THE GLASSHOUSE PROJECT

We light up the Port! At the Port’s pier 1, at the former nursery station building, a big-size and glass-packed structure, the Festival showcases The Glasshouse Project.

The Glasshouse Project is an installation commissioned to artist Nikos Rakkas that draws inspiration from the conditions of confinement we’re experiencing during this unprecedented situation. The installation will adorn the former nursery station on a daily basis. All of the building’s glasses have been covered with multicolored slides that are lit up from the inside, generating a multicolor light, visible from the entire seaside front of Thessaloniki, as the night falls.

“The idea was to build a light-based installation. A multicolor light, which, even if cooked up in quarantine like ourselves, has the power to brighten up the entire city, offering a glimpse of hope and courage”, points out Orestis Andreadakis, TIFF’s Artistic Director and the project’s curator.

Nikos Rakkas, the artist behind The Glasshouse Project, goes on to say: “I was suddenly picturing the people around me and my own world inside little boxes, having found the way to shine brightly. Little boxes with pervasive light inside them, whose glow was and still is an essential element of my microcosm. The building at the pier was an everyday companion for me during that time, therefore the ideal location to set up the installation.”

At the same time, a luminous board has been placed in the interior premises of the former nursery station on the surface of which, verses, poems and short texts will be attached and projected every day.

The kick-off was with Giorgos Seferis’ haiku

Whether it’s dusk
Or dawn’s first light
The jasmine stays
Always white

giving the floor to the verses of Father Simeon on Monday

Laying drops one by one,
hope paved
a bedrock of breeze.

Stay tuned for these daily poetic surprises.

Take a glimpse of The Glasshouse Project on the following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeGKVKxT7_w&feature=youtu.be

Nikos Rakkas is a Thessaloniki-based visual artist and photographer. He creates conceptual window displays and installations in stores, bars and outdoor spaces. He is the artist behind The Playmobil project, where he photographs Playmobil figures as if regular everyday people.