Today I am, Tomorrow I’m not, filmed in the industrial wasteland of Aspropyrgos, near Athens, reveals a forgotten place and forgotten lives. The two-channel installation highlights the struggle for survival of stray animals in this derelict industrial landscape where human waste accumulates in a vast landfill. Among the rubbish, broken toys symbolise fleeting interest, analogous to pets adopted out of a fleeting desire and later abandoned. This metaphor highlights the loss of reciprocal recognition between humans and animals. The artist raises questions concerning the status of animals in our society, challenging the hierarchy of life forms. Moreover, the work highlights the plight of numerous strays in Greece: including the abandonment of pets, the lack of law enforcement despite recent animal welfare laws, a limited practice of neutering and old-fashioned views of animals as property or work tools especially in the countryside or rural areas.

The video is part of a larger multi-media collective project, entitled Greekies, that has been filmed since 2011 in the area of Elefsina and the Thriassian Plain, industrial areas at the edges of Athens. With moving image as its starting point, it captures stray animals and the spaces they inhabit, daily anecdotes, people who become unsung heroes of unpredictable films, public dialogues, and diverse artistic actions on critical environmental and social issues within the imaginary triangle from Athens to Elefsina. The core subjects are the abandoned and traumatised strays of these areas, which are extremely popular for adoption abroad despite their obvious disabilities: the ‘Greekies’. The term takes on an allegorical dimension by including anyone who feels isolated or abandoned.

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In Search of a Cage is a slideshow consisting of 80 slides which document the tender relationship between a juvenile detention centre inmate and a young bird who share the same cell. The work forms part of a larger project titled A Bird in Search of a Cage in which Menelaos Karamaghiolis looks into the relationship between the young inmate and the bird, adopting different angles and using a variety of media. The young boy uses a syringe to feed the bird – probably a goldfinch – with mashed up food. The bird, not being strong enough to fly yet, is learning to spread its wings as it teeters on the palm of its caregiver’s hand. It appears to be free – there are no fetters or a cage in sight – and yet it lives in a prison. Devoid of narrative or sound, images are here the only means through which the viewer can follow in detail this codependent relationship between a human and an animal, along with all its implied parallels and conflicts.