Never Cross the Same River Twice | Chapter 2: Transhistorical Investigations
Duration: June 12 – September 25, 2021.
Address: space52, Kastorias 52 – Athens 104 47
Opening Hours: Open to the public by appointment.
Contact: +306977041634 | info@space52.gr
Neon Announcement: https://neon.org.gr/en/exhibition/never-cross-the-same-river-twice/
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Participating Artists Part I: Monica de Miranda, Moataz Nasr, Emo de Medeiros, Harold Offeh, Longinos Nagila, Ahmet Öğüt, Gilivanka Kedzior, Marinella Senatore, Daisuke Takeya, Sammy Baloji and Lazara Rosell Albear
Participating Artists Part II: Valentina Karga, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Mary Zygouri, Ariana Papademetropoulos, Eva Papamargariti and George Drivas
Curated by Kisito Assangni and Ariana Kalliga
Never Cross the Same River Twice, curated by French-Togolese independent curator Kisito Assangni and Greek-British curator Ariana Kalliga, is a time-shifting survey of performances converging between video, film and installation. Initiated as a travelling research project in 2020, the exhibition connects two borders that unfold in tandem, tracing the recent video practices of 11 international artists selected by Assangni and 6 Greek artists invited into dialogue by space52, Athens. The exhibition embraces expansive videographies that aim to foster new forms of transnational and collective assembly.
The selected video works act as sites of visual contestation; cinematic aesthetics with narratives that re-remember; they reclaim histories and ancestries; decolonize both the mind and the imagination. Referencing Heraclitus’ river, which conceived identity as an ever-evolving and fluctuating entity, the title of the exhibition is a call to invent new grounds in place of entrenched environmental, political, and regulatory systems.
Exploring the limits of film as activism, several of the participating works reflect what Argentine scholar, Walter D. Mignolo, termed the ‘epistemic disobedience and decolonial freedom’ needed to rebuild just and non-colonial futures.
From a ‘coming community’ to a planetary escape, the exhibition opens up uncanny spectral exits to new geopolitical imaginaries. Accompanied by a parallel series of bi-weekly screenings and talks, Never Cross the Same River Twice aims to expand and densify the interconnected motifs weaved through the exhibition program; history, ancestry, ethnography, spirituality, memory, colonization, Afrofuturism, feminism, diaspora, identity, globalization, consumerism, myth.
DOWNLOAD HERE THE CATALOGUE – ready for print (
cover body)
Team
Curators: Kisito Assanghi and Ariana Kalliga
Project Advisor: space52 Founder, Dionisis Christofilogiannis
Communications Coordinator: Dimitra Michail
Design: Pantelis Vitaliotis-Magneto and Virginia Russolo
Public Program Guest Curators: Argyro Nicolaou, Samantha Ozer, Evi Roumani (LAB12, Athens School of Fine Arts), Menelaos Karamaghiolis
Download Press Release – English Version
Download Press Release – Greek Version
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final note/
Performance, Change, and Decoloniality in Contemporary International Film, by Dionisis Christofilogiannis
The exhibition NEVER CROSS THE SAME RIVER TWICE, curated by Kisito Assangni and Ariana Kalliga, reimagines performance and film as vital tools for negotiating identity, history, and subjectivity in a globalized world. Drawing inspiration from Heraclitus’ notion of perpetual change—”No man ever steps in the same river twice”—the exhibition situates change not only as inevitable but necessary in our current socio-political context. This curated body of short film performances transcends geographical, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries to explore themes of memory, transformation, and decolonial expression through contemporary visual politics.
At the heart of the exhibition lies a commitment to decolonial aesthetics, described by Mignolo (2009) as epistemic disobedience, a strategy that challenges dominant systems of knowledge production. Through non-linear narratives, hybrid mediums, and transcultural motifs, the works in this collection resist hegemonic histories and reassert marginalized voices. For instance, Ahmet Öğüt’s The Missing subverts traditional authority by presenting dismissed police officers protesting corruption through Mayan symbolism and language—asserting indigenous identity in defiance of modern state power.
This exhibition positions itself within bell hooks’ (1995) framework of “visual politics,” where film becomes a site of resistance and healing. hooks emphasizes film’s capacity to reclaim silenced histories and offer revolutionary visions that nurture the spirit and counter imperialist oppression. This is visible in Monica de Miranda’s Beauty, which uses sculpture and film to evoke the trauma and resilience of the African diaspora, and in Moataz Nasr’s The Mountain, where feminist disruption challenges patriarchal structures within traditional societies.
Performance, in this context, becomes more than aesthetic gesture—it is a social act, a means of reclaiming space and subjectivity. Harold Offeh’s Two Positions, for example, performs the archival image anew, placing the Black body within historical architectures to reframe how we perceive space and belonging. Similarly, Marinella Senatore’s The School of Narrative Dance disrupts hierarchies of knowledge through collective, participatory performance, envisioning dance as both pedagogy and protest.
The curatorial vision also emphasizes film’s accessibility and immediacy, facilitating global dialogue and fostering cross-cultural understanding. Emo de Medeiros’ Transmutations, with its digital and mythological layering, encapsulates the exhibition’s concern with hybridity and contexture in the postcolonial era. His use of digital media to navigate identity, commerce, and memory exemplifies the exhibition’s commitment to artistic experimentation and technological engagement.
Ultimately, NEVER CROSS THE SAME RIVER TWICE is not merely an art exhibition but a mobile platform for critical reflection, community building, and cultural deconstruction. By engaging with memory, futurity, and affect through performative film, the project aligns with a broader movement toward the decolonization of artistic practice and historical consciousness. As bell hooks (1995) affirms, to reclaim representation is to reclaim agency. Through this exhibition, Assangni and the participating artists articulate an urgent call for transformative ways of seeing, making, and being in the world.
References
hooks, b. (1995). Art on My Mind: Visual Politics. New York: The New Press.
Mignolo, W. (2009). Epistemic disobedience, independent thought and decolonial freedom. Theory, Culture & Society, 26(7-8), 159–181.
