Dimitra Kondylatou

During my residency in the Saari Residence, I will research and lay the groundwork for a new project, entitled Shallow spring (working title), that will investigate, through different media, the social, environmental, corporeal, and aesthetic aspects of thermal tourism.

Tourism has been my research topic for the past couple of years. In this new project, I chose to focus on thermal tourism, as it seems to condense some of the aspects I am mostly concerned with, such as its social and environmental impact and the generation of desires and fantasies within the tourism industry. Thermal tourism, being one of the first forms of tourism, has changed over the years, along with the perception of healing. Initially prescribed as a medical cure, thermal baths are now part of the leisure and wellness culture. This change is aesthetically and administratively imprinted in the infrastructures built around thermal springs. I am interested in understanding their transformation from social spaces into commercial spaces for individual treatment and well-being and the management of natural resources embedded in this process.

Having gathered some essential visual and literary references to start with, I aim to use the time and space provided by Saari to focus on how relevant issues have been represented in art and analyzed in social theory and to define the focal points of my research project. I also plan to revise my current work, in which I attempted to bridge fact, theory, and fiction, experimenting with the form of the essay film. In my work, I explore how real and sometimes overlooked stories can be transmitted through the artistic media’s plasticity and artificiality. The residency will hopefully lead to ideas and notes for a new body of works around thermal springs, raising questions on the physical and political connections of the body to other bodies, to nature, culture, and the market.

Bio

Dimitra Kondylatou is a visual artist living in Athens. She works across video-making, editing, writing, and hosting. She is interested in the limits of art and its entanglements with tourism and everyday life. She visually explores gestures, practices and correspondences within contexts and spaces of hospitality and exchange. Her methodology is informed and crosses boundaries with other disciplines, through her participation in collective projects, the realization of workshops, and the presentation of her work in conferences and publications, group exhibitions and film festivals. From 2012 to 2018, her artistic research on art and tourism was enriched through her seasonal occupation as manager and worker of the neion guesthouse in Lefkada and through the residential project The island-resignified that she initiated and hosted there from 2015 to 2017. She was a member of kyklàda.press publications (2020-2021) and TWIXTlab (2017-2018). She holds a Master of Arts from the Dutch Art Institute (2017) and an Integrated Master of Fine Arts from the Athens School of Fine Arts (2012).