Critical Practice
Ioannis Dimopoulos
Sergeant Major of the Army (SMA) Ioannis Dimopoulos was born in 1983 in Athens, Greece and is the son of the Lieutenant General Nikolaos Dimopoulos.
Since his younger years, SMA Ioannis Dimopoulos has shown exceptional interest and comprehension in the field of motor engineering (vehicles) and a predilection in the sport of Shooting.
In 1999, he was awarded the gold cup in the category of Junior Class (125cc-stroke engine)in the Greek national car race.
From the Year 1999 until 2001 he attended the Zorbas Military High School in Athens, Greece and participated in numerous regional Shooting Sport Competitions as part of the ΑΘΛΟΣ team.
In 2003,after he completed his diploma degree in Mechanical Engineering (Automotive Pathway) at Technical University of Kalamata
(Greece), he was soon admitted to the Greek Non-Commissioned Officers (NCO) School with entry rank of Specialist.
In 2004 he was promoted to the rank of Sergeant and served as the executive chauffer of the chief of the Supply Division, Brigadier General Dimitrios Anastasopoulos. He then served in Iraq for 3 months as the executive chauffer of Greece’s Military Observer under NATO’s guidance.
Between 2005 and 2010, he received trainings at School of Paratroopers in Suda, Greece (2005), School of Mechanics in Munich, Germany (2008) and School of Military Diplomacy in the Hague, the Netherlands (2010).
He was then promoted to the rank of Master Sergeant, overseeing operations such as High Ranks military transportations.
In 2015, he received trainings at School of Unconventional Warfare in Colorado, US and in 2017 he received occupational training in Army: Mixed Media in Nevada, US as part of the Modernization of the Greek Armed Forces program.
He was awarded the rank of Sergeant Major of the Army with high honors in 2018.
Other interests include daily video making and Bird hunting (Aythya ferina and Bird of Pray).
My work is about human freedom.
Who is free? Who has the freedom? Who has the choice?
What is it that leads us to confront ourselves, our very existence?
Submission and Nomos.
I choose, I choose. Free Will.
When he understands that his freedom can begin where the freedom of the others begins, then he can understand the pain and difference of the other.
We have differences between us, but in the end we may not be so different.
Through my works create conditions—take away from someone the effects of society, peel off the skin that gives them recognition, enclose them in anonymity—so that one realizes his actions on his own and reveals his own face to himself.
It starts from the way he dresses and respond to his image, to the consumption and alteration of the notion of an ideal man as a patriarchal
figure, where he finds himself married to himself.
The unspeakable natures inside him are carte blanche. The fear of criticism growing on him. His ego and being are looking forward to him.
Also he challenges the absolute power and control over the others by resting on ideas and images through an art institution without realizing that
the same values take place outside the protected space and ensemble. But who is responsible?
The act of devouring the others without foreseeing the consequences is revealed, one heads towards self-realisation and redemption.
He continues with an enduring and profound journey during his first year abroad, where he feels himself and his environment becomes one.
The same man experiences the most difficult moment of his life, being helpless to act or to do anything. He can only pray for salvation through terminating his life, being unable to face the betrayal of his love, nor the pain that follows.
The journey also presents him a choice between two packages. The first one calls him to reflect and to share himself through exchanges with the others.The second one cuts him off from everything and makes him confront himself.
Alkistis dies, she becomes a monument and a show.
But no one can refer to her with her name. She becomes An empty space in a text.
In the end, what remains is the human.
The Hunters
Hunting, predation, κυνήγι, απακτικό, meanings with identities differing on the intention of the plaintiff.
They are activated in the same moment yet creating different time.
On the left side the hunter speaks about the rituals and the preparation of hunting. His initiation on the sport, the game, the instinct of hunting.
If one is born a hunter, if it takes the physical and sentimental space.
If behind the human, still there is the animal, keeping the top of the survival pyramid. If the knowing and the consciousness of the action makes it less human and the respect one shows in his pray-victim.
By showing his rifles and his collection, he speaks about the guns of one’s mind to poise the weakness of his body.
The survival of hunting until today and its preservation until future cannot accept it anymore.
One is not alone, he has accomplices, hunting is interracial. One has to smell and find the fallen.
Speaks about the fears of one, from how being the hunter one can be the hunted one.
And how one goes to bed after the act of killing.
Predators is about the fears and possession, Poachers is about human’s darkest hidden instincts, Hunting Preservatory deals with why and how we set limit within our mind to make us human, Mitigation Game questions if changing of environments can seduce a change in human nature, and Repopulation is about the regeneration of all aforementioned human natures.
Is there a trophy after all, to fill a gap, to fulfill a nemesis, to ease oneself, or to generate more?
Professional Mourners Ltd.
Showed and transmitted simultaneously next to the confession, a night in the street Filis, explores the same instincts of one, only that this time the pray it is not an animal.
The animal is the one who hunts now. It prays on its victims, either by hiding in the shadows, lurking, waiting for hours to step in, or in packs of young, un-initiated in it.
The power relation between one and the other, exists in one’s body and mind, in one’s society and what is forbidden, unspoken, hidden.
Professional Mourners Ltd. works as the mediator to showcase this.
The prime service of Professional Mourners Ltd is an online magazine, on which are featured. These , as specters only existing on the magazine, are actually women that passed away. Through engaging with these via the online designated chatroom provided by the magazine, a reader/viewer started to discovered the hidden stories, untold secrets, and emotions of these .
The notion of confinement—both one’s physical freedom and one’s destiny—is intensified via the setting of existing in the magazine. do not use their body deliberately as a means of labor to survive as sexual workers do, yet by doing so, they have been driven into a life without their consent. This sense of confinement is mirrored in here: by only existing on the online magazine that these women can come back to life, yet this place traps their soul. Their voice is muted, their freedom is deprived, only to await activation from the viewer.
At such a night, Midas Touch was attacked.
At such moment Alcestis, became an empty space on a text.
Medium:
Live stream, a journey and a night outSize:
The space odysseyAlcestis died for the sake of her love, but here she never returns to the living.
You cannot take back death, no matter how many times one looks at the screen, at the messages, at the phone. No matter how much you mourn, scream on top of one’s marble plate, you will never know if they hear.
They should have been heard when everyone could speak.
Now it is a monologue.
But there is still forgiveness, inside us, to make us keep moving. There is still forgiveness from the other side if this is what we choose.
But Stigma cannot get away, it is hunting one for the rest of his life, no matter how many times one has to die and be reborn.
SHE tried to forgive the one who took her life. For his own sake, for his own heart. But her words are trapped forever in that cargo, in that truck. She never had a chance of being born again.
Stigma will follow her thereafter.
Psychologist Tina Feidia, whose main work and research focuses on anxiety disorders, in collaboration with National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 1st Department of Psychiatry, is giving a talk about the stigma associated with people who offer sex services and to those who seek these services. The research and the talk is based on the selected bibliography of:
Benoit C, Jansson SM, Smith M, Flagg J. Prostitution Stigma and Its Effect on the Working Conditions, Personal Lives, and Health of Sex Workers. J Sex Res. 2018;55(4-5):457-471. doi:10.1080/00224499.2017.1393652
Benoit C, McCarthy B, Jansson M. Stigma, sex work, and substance use: a comparative analysis. Sociol Health Illn. 2015;37(3):437-451. doi:10.1111/1467-9566.12201
Zarhin D, Fox N. 'Whore stigma' as a transformative experience: altered cognitive expectations among Jewish-Israeli street-based sex workers. Cult Health Sex. 2017;19(10):1078-1091. doi:10.1080/13691058.2017.1292367
Ma PHX, Chan ZCY, Loke AY. Conflicting identities between sex workers and motherhood: A systematic review. Women Health. 2019;59(5):534-557. doi:10.1080/03630242.2018.1500417
Raine G. Violence Against Male Sex Workers: A Systematic Scoping Review of Quantitative Data [published online ahead of print, 2019 Aug 30]. J Homosex. 2019;1-22. doi:10.1080/00918369.2019.165602
Sawicki DA, Meffert BN, Read K, Heinz AJ. Culturally Competent Health Care for Sex Workers: An Examination of Myths That Stigmatize Sex-Work and Hinder Access to Care. Sex Relation Ther. 2019;34(3):355-371. doi:10.1080/14681994.2019.1574970