The Athens Journalists Union’s (ESIEA) educational foundation will inaugurate an art exhibition on Monday afternoon entitled “Phryctoria: Dissemination of Information from Antiquity Until Today”, featuring dedicated works by visual artist and author Rania Kapeliari.
The exhibition will be hosted at the Union’s Dimitris I. Pournaras Library in downtown Athens and will run until Oct. 18, 2025.
The displayed three-dimensional artworks, created inside boxes, contain representations and information about a specific period in the evolution of news transmission over the centuries.
Next to each work is a historical reference to the way in which people tried to convey news and information since antiquity. The exhibition also focuses on the history of journalism, the historical development of what we call “media” today, through cataclysmic technological advances that have brought instantaneous digital news dissemination into the very palm of billions of people around the world, but with various “pitfalls”, however, lurking behind every pixel.
Phryctoria, or phryctoriae, were towers built in ancient Greece on selected mountaintops so that one tower (phryctoria) would be visible to the next tower, usually several kilometers away. The towers were used for the transmission of a specific prearranged message. As one tower would light its flame, the next tower would see the fire and light its own.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog.
Opening hours: Monday-Friday: 9 a.m.-4 p.m. at ESIEA building, 20, Acadimias Ave.
