SMART PANTHEON (short version)

My themes and visual researches deal with powerful symbols, myths and signs from architecture, society, politics, movies, and religions. My artworks are explorations of their meanings, a questioning, reevaluation, and creations of new associations. In order to undermine entrenched representations, I work directly with them, contradict or re-interpret them with visual means, or focus on their hidden aspects. Using video, animation, collage, abstraction, and found footage, well-known figures undergo transformations, start to communicate and build new relations. Symbols of identities turn into elements of dialogues.

Project Synopsis

SMART PANTHEON (short version). Myriam Thyes, 2016, HD video, 5:50, b/w, stereo.

Director, concept, camera, editing, effects, sound: Myriam Thyes. 2nd camera and 2nd sound recording: Monika Pirch.

All kinds of people are using their smartphones. The displays don’t show any apps – only the sensual movements of the hands count. Each pair of hands plays both roles from Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” at the Sistine Chapel: God the father and Adam, whose fingers touch each other. Smartphones are the new saints to which we cling and who guide us on our ways – they are the amulets of our time.

Project Website

↳ http://www.thyes.com/relations-polarities/smart-pantheon

Video Documentation

Artist Bio

Myriam Thyes is a new media artist from Switzerland and Luxembourg, living in Germany. 1986-92 Academy of Fine Arts, Dusseldorf, Prof. Nan Hoover. Since 1994, Thyes participates in exhibitions and festivals internationally.

Awards: Depict Award, Encounters Festival, Bristol (UK), 2005; MultiMedia Prize, Avanca Festival, Portugal, 2006. Web / New Media Award, AltFF Alternative Film Festival, Toronto, Canada, 2017. Best Experimental Award, Near Nazareth Film Festival, Israel, 2017. Best Video Art Award, FICOCC Five Continents Intl. Festival, Venezuela, 2018.
AIR: Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (1990); Glasgow, UK (2008); Styria AIR, Graz, Austria (2015).

Fundings by: City of Dusseldorf, State of Northrhein-Westfalia, Swiss Federal Office of Culture, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, State of Luxembourg, City of Graz + Province of Styria (Austria).
Publications: ReVisions (2007); Glasgow Styles / Magnify Malta (2012), both Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg.

Myriam Thyes is represented by the foundation imai – inter media art institute, Dusseldorf.