Opening

ΠΝΥΞ (Pnyx)
Directors: Angela Melitopoulos, Kerstin Schroedinger Greece 2026
Digital file without dialogue 4 min.

The Pnyx is a rocky hill in the heart of Athens, surrounded by parkland. On its slope lies a vast platform of eroded rock, as well as the orator's stone. From 507 BC onwards, the Athenians gathered on the Pnyx to hold their popular assemblies. In order to strengthen the power of the assembly and reduce the influence of the aristocracy on the politics of the polis, they thus established a direct democracy that granted equal rights to ‘free citizens’ – but excluding women, slaves and foreigners. This ‘parliament of the world’ ensured, on the one hand, the equal application of the laws, whilst at the same time serving as a popular assembly capable of punishing and neutralising citizens if they posed a threat to the state or were potential tyrants.

While walking through Athens, Angela Melitopoulos, Kerstin Schroedinger, and Stefanie Schulte Strathaus were discussing the theme of the upcoming Archival Assembly edition when they came across the Pnyx. The idea for the opening film was born.

Followed by: Vinzenz Hediger and Stefanie Schulte Strathaus in conversation with Prof. Dr. Sigrid Weigel: Transnational Cultural Policy and Cultural Heritage

Vinzenz Hediger is director of the Cinémathèque suisse. He was Krupp Foundation professor of documentary forms at Ruhr University Bochum from 2004 to 2011 and professor of cinema studies at Goethe University Frankfurt from 2011 to 2026. He is a co-founder of NECS - European Network of Cinema and Media Studies (necs.org) and the founding editor of the Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft (www.zfmedienwissenschaft.de).

Angela Melitopoulos is an artist and realizes experimental media art pieces, mostly multi-screen video installations. Her film installations on mnemonic politics stand for resistant subjectivities and post-colonial alliances within historical contexts shaped by imperialist violence, fascism, and nation-state oppression of migration in the 20th century. Her videos have been shown at festivals, exhibitions, and museums internationally. She holds a PhD in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London, and has taught media art at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and HfG Karlsruhe. Melitopoulos/Schroedinger have been collaborating since 2019 and have a music project named Zonkey.

Kerstin Schroedinger works on long-term, research-based projects at the intersection of film, sound, and performance, engaging with the social and political formations of time-based media through their historicity and materiality. She is currently a University Researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki. Schroedinger’s works have been screened and exhibited across the world, including at CIC Cairo, Whitney Museum of American Art New York, 17th Istanbul Biennial, 2nd Kyiv Biennial, and have been featured at international film festivals in Berlin, Hong Kong, and Toronto, among many others. Melitopoulos/Schroedinger have been collaborating since 2019 and have a music project named Zonkey.

Stefanie Schulte Strathaus is the Artistic Director of Arsenal Filminstitut in Berlin. From 2001 to 2019 she was a member of the selection committee of the Berlinale Forum and from 2006–2020 founding director of Forum Expanded. She curated exhibition and research projects such as Living Archive – Archive Work as a Contemporary Artistic and Curatorial Practice (2010–2013) and Archive außer sich (2017–2022). In 2021 she launched the biennial festival Archival Assembly. Schulte Strathaus serves on the boards of FIAF (International Federation of Film Archives), the master’s program Film Culture at the University of Jos/Nigeria, and the Harun Farocki Institut. She is co-editor (with Vinzenz Hediger) of Accidental Archivism: Shaping Cinema’s Futures with Remnants of the Past (2024).

Sigrid Weigel held professorships in Hamburg, Zurich, Princeton, and Berlin before becoming Director of the Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL), which she developed into a laboratory for experimental interdisciplinary research addressing pressing contemporary questions. Her work focuses, among other areas, on early cultural studies (Freud, Warburg, Benjamin, among others), image theory, genetics/genealogy/heritage, the plurality of European cultural history, and the concept of the “cultural nation” (Kulturnation). In 2019, she published the study Transnational Foreign Cultural Policy – Beyond National Culture.