

characters suggest something more demanding: that the loss of a

place, of a permanent point on the map, does not necessarily entail

the loss of morality. Amidst mobility, uncertainty, and physical

exposure, a form of universal human experience emerges through

our radical exposure to homelessness.

With her unique blend of childlike innocence, tenderness, and tragic

vulnerability, Masina becomes a powerful cinematic figure through

which one can contemplate the universal ethics of human dignity. In

Giulietta degli spiriti, where, for the first time, she bears her own

name, her character is transported to a different environment—

urban, seemingly protected. Giulietta undergoes tribulations in the

psychedelic delirium of her wanderings in a parallel universe that

opens up alongside the “real” one without ever reconciling with it.

As she leaves the fenced-in house and heads toward the forest,

Masina makes us wonder whether this is a choice of emancipation

and liberation or of confinement and loneliness.

This ambiguity in the final scene of Giulietta’s exit into the forest—

which sparked a disagreement between Fellini and Masina over its

meaning—is the most honest conclusion. An exit with no

guarantees. Another detour.

But there is another forest that Giulietta Masina traverses. In the

final scene of Le notti di Cabiria, her walk through the forest does not

lead to a gradual disappearance but to a hesitant, initially sorrowful

stumble—of a body that does not know if it can bear to continue.

And here, inevitably, we cannot ignore her greatest fan, Charlie

Chaplin, who in all his films walks away down the street and his

silhouette, with its slightly bouncy gait, disappears into the horizon,

while the camera remains behind him. It is, as Vladimir Jankélévitch

observes, that “gait of someone who is going nowhere and who, in

any case, is going somewhere further on, the gait of someone who

does not know where they are going.” [6]

Cabiria continues to walk through the very world that has just

crushed her. Weeping. The shock of seduction and betrayal by a

loved one who has just robbed her has not yet faded. A crowdpasses by; a group of young people who walk past her and treat her

with exuberance and a playful spirit as they dance and sing. Cabiria,

however, does not leave; she continues to walk among them.

Gradually, trust is restored.

Thus, where Chaplin justifiably embodies a poetics of escape,

Cabiria shapes an ethics of perseverance. As she crosses the forest

with the people around her, her gait signifies an adobe, without

being a flight into the unknown. It is a gait that coexists with loss.

And then, for a moment, a few seconds before the film ends,

something inexplicable happens. The shadow of her shattering and

failure is illuminated by a paradoxical grace: a movement that

continues obliquely, awkwardly, persistently to exist within the world

that has just accepted her again, as she begins to smile through her

tears.

Notes

1 As examples, I have chosen the editions in their original

languages: Simone Weil, L’Enracinement: Prélude à une

déclaration des devoirs envers l’être humain (Paris: Gallimard,

1949); and Martin Heidegger, “Bauen Wohnen Denken”, in Vorträge

und Aufsätze (Pfullingen: Neske, 1954).

2 Here I quote the entire dialogue:

“Everything in this world is useful for something. Here,

take this pebble, for example,” says the jester.

“What is it good for?” asks Gelsomina.

“It has a purpose… How should I know what it is? If I

knew, do you know what I would be? The Almighty, the

one who knows everything—when you’re born, when

you die. And who can know those things? No, I don’t

know what this stone is for, but it must be for something.

Because if this is useless, then everything is useless—

even the stars. And you, too, have a purpose, with that

artichoke head of yours.”

Salvatore Cernuzio, “Pope Francis Celebrates 70th Anniversary of

Fellini’s La Strada,” Vatican News, May 2, 2024,

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2024-05/pope-francis-

federico-fellini-la-strada-70th-anniversary.html.

3 Karl Schoonover, “Histrionic Gestures and Historical

Representation: Masina’s Cabina, Bazin’s Chaplin, and Fellini’s

Neorealism”, Cinema Journal, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Winter 2014), pp. 93-

116, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43653570/4 For the concept of the animate tree in association with practices of

physical humor, see Kostis Velonis, “Disguised as a Tree,” in Forest-

Architecture. In Search of the (Post) Modern Wilderness (Milan:

SYLVA/Mimesis Edizioni. 2024),

http://mimesisbooks.com/index.php/mim/catalog/book/71. See also

Kostis Velonis [in Greek], “Environmental Comedy and Animism. On

the Animation of the Tree in Slapstick Practices”, in Here! Place –

Landscape – Space – Time, ed. Theodoros Zafeiropoulos, (Athens:

Tziola Publications, 2024).

5 “Lines are both created by being followed and are followed by

being created.” Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations,

Objects, Others (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 16.

6 Vladimir Jankélévitch, Béatrice Berlowitz. Somewhere in the

Unfinished, Greek trans. Lizy Tsirimokou (Athens: Polis, 2021), p.

205.

https://www.darlingmagazine.net/masina/velonis-en