The work “1981” (Allagi) came into being through a process of filing and presenting photographic documents from the archive of the Eleftheros Kosmos (Free World) newspaper (published from 1966–82), as the semi-official porte-­parole of the Regime of the Colonels was titled. These photographs, covering a nine-month period from October 1981 to June 1982, when Eleftheros Kosmos stopped being published, are presented in alignment and in chronological order, with no other criteria for their selection. They report about political, social, and cultural events, as well as show images of daily life. By means of an arbitrary narrative composed of this material, Vangelis Vlahos attempts an approach to the multifaceted notion of change (“allagi”), as was the dictum of the socialist party—which first came to power in 1981, and was invested in sociopolitical restructuring and transformation.

—Tina Pandi, adapted from In Present Tense (Athens: National Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007)