In this new phase of project NERO, we invited iconic conceptual artist and poet, Kalen Iwamoto, to enter in dialogue with ALEXANDER Schellow’s frames, to create a new layer of awareness on the river’s health, through a multimedia installation, including a collection of dynamic NFTs to be mapped on a free-standing monolith measuring the river’s health in real-time.

This series of dynamic NFTs brings together the drawings of Alexander Schellow and the writing of Kalen Iwamoto in a palimpsest that traces the fate of the Kifissos river. The drawings and text unearth the stories of a buried river, while setting up a dialogue between its (ill)health and its urgent, yet forsaken, state.

The images depict scenes connected to the river as filtered through the memory and artistic practice of Alexander Schellow. From a bank of hundreds of such images, the NFT displays one that corresponds to the real time pollution level of the Kifissos river, so the drawings change to reflect the health of the river. Various data that indicate the relative health of the river are selected, then tied to a specific parameter of the drawing (such as density, tonality, or contrast). When pollution is elevated, the displayed drawing is heavier, darker, denser, while a drop in pollution replaces this with drawings that are lighter and sparser, thus revealing more of the text that lies beneath.

This stream of text, crawling by slowly below the drawings, is a conceptual poem derived from stories about the Kifissos river. Using interviews about the river with those affected by its absence, Kalen Iwamoto applies a conceptual writing process to distill new lines from this raw textual material. The importance of these stories, of the Kifissos, and of the water crisis more generally is signaled by the large, bold, red text scrolling across the screen in the style of a news ticker, a literary-visual form intended to communicate important and urgent information quickly. Yet, the text is difficult, if not impossible, to read due to the slow scrolling speed and the overlayed images: the Kifissos story, pressing as it is, has not been getting the attention it deserves.

Can art have a hand in reversing this state of neglect?

Will people act to save the river, making the stories legible?

Or will the pollution levels remain high and the stories obscured?