Plásmata 3: Embodied Form and the Memory of Matter

Spaces do not exist in themselves; they become meaningful through our presence, perception, and movement within them. This is acutely felt in Athens’ Pedion tou Areos Park, where the third edition of the Plásmata project by the Onassis Foundation has been on view since May 27. The title Plásmata (from the Greek πλάσματα, “creatures,” “beings,” “forms”) is multilayered, evoking both living organisms and artificial bodies, including digital structures.

The project’s theme We've Met Before, Haven't We? asks a question, or perhaps makes a statement, addressed not only to the viewer but to the city itself. Here, Athens is not merely a backdrop, but a living body in dialogue with artists, curators, and visitors.

This is not simply an open-air exhibition, it is a poetic intervention into the vast space of the park, into the fabric of the city, into its daytime and nighttime rhythms, into collective and embodied memory. Architecture, plants, fountains, illuminated paths, and the shadows of trees become part of an extended scenography, a performance unfolding over time and space.

Plásmata 3 explores themes of fluidity, elusive identity, the digital body, and traces of the past, accumulated like sediment in the soil. The park itself becomes a metaphor for organic memory. You can wander here, unsure whether you are seeing an artwork or a play of light on leaves, or become entirely lost, suddenly encountering a screen or a hologram hidden within a cave.

This is an exhibition you cannot experience all at once, it must be lived through. This is the strength of the curatorial work of Onassis Stegi, which has brought together artists from Europe, the United States, Lebanon, China, South Africa, and Latin America for an ambitious international project exploring the future of embodiment, urban ecology, and digital poetics.

The project brings together over 25 works, each offering a state of being, an experience, a somatic mode of recognition.

Among them is Tokyo Tonight by Ziad Antar (Lebanon), an ironic video where shepherds in a barren landscape utter the word "Tokyo," transforming emptiness into a scene of playful illusion. Anatomy of Non-Fact by Martyna Marciniak (Germany / Poland), a piercing reflection on hyperrealism, fake images, and new forms of digital truth. A fake Pope Francis wearing a Balenciaga jacket delivers a monologue about the nature of truth, questioning the reliability of images and traditional sources of authority.

Ziad Antar. Tokyo Tonight

Godfrey Reggio, John Fitzgerald. The Vivid Unknown: CloudQatsi.

The Vivid Unknown: CloudQatsi by Godfrey Reggio and John Fitzgerald (USA) projects images onto vapor, creating an atmosphere of perpetual instability. The artwork is based on material from the legendary film Koyaanisqatsi, a groundbreaking 1982 non-narrative documentary film that depicts the contrast between nature and contemporary civilization.

Focus! by Andreas Wannerstedt (Sweden) and The Sleight of the Machine by Maria Mavropoulou (Greece) explore the nature of illusion, desire, and the mechanics of deception, from ancient philosophy to machine vision.

In many of these works, the park itself emerges as a living archive, a space inhabited by spirits, animals, shadows, where the natural and the artificial intertwine into a new poetics of place. The Keeper of the Garden by Kalos&Klio (Greece), embodies the Genius Loci, the spirit of place, re-envisioning public spaces as political gardens of diversity, growth, and democracy. The installation visually constructs a new guardian of the garden, a figure embodying unity, temporality, and ecological awareness. Ares Awakening by Aias Kokkalis (Greece) offers an allegory of an ancient deity awakening in the modern park, in the form of genetically altered animals, evoking the site’s hidden energies and mythic layers.

Subtle and powerful works are woven into the park’s topography, transforming it into a mythological space. Anarchaeological Anaparastasis by Andreas Angelidakis (Greece) is an “anarchaeological reconstruction” that assembles fragments of real and imagined architectural artifacts into an installation, where the memory of the past becomes a stage for new, mutable identities. A term coined by Michel Foucault (anarchaeology) helps the artist articulate a liberating perspective on the deconstruction and reimagining of historical narratives through contemporary art.

Yoann Bourgeois. Approach 17. Opening

A particular intensity is generated by Approach 17. Opening by Yoann Bourgeois (France). In several evening performances, a staircase appears, ascending into the sky, and a figure climbs it again and again, falls, floats in a performance at the intersection of circus, dance, and architecture. This is an act of resistance against gravity, time, everyday life, and the system, and it speaks to all of us: people who strive to rise, destined to fall, yet compelled to keep trying. I saw the audience hold its breath, such was the tension of this fragile, perfect moment.

Plásmata is not only art in public space, it is a choreography of the body within the urban environment, an architecture of emotions, an invitation to pause and perceive. It is a poetics of slowing down, a rare phenomenon in our digital era.

I left the park late at night, accompanied by the sounds of video installations and a DJ set, among others who, like me, lingered in this in-between space a little longer. And I thought: indeed, we have met before: with ourselves, with the city, with the utopia of a shared space where art restores our capacity for feeling.

Featured image: Aias Kokkalis. Ares Awakening. Courtesy of Plásmata 3