COUNTER(-)
[2021]
VIDEO INSTALLATION
DOCUMENTARY
Counter (-) approaches the act of Electrical Power Theft using
the "tools" of documentary. Through a series of videotaped interviews it discusses
the political dimensions of individual and collective interventions in
the electricity network as well as the motivations and the nature of
their application, ranging from an inability to repay bills to a
conscious ideological attitude and from opportunism to an act of
solidarity.
The axes on which this attempt of recording, analysis and approach moves
are constantly alternating through different presences. The technique
itself, its transformation into knowledge and its way of dissemination,
the selection and subjectivity in the colouring of the act, as well as
the understanding of the respective context co-form a polyphonic
ensemble.
The interviewees are asked to cover their faces in any way they wish in a
process not only of concealing their identity but also of consciously
representing their socio-political self in the context of the interview. Their
disguises are being elaborated as techniques of self-representation and are
discussed during the interviews along with topics concerning technical, ethical and political
aspects of electricity theft.
Counter (-) does not seek a conventional depiction of the Electrical
Power Theft phenomenon. Instead, beginning with the mapping of a network
of actors, it deals with the various ways in which subjects choose to
make sense of a delinquent act, to form a political and moral discourse
around it, and to represent themselves in the context defined by the
interview.
Photographs by Stathis Mamalakis