Angelo Plessas
Angelo Plessas is an artist who investigates the ambiguous approach of spirituality with technology and explores different cosmologies which connect ancient, folk and cybernetic histories. Since the early years of the Internet, Plessas’ research has been focused on the fluid relationship between online and offline worlds, and has been initiating communal experiences between beings, symbols, and machines. His activities range from performances to artist’s residencies; from self-publishing books to interactive websites; from quilted sculptures to live-stream events; from neon installations to educational projects. Recently his practice has expanded to teaching, writing, curating, and different forms of healing. Over the last few years, he has been organising the annual, weeklong gatherings of the Eternal Internet Brotherhood/Sisterhood and Experimental Education Protocol. These projects happen in different places in the world involving both international and local artists, curators, designers, and researchers. Angelo’s work has been exhibited internationally in recent shows such as the 8th Thessaloniki Biennale, the Onassis Foundation (Athens), the 8th Biennale of Gherdëina (Val Gardena), the Serralves Foundation (Porto), and the 13th Gwangju Biennale. Other projects have also been exhibited in documenta 14 in both Kassel and Athens, The Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), the Jeu de Paume (Paris), the DESTE Foundation (Nea Ionia), and the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Athens). He is the founder of the independent space P.E.T. Projects in Athens, a Fulbright alumnus, and the recipient of the DESTE Foundation Prize in 2015. Angelo lives and works between Athens and Kymi, Greece.
Angelo Plessas’s drop features three videos which deal with the concept of continuity between all entities. The videos are editions of unique websites, where you see images from different realities and continuities between our planet and the rest of the Universe, humans, animals, plants, and machines, channelling the idea of synergy between life and technology. Inspired by shamanic and tantric iconography they aspire to become TechnoShamanistic tools for healing, blessing, and meditating. The websites were conceived within the long-term project The Noospheric Society, which is intended to remediate the afflictions of lives that are possessed by a technological “evil eye”. Since 2017 Plessas has been cultivating new forms of communal knowledge and spiritual advancement, while questioning the ideals of unlimited connectivity and insistent demands to “become virtual.” The term ‘noosphere’ supposedly embodies a sphere which has advanced from the biosphere into a new layer of humankind’s planetary intellect. It was coined in the early twentieth century by French philosopher and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky.
