Vasilios Papaioannu – N.00090007
Grecia 3:17Synopsis: A violent detonation of colors peacefully settles into a liquid cosmos, blurring the boundary between macro and micro. An unknown point of view captures nebulous glints, rays of eternal beauty in rapid succession. Water is a capsule that filters and transforms solid form into a primordial scream of echoed life. Energy is performing. Light, cracked into minuscule particles of glittery matter nurtures the cornea with disturbance. Motion is endless, constant. Motion is the transference of darkness into light. Form is reborn through applied mathematical functions transforming the content into an alter ego of itself. Digitization dies and becomes an impression.
Bio: Vasilios Papaioannu (born 1978, Greece) is a filmmaker based in the State of New York (Syracuse, New York City), USA. Although Papaioannu was born in Greece, in his late teens he moved to Siena, Italy to pursue a BA and an MA in Communication/Text Semiotics at the University of Siena. He completed his degree with an experimental final thesis on the Contrast between Nature and Culture in the combined video clip works of Michel Gondry and Bjork, supervised by renowned semioticians like Omar Calabrese and Tarcisio Lancioni. During that time he also completed and produced a series of Super 8 and HI8 films, in collaboration with the Humanities Cinema Group at the University of Siena, that showcased the work of artists located in the Tuscany region. In conjunction with his filmmaking activity he is also a mixed media visual artist, combining painting, vector art and photography. In 2009 he was accepted with a Full Time Teaching Assistantship by the Department of Transmedia in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, New York to complete an MFA in Film. In 2012 he completed his studies receiving the Master’s Prize Award by the university faculty for his outstanding work as an artist and a scholar during the time spent in Syracuse, NY.
In his works Vasilios Papaioannu employs multiple moving image technologies, ranging from 16mm film to high definition video to suggest the manifold states of human consciousness. Through editing these various techniques, the pieces drift between snapshots of reality and dream-like, memory-fraught states of the unconscious in the dust-spotted film. Much like a lifetime flashing before your eyes, the films run along loose narratives, which have become abstracted over time. The pieces reflect on the existential navigations of life, citing moments of daily routine speckled with intense vulnerabilities as filtered through a subjective gaze. Forbidden or suppressed thoughts are unearthed as melancholic soundtracks wash over and encompass the viewer into this strange yet familiar world. Papaioannu calls upon a symbolically charged cast of characters such as lovers, guardians, and prophets, and translates them into contemporary roles leaving a residue of significance on the encounters in the every-man’s lifetime.
Papaioannu has exhibited his work, in a variety of film and video art festivals all over the world. He is teaching Scriptwriting, Modern Cinema, Film Theory, Cinematic Modes of Production and Sound-Image Relationship as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Transmedia, Film, in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, NY.
