Katerina Angelopoulou is a Greek Artist
Episode 482: Katerina Angelopoulou‘s The Fumes of Mars is an incredible book.
I have to say that I am biased, having worked on it with her before she began working with GOST on the final edition. The final edition is really well-done with significant backstory and archival material for the Tragedy that was the Mati fire in 2018, an event that both Katerina and her family suffered through, and an event in which there is an appalling lack of responsibility still being discussed in Greece’s politics today.
The Fumes of Mars is a first-hand account of the fires by an artist working in a documentary-adjacent milieu, whose work covers the loss of her family and, through deep testimony, the loss of others, with supporting documents from the press, military, and government. Arguably, there is an open question about the events that unfolded that day in Mat, I, and it can be discussed through the lens of politics, ecology, and an attempt to parse out and recreate trauma and its effects on the human psyche. This post-traumatic disorder crops up in the discussion that we had in Katerina’s Athens studio this past October.
Please listen in and hear about the fire, and Katerina’s attempts to discuss its circumstances, but also its lasting effect on her family and her own reconciliation with trauma and memory.
