Having just returned from a whirlwind two-week trip in which I covered seven cities within six countries within two continents and two time zones, I am the last person you want to ask what time it is. Or even what day. What’s so exciting about these sort of adventures is precisely that lack of attention to time—save for making sure to catch a train or plane. In our day-to-day lives, time—really schedule—seems to control every single action we take, and we lose the sense of impulse that makes vacation so fun.

This idea of non-linear time has been investigated by artists, writers and musicians (or at least maybe that’s what jazz is about) for years and is currently the source of inspiration for Greek artist Athanasios Argianas. For his current project at National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in Athens, Greece, entitled The Length Of A Strand Of Your Hair, Of The Width Of Your Arms, Unfolded, Argianas has created new work dealing with “memory and the way we process and translate information.” The title piece of the show is an eerie installation consisting of a metal mobile, which hangs in the way of two projection screens, casting a silhouette of itself onto the projections. It is described by the museum as “interrupting” the projection, which recalls the way one’s memories interrupt the present every so often, layering themselves upon your consciousness like shadows on a screen. Sometimes memories—particularly the really good and the really bad—have a way of interrupting life this way, causing us to momentarily lose sense of time and place. Additionally, Argianas’ piece involves the intermittent presence of a silhouetted man walking across the projection screen, reading aloud from a text, which is “key for understanding the work.” The Length Of A Strand Of Your Hair, Of The Width Of Your Arms, Unfolded runs through September 5, 2010.

Athanasios Argianas was born in Athens, Greece and currently lives and works in London. He earned his MA at Goldsmiths College, London. He has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally, including at: The Breeder (Athens), La Chambre, Xippas, (Paris), Faye Fleming & Partner (Geneva), The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion (London). He was selected to participate in Heaven the 2nd Athens Biennial (Athens), and was shortlisted for the 2009 Deste Prize.

According to the online catalogue (by both Goolrick and Artistic Director Lizzie Zucker Saltz) this exhibition asks whether digital media threatens the very idea of the free press in today’s society. As new media is unavoidably brought by globalization, many understandably lament the current proliferation of layoffs and financial difficulties of many local newspapers. Hannah Lamar Simmons’ work Newspaper Blanket is a decidedly nostalgic visualization of the decline of the news press. It can be read as a consummate expression of the familiarity and tangibility of the newspaper – furthermore as a part of our cultural fabric and the tradition of story telling. The installation is conceived entirely of newspaper woven into a ball of newspaper yarn draped over a rocking chair, placed alongside knitting needles.

Exhibit curator, Allie Goolrick, in collaboration with photographer Wayne Bellamy, examines the decline of traditional news media at a local level in a similarly reverent fashion, through the depiction of loss. An Echoing Emptiness presents digital photographs illustrating physical evidence of job loss and financial struggle at the Athens Daily Herald. These photographic images are alternated by quotes from well-known historic figures on the merit and importance of journalism in society. The gallery visitor is not only shown ‘emptied offices’, but ‘disassembled darkrooms’ that nostalgically point to the move from film to digital photography.

Franklynn Peterson’s photojournalism work from the 1960s and 1970s illustrates the darkroom approach to photography and its utility in capturing important historical moments and social issues. Importantly, Peterson’s photographic portrait of Marshall McLuhan from 1974 is projected as a 35 mm slide. The inclusion of this portrait begs brief address of what some art historical scholars determine to be our post-medium condition. Should we pay any mind to Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase that ‘the medium is the message’? If we do, it is certain to reveal that the multiplicity of outlets in which we receive today’s news reflects the globalization of today’s world. Globalization is both the determining force for the movement away from print and the defining context of today’s news coverage.

Athens artist Kathryn Refi, who received her MFA from the University of Georgia, critiques news from a traditional source. In doing so, she contributes her own unique take on the prominent theme of mapping, which has gained ascendancy in our contemporary period. The artist examines news radio in efforts to map the geographic location of news coverage and illustrate its incomplete nature. Refi’s All Things Considered marks the geographic location of the news stories included on the revered NPR program to which the artist tuned in for one hour every day for the entirety of 2007. Dots were placed on blank white paper (underneath which the artist temporarily placed a map for guidance) to carefully record the areas from which news was reported. The blank paper, which excludes national boundaries and territories left vast blanks – pin pointing the relativity with which we view the world. The catalogue points out that Refi’s work ‘condenses’ a year of news into ‘visually digestible form, making it apparent how much is excluded’ – unwittingly or not. Regardless of efforts by NPR and other news sources, coverage seems to be unavoidably biased and incomplete.

Despite the pains of transition new media must be seen to have many advantages, which include an arguably lessened environmental impact. Furthermore, its ‘grassroots’ character allows greater access and a more global audience as internet access increases. Anyone can ‘participate’ by commenting on online news paper articles while also blogging and tweeting their opinion. New sources such as podcasts, iReports and news websites emerge online, serving to replace and supplement print, radio and television. The contemporary individual can usurp traditional impediments and become a visible journalistic force. The new grassroots possibility of the internet news medium came powerfully to the fore on the Huffington Post, for example, during coverage of Iran’s recent election uprising. As traditional media outlets were banned from the nation, Iranian citizens submitted their own accounts and videos of events taking place.

In the context of globalization, information travels faster than ever before through increasingly complex and virtually instantaneous networks. Therefore, it is now more important than ever to question the source and integrity of the news we consume. Internet opens each of us up to a global network of ideas and stories – thus to the possibility of increasing awareness. While the possibility of new media is truly global, it is important that we do not overlook the need for an intellectual filter in order to discern what is reliable from what is not. Artist Jon English’sClassic Babel, investigates the over-abundance of information in today’s world. English places speakers that play all of Athen’s local radio stations inside of a visually classical column. Through speakers on the column’s facade, an indecipherable cacophony of noise is emitted for the gallery visitor.

English and other artists featured in Free Press in Free Fall choose to create work that is stark white. As the catalogue points out, this artistic decision can be viewed as representing or reflecting the concept of white noise, which is defined as the ‘”heterogeneous mixture of sound waves extended over a wide frequency range”‘. The omnipresence and wealth of daily news can combine to become ‘background noise’ that is too overwhelming to process.

Free Press in Free Fall ultimately demands that the gallery visitor approach news media with a critical eye. It remains at the Athens Institute of Contemporary Art through 8 November 2009.