# Athens : First Open screening of Bunker Buster

"Bunker Buster"
A film by Joseph Dadoune

With the participation of Alexia Vassiliou

2006 / Grèce / 22 mm / HD film / Black and With.




The title of the work by Joseph Dadoune "Bunker Buster" refers to the American bomb Buster, able to penetrate concrete six meters deep and ground to thirty meters. The installation of Joseph Dadoune includes a black and white high definition film, twenty two minutes long, that was shot entirely in the War Museum of Athens. In this project the artist invited Alexia Vassiliou in a conversation-action that combines fragmented speech, singing, movement and improvisation, elements that cause new "abstractive" situations in a shifted "other" space-time, with an interactive catalytic character of the release of primal characteristics and behaviors. The work records the triadic projective relationship of intellectual, natural and architectural space of the individual (individual space, emotional space, work space, space of the Museum), the white internal room (white cube) in relation to the space of the dictator/master.

In the internal atrium of the Museum two individuals wander and act: The feminine presence (Alexia) with her face covered by a handmade woven mask/shield of hair (the only opening of the mask is that of the mouth) utters speech and voice while the artist (Joseph Dadoune) personifies multiple roles: dictator, crazy man, child. Their relationship is ambiguous.

The primary feminine entity with her robotic dimension is identified with the essence of the bomb buster, it "penetrates" multiple levels in the intellectual space of the dictator/child, it crosses the successive spaces/rooms/corridors while simultaneously like the ancient golem prohibits every movement of entry.

A complex oedipal relationship is established between the two entities/spirits. Wandering in the space they avoid each other, they are met without ever meeting. The monstrous entity suddenly places the crazy dictator’s hand on her belly, a point of reference to fertilization and the power of woman’s nature, able to penetrate "enchantingly" in the system of power of authority and in the hierarchical relationships of the imposition of power of authority in the current social and political reality, a thought that occupies the multidimensional work of Joseph Dadoune over the last few years.

This dangerous contradictory sharp-edged relationship of avoidance and simultaneous penetration is strengthened by the transcendental schizophrenic situation of the "blind" artist/dictator (his eyes are voluntarily covered) who crosses the space enclaved in a reflected space-time of wandering, of confinement, of terror and of an agonizing search of catharsis.
Joseph Dadoune, through a "laborious" and long-lasting creative process of the treatment of film (change of color from colored to black and white, chronological shift of actions, interruption of linear narration, expulsion of concrete elements of natural architectural space, and utilization of special effects), presents the analytic conceptual dimension of created cinematographic reality (the film is based on the interjection of the three basic colors white, black, and red): the liberating nature of the natural and intellectual light against the terror of repetitive confinement that intervenes redemptively in a space-time without beginning or end (the viewer may watch the film without a time sequence).

>> Open screening : Monday 15 January 2007 <<

Track7 Art Space
Sidirokastrou & Amfipoleos 1, Votanikos
Tel. 211 100 7082
Entrance: Free

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23 December 2006 - 26 March 2007
10.00 - 14.00, 17.00 - 21.00 (except Holidays)