Author: gourgourini

“As Uncanny As a Body” by Irini Kalaitzidi

 

‘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 swimmer” exhibition, part of the series “THF Raw”

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 by SPIT!

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”: Karolina Krasouli’s solo show

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 Kelleys 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

[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.

 

Talk: Konstantina Georgelou

Konstnatina Georgelou, performing arts theorist, dramaturg and researcher, and  also a member of our Dance Selection Committee this year held an zoom talk and spoke about her interest in exploring discursive, artistic and activist practices as articulations of the political and how “practices of undoing“ can become means of creating space to formulate and express the collective.

Konstantina Georgelou is an Amsterdam-based performing arts theorist, dramaturg and researcher. Her research is on the practice and theory of dramaturgical activity, especially regarded from a political perspective, which is part of her ongoing inquiry on embodied practices of resistance and forms of dis/order as these are thought and expressed within dance, performance and artistic activism.She works in the MA programmes of choreography and theatre at DAS Graduate School (Amsterdam University of the Arts) and she is a senior lecturer in the Department of Media and Culture at Utrecht University, teaching courses on dramaturgy, spectatorship, artistic interventions in the public space and on performance theory. In 2011 she received her PhD from Utrecht University, with a thesis entitled Performless: The operation of l’informe in post-dramatic theatre. Together with Danae Theodoridou and Efrosini Protopapa, she edited and authoredThe Practice of Dramaturgy: Working on Actions in Performance(Valiz, 2017). Her publications have appeared in journals and books internationally, and she collaborates with dance and performance artists, such as Zhana Ivanova, Efrosini Protopapa, Billy Mullaney, Danae Theodoridou, Janez Janša. Konstantina also has an ongoing engagement with modes of production in theory and in the arts, which has been taking different formats in primarily collaborative projects.

Curator’s Talk: Marina Fokidis

After so long, we finally had the pleasure to host our first curator’s talk in person! Our guest speaker was Marina Fokidis, curator, writer, lecturer and also member of the Visual Arts Selection Committee for the 4th SNF Artist Fellowship Program.

Juxtaposing notions such as entitlement vs relevance, translocality vs global fiction, empathy vs exoticism, Marina elaborated on her curatorial practices and presented some of the major projects she has undertaken: the 3rd Thessaloniki Biennale as a member of the curatorial team, Documenta 14 where she served as Head of the Artistic Office in Athens, Kunsthalle Athena as the founding and artistic director, as well as the bi-annual arts and culture journal South as a State of Mind produced in Athens and distributed internationally that she founded before it temporarily became the @documenta14 journal for several years.

 

Takis Foundation visit

On November 1st, we visit with our cohor of Fellows the Takis Foundation in Gerovouno hill, Attica. We were immersed through the unique world of Takis: kinetic sculptures, magnetic fields, cosmic and invisible powers, telesculptures, telepeintures (telepaintings), telelumieres (telelights), musicals, electromagnetic sculptures, hydro-magnetic sculptures, erotic scupltures.

Panayiotis Vassilakis, known as TAKIS, was one of the most prominent personalities of both international and greek art scenes. A pioneer of kinetic art, he unfurled his talent after the end of World War II, and he asserted himself by offering a different approach to kinetic art. Self-taught artist by conviction, he managed to create an inextricable link between art and science by combining elements of nature and physics in his sculpturing. Takis, as a “tireless worker of the magnetic fields …” continues to this date to experiment and create kinetic works of art that have inspired painters, sculptors and poets of his generation, as well as his contemporaries.

Takis Foundation – Research Center for the art & the sciences History has been the birthplace of Takis’ research and art with the aim to promote knowledge and appreciation of the visual arts to the general public, as well as to provide services, facilities and support programs for both education and contemporary art.

More info: https://takisfoundation.org/

EXHIBITION TOUR BY EVA VASLAMATZI

On Tuesday October 26, our Fellows from the 4th SNF Artist Fellowship Program had the chance to visit the exhibition “I heard it from the valleys” and be guided through its works by the curator and SNF ARTWORKS Fellow Eva Vaslamatzi. The exhibitoin is the result of the participation of Eva Vaslamatzi (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow) in the Curatorial Residency Program at SAHA Association in Istanbul (May-June 2021) made possible by the ARTWORKS association and with the support of Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) and presents a series of new productions linked through techniques, narratives and symbols related to the wide field of folk art. Folk production and forms of knowledge, mainly anonymous, are approached here as a field of inspiration and possibility for understanding forms and behaviors, which function individually and independently from grander national narratives.

Artists: Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, Aslι Çavuşoğlu, Anastasia Douka, Marina Papazyan, Evi Souli, VASKOS (Vasilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis)
Curated by Eva Vaslamatzi

Haus N Athen
Kairi 6, 105 51 Athens, Greece

Duration: 2/10 – 05/11/2021

 

 

 

Workshop “How to Develop a Film Collaborating With Actors” by Syllas Tzoumerkas

From October 23rd until October 26th 2021, we hosted the workshop “How to Develop a Film Collaborating With Actors” designed and led by Syllas Tzoumerkas. Moving Image and Visual Arts Fellows immersed themselves in liberating, norm-defying, head-on and market-protected paths to develop and enrich their projects through direct collaboration with actors.

“daedala”, photographic & SCULPTURAL INSTALLATION

The narration of a myth is inextricably linked to the subject of memory. The work ‘Daedala’ explores the mythological element, as the revelation of a memory that is shaped in the present and is relative to the sacred, the hidden, the secret. Two visual arts, photography by Stefania Orfanidou and sculpture by Natalia Manta, meet in a labyrinthine installation and come into dialogue, integration, juxtaposition, crack and deconstruction. Its objects, fragments from excavation and revocation in the depths of a living memory, are recomposed and form a narrative, which, however, is not a recollection. Hidden elements alternate with visible ones, apparently in an uncanny condition. In the exhibition ‘Daedala’, the artists create a mapping of a new landscape to be explored, where the discovery, the reading and the correlation of the findings refer to the mattock and to the research that follows an archeological excavation. The works, like findings, function as presumptions of an imaginary connection with another era, real or mythological. The space turns into a labyrinth, with scattered pieces of a puzzle, which visitors are invited to discover and reconstruct, relating them to their own personal experiences.

‘Daedala’, in ancient Greece, were composite crafts made of metal, wood or fabrics based on the materials’ shredding, complementarity and joining. They were works of art, which reflected reality and were related to light, perception and illusion. Works to be seen, concealing the refined work of a craftsman, the carving details or the coating of one material with another.

PHOTOGRAPHIC & SCULPTURAL INSTALLATION
STEFANIA ORFANIDOU / NATALIA MANTA / GEORG ES SALAMEH
YIALI TZAMI / OLD HARBOUR CHANIA / 4-18 NOVEMBER 2021

With the support:
ΑΝΟΙΧΤΑ ΠΑΝΙΑ 2021 / ΚΕΠΠΕΔΗΧ ΚΑΜ / CHANIA MUNICIPALITY

*Stefania Orfanidou is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2020

EXHIBITION: The Rules of the Game

The exhibition “The Rules of the Game”, inspired by Jean Renoir’s masterpiece, The Rules of the Game, takes place at the former Nursery School (Pier A, Port of Thessaloniki) from November 6th to December 6th, 2021.

Partipant artists: Marina Velisioti, Nikolas Ventourakis, Xenia Vitou, Kyriaki Goni, Stathis-Alexandros Zoulias, Alexandros Manganiotis, Sofia Stevi, Diamantis Sotiropoulos, Dimitris Tataris and Doreida Tzogou.

Exhibition duration in Thessaloniki: 6/11/2021-6/12/2021. Opening hours 6/11/2021-14/11/2021: 10am-10pm. Opening hours 15/11/2021-6/12/2021:10am-6pm (except Mondays). Exhibition duration in Athens: 16/12/2021-16/1/2022.

A few words about the timeless masterpiece The Rules of the Game (1939) by Jean Renoir

Unconditionally timeless, especially in the liminal times we are living in, as we brace ourselves to greet an emerging meta-world, Jean Renoir’s chef-d’oeuvre grooms us for a much needed and inevitable transition to a new era. A film that reminds us how abruptly the rules of the game can change in a split second and how important it is to redefine them from scratch.

The Rules of the Game, a milestone of world cinema that has been screened strikingly fewer times than the rest of the groundbreaking films that changed the course of cinema history, hit the theaters right before the breakout of World War II, triggering a public outcry as it seemed to foretell the devastation looming over Europe and the entire planet. Renoir, at the heyday of his career at the time, did not hesitate to illustrate the decadence and moral bankruptcy of all social classes in the most vivid way, foreshadowing the painful dawn of a new era.

*Kyriaki Goni and Nicholas Ventourakis are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows.

212 Medea (Recited from an Empty Middle) by Stefania Strouza

The solo show “212 Medea (Narratives from a place in limbo)” by Stefania Strouza, curated respectively by Christos Chrysopoulos and Daphne Dragona is presented at the Project Space at Megaron the Athens Concert Hall, from November 4, 2021 until January 23rd, 2022.

With a number of works presented for the first time in Greece –two of which were created especially for the exhibition–, the artist refers to the suspended condition in which the planet finds itself today. She focuses on moments of conflict, on imprints of disaster and on the possibility of reparation and regeneration. The exhibition takes its title from the asteroid named 212 Medea, which occupied Stefania Strouza in the context of her artistic and research work on the myth of Medea. Upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere, asteroids are transformed into shooting stars which are also earth-threatening bodies in the event of a collision. Medea is identified with the unpredictable and the destructive but also with the opposition to the self-evident and the imposed. In studying her story, Strouza focuses on an unexplored aspect of her character that demonstrates the anti-heroine’s relation to natural phenomena, animal instincts and the Earth itself, while at the same time always remaining alienated herself. For the artist, the existence of asteroid 212 Medea is a trigger for producing a visual narrative in which the myth’s modern connotations in relation to the natural environment are revealed.

The exhibition presents three sculptures and one video. The sculptures are suggestive of bodies geological and cosmic, human and non-human, material and active, bodies that bear traces of collision but at the same time can bring about changes. Centrally placed is the sculpture 212 Medea (Perpetual Silence Prevails in the Empty Space of Capital), which resembles both an asteroid on a collision course and a female body, referring to the relation between gender identity and the climate crisis. The sculpture 212 Medea (If only I had stayed the animal I was) refers to the acknowledgment of other living worlds beyond the human, while the smaller sculptures SPK-ID 2000212 (A880 CA), in the form of fragments, are a reference to the flows of matter, to moments of explosion and constant transformation. Finally, the video Monologue (Medean Remix) is based on excerpts from the works of Euripides, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Heiner Müller. In this, Medea recalls and embodies the fundamental relations between ‘nature’ and culture, as well as between humans and other living beings

More info here.

Head 2 Head

“Head 2 Head” is an exhibitional projects that is presented between Greece and Iceland. It takes place in Athens, between November 5th and November 14th 2021 and in Reykjavík at 2023. The art spaces that join the projects are: 52, PS, 3 137, EIGHT / ΤΟ ΟΚΤΩ, HYLE / ΗΛΗ, backspace, Stoa 42, zoetrope, A-Dash and KEIV.

The artist-run spaces Kling & Bang and A – DASH join with much excitement to the initial phase of the bilateral visual art festival HEAD2HEAD in Athens on the 5 – 14th of November 2021. Below you may find the schedule to these spaces:

Friday, November 5, 2021
7:00pm
Space52 – Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir, Konstantinos Kotsis, Selma Hreggviðsdóttir and Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir
Space 52 → OMS / One minute space

8:00pm
OMS / One Minute Space – Ásta Fanney (performance), Logi Leó Gunnarsson, Ólöf Helga Helgadóttir and Vasilis Zarifopoulos
OMS / One Minute Space → PS:

9:00pm
PS: Almar Atlason, Giorgos Tserionis, Anastasis Palagis Meletis & Flora Vavoula (performance), Sigurður Ámundason and Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson (performance)
The evening ends with a DJ/performance by Apex Anima and FRZNTE.
On Sunday November 7th, 2021 at 19.00 a group exhibition under the title “Head 2 head” takes place at Keiv Space (38, Kalymnou str., Athens, 112 51), where artists Elísabet Brynhildardóttir, Konstantinos Giotis, Una Björg Magnúsdóttir and Eleni Papazoglou present their work.

More info here.

*Konstantinos Kotsis, Vasilis Zarifopoulos, Konstantinos Giotis and Eleni Papazoglou are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

Andreas Ragnar Kassapis: Τo see a block of flats as a cave

to see a block of flats as a cave

I started counting distance through fatigue.

Νot experience but fatigue.

I start counting with that that is caused by distance to the neck and feet.

We live in the city.

We live in the block of flats.

We see the block of flats as a cave.

He says:

Look at these plants below. How does it sound like?

From this man? Outside.

What is it heard from inside of the door?

I asked them :

When is it that you are not yourselves? He replied :

I am not myself when I change room.

I started counting distance through fatigue.

Not exactly perspective but fatigue

© Andreas Ragnar Kassapis, 2021

 

Kalfayan Galleries present the solo exhibition of Andreas Ragnar Kassapis titled “Τo see a block of flats as a cave”.  In his solo exhibition at Kalfayan Galleries, Andreas Ragnar Kassapis presents a diverse installation consisting of paintings, text and archival photography. At the same time, the exhibition is accompanied by a music work that is presented and available digitally. As the artist observes regarding the new series of works: “My subjects are landscapes or at least ‘areas’ that keep within them the objects inseparable. I continue with my investigation into the concept of Nuance and consequently into the concept of Mood (Stimmung); the concept of Duration (la durée) and consequently subjective experience and lived time; the notion of distance and therefore the concept of perspective and its distortions “. Having psychoanalysis, phenomenology and contemporary cultural criticism as basic methodological tools, the work of Andreas Ragnar Kassapis focuses on themes concerning the mechanisms of perception, memory and representation. Having as a starting point cognitive theories of object perception, his paintings raise questions about the imprint of technical images on perception and memory in modern times.

The exhibition opens on Wednesday, 10 November 2021, 18.00 – 21.00
Duration: 10 November – 11 December 2021

*Andreas Ragnar Kassapis is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2020

SNFCC Members x Artworks x Delta Restaurant

We are delighted to inaugurate a new collaboration with Delta Restaurant and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre (SNFCC), offering a thematic initiative of artistic visits in two parts, exclusively for SNFCC Members!

Delta, the fine-dinning restaurant by Dipnosofistirion at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC), driven by the cultural character of its operation, αs well as being a lively promotion platform of contemporary visual arts, collaborates with ARTWORKS and presents works of Greek artists in the restaurant’s venue. The restaurant embraces art and organically integrates yearly rotating artworks in its interior and surrounding spaces. Following the concept of sustainability, we are invited to think of art as part of diverse ecosystems and interdependent interactions.

In this context, the Membership Program has planned exclusively for the Members of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC) a group of thematic visits from November 2021 to March 2022. The visits are structured between two parallel axes: initially in the Delta area, where through monthly tours, the works of the 5 participating artists that have been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship Program by ARTWORKS will be presented, and then off the premises of the SNFCC, at the studios or in exhibition spaces of the up-and-coming artists.

During SNFCC members’ visits to Delta Restaurant, the initiative and the philosophy behind the partnership of Delta with ARTWORKS will be presented, and members will be guided in the selected works of the 5 artists, which are harmoniously integrated in the restaurant space. Then, the artists will welcome the members to their space, presenting their work and creating the space for an open discussion.

The events are dedicated to all our members who love art and culture and want to immerse themselves in the concept of artistic creation and its practice, in every form. They are also addressed to all those who are interested in getting to know the modern ambassadors of the domestic art scene.

Participating artists: Petros Moris, Malvina Panagiotidi, Katerina Komianou, Manolis Daskalakis Lemos and Dimitris Efeoglou

The 5 artists presenting their work this year have been awarded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship Program, ARTWORKS, thanks to the founding donation of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

Visits Schedule:

November:
Monday 8/11, 18.00 | 1st Visit to Delta Restaurant
Saturday 20/11, 12.30 | Off Premises: Petros Moris- Solo exhibition at Radio Athènes
December:
Monday 6/12, 18.00 | 2nd Visit to Delta Restaurant
Thursday 9/12, 18.00 | Off Premises: Studio Visit | Meet the Artist: Malvina Panagiotidi
January:
Monday 10/01, 18.00 | 3rd Visit to Delta Restaurant
Saturday 15/01, 12.30 | Off Premises:Studio Visit | Meet the Artist: Katerina Komianou
February:
Saturday 12/2, 12.30 | Off Premises: Studio Visit | Meet the Artist: Manolis Daskalakis Lemos
March:
Saturday 12/3, 12.30 | Off Premises: Studio Visit | Meet the Artist: Dimitris Efeoglou

Delta was created through an initiative and a grant by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center A.E. It aims to become a landmark culinary destination in line with the high standards of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC) and to share Greek cuisine around the world.

Free entrance via online pre-registration*

* Pre-registration for our monthly visits starts at the beginning of each month. The information is provided through the Newsletter of the Members of the SNFCC.

This initiative is a collaboration of the SNFCC Members Program with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship Program, ARTWORKS and the Delta Restaurant.

More info here.

9 FELLOWS SCREEN THEIR MOVIES AT THE 62th THESSALONIKI FILM FESTIVAL

The 62nd Thessaloniki International Film Festival is returning to its home turf, the movie theaters, prioritizing safety and abiding by all health and safety protocols, from Thursday 4 to Sunday 14, November 2021. This year’s celebration of independent cinema will take place in physical spaces, but online as well.

Within the framework of the 62nd TIFF, 197 films will be screened in the time-honored home ground of the Festival, while the audience will have the chance to watch 144 films online, through the digital platform of the Festival, online.filmfestival.gr.

Check below our Fellows’ movies which will be screen at the 62nd TIFF:

Brutalia, Days of Labour, Manolis Mavris
More info here

Motorway 65, Evi Kalogiropoulou
More info here

ORFEAS2021, FYTA*
More info here

Soul Food, Nikos Tsemberopoulos
More info here

Souls All Unaccompanied, Yorgos Teltzidis
More info here

The Timekeepers of Eternity, Aristotelis Maragkos
More info here

Holy Emy, Araceli Lemos
More info here

Magnetic Fields, Yorgos Goussis
More info here

Moon, 66 Questions, Jacqueline Lentzou
More info here

*Foivos Dousos part of the artistic duo FYTA is Fellow

The Department of Civil Imagination (DCI) Agency in Athens

ARTWORKS founders, Marily Konstantinopoulou & Dimitra Nikolou, were among the art professionals that were interviewed by 3 137 within the scope of RESHAPE in relation to the art sector in Greece.

RESHAPE is an experimental, bottom-up research process that proposes instruments for transition towards a fairer arts ecosystem across Europe and the Southern Mediterranean. Forty art workers engaged in collaborative work relating to five major challenges of today’s arts sector: Art and Citizenship, Fair Governance Models, Value of Art in Social Fabric, Solidarity Economies and Transnational/Postnational Artistic Practices. Together they have created a series of Prototypes that reflect and incite the transformation of the art sector towards practices that are more in line with the civil role of the arts.

Paky Vlassopoulou, one of the founding members of 3 137, was a participant of the RESHAPE trajectory Art and Citizenship that created The Department of Civil Imagination (DCI), a fictional department that utilises the ‘civil imagination’ as a radical act to reshape realities in poetic, practical, and political ways following the provocation by adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha that ‘all organizing is science fiction.’

In parallel, over the past few years, 3 137 has been developing a similar methodological tool, through the invention of the immaterial art institution GABRIELA. GABRIELA is a self-reflexive process that functions as a tool, a service, and a manual for questioning the role of―and the labor involved in―artists’ initiatives. The organizational structure of GABRIELA appropriates corporate strategies such as directorship, administration, branding, and communication campaigns to occupy public space and the web, seeking to redistribute itself among its peers.

On the occasion of this meeting between these two fictional entities (DCI & GABRIELA) a conversation, in the format of short recorded one-to-one interviews, is presented with the aim to rethink and reimagine on a local level a different arts ecosystem.

Participants: Christos Carras, Marily Konstantinopoulou & Dimitra Nikolou, Dimitris Passas, Artemis Stamatiadi, Katerina Tselou, Evita Tsokanta, and Venia Vergou.

The participants were invited to share ideas about the relationship between the private and public sector in cultural production, about the values that can be used to build a code of conduct for workers in the cultural sector and about the value of art in the social fabric.

The collection of recorded interviews is a study that enables us to understand the particular conditions within which the sector operates in Greece, to hear different perspectives in order to map the common ground that might exist for the improvement of the working conditions and the cultural production overall as well as for the development of critical discourse in Greece. The opinions that are presented here are strictly personal. The questions that were posed were the outcome of the conversations between 3 137 and Onassis AiR. The recorded interviews were conducted by Kosmas Nikolaou.

Listen to audio recorded one-to-one interviews with Marily Konstantinopoulou & Dimitra Nikolou:

Listen to all the audio recorded one-to-one interviews here

On Tuesday, October 26 and Wednesday, October 27, 2021, the research material and the presentation of a series of tools that was produced within the scope of RESHAPE in relation to the art sector in Greece, will be presented at 3 137 artist-run space.

 

DISCUSSION PANEL “SUPPORTING THE ARTS TODAY”

On Saturday, October 23, 2021, in the context of the autumn events of the Averoff Gallery, Dimitra Nikolou – ARTWORKS Co-Founder and Director of the SNF Artist Fellowship Program  – participated in the round table discussion “Supporting the Arts Today”. The objective of the panel discussion was to explore the current conditions of the support system of the arts and discuss the possibilities and the difficulties that exist from the perspective of the state, of art institutions, but also from the viewpoint of the new generation of artists.

 

Participants:
Paky Vlassopoulou, Artist, Co-founder of the artist-run space 3 137
Dimitra Nikolou, Co-founder, Program Director ARTWORKS
Marios Spiliopoulos, Artist, Tutor at the Athens School of Fine Arts,
Stamatis Schizakis, Curator, Department of Photography and New Media, Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST)

Syrago Tsiara, Deputy Director of MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art-Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and State Museum of Contemporary Art Collection
Manolis Haros, Artist

The discussion was moderated by Irini Orati, Art historian.

 

“PORTALS” VISIT AT THE former Public Tobacco Factory

Our next stop with the Fellows 2021 was at the former Public Tobacco Factory – Hellenic Parliament Library & Printing House, a city landmark that was restored by NEON; On Thursday October 21st, 2o21 we had the chance to visit an extraordinary exhibition titled “Portals”, featuring 59 artists from 27 countries, from which 5 SNF ARTWORKS Fellows (Anastasia Douka , Eirene Efstathiou, Chrysanthi Koumianaki , Alexandros Tzannis and Myrto Xanthopoulou! Congratulations!

Along with our Fellows 2021, we were warmly welcomed by members of the NEON team, Nafsika Papadopoulou , Fanis Kafantaris and Galini Notti. We learned more about NEON organization, the philosophy behind the renovation of this historic building as well as the concept and the main axes of the exhibition.

More info here

 

“Anti-structure” at DESTE: our First group visit with the Fellows 2021

On Tuesday October 19th 2021, we held our first group visit with the Fellows 2021 at the exhibition “Anti-structure” at DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art.

Andreas Melas, the exhibition curator, guided us through the works and talked about the concept behind the exhibition which he developed in collaboration with the collector Dakis Joannou in order to create a relationship between the installation works of Urs Fisher and artworks by Greek and Cypriot artists, while exploring the lines between order and chaos, stasis and flux, structure and fragility.

“ANTI-STRUCTURE”, DESTE FOUNDATION

Taking as its starting point an immersive installation with works by Urs Fischer and placing it in dialogue with the work of twenty-one Greek and Cypriot artists of various generations and modalities, Anti-Structure explores the far-fetched realm of fine lines between order and chaos, stasis and flux, structure and fragility.

Coined in 1969 by cultural anthropologist Victor Turner (1920–1983), “anti-structure” is a study of the state of mental and spiritual limbo that is characteristic of the second stage—the liminal stage—of any rite of passage, when the novitiate is neither here nor there but, betwixt and between, remains enveloped in abiding upheaval and disarray and a preternatural void.  Anti-structure thus describes a stage of perpetual transformation characterized by moments of dissolution where “structural hierarchies are flattened or inverted.” Whereas the dominant ideology du jour was that any such breakdown would result in anomie and angst, Turner recognized that in times of great happenstance, culture in fact reboots itself and new symbols, models, and paradigms arise.

It is not unusual to find such pockets of clandestine novelty simmering deep in the underground, the pregnant margins of normative order. It is in these lands of strangers and exiles, that one finds fertile ground for radical thought and very strange ideas. It is these ideas cultivated in the fringes of institutionalized etiquette that bring forth novel ways of dress, posture, and expression, attitudes that when fully formed feed back into the system to either break or make the mainstream.

The exhibition includes the works of: Yannoulis Chalepas, Diohandi, Dora Economou, Andreas Embirikos, Urs Fischer, Sotirios Kotoulas, George Lappas, Tony Moussoulides, Aliki Panagiotou, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Nausika Pastra, Georgia Sagri, Lucas Samaras, Christiana Soulou, Takis, Thanassis Totsikas, Iris Touliatou*, George Tourkovasilis, Pantelis Xagoraris, Marina Xenofontos, Takis Zenetos

*Iris Touliatou is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow

Curator: Andreas Melas

More info here