VIDEO:Video Art Miden Screenings June 2026
Video Art Miden is an independent organization for the exploration and promotion of video art. Founded by an independent group of Greek artists in 2005, it has been one of the earliest specialized video-art festivals in Greece, setting as basic aims to stimulate the creation of original video art, to help spread it and develop relevant research.
Photo: Video Art Miden Archive
Video Art Miden collaborates with the exhibition space ToPikap Kato in Thessaloniki, presenting a panorama of international contemporary video art, with 110 artists from all over the world participating in this tribute. Thematic sections curated by the Video Art Miden team are screened, which explore contemporary trends, pursuits and issues of our time, such as artificial intelligence, history, memory, war, relentless productivity, personal experience, poetic storytelling, physical movement and expression, the wandering of the gaze and travel, the perception of a world (or worlds) in transition. Selections from invited festivals and groups will also be screened, specifically from the International Multidisciplinary Dare Dance Festival, which presents a selection of videodance works, Visualcontainer, which presents the collection of Italian video art “Panoramica*25”, and the international collective of women video artists FemLink-Art, which presentzs a thematic project entitled “Magic”. Students from the 2nd Painting Studio of the School of Visual and Applied Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki also participates, in a screening program entitled “Emerging Frequencies”.
The screening program brings together many different versions and approaches to the contemporary world and the current human condition. Many renowned video artists participate, while at the same time fresh and youthful perspectives emerge, directed towards an exploration of the future, often dystopian and suffocating, in which however the sensitivity, empathy, critical humor and existential concerns that unite people throughout time set the tone and provide a note of optimism in an increasingly dark and cruel era, which tests human limits and crushes the vision of a utopia. It is obvious that the works express an era where parallel worlds meet and where art and artists open a substantial dialogue on critical issues, both on a conceptual and aesthetic, as well as on an existential and social level. The sections are
Thursday 11/9/2026
EXTRACT PRODUCE PERFORM 2, curated by Sofia Grigoriadou: You are here: amid extraction zones and construction sites, colonial monuments and cruise ships, where relentless productivity meets ecological erasure; where marketable yet overwhelmed selves stumble through fractured vocabularies of exhaustion, hope, and desire. Participating Artists: Esteban Rosales, Holly Veselka, Zsuzsanna Spilák, Andrew Frangella, Jaleh Nesari, Lingxiang Wu, Suhan Lalettayin
Narrative poetry, curated by Margarita Stavraki: A selection that brings together different versions of narration, with a variety of colors, timbre of voice, movement of bodies and images, but mainly with different content, sometimes confessional, sometimes poetic and beautiful. Participating Artists: Bishoy Adel, Anna Schlechter, Eugenia Grammenou, Loreto Leonvendagar Hurtado, Torpeng Chua-oon, Magdalena Łakoma, Maita Chatziioannidou & Danai Tezapsidou & Io Le Moller, Nara Beibit, Marina Shaltout
International Multidisciplinary Dare Dance Festival, curated by Artemis, Manakou, Antonis Bertos, Vangelis Papaevangeliou: The International Multidisciplinary Dare Dance Festival is taking place from 2022 until now (Cinema Ideal & Cinema Danaos, Athens) hosting videodance from all over the world. The festival curators consist of Antonis Bertos, physical theater performer-psychologist, Artemis Manakou, physical theater performer & teacher, kinesiologist and Vangelis Papaevangeliou, filmmaker-director. Since 2018, the International Multidisciplinary Dare Dance Festival team combines psychology, physical theater, visual arts and video art and aims to create short films, videodance and visual exhibitions with a strong artistic and social impact. Participating Artists: Antonis Bertos & Vangelis Papevangeliou, Pablo Soto, Vangelis Papaevangeliou & Sabina Andrea Allen, Vasilis Mavrianos & Sophia Pouchtou, Vangelis Papaevangeliou & Artemis Manakou
Decoding the codes, curated by Olga Papadopoulou & Gioula Papadopoulou: Video works exploring parallel realities with the use of AI. Participating Artists: Jimena Aguilar, Yichu Li, Chi Kiu So, Ong Kian Peng, peqpez, Michael Spahr, Guilherme Peters & Matias Mariani & Roberto Winter, Maria Bernardi
School of Visual & Applied Arts – AUTh: Emerging Frequencies, curated by Gioula Papadopoulou: Video works by students of the 2nd Painting Studio of the School of Visual & Applied Arts, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Teaching staff: Vally Nomidou (Director of the 2nd Painting Studio), Sotiris Panousakis, Gioula Papadopoulou, Tatiana Altini. Participating Artists: Vicky Panakia, Katerina Petrakou, Kyveli, Maria Skylogianni, Prodromos Charitidis, Christina Hasekidou, Maria Skylogianni, Tete, Magda Ousli, Vicky Panakia
FemLink-Art Collective: Magic | Project 2024: According to several authors, including Plutarch, Hieronymus Bosch’s painting, “The Conjurer,” represents the oldest magic trick, already practiced in Egyptian times. Our fascination with magic and the enduring figure of the magician throughout the centuries in most cultures raises questions about the permanence of the attraction that conjuring tricks exert on the mind. Magicians are the only ones who can deceive us and make us laugh at the same time. With them, the loss of our connection to reality or truth takes the form of a game, a spectacle. Before science could provide answers to the questions that tormented humanity, the functioning of the world seemed governed by incomprehensible forces. The need for rational explanations certainly led to organizing the world so that it became logical and therefore reassuring, but at the same time, it provided irrational answers, steeped in magic and the miraculous, to which the Human beings have clung to each other like lifebelts. “In the absence of power, we need trust,” writes Bergson in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Much like a magician, the artist suspends all the laws of physics and perception to bend reality to his will. His work is an enclave within reality to propose another reality. “Art is a lie that tells the truth” Jean Cocteau. At the heart of video composition, the video works question the notion of “what is magical” as a source of comfort, inspiration, and transformation, but also of manipulation, illusion, and danger. Participating Artists: Alessandra Arnò, Cagdas Kahriman, Fatima Mazmouz, Christie Widiarto, Véronique Sapin, Yue Liang, C. M. Judge, Félicité Codjo, Heejeong Jeong, Anna van Breest Smallenburg, Alena Kupcikova, Helena Martin, Kerry Baldry, Surekha, Rachida Azdaou, Tanya Akhmetgalieva, Nicoletta Stalder, Angie Bonino, Lucy Azubuike, Maria de Alba, Tanja Koistila, Katya Nikonorova, Irina Gabiani, Sigrun Hardardottir, Angelika Rinnhofer
Friday 12/9/2026
Visualcontainer: Panoramica*25, curated by Alessandra Arnò: To map today does not mean describing a territory neutrally, but rather recognising that every map is a device: it selects, orients, produces visions and omissions. Liminal Cartographies brings together works that inhabit thresholds between the natural and the artificial, memory and simulation, body and machine, intimacy and platforms, crisis and transformation. From the sonic and choral landscapes of Val Badia and Elba to virtual architectures inhabited by avatars; from narratives entrusted to AI to posthuman ecologies reconstructed through data and pixels; up to the city of Milan observed as a field of surveillance and war invading the background noise of the present: “place” becomes political, perceptual and emotional matter. The selection presents practices that do not simply represent, but construct conditions of vision, shifting the point of view onto a critical map of the present: not in order to close a discourse, but to keep contradictions open, to make thresholds visible, and to measure — through the moving image — what traverses us today. Participating Artists: Citron/Lunardi, Lorenzo Papanti, Nicola Bertoglio, Marco Gentilini & Veronica Orrù, Plurale (Leonardo Avesani / Chiara Ventura), Atefeh Khas, Massimiliano Marianni, Gianni Barelli, Francesca Longo, Cosimo Iannunzio
Unstable Horizons: bodies, images and worlds in transition, curated by Tatiana Altini: This selection brings together eleven videos that navigate between imaginary ecosystems, digital cosmologies, social bodies, and techno-dystopian narratives. Overall, the emphasis is on moments of instability: where a world, a body, or a system “slips” and its coordinates begin to shift. The screening begins with non-human scales of time and space (“Growth”, “Infinite Realms”, “The Mind’s Egg”) and moves to its moral center with “Count”, which questions whether pain can be “measured.” Next, the loneliness of the contemporary subject (“Follower”) and the autobiographical trauma in “Echoes of the Wound” refocus attention on the vulnerable body. The final section shifts to environmental and sensory horizons (“Lifeline”, “Verve Solar”, “Sungazing”), and the collapse of a techno-capitalist promise of “suspension of death” (“I want a refund”). The section concludes with the dissolution of the very concept of destination, leaving the viewer in a field of unstable arrivals (“You have reached your destination”). Participating Artists: Luca Lee, MohammadAli Famori, Maria Korporal, Daniele Grosso, ’Jacopo Mattia Alegiani & Edoardo Cicchetti, Anastasia Prodromaki, Krista Steinke & Sherman Finch, Maeva Badaire, John Mosher, Teresa Leung, Gerald Trimmel
Hide and Seek 1, curated by Martha Zoupa: “Hide and Seek” brings together video works that explore visibility, disappearance, exposure, and concealment, transformation and illusion, the real and the imaginary. Through elements of revealing and withholding, the program considers how bodies, memories, identities, concepts and landscapes are continuously negotiated between presence and absence. The selected works move through intimate, social, political, conceptual and poetic territories where what is hidden becomes as significant as what is shown. Participating Artists: Sofia Damala, Yana Gukun, Yiannis Pappas, Thomas Bennett, Alice Indi Ryne, Nadja Elpida Murze & Anastasia Shirmanova, Anna Kafarova, Angela Christlieb & Christian Dautresme
Memories/Histories аnd а Recipe, curated by Sofia Grigoriadou: How to sustain memories of love and resistance? What rituals to invent to process trauma? Do flowers dream of what official history erases? Participating Artists: Yanzhen Huang, Adam Taufiq Suharto, Justin Enrico Legaspi, Robert Minassian, Joana Claude, Daniela Lucato, Özlem Köse, Harmeet Singh Rahal, Jose Luis Benavides, David de Rozas
a-broad, curated by Olga Papadopoulou: A selection of video works exploring a broadenedstate of travelling. Movement and stillness converge in a journey where landscapes unfold, memories arouse, observers and passengers mingle, reality merges with imagination. Like riding an old style train. Participating Artists: Amir Komeli & Vida Kashani, Vlad Tretiak, Tiffany Carbonneau, Susanne Wiegner, Katina Bitsicas & Scott McMahon, Marcin Wojciechowski, Ethann Néon, Nenad Nedeljkov, Saman Haghighivand, Kent Tate
Photo: Torpeng Chua-oon, The Unveiling, 2025, 6.23’, Courtesy the artist and Video Art Miden
Info: ToPikap Kato, Olympou 57, Thessaloniki, Greece, Duration: 11-12/6/2026, Hours: 18:00-22:00, www.topikap.gr/ & www.festivalmiden.gr/
