Catriona Gallagher

Untangling Knowledge Systems with Plants and Artist’s Moving Image

Talk description:
In this presentation, artist Catriona Gallagher, will discuss some of her recent projects, including Daphne was a torso ending in leaves, a digitised 16mm film that explores the mythological transformation of Daphne into a bay laurel tree and its representation in contemporary Rome. The 16mm film was developed using a soup made from bay laurel leaves, vitamin C, and soda. Gallagher will also discuss her current project, which applies the same plant-based processing technique to develop a film that depicts the garden of Sparoza, near Athens. This experimental garden was established in 1963 by Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, a British professor of urban planning at Harvard and a major figure of post-war modernism. Gallagher tells the story of the garden by activating the garden as a medium for film making; she develops the film using plants sourced from the garden itself.

Bio:
Catriona Gallagher (UK/IE) is a visual artist and filmmaker working between the UK and Greece. Her work probes at the collision of manmade and natural worlds, navigating overlooked details in our physical surroundings and their mirroring psychological landscapes. She uses moving image, drawing, writing, and research processes to map physical and conceptual traces of human and non-human relations. Her work has been shown internationally in exhibitions and film festivals and supported by Arts Council England, Creative Ireland, the Bridget Riley Foundation, the British School at Rome, and the Onassis Foundation; she is an Onassis AiR Fellow. Her 2024 film Daphne was a torso ending in leaves was awarded the KNF Award in the Tiger Shorts Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

https://www.catrionargallagher.com/

Christos Bourantas

Fragmented Worlds: Reimagining Cultural Heritage through Immersive Environments

Talk description:
This talk explores a series of projects at the intersection of cultural heritage, XR technologies, game design, and interactive storytelling. Drawing from works that range from immersive museum installations to performative VR and speculative environments, it examines how historical and artistic material can be translated into engaging, playable worlds through interaction, cinematic language, and world-building. Rather than reconstructing static cultural narratives, these projects propose an interdisciplinary approach to designing digital experiences, treating documented material as a starting point, continuously re-authored through interaction, embodiment and technology.

Bio:
Christos Bourantas (GR) is an architect, filmmaker, and digital artist. His work explores speculative spaces through digital media, following a cross-disciplinary, narrative-driven approach. He has worked in production design and art direction for film, games, and XR projects, and has participated in European research initiatives focused on cultural heritage digitization.

https://christosbourantas.com/
 

Organized by Ingrid Halland and Panagiotis Farantatos. 
Department of Art History, Aesthetics & Culture and Museology, Aarhus University