Image/Method: Thodoris Chiotis
[Splicing language]


1. Could you briefly describe the conceptual process you follow in your work?

The conceptual process of a given work depends largely on the medium I am using. Like most work, the conceptual process begins in the process of designing, researching, or attempting to think through a specific problem or issue. More than anything, in the beginning I am focused on splicing and overlaying different ideas and sensations. The express purpose is to generate and evaluate whether the accumulated material and prospective techniques can be used towards the execution of the work. This means that I try to brainstorm the context or self-imposed restrictions in order to create a framework which will guide the subsequent development of the work. Often this means that the conceptual process is one of rejecting and erasing previously accumulated work. In the visual work I have been doing in this vein seeks to explore the concept of blurred/blurry vision and the strategies employed to manage this sensory experience.

2. Is there a dynamic movement/shape/pattern or even rhythm that you are more drawn to in your visual thinking while working?

In my work, images are cut, spliced and manipulated in more ways than one. I borrow techniques from the Concrete Poetry movement and reuse them in a way which explores where and how language as a visual object might be folded into image. Repetition is key to my visual work and this is evident in how the work and its components are repeated across the image itself.

3. Has the image(s) you have chosen here to share shifted your understanding or tapped into an area that was unknown to you? And if so, could you loosely link an idea with an imagistic aspect?

This particular image has allowed me to rethink the geometry used in portrait photography and how verisimilitude is essentially a construct. In this sense, I came to think how representation as practice can be amplified to the point that it bleeds into hard-edged abstraction.

 

  • Theodoros Chiotis’ publications include Screen (Paper Tigers Books, 2017), limit.less: towards an assembly of the sick (Litmus, 2017), κράμα (ή, γλώσσα_μηχανή) ([φρμκ], 2025) and counterfactual (Steel Incisors, 2026). He is also the editor and translator of the anthology Futures: Poetry of the Greek Crisis (Penned in the Margins, 2015). His work has appeared in Litmus, Datableed, Tripwire, Poetry Wales, Shearsman, Adventures in Form, Austerity Measures, Tenebrae, Forward Book of Poetry 2017, aglimpseof, Visual Verse, lyrikline, Otoliths, amongst others. He has translated contemporary British and American poets into Greek and Aristophanes into English. He is a member of the editorial board of the Greek literary magazine [φρμκ]. His project Mutualised Archives, an ongoing performative interdisciplinary work, received the Dot Award by the Institute for the Future of Book and Bournemouth University; he has also been awarded a High Commendation from the Forward Prizes for Poetry in 2017.