Waking Καλλιόπη is a collaborative online artwork by Tim Brennan and Ilektra Maipa and supported by Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. It forms part of their ongoing research into the performativity of writing, reading, the visual and focuses the potential of the internet to unlock the terms and conditions of poetry. By navigating in space (with cursor movements) a line drawn in real time traces across the user’s screen. This journey is built gradually at the pace of every user. When the user clicks on points along the line the words of Brennan and Maipa’s collaborative poem are revealed. Each pop up window is coded to show a section of google images associated to each word. By clicking new points along the line successive words of the poem appear along with further curated information. Each user determines how they write and read the poem through their action of drawing. In this way the idea of the poem as a locked or sealed object is opened up to the agency of the user. The user becomes the reader, writer and maker in the extended visual poem.
BY Tim Brennan, Ilektra Maipa Tim Brennan, Ilektra Maipa (UK/GR)
Tim Brennan has exhibited internationally over the last 35 years, including the 50th and 54th Venice Biennales, Interzone Performance Biennale in Quebec, Canada and The British Museum, London. He has published extensively with over 15 monograph publications and into multiple academic journals. In 2007 Brennan was shortlisted for the UK's Northern Arts Prize. Currently, Brennan is Professor of Art and Head of the Department of Art & Performance at Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.
Ilektra Maipa is a visual artist based in Thessaloniki, Greece. She studied Painting in the Department of Visual & Applied Arts at University of Western Macedonia. She continued her studies at the Manchester School of Art, Metropolitan University of Manchester. She has presented her work in various exhibitions in Greece and abroad: MATAROA Awards; Art Thessaloniki International Contemporary Art Fair (2021), Manchester Art Fair, UK (2019), the Brave New World project, K-Gold Gallery, Lesvos, Greece (2016), She has been awarded with the ARTWORKS Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship Award (2020).
