Author: gourgourini

A while before 2021 comes to an end, the Greek National Opera presents three productions created as part of the tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution for free on GNO TV, from December 10 through December 20. The programme includes the double bill of opera and dance Despo – Greek Dances that was presented in the Stavros Niarchos Hall of the GNO, the production Kolokotronis Contemplating the Future Women Preparing for the Revolution and I’ll Be Thinking of Something that was presented on the Alternative Stage, and a remarkable commission from the GNO Learning & Participation Department that will now make its debut, the video dance festival Miniatures for Revolution. The programme, part of a tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org].

The video dance festival Miniatures for Revolution is the new production of the GNO Learning & Participation Department. Inspired by the idea of revolution, five young composers and five young choreographers worked together to create short music and dance works, the Miniatures. The Miniatures were captured in original videos that will be broadcast on GNO TV. The production was realised in collaboration with the GNO Ballet and the Intercultural Orchestra of the GNO Learning & Participation Department. Five video/film-makers as well as young professional dancers also took part in the production.

Artistic planning:
GNO Learning & Participation Department
Konstantinos Rigos, GNO Ballet Director

1. haul

Memory is handed down mediated from generation to generation. School is the agent that passes down history and constructs narratives. Starting from a reading of the iconography of 1821 and baptising the materiality of memory as a miniature, five dancers in a school environment bring to life a tableau vivant of a collective memory. Through vibratory fallbacks* and repositioning of body parts, and with a progressive release of unruly voices, we seek today’s variations of the insurgent social body. If school is the seed of successive dichotomies, then the single body of resistance that is formed is ready to be transformed into its mirror image, as a sign of the times.

(* in military terminology the term fall back means to retreat and pull back.)

Warm thanks are due to Nikolaos Kaklamanos, Maria Thanou, Maria Markesini, Panina Karydi, Artemis Flessa, Nefeli Papadimouli.

Filmed at the Round School, Agios Dimitrios, Attica on 8 April 2021.

Choreography, director: Vassia Zorbali
Music: Stavros Markonis
Cinematography, editing: Antigone Davaki
Costumes: anomia
Director’s assistant: Evi Psaltou
Dancers: Daphne-Maria Douli-Gotsi, Konstantina Liontou, Natalia Baka, Theano Xydia, Maria Papakonstantinou
Musicians (members of the Intercultural Orchestra of the Greek National Opera): Sofia Zafeiriou (violin), Yann Ecorchard (cello), Manolis Christodoulou (qanun), Elsa Stournara (accordion), Yannis Tikov (double bass), Alexandra Balandina (daf, bendir, tombak)
Sound recording: Kostas Bokos – Studio 19
Sound mixing, mastering MD: Recording Studio, Nikos Michalodimitrakis

Photo: Antigone Davaki

2. KADIN – Miniature for Revolution

Obsessive patterns are constantly interrupted by the violence in the music instruments.
Aggressive events disrupt continuity.
Continuum.
Then event.
Then continuum.
A never completed sequence that swirls like a spiral.
Revolution?

Bodies trapped in their private space struggle for expression.
Self-isolation is suspended, and bodies touch each other.
Asynchrony.
Then harmony.
Then asynchrony again.
A persistent struggle for communication that seems to be constantly failing.

Six female voices discuss revolution.
They do not look for meaning or definitions.
They only mumble, and uneasily strive to articulate their personal stories.

Six female dancers, against the dominant national narrative that fixates on heroic and military achievements, give prominence to women’s power, women’s body, women’s voice. They reveal the fragility and vulnerability of their own personal revolution, that is, a fight that does not reinforce historical divisions but rather invests in the solidarity and the cultural closeness between nations.

(KADIN = woman in Turkish)

Texts written by: Lambrini Gioti (Swedish), Efi Psiachoulia (Bambara, translated by Fode Seydi), Victoria Taskou (Turkish, translated by Berker Basmacı), Rebecca Wolf (Farsi, translated by Arash Yazdani), Mei Angelaki (Greek) and Elsa Stournara (Greek).

Filmed at the Backstage of the Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center on 11 April 2021.

Choreography: Nikos Kalivas
Music: Ioannis Angelakis
Sets: Antigoni Vafiadi
Costumes: Angelos Bratis
Video: Grigoris Morikis
Lighting: Komninos Kousieras
Dancers: Alexandra Georgovasili, Elina Demirtzioglou, Daphne Douli, Natalia Baka, Sophia Pouchtou, Marina Tsapekou
Additional roles: Christiana Felouka, Ann-Kristin Sofroniou, Rebecca Wolfe
Musicians (members of the Intercultural Orchestra of the Greek National Opera): Lambrini Gioti (voice, nyckelharpa), Efi Psiachoulia (kora), Elsa Stournara (accordion), Mei Angelaki (Cretan lute), Rebecca Wolfe (violin), Victoria Taskou (yaylı tambur), Martha Papadogianni (cello), Mohammed Alabdali (daf)
Hairstyle, make-up: Eleni Nikola
Sound recording, mixing: Kostas Bokos – Studio 19
Recording Studio, Nikos Michalodimitrakis

Photo: Grigoris Morikis, Antigoni Vafiadi

3. FUGA

In a time-worn environment we are faced with the wholly natural tendency of body and spirit to react instinctively and interact in a direction carved out by the dictates of history, when circumstances call for it. Under the current dictates, two female warriors from the near future wake up exploring the stretto of human repetitive behaviour over time. FUGA is a short story of birth, stasis, and disorderly escape.

Filmed at the Lipasmata Multifunctional Park in Drapetsona on 4 April 2021.

Choreography: Myrto Grapsa
Music: Stamatis Pasopoulos
Director: Panagiotis Kostouros
Costume coordination: Dimitra Vlachou, Myrto Grapsa
Dancers: Stella-Jasmine Pagiati, Sevasti Zafira
Musicians (members of the Intercultural Orchestra of the Greek National Opera): Stavros Papakyritsis (οud), Christos Syngelos (οud), Hussain Badran (οud), Seray Yalçın (οud, voice), Savvas Koudounas (lyre), Cid Carmo (tarhu), Victoria Taskou (yaylı tambur), Guillaume Juigner (clarinet)
Make-up: Dimitra Vlachou, Myrto Grapsa
Camera: Damian Aronidis
Editing: Panos Kostouros
Sound recording, mixing: Kostas Bokos – Studio 19
Artistic consultant: Anna Papathanasiou
Production assistant: Dimitra Vlachou
Production: Edit59

Photo: Panos Kostouros

4. CHTHON

This choreography was inspired by revolution, the revolution of now, of then, of tomorrow; the one nobody has taught us yet, the one that exists in our imagination, and the one we haven’t imagined yet; the one within us, the one outside us, the one around us. It is a quick reference to all these revolutions, with the help of movement and images studied and captured as a quick sequence of moments.
The musical part was inspired by the folk and Klephtic songs of the time of the Greek War of Independence. Their mimetic character and two common vocal ornamentations extensively present in the singing, yet in their most unvarnished form, synthesise a sonic environment where the collective transcends the individual.

Filmed at the Stoa of the Panathenaic Stadium, Athens, with a permit from the Service of Modern Monuments and Technical Works of Attica, Eastern Continental Greece and Cyclades, and the support of the Hellenic Olympic Committee on 10 April 2021.

The copyright of the antiquities depicted in the video belongs to the Ministry of Culture and Sports (L. 3028/2002). The Panathenaic Stadium (Stoa) falls within the remit of the Ministry of Culture and Sports and the Hellenic Olympic Committee.

Choreography: Anastasia Pattelaki
Music: Yiannis Maramathas
Director, video: Dimosthenis Grivas
Director of photography: Manolis Armoutakis
Dancers: Maria Papakonstantinou, Konstantina Liontou, Stella-Jasmine Pagiati
Musicians (members of the Intercultural Orchestra of the Greek National Opera): Rebecca Wolfe (violin, voice), Anastasia Papageorgiou (lyre, voice), Labrini Gioti (nyckelharpa, voice), Elsa Stournara (accordion, voice), Victoria Taskou (yaylı tambur, voice), Stavros Papakyritsis (οud), Harris Lambrakis (ney)
Sound recording, mixing: Kostas Bokos – Studio 19

Photo: Dimosthenis Grivas

5. BATTLE OF FISHES

Six female bodies are suspended in space; they detect, meet and touch, dancing a light dance. Stop motion creates the illusion of the bodies’ oscillation in the air, in an attempt to capture deviation and resistance to gravity. BATTLE OF FISHES is an assemblage of snapshots, dislocated maps, technologies and bodies, rhythms and broken locations.

Filmed on 14 May 2021.

Special thanks are due to the Municipality of Vari – Voula – Vouliagmeni.

Choreography, director, costume coordination: Ioanna Paraskevopoulou
Music: Sofia Zafeiriou (the performance featured the work Allochthono)
Direction of photography, cinematography, editing: Chrysanthi Badeka
Dancers: Alexandra Georgovasili, Elina Demirtzioglou, Natalia Baka, Theano Xydia, Sophia Pouchtou, Marina Tsapekou
Musicians (members of the Intercultural Orchestra of the Greek National Opera): Orestis Gargoulakis (flute), Panagiota Xydi (ney), Anastasia Papageorgiou (lyre), Victoria Taskou (yaylı tambur), Christos Syngelos (οud), Stathis Koutouzos (percussion), Sofia Zafeiriou (electronics)
Sound recording, editing: Kostas Bokos – Studio 19

Photo: Chrysanthi Badeka

*Nikos Kalyvas and Ioanna Paraskevopoulou are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

What a year! In the attempt to recapitulate the last twelve months and to make ourselves comfortable with the forthcoming ones, Callirrhoë presents the group show Cc. Twenty three Athens-based artists have been invited to contribute a work on paper of theirs and to extend the invitation to a fellow artist who can also be part of an improvised network mapping. Though we all differ in many ways and our perspectives often diverge, we have to admit that due to the new circumstances, we have shared a common experience and we have gained a deep understanding of our interdependence. The image of society and of social norms has been whirling. Can we imagine building an in situ collective consciousness based on the individual relationships of a larger group and shared by the plurality of the invited artists? How can the symbolic gesture of „invite“ be entwined with and embedded in the process of a collective practice?

With works by Antonakis・Alexandros Simopoulos, Dionisis Christofilogiannis・Nicomachi Karakostanoglou, Theodoros Giannakis・Petros Moris, Vassilis H.・Jannis Varelas, Anna Lascari・Kostas Sahpazis, Panayiotis Loukas・Vassilis P. Karouk, Jack McConville・Quinn Latimer, Irini Miga・Eugenia Vereli, Charlotte Nieuwenhuys・Elena Demetria Chantzis, Panos Papadopoulos・Marilia Kolibiri, Nana Sachini・Margarita Bofiliou, Sofia Stevi・Kyvèli Zoi, Stefania Strouza・Ino Varvariti, Valinia Svoronou・Katerina Komianou, Alexandros Tzannis・Spiros Kokkonis, Giorgos Tserionis・Anestis Ioannou, Vaskos (Vassilis Noulas, Kostas Tzimoulis)・Nina Papaconstantinou, Nikolas Ventourakis・Natalia Papadopoulou, Amalia Vekri・Erica Scourti, Mary Zygouri・Nadia Kalara and 3137 (Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Kosmas Nikolaou, Paky Vlassopoulou)・Eleni Bagaki, Alexia Karavela, Karolina Krasouli; curated by Olympia Tzortzi

9 – 30 December 2021

Opening day: 9 December 2021, 7pm – 10 pm

Kallirrois 122, Athina 117 41

Thursday–Saturday 4–8 pm

and upon request

Delphian Landscapes is a series of underwater multi-site-specific installations project that takes place in the marine region of Corinth Greece and its surrounding sea areas. The team utilizes a plethora of LED lights that are installed on the sea bed amongst and within ancient structures, sunken vessels, and post-industrial artifacts. The project was initiated in 2019 in cooperation with Hyperlink Athens and is ongoing.

OMIO (1999) was formed in Athens by a group of train graffiti writers active in hacking networks, urban exploration, and in situ actions. The team has produced work all around Greece and in various foreign countries. The team works with large-scale installations, film, and audio recording focusing on multiple locations, from train graveyards to underground war shelters and from abandoned urban voids to peripheral industrial areas.

OMIO practice consists of a variety of actions that take place out of formal structures. These are small acts that provide momentary disruptions and ‘’cuts’’ in the everyday rationalized order (function) of the public space. These situations are based on a continuous collection and reassertion of environmental components in specific sites/structures. The topography of each of these sites is highly considered. The main intent of these actions is to infiltrate the site structure by integrating into it in an attempt to deconstruct and unlock layers between the sites fragments – components and mechanisms. Since 2008 the team focuses on the medium of artificial light emissions and large-scale installations.

Every action undertaken by OMIO is ephemeral since by itself it rejects the notion of the establishment.

Hyperlink Athens is an open research project, a site of interdisciplinary collaboration; this is the core that characterizes its trajectory. Hyperlink expands its practice/methodology into a symbiotic manner with off-site installations, in-situ interventions, video documentation, and sound, with a view to creating an autonomous fluid mode between artwork and curation. The praxis of putting works in a new light provides a critical research process of investigation, discovery, and reflection on contemporary culture.

OMIO “Delphian Landscapes”
09.12.2021 – 09.01.2022
Opening 5:00pm – 10:00pm
HYPERLINK ATHENS PROJECT SPACE
Asimaki Fotila 32 Exarcheia, Athens 11473
Opening Hours: Thursday – Saturday 6 PM – 9 PM and by appointment

Delphina Landscapes is organized by Georgios Karamanolakis (Fellow 2021) and Alexandra Koumantaki (Fellow 2019) in collaboration with art historian and curator Christoforos Marinos.

The piece “Re-pose”, taking as starting point the archive of the photographer Leonidas Papazoglou, is an attempt to represent his work, but also the various lenses through which we document and interpret reality. What are the limits of the viewer’s gaze looking at a photograph? What possibilities and meanings are embedded in a photograph and what tools does one use to transfer to the “here and now” documents that depict history or rather fragments of it?

Video Trailer:

Choreography: Ioanna Angelopoulou
Performance: Xara Kotsali, Martha Pasakopoulou
Musical composition: Maria Sideri
Synthesizers: Orestis Benekas
Lighting Design: Eliza Alexandropoulou
Dramaturgy: Rodia Vomvolou
Scenography: Valia Papastamou
Costumes: Christina Lardikou
Text editing: Pasqua Vorgia
Video: Manos Arvanitakis
Sound: Vangelis Sarrigiannis
Special thanks to: Yorgos Prinos, Martha Mavroidi, Nikos Siokis and Christos Golompias

Free entrance
Reservation required via email [email protected] or message 6976298165
With the support of the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports and Flux Laboratory Athens

*Martha Pasakopoulou and Maria Sideri are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

Sometimes going to the grocery store makes me feel less alone. Sometimes I’m trying to tell someone about this new opening in my life, and I end up feeling closed. When I say opening, I mean the possibility that when Ι feel I won’t feel like I shouldn’t feel. My body in a room with other bodies feeling me feeling my body. When I say this room I mean you. When I say you I mean make room.

On a good day, I write in sentences. On a bad day I write in thoughts. You know when you’re dreaming, and past and present blend together in a way that makes it feel like maybe you can imagine a future? And then you wake up. Dreaming is not quite escape, not quite thinking, not quite feeling, or is it? Because sometimes I feel so much more hopeful when I’m asleep, like this day when everything changes, I mean once I wake up, or maybe I’m already awake, but not quite, because it’s that possibility of living in two times or experiences at once, but in the same body, the one that lets me down as soon as I get out of bed.

– Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, The Freezer Door, 2020

The way in brings together new and existing works by Leah Clements, Christian Friedrich, Aaron Ratajczyk and Iris Touliatou. Video, sound and sculptural installations respond to the architecture of Haus N, proposing an existential exploration of being.

The starting point of this exhibition stems from the recent past – a time when our collective experience of time itself felt different, when the relationships between ourselves and our bodies, our surroundings and others were renegotiated, and when the exploration of interiority, embodied presence, and the desire to connect felt like shared concerns.

We have been working closely with each of the invited artists to develop a scenography that welcomes the viewer into an interior space of memory, feeling and desire. The presented installations make public and palpable elements that are highly intimate and intangible. It is through a specific organisation of space and time that the works move between introversion and entanglement, to convey a sense of containment and opening up. The way in “shifts with the emotion, with the feeling or not feeling, a vibration.”

About the artist contributions:

The continuous tension between (interior) self and (exterior) world, between notions of control and subjugation, between pleasure and pain, finds a cerebral/bodily address in Christian Friedrich’s silent film Untitled, 2010-2011. Alternating shots of freedom and overpowering – a man being repeatedly electroshocked in a sex dungeon, a billowing American flag, a NYC Thanksgiving Day Parade – rhythmically re-appear at a pace too high to grasp, causing images to appear superimposed and the video to become structural rather than discursive. This can be said about most of Friedrich’s work, as well as about the exhibition in general; the focus lies on the artistic rather than the referential impact, on what the work does and how it comes into being rather than what it is about, though without shying away from its references.

Leah Clements explores altered experiences of space and time through a light and sound sequence titled Reprise/Reprieve. The work has grown out of Clements’ text-based video installation in her solo exhibition The Siren of the Deep at Eastside Projects earlier this year, which is centred around the phenomenon of deep-sea divers feeling an overwhelming pull to stay on the bottom of the ocean in a state of awe and never come back up. This new work – developed through a more experiential and somatic approach –uses deep bass sound, warm lights and an installation reminiscent of an abandoned medical experiment, in a sequence that causes a gradual build up and sudden release of tension at set intervals in the gallery.

Presence and its mediation, isolation and connection, intimacy and belonging are explored in Aaron Ratajczyk’s contribution. His installation consists of a tent-like structure made of semi-transparent plastic, entitled Home Ressemblances, and a floor made of flattened cardboard boxes connected to speakers through contact mics, entitled Remote Ressemblances. Found on the streets of Athens and at local convenience stores these materials served as packaging of products from around the world. Viewers are invited to enter Ratajczyk’s open yet contained environment, generating sounds through which togetherness becomes both intimate and alienating.

Iris Touliatou’s contribution What we had expected and for how long is a new work developed through a relational exchange between herself and the curators of the exhibition. As a result Haus N is punctuated with objects, including Touliatou’s 2016 piece Exhausted Lovers, a carefully contained breakup, which the curators carried away from the artist’s home. While being abroad the artist entrusted us with the keys to her house/studio, to extract items of our choosing. The items are containers – drawers, shelves, trays, frames – each holding together very personal and at times useful materials. Through the act of making public, the negotiations and the relational exchange between us, the work engages proximity and public intimacy, agency and co-dependence, togetherness and solitude, optimism and letting go.

About the artists:

Leah Clements’ (b. 1989, based in London) practice spans film, photography, performance, writing, installation, and other media. Her work is concerned with the relationship between the psychological, emotional, and physical, often through personal accounts of unusual or hard-to-articulate experiences. Her practice also focuses on sickness/cripness/disability in art, in critical and practical ways. Clements is currently artist in residence at Serpentine Galleries and has previously been artist in residence at Wysing Arts Centre and Rupert. She has presented her work at Chisenhale Gallery, Somerset House Studios, Science Gallery, Institute of Contemporary Art, Jupiter Woods and Wellcome Collection, London; Baltic39, Newcastle; Vermilion Sands, Copenhagen; The National Gallery of Art, Vilnius; Eastside Projects, Birmingham; La Casa Encendida, Madrid. www.leahclements.com

Ιris Touliatou (b. 1981, based in Athens) engages in a conceptual practice, which transposes the political, environmental and affective, and employs various mediums necessary for each intervention. Manifesting in sculpture, photography, sound, scent and text, her work creates open forms and shared experiences, to comment on time, intimacy, transience, mortality, economies and states of being. Ιris Touliatou has exhibited work at 2021 New Museum Triennial, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; The 7th Athens Biennale, DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art and Radio Athènes, Athens, among others. www.iristouliatou.com

Christian Friedrich (1977, based in Amsterdam and Berlin) investigates the condition, structure and manipulation of subject-object relationships through a variety of media, including video, sculpture, audio and scent. His work frequently employs elements of the sexually outré, played against formalism, aestheticism, and structural contradiction. Friedrich’s work has been shown, among others, at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, PS120, Berlin; Cabinet Gallery, London; NYU, New York; Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen; Grazer Kunstverein, Graz; De Hallen, Haarlem; Goethe-Institut, De Appel, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Städtische Galerie am ZKM, Karlsruhe. In 2017, Friedrich was the recipient of the Cobra Art Prize, in 2013 he was nominated for Prix de Rome.

Aaron Ratajczyk’s (1989, based in London and Berlin) practice explores modes of intimacy and dis-identification, treating the body as a malleable interface. Often expressed through non-verbal affects – mood, atmosphere and poetics – his work takes the form of video, performance, text and installation. His work has been presented at Museum of Modern Art and KEM, Warsaw; Tree Art Museum, Beijing; RCA CCA in partnership with Nottingham Contemporary; Yvonne Lambert, Berlin; Forum for Live Art Amsterdam. Forthcoming projects include group exhibitions at Goldsmiths CCA and South London Gallery (as part of New Contemporaries) and a solo commission by Institute of Contemporary Art, London. www.aaronratajczyk.com

The way in is curated by Panos Fourtoulakis and Titus Nouwens

Graphic design by Sara Ozvaldic

*Panos Fourtoulakis and Iris Touliatou are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

Bodies In Motion, group show curated by Odette Kouzou
Alkinois Project Space – 6, Alkinois Athnes 11852 (Petralona)
Duration: October 17 – November 14, 2021
Artists: Anna Papathanasiou, Antonakis, Despina Charitonidi, Evgenia Vereli, Maria Louizou, Panos Papadopoulos, Rallou Panagiotou, and Sofia Stevi.

* Anna Papathanasiou and Maria Louizou are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

The Collectif MASI (Madlen Anipsitaki and Simon Riedler) with the artists Melissanthi Spei and Georges Salameh, present the works they created during the second cycle of the Station One AIR 2021 residency for emerging artists. The artwork of Collectif MASI “A square with a view – Renewing the self-image of a square” will be in Victoria Square from November 26 until December 3, 2021.

The statue “Theseus saving Hippodamia” breaks its silence! Ιt speaks about its life, its roots and its movements, the bullets that it took, its thoughts about the people of the square. Through paintings and spatial installations, we create a counter-monument, challenging the existing one to revisit its myth in the light of Victoria Square’s contemporary reality. There we set up an open-air exhibition, which consists of paintings on sheets hung from balconies surrounding the square. In the square itself we place four statues that one can climb for an uninterrupted view of the paintings. From that viewpoint, for the first time in years, the living gaze intersects with that of the statue’s. “Theseus saving Hippodamia” comes to life through their eyes, while the living statues reflect on all the things that the statue saw over the years without being able to speak about them.

Program of Station One AIR II

Friday 26 November
11:00 – 17:30 | Collective MASI artwork activation in the square with the community | Victoria square
17:30-20:00 | 4 sculptures presentation in the square, Collectif MASI | Victoria square

Wednesday, 1 December
16:30 | Presentation Collectif MASI | Elpidos 13, Athens
From November 26 until December 3 the Collectif MASI will be in Victoria Square (from 11 AM until 7 PM except on Tuesday 2 PM – 10 PM) activating their artwork by interacting with the community.

Thursday, 2 December
21:00 | Performance “Hippodamia Rising” directed by Melissanthi Spei | Elpidos 13, Athens
The performer Eleni Papaioannou will interact with Melissanthi Spei’s artworks. Starting from the Hippodamia’s myth, the performer will comment on the role of women in contemporary society.

Friday, 3 December
20:00 | Video screening, George Salameh | Elpidos 13, Athens
20:30 | Public Discussion with the artists | Elpidos 13, Athens
The artistic duo Collectif MASI, George Salameh and Melissanthi Spei discuss with the VSP community their experience during the residency program. The discussion will open with a video screening by George Salameh.

Station One AIR 2021 residency for emerging artists focuses on Johannes Pfuhl’s neoclassical sculpture of Hippodamia in Victoria Square. Through their projects, resident artists engaged the Square as a potential locus for intercultural exchange and community building and explored methodologies for using contentious monuments and public art to facilitate consideration and conversation across diverse communities about history, identity, and belonging.

The residency program explores the common ground that emerges when identities come to be viewed as ever-evolving and dynamic and to strengthen community through cross-cultural exchange and artistic production. Station One AIR 2021 is a collaboration between Victoria Square Project and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative (SNFPHI) at Columbia University, supported byCounterpoints Arts and Outset Contemporary Art Fund Greece.

*Madlen Anipsitaki is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow (visual arts)

The choreographer and dancer, Dimitris Mytilinaios, presents his new work “INSEQS- INORGANIC SEQUENCES” in a former car showroom for four performances (December 1-4, 21:00). INSEQS is a remnant of a classic choreographic composition that attempts to highlight the beauty of embarrassment.

The group, consisting of five dancers, a karate teacher who sometimes dances and four musicians, orchestrates a seemingly classical technique and vocabulary – which, while playing in terms of a variety
show, tries to articulate a peculiar stage language.

The work borrows the structure of a classical dance class lesson and unfolds in successive acts. Each act has its own world; each of the performers raises its own cross. Ballet hides behind everything. Rita
Mosss’s noise-punk music -specially written for the show- accompanies the dancers and exposes their agitation, adapting patterns from the classical repertoire and scores for ballet exercises.

By presenting a series of “ill-treated” exercises performed in front of an audience, (assuming that a lesson is the first choreography performed and therefore the archetype for each choreography), the work examines the pile of encrypted information that make up the dance body and the types of look it invites.

Choreography: Dimitris Mytilinaios

Dancers: Nefeli Asteriou, Filippos Vassiliou, Veatriki Kapnisi, Markella Manoliadi, Pagona Boulbasakou, Dimitris Mytilinaios

Music: Rita Mosss (Kostas Kangelaris, Michalis Kalligeris, Michalis Magnis, Dimitris Tsampounaris)

Lighting design: Apostolos Strantzalis

Costumes: Ioanna Tsami

Video / Photos / Graphics: Marina Skoutela

Production manager: Olga Tsatsouli

Press officer: Evangelia Skrombola

Production organization and execution: howtomakeyourlifeharder Non-profit Organization

Supported by the Ministry of Culture

INFORMATION
December 1-4 at 21:00
Estimated duration: 55′
97, Falirou str. Koukaki, Athens

*Dimitris Mytilinaios, Filippos Vassiliou and Nefeli Asteriou are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

2021 marks the 26th anniversary for Art Athina, the leading International Contemporary Art fair of Athens. Two years after the global pandemic Virtual meets Actual and Art Athina presents for the second time Art Athina Virtual as well as a multidisciplinary program featuring performance, new media space, live talks and a podcast series. The online event culminates with its physical counterpart, Art Athina Pop Up at King George Hotel in Athens, November 12-21 2021.

Check below our Fellows’ participation:

GALLERIES

a.antonopoulou.art
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/a-antonopoulou-art
Stefania Strouza

CASK
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/cask/
Irini Miga

CRUX
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/crux-galerie/
Anestis Ioannou

Donopoulos Fine arts
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/donopoulos-international-fine-arts/
Fotis Sagonas

Kalfayan Galleries
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/kalfayan-galleries/
Rania Bellou
Andreas Ragnar Kassapis

Zina Athanasiadou Gallery
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/zina-athanassiadou-gallery/
Maro Fasouli

Zoumboulakis Galleries
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/zoumboulakis-galleries/
Dimitris Efeoglou

CAN Christian Androulidaki Gallery
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/can-christina-androulidaki-gallery/
Petros Efstathiadis
Manolis Daskalakis Lemos
Valinia Svoronou

Eleni Koroneou Gallery
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/eleni-koroneou-gallery/
Eleni Bagaki
Irini Efstathiou

Ileana Tounta Art Center
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/ileana-tounta-contemporary-art-center/
Maria Louizou

PROJECTS

MISC
https://aavirtual.gr/en/project-galleries/misc-athens/
Νικόλας Βεντουράκης
Ναταλία Παπαδοπούλου
Βαλίνια Σβορώνου

Callirrhoë
https://aavirtual.gr/en/project-galleries/callirrhoe/
Βασίλης Παπαγεωργίου
Μαλβίνα Παναγιωτίδη
Αναστασία Δούκα

PERFORMANCE (FILM ACTIVATIONS) PROGRAM
https://aavirtual.gr/en/performance/
Curator: Kostas Stasinopoulos (Assistant Curator, Live Programmes, Serpentine)
Aristidis Lappas, Eleni Bagaki, Malvina Panagiotidi, Vasilis Papageorgiou, Serapis Maritime, Eliza Sorogka, FITA

NEW MEDIA SPACE
https://aavirtual.gr/en/videos/
Eva Papamargariti, Hypercomf, Kosmas Nikolaou, Kyriaki Goni

‘As Uncanny As a Body’ is a video work which documents the constant transition of a dancing body from an abled human state into a glitched, injured, unspecified one.

Based on the development and use of a GAN model, the visual data of a dancer are processed, and figures that manifest this in-between state are produced. What happens when AI is not used in order to optimise the performance of the dancer but rather to generate body types and movements lying beyond fixed standards and classifications? How does a poorly trained AI model perceive the body and how does it affect our perception of it? Does it remain human in all its smudges, cracks and distortions?

With her work ‘As Uncanny As a Body’, Irini provokes painless AI-injuries on the virtual dancing body with tenderness and a wish to bring the uncanny closer to the human.

Acknowledgments:

Concept, Choreography & ΑΙ: Irini Kalaitzidi
Performer: Maria Vourou
Filming and Digital Support: Stathis Doganis
Music: Nick Tsolis
Special Thanks: Daphne Dragona, Orestis Korakitis, Sakis Kostis and studio ΠΛΑΤΩ

‘As Uncanny As a Body’ was created during Irini’s participation in the 2020-21 Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Artist Fellowship Program by ARTWORKS (GR).

The exhibition series “THF Raw” acts like an open invitation to local curators who need a space to experiment, to take chances and to work with artists of their choice. By addressing the alternative non exhibition spaces of the museum, they both give a chance to unseen and unused spaces of the peripheries of the Foundation, while curating work that could be seen with a new set of eyes in these raw but established groundings that exist in the heart of the Athenian city.

The opening of the exhibition “The Swimmer” at the B. & M. Theocharakis Foundation will take place on November 24, 2021, at the balcony of the building from 18:00 to 20:45, and will be followed by a free screening of Frank Perry’s film The Swimmer (1968) at the Foundation’s auditorium at 21:00. Α variation on Natasa Efstathiadi’s solo show of the same title, which was presented at CAN Christina Androulidaki Gallery in Athens in 2014, the exhibition borrows its title from Perry’s film and from John Cheever’s 1964 New Yorker short story on which the film is based.

The Swimmer tells the story of a suburban middle-aged stud (played by Burt Lancaster in the film) who one afternoon, while paying a visit at some friends’ garden, decides to swim home across the county, pool by pool. As his friends are lounging, dog-day lethargic, drinking gin, he pictures “the quasi-subterranean stream that curves across the county,” the string of swimming pools that separate him from his home, and without hesitation he sets out to swim across it. His journey across the “Lucinda River” (he dubs the route after his wife) feels liberating and life-affirming in the beginning, but soon is given over to a haunted feeling. Ηis aquatic journey is quickly revealed to be the catalyst of his imminent disintegration.

Exposed to the elements, laid on the floor on the balcony of the B. & M. Theocharakis Foundation, ten compact pools made of plaster model the succession of swimming pools that appear in the film. Nine of the pools shown here were included in the original The Swimmer 2014 exhibition. The tenth pool, placed to the side of the balcony overlooking the Greek Parliament, is Efstathiadi’s most recent addition to the work, fully rendering the “Lucinda River” into its sculptural echo. The work now seems to address that same confronting question that laces the film’s poster: “When you talk about The Swimmer will you talk about yourself?”

Artist: Natasa Efstathiadi
Curator: Maya Tounta
Artistic Director: Marina Miliou – Theocharakis
Exhibition Production Assistant: Nefeli Siafaka
Copy-editor: EG (Eleanna Papathanasiadi, Geli Mademli)

Duration: November 24, 2021–January 20, 2022
Opening hours: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, 10:00-17:00 hrs, Friday 18:00-22:00 hrs

*Natasa Efstathiadi and Maya Tounta are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

WE THE ENEMY manifesto by SPIT! (Carlos Alejandro Motta, John Arthur Peetz, Carlos Maria Romero aka Atabey Mamasita) where Despina Zacharopoulou (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2021) is performing, will be screened online on https://kirikonline.org/ for the period 25 November- 9 December 2021.

The SPIT! Manifesto was a series of performance interventions at Frieze Projects London (2017) that used speech acts and performative gestures inspired by queer manifestos from the 1960s to the present. SPIT! wrote a series manifestos that respond to contemporary pressing issues of sexual and gender oppression and invited performers Joshua Hubbard, Carlos Mauricio Rojas, Claudia Palazzo, Malik Nashad Sharpe, Daniel Brathwaite-Shirley, and Despina Zacharopoulou to interpret, (in cases) rewrite, and perform them.

​SPIT! also published The SPIT! Manifesto Reader bringing together a selection of historical and contemporary queer manifestos to create a dialogue between radical queer histories past and present. 

​

Promise is Κarolina Krasouli’s first solo exhibition in Greece. She has had two more solo exhibitions in France, in 2016 and 2020. The backbone of Promise is a series of hand-sewn canvases, painted in gesso and oil in soft, pastel colours. These mainly large-scale works evoke windows, doors, books, folded pages, and envelops. They are displayed on the wall, like regular paintings, but can just as well be set on the floor. Most were produced during the last year, specifically for the Arts Centre exhibition.

The overarching theme in this series of works is the book as both object and landscape. The folding and browsing, the abstract language, the irreplaceable space of the book in general – from the unique ambiance of an old bookstore or a good library, handmade stationery, various archival paraphernalia and writing implements to the room itself and to a writer’s cherished tools (a case in point is Roland Barthes’ handmade cards, on which he wrote his journal notes) – these populate the microcosm that Krasouli evokes on her hand-sewn canvases.

Krasouli’s works are complex and elaborate, as sophisticated as an haute-couture garment. Using a time-consuming and laborious process that involves preparing the canvas, painting it, followed by folding, sewing, and ironing, the artist creates paintings that ‘express innocence of mind’, to quote Agnes Martin’s apt remark on the 30 screenprints of On a Clear Day series (1973).

‘This series of works on hand-sewn canvases evolved from my project inspired by Emily Dickinson’s envelop poems in 2016.[i] What I kept from that series is the evocation of paper, of a sheet through painting,’ Krasouli notes and continues, ‘This series came as a result of a small-scale painting (A Further Migration, 2018), in which I painted a stack of paper in a realistic manner. What I loved about this project is how we can sense the spaces of the sheets underneath without actually seeing them. That’s why I made the first cloths – on a much larger scale and using painting materials (canvas, gesso, powders, and oil).

The hand-sewn canvases are complemented by 60 watercolours on paper, titled Depths of Green (2021). ‘Repetition was also at the core of my work for the watercolour series,’ explains Krasouli. ‘When I embarked on this project, I had recently read Virginia Woolf’s The Waves and I made this note (hence the title): ‘Flower after flower is specked on the depths of green.’ I also noted: ‘The real flower on the window-sill was attended by a phantom flower. Yet the phantom was part of the flower, for when a bud broke free the paler flower in the glass opened a bud too.’[ii]

The artist goes on: ‘In this series I loved this concept of the double, the doppelgänger, the mirroring,’ she says, citing as her main influence Mike Kelley’s essay ‘Playing with Dead Things: On the Uncanny’ (1993). ‘Other artists I look at are Anna Oppermann, in terms of repetition and encapsulation, Mark Manders, and especially works involving stationery. I always look at Agnes Martin, Giotto and his colours, a lot of films, especially Leos Carax.’ To that eclectic list of artists cited by Krasouli might be added the Belgian painter Raoul De Keyser (1930–2012), who systematically explored the representational possibilities of abstraction.

What more could be added while looking at Krasouli’s works? Promise is silent art and as such invites contemplation – a visionary ‘contemplation… [that] entails self-forgetfulness on the part of the spectator,’ Susan Sontag aptly argues in her essay ‘The Aesthetics of Silence’. [iii] ‘The spectator would approach art as he does a landscape. A landscape doesn’t demand from the spectator his “understanding,” his imputations of significance, his anxieties and sympathies; it demands, rather, his absence, that he not add anything to it,’ Sontag writes.

Without a doubt, the word promise and the associated verb are weighty words. Like love and I love you, they carry a certain weight – they don’t come out easily. However, Krasouli’s work promises a lot and delivers even more – a new understanding of the meaning of painting today. In its fragmentation and serenity, in the sense of silence it conveys, her paintings annihilate you, take a weight off you. The heaviness of being lightens up, grows wings. Karolina Krasouli’s Promise promises a miracle – a different approach to painting and for that reason deserves our attention.

Christoforos Marinos

Art Historian

OPANDA curator of exhibitions and events

Exhibition Curator: Christoforos Marinos, art historian, OPANDA curator of exhibitions and events
Exhibition Duration: November 25th 2021 until January 23rd 2022

*Karolina Krasouli is visual art SNF ARTWORKS Fellow

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[i]Specifically, Krasouli was inspired by Emily Dickinson, The Gorgeous Nothings, Christine Burgin/New Directions, New York 2013, Jen Bervin and Marta Werner (eds).

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Susan Sontag, ‘Aesthetics of Silence’, Aspen nos. 5 + 6, item 3, 1967; retrieved from http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/index.html.