and, so what?

A work in progress by Constantinos Hadzinikolaou and Apostolos Vasilopoulos

Flickering lights, moving images, refracted; fleeting visions of the aggressive tenderness of this city, its sonic reverberations and a group of friends making noise. And, so what?

And, so what? Is born from ten years of research retracing the musical outburst, the lives, the breakup and ensuing disarray of En Plo, a Greek rock band that produced just one album and one live concert. Constantinos Ηadzinikolaou and Apostolos Vasilopoulos, over the last decade, have been amassing archival footage, interviewing the surviving band members (radically calmed tending to gardens in time), sourcing material, making notes, interviewing, listening, filming; a side quest, nurturing their very own friendship, which in turn forms a central part of this narrative. This exhibition is as much about them, their shared vision, their friendship – or the deep-felt invisible urges that drive anyone to make, something. The process of making, and the making of making is very much felt in this project, never mind whether it’s an album or a film, or indeed the conceptual loop of an exhibition about a film about a band. The intent, and its representational reflection into the world, remains porous, full of gaps and fissures. And so, the moving images that light up the exhibition: sequences of archival documentation, hand held cameras, Super 8, Video 8, MiniDV, excerpts from national Greek TV, suggesting, insisting, probing, appear unpolished, rough cut, like the fractured story line, of a story as yet untold.

Considered an acoustic milestone, En Plo’s single album fused layered musical references, encapsulating the acidic fragility of a still poor city, badly built, lurching backwards and forwards, awkwardly modernizing, and a tense political moment in Greece’s post Junta history. The moving images speak of an as yet unassimilated underground scene, where creative urges flirted with the political fringe. We are now well accustomed to turbulence, violence even (in a world currently saturated by terror and aggression), shiny, wrapped up in gold, marketed, embellished, just so. But what about a time when darkness lingered uncomfortably on the edge, closer than we thought, in the house next door. What about a not so recent and yet not so distant moment when shadows simmered behind closed doors, bursting at the seams? When those speaking from the limits were not capitalized, marketed, but pushed further to the brink – how do their cries of anguish echo with us now? Do their calls still resonate?

The exhibition space, lit-up by reflections, uses the filmic form of time to talk about its very passage. And, so what? is slippery like the past, yet glistening. A compilation of images trying to piece together the elusive story of a ghost band that appeared and vanished, and the aspirational dream of making music, a sonic representation of a given historical moment, the arduous task of remembrance, friendship but most of all the melancholic hum of failure. As the lyrics from one of En Plo’s songs asks, “Where have all our friends gone? Where are they lost? How will this cry come to an end?” We see the band members young, brash, defiant, and then again quiet, older, alone, wounded by life, accepting its wear and tear. This is a story about music, the streets, politics, the underground, and time that slips through our fingers. But most importantly, it’s a story about a moment where electric dreams rose and died, leaving nothing but ashes.

Public programme

Saturday, 18 October 2025, 16:00  | Guided exhibition tour by Apostolos Vasilopoulos

Saturday, 15 November 2025, 16:00 | Guided exhibition tour by Constantinos Hadzinikolaou

Wednesday, 3 December 2025, 20:00 | Listening session of En Plo’s album

Saturday, 13 December 2025, 16:00 | Guided exhibition tour by Maria-Thalia Carras