Angeliki Tzortzakaki → artist-in-residence of Research Pavilion #5

Toni Brell and Angeliki Tzortzakaki will tell stories of socio-geo-ecological entanglements through the fictionalised setting of a night boat, inspired by the multilayered history of the Finlandia cruise ship that between 1975 and 1988 sailed around the Baltic Sea under different identities. Wrapped into the format of a ghost sea-vessel story, they will research and speak about the changing landscapes and scenarios that we are haunted by due to a perennial planetary crisis. Brell and Tzortzakaki are artists-in-residence of Research Pavilion #5.

Toni Brell (DE) and Angeliki Tzortzakaki (GR) have been working and thinking together for some time now. Their trajectories crossed when they started collaborating for the performance collective Scores for Gardens, blending interdisciplinary research with performance. Both spending most of their time in Amsterdam, they have been working together in other circumstances as well such as the collaboration with visual and performance artist Mercedes Azpilicueta.

The night boat project
In the vastness of the night and the deepness of the ocean, a floating body traverses. Slow but steady, accompanied by the lingering hum of its engine. This body-vessel is unlike any other boat: it’s an obscure mechanic configuration whose destination is uncertain and can only be seen or heard after sundown. It carries dreams or nightmares, faded out memories, fictions, illusions and origin stories around the ever-evolving seas. This very ocean, whose darkness comes in waves, or calm velvet surfaces, is another not unrelated story. It bears the exhausted geographies and marine ecologies of the Baltic, but also exceeds the normativity of a contained body of water. Thus, the night boat’s journey is not linear. It is this anti-narrative that the vessel helps us to pass through: Its capacity to carry and be carried enables a different way of thinking through temporalities, storytelling, proximity, scale and the self. If a night boat is a body in search of something lost, how do we navigate our (un)human geographies and fleeting states of existence?

Toni Brell’s and Angeliki Tzortzakaki ‘s Research Pavilion residence will take place in Saari Residence from 16 May to 28 May 2023.

More info: https://blogit.uniarts.fi/en/post/night-boats-the-case-of-golden-princess/

Angeliki Tzortzakaki is an SNF ARTWORKS Curatorial Fellow (2021).