Author: gourgourini

For the programme of #OccupyAtopos and with reference to the 200th anniversary of the Greek revolution, the artistic director of ATOPOS cvc, Vassilis Zidianakis, invites artist, historian, and researcher Alexis Fidetzis to curate the hybrid, ongoing project #RevoltingBodies. The project aims to integrate the Greek Revolution into a broader dialogue about the revolutionary phenomenon that to an extent defined modernity, immersing into the stories of the bodies upon which both the revolutionary action and the mythologies around it are imposed.

Fidetzis transforms the neoclassical building at Salaminos 72 street into the Revolutionary Headquarters of Language and Image. The exhibited artworks are semiotic references to revolutionary moments and narratives. These artworks do not constitute an aesthetic representation of the history of the notion of revolution, instead they present more of an outline of the methods through which contemporary societies metabolize the revolutionary imaginary. A series of pencil sketches coexist with large-scale prints, creating wall installations. These artworks refer to gendered and racial identities of the revolutionary bodies while at the same time they highlight the questionable lust for glorification in post-revolutionary societies. The statue of a beheaded Jacobin on a pedestal will dominate the inner courtyard of the ‘Revolutionary Headquarters’ and will be a constant reference to the violence imposed by and on the revolutionary bodies. While the library of Atopos has been occupied by a video installation, which bombards the viewer with institutional and non-institutional representations of revolutionary actions.

The whole motley iconography will be homogenized aesthetically, through a specific color filter, a particular green shade that makes its appearance in subcutaneous aspects of the history of the revolutions, from the reference to Robespierre as a spirit as pure as the green of the sea to the turquoise green ”Faberge” eggs of the Romanov estate that Stalin secretly sold to Western tycoons.

*Alexis Fidezis is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow

Duration: October 6 – November 26, 2021
Days & Hours: Wednesday: 16:00 – 20:00 (in the presence of the artist & curator Alexis Fidetzis)
Thursday & Friday: 12:00 – 18:00
Saturday: 16/10, 23/10, 6/11, 20/11, 12:00 – 16:00 (in the presence of the artist & curator Alexis Fidetzis)

Free entrance, registration is required as there is a limited number of visitors allowed (up to 5 visitors per hour)

Drama International Short Film Festival (DISFF) is Greece’s leading short film festival, and the annual meeting place for filmmakers and industry professionals. Based in the picturesque city of Drama, the festival is the leading Greek and South-Eastern European gateway to the world’s most prestigious short film awards, and nominated filmmakers qualify for the European Film Awards (EFA).

This year, 6 of our Fellows join the DISFF with their short movies:

Heatwave (Fokion Xenos)

Motorway 65 (Evi Kalogiropoulou)

Luxenia (Dimitra Kondylatou)

Souls all unaccompanied (Giorgos Teltzidis)

Brutalia, εργάσιμες μέρες (Manolis Mavris)

Soul food (Nikos Tsemperlopoulos)

>>> More info: https://www.dramafilmfestival.gr/en/

How can tradition converse with other forms of artistic expression, such as contemporary dance, without being threatened or offended, but instead enriched and communicated with the respect it deserves to a wider audience? Combining the principles and themes of the dances of his native Crete with his long-standing experience as a modern dancer, Foniadakis creates a palette of rhythms and melodies for directing the flow of the performance. Above all, though, he attempts to convey the strength of the Cretans who dance the pentozalis (pente meaning “five” and being a reference to the Cretans’ fifth attempt for liberation), a ten-step dance (as the Sfakians decided to start the revolution on 10 October 1769) that consists of twelve parts (musical phrases, turnings) in honour of the twelve leaders of the uprising.

Salema: a struggle with time, immobility and the moment. Dancers and musicians mingle in a bizarre game, upsetting memories and emotions.

CREDITS
Choreography:
Andonis Foniadakis

Music supervisors – Orchestration:
Paris Perysinakis, Giorgos Skordalos

Original music:
Paris Perysinakis (adaptations of traditional Cretan tunes)

Dancers:
Nefeli Asteriou, Despina Lagoudaki, Evi Economou, Maro Stavrinou, Stefania Sotiropoulou, Christian Denice, Georgios Kotsifakis, Nikos Grigoriadis, Jan Labner, Anestis (Tasos) Nikas

Musicians:
Giorgos Skordalos: Cretan lyra, Cretan lute, Song
Paris Perisynakis: Viora, Cretan lyra, Cretan lute, Mandocaster
Giorgos Makris: Recorder, Ascomandoura
Petros Varthakouris: Double bass
Vangelis Karipis: Percussion

Assistant choreographers:
Markella Manoliadi, Pierre Magendie

Lighting:
Sakis Birbilis

Costumes:
Anastasios Sofroniou

Production:
visionary culture / Vassilis Grigoropoulos

*Nefeli Asteriou, Maro Stavrinou and Georgios Kotsifakis are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows
** Antonis Foniadakis is member of the selection committee for the 4th SNF Artist Fellowship Program

EP journal is a publishing initiative by Enterprise Projects in the form of an online publication of newly commissioned theoritical and research essays in both greek and english. For issue 5, curator and Fellow Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou is writing about Art and Radioactivity. She looks at the ambivalent relation of art and radioactivity, but also at the possibly ambivalent nature of one’s experience of radioactivity. While great significance has been invested in the bomb, Kyveli turns to the notion of ambivalence as an interruption of the sublime visuality that characterizes nuclear images.

Check and download the essay following the link: http://enterprise-projects.com/ep-journal/

Enterprise Projects is an Athens based projects by our Fellows Danai Giannoglou and Vasilis Papageorgiou (SNF ARTWORKS Fellows).

ARTWORKS Fellows Elissavet Sfyri, Sofia Sfyri, Manolis Mavris, Dimitra Kondylatou, Evi Kalogiropoulou and Nikos Tseberopoulos  take part in Greek Short Stories – In Competition of the 27th Athens International Film Festival (22nd September – 3rd October 2021).

Zabeta
ΔΙΑΡΚΕΙΑ / DURATION: 12’ ΣΚΗΝΟΘΕΣΙΑ / DIRECTORS: Elissavet Sfyri, Sofia Sfyri

A glimpse into the life of the directors’ 90-year-old grandmother as she reminisces her forced immigration to Canada, her escape back to Greece and divorce in the 60’s. A small personal story of patriarchy in Greece.

Brutalia, Days of Labour
ΔΙΑΡΚΕΙΑ / DURATION: 26’ ΣΚΗΝΟΘΕΣΙΑ / DIRECTOR: Manolis Mavris

Perfectly identical girls work day and night. A matriarchal and oligarchic society. What would happen if we replaced bees with humans? Anna observes the universe of her hive. Not being able to consent to the violence that surrounds her, she’ll have to make a radical decision.

Luxenia
ΔΙΑΡΚΕΙΑ / DURATION: 10’ ΣΚΗΝΟΘΕΣΙΑ / DIRECTOR: Dimitra Kondylatou

A receptionist, a waitress and a chambermaid work during the summer season in Hotel Luxenia. One day, a small pause interrupts their automated, everyday routine. Luxenia is about the staged image and the backstage contradictions of the so-called hospitality industry.

Motorway 65
ΔΙΑΡΚΕΙΑ / DURATION: 15’ ΣΚΗΝΟΘΕΣΙΑ / DIRECTOR: Evi Kalogiropoulou

Two siblings live in the industrial town of Elefsina. A bridge connects their neighborhood, inhabited mostly by Black-Sea Greeks, to an area inhabited by immigrants varied background. Social divisions give rise to hostility, reflected in the local sports scene and two siblings’ relationships.

Soul Food
ΔΙΑΡΚΕΙΑ / DURATION: 24’ ΣΚΗΝΟΘΕΣΙΑ / DIRECTOR: Nikos Tseberopoulos

Yannis starts hanging out with Olga, a socially secluded hard rock woman who lives in the basement of his apartment building. Simultaneously, he associates with a group of teenagers, the leader of which bullies Olga whenever he sees her.

More info: http://en.aiff.gr/home_page/

With undiminished interest in the conceptual content of body states, the choreographer and SNF ARTWORKS Fellow Anastasia Valsamaki presents her new work focusing on the different ways to conceive wrestling. ‘From combat sports to the competitiveness between two or more opposing forces’

Although there are several ways of perceiving ‘wrestling’ in terms of movement, the interest is located in the way the performed actions are classified. If with wrestling we usually refer to the escalating conflict and consequently the discharging of an action, the choreographer Anastasia Valsamaki urges us to see the transition from intensity to repression and its reversal in a ‘struggle’ that does not divide winners from losers. The reference to wrestling, therefore, is a way of investigating the movement beyond the corporeality of the wrestlers and the theatricality of the event; by possibly combining the ‘studiousness’ of the choreographic score with its fun and exaggeration.

In this peculiar struggle, five dancers – as a group but also as a quirky ensemble – try to bring together a priori contrasting elements: the initiating explosiveness with the awkwardness of a pause, the refueling of the physical frenzy with the suspension of relaxation, the completion of a pattern that constantly re-articulates by changing its composition. Ultimately, if the goal is to remain ‘in the game’ by constantly inventing new rules, then the fight comes as a promise to renew what keeps us still in the game, even if, momentarily, every evident goal seems to have failed.

Anastasia Valsamaki
Graduated with honours from the Greek National School of Dance​, Anastasia Valsamaki made her debut as a choreographer with “Sync” in June 2016 and she was selected by the Aerowaves network as one of the 20 most promising emerging choreographers in Europe for 2017. The same year, ​she ​attended the Choreography Postgraduate Program (I.C.E) at the SEAD Dance Academy in Austria and presented “Sync” at the Athens & Epidaurus Festival. In 2020 she presented her latest work “DisJoint” within the Onassis New Choreographers Festival 7. For 2020-2021 she received the ARTWORKS award and participated in the 3rd SNF Artist Fellowship Program while selected as an Aerowaves Twenty21 Artist with her work “Body Monolog​ue​”. She continues to be an active dancer and choreographer, while at the same time teaching dance. Get to know her work: https://anastasiavalsamaki.com/

W REST LING
Premiere at ROES Theater
30 September 1, 2, 3 October 2021
Tickets (8€-12€): https://www.viva.gr/tickets/dance/w-rest-l-ing/
Concept & Choreography Anastasia Valsamaki
Music & Sound Composition Jeph Vanger
Dancers Gavriela Antonopoulou, Nefeli Asteriou,
Nikos Grigoriadis, Sotiria Koutsopetrou, Thanos Ragousis
Dramaturgy Anastasio Koukoutas
Lighting Apostolos Strantzalis
Styling Nefeli Asteriou
Production Manager Eleni Valsamaki
Producer MINDTHELOOP
Photographers Emmanouela Pechynaki, Marieta Rou
With the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and Sports.
Entrants to the theater must have a vaccination certificate or disease certificate or a negative COVID test (72 hours for pcr test – 48 hours for rapid test).

* Anastasia Valsamaki, Nefeli Asteriou and Jeph Vanger are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

As I told you, they were made with a technique called solar etching, in which a light-sensitive metal plate is exposed to ultraviolet radiation and washed out with cool water instead of acid chemicals. The rest is carried out with a traditional printmaking process; oil-based inks on cotton paper that runs through the intaglio press.

The subjects come from photo archives I have been assembling in Attica: urban environments, vegetal and geological formations, inscriptions on architectural structures, public sculptures, and archeological artifacts in Kerameikos. I fed this visual material into generative algorithms that run on artificial neural networks. Loosely translated, this is a process of “breeding” images that follows a predictive system inspired by biological processes and game theory …

Generated by Clouds ☁️ Etched by the Sun ☀️

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PETROS MORIS
SOLAR VECTOR

New Etchings

22 SEPTEMBER – 23 OCTOBER 2021

opening on Wednesday 22 September from 5 to 9 pm

*Petros Moris is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow

To feature contemporaneity, OMS shows young Greek art whereby “Greekness” is deterritorialized. In what way is locality part of the being if we do not speak about territory any more but about a series of situations? Situatedness can depict embodiment or perspectivism, can reflect the conditionality of knowledge or can refer to the entanglement of mind and world. It can support temporality but sitting between stasis and duration it can also counteract it. We think it cannot only be useful to describe the implications of embodiment but can also be used to emphasize the dynamic of space-time and corporeality of agency. What becomes obvious with the works of the YOUNG GREEK ARTISTS participating in OMS’s inaugural group show for the season “ΕΔΩ ΚΑΙ ΤΩΡΑ“ is the transversal and transgressive character of situatedness that simultaneously connects and detaches past and future and space. To put it in the words of two participating artists :”Coming out of place, makes it easier to come out of time” (Myrto Vratsanou and Anouk Asselineau). Our experience can still be at some previous location while being with embedded in the new. And we have not even begun to talk here of the implications that quantum physics, virtuality and augmented reality might have on situatedness.

OMS’s inaugural group show for the season

“ΕΔΩ ΚΑΙ ΤΩΡΑ“

From September 30th to October 15th 2021
September 30th, 19.30: After a brief introduction by the curators, the artists will speak about the presented work

Artists: Stathis Alexandros Zoulias, Elena Chantzis, Stelios Papagrigoriou, Fi Tsaoules, Myrto Vratsanou (in collaboration with Anouk Asselineau), Grigoria Vryttia
Curated by Nadja Geer and Florent Frizet

*Elena Chantzis is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow

The fragment of antiquity is what we have been left. Only in this dilapidated form can anything be read. The only real integrity that remains is the integrity of the fragment. The only recovered form is the fragmented form. Fragments, which do not seek their wholeness, rather seek their availability, and their preservation in the initial position of zero.

This year’s group exhibition Fragments by The Symptom Projects, curated by Apostolis Artinos, and in collaboration with the Delphi Antiquities Authority, will take place in the halls and garden of the Archaeological Museum of Amfissa, where fifteen contemporary visual artists will attempt to coexist with the Museum’s collection through their work, to coordinate with the energy of its fragments and to interact with their language.

Curator | Apostolis Artinos

Participating artists | Malvina Panagiotidi, Panagiotis Vorrias, Panos Profitis, Christina Mitrentse, Eugenia Vereli, Anastasia Douka, Lizzie Calligas, Dimitris Ameladiotis, Dionisis, Hara Piperidou, Dionisis Christofilogiannis, Ilias Papailiakis, Anna Lascari, Despina Charitonidi, Vasilis Zografos, George Skiloyannis.

The Symptom Project is supported by NEON.

*Malvina Panagiotidi, Panagiotis Vorrias, Panos Profitis and Anastasia Douka are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

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FRAGMENTS

25/09/2021 – 19/11/2021

Archaeological Museum of Amfissa

OPENING

25 September | 8pm

OPENING HOURS

Wednesday to Sunday | 9am – 4pm

Monday – Tuesday | Closed

More Information: the-symptom-projects.blogspot.com

We traverse the landscape caught in-between states. From a point of departure to a delineated or yet unknown destination we find ourselves always in transition. Every step we take is a threshold of becoming, a never-ending return to the state we were in before and an arrival to a new state that is about to emerge. Neither inside nor outside we start grasping the world around us by passing through, by moving from one space to another.

The exhibition “Betwixt and Between” explores those liminal moments of being through a collaborative work by Antonis Theodoridis and Nikolas Ventourakis that takes the form of a photographic installation on the terrace of the B & M Theocharakis Foundation for The Fine Arts and Music building. First introduced by anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in the beginning of the 20th century and then rediscovered by Victor Turner in the 1960s –from whom we borrow the term that serves as the title of the show– the concept of liminality is used to define the intermediary stage in any ritual passage or in any radical situation that marks a transition within society and which comes to constitute it anew. Where social structures cease to be and fixed positions become disarranged the liminal period is one of uncertainty and simultaneously one of potentiality. In times of confinement and of social and physical distancing we are invited to reconsider those liminal spaces and times where what is real has yet to be imagined.

Between darkness and light, the works presented in this exhibition point to that direction. Taking as a starting point the city of Athens with its natural and built environments in constant negotiation Theodoridis and Ventourakis guide us through what resists being at the center, capturing and evoking what we do not expect to see or what lies in between. The exhibition space turns into a waiting space, a liminal space itself, where the boundaries between what is natural and constructed seem to get dissolved.

The ways cities are arranged reveal the social structures that formulate our human experience at the same time that our experience sets the very conditions for social actions that would allow for new structures to emerge. Located in the very center of the city, the National Garden of Athens serves as a landmark and a starting point for this rite of passage. Designed by the architect François Louis Bareaud in the mid 1800s under the careful guidance of Queen Amalia and in the principles of the English Garden, that represents an idealized view of nature, the National Garden constitutes the first organized ornamented green space of the modern Greek state. A natural yet highly constructed space for contemplation and seclusion inside the city’s chaotic realm the Garden becomes a silent frontier as well as a space between, that calls for endless crossings. Captured in long exposure photographs taken during night hours, a lush landscape of tranquility, where one can choose to remain lost, comes into contrast with the intensity of the surrounding city that seems to have remained intact. The antithesis between the natural and manmade gets intensified through another lens that depicts the city not as an organized whole, but rather as a composition that defies any strict order. Out-of-ordinary moments seem to interrupt our everyday practices and invite us to look at the city otherwise. Nature takes over in subtle or sometimes profound ways and thus becomes a new layer that weaves into the cultural and ideological narrative of the places we traverse and inhabit. Accompanying the photographs and audio installation comprising a series of recordings gathered in the Garden completes the setting by revealing the parallel lives of the place during the unsettling silence of the night. Between a fixed structure and a complete disarray, we find ourselves again on the limit, in an inter-structural position that separates us from any predetermined structure and which prepares us for the appearance of a new one.

On the very top of the B & M Theocharakis Foundation building with the direct view to the National Garden and to the symbolic and physical center of the city of Athens, we find ourselves on a liminal point, in and out of time, neither here nor there, yet both “betwixt and between”, immersing ourselves into an otherworldly state where the internal and the external alternate infinitely.

Curated by: Myrto Katsimicha
Artistic Direction: Marina Miliou – Theocharakis
Artists: Antonis Theodoridis and Nikolas Ventourakis
Exhibition Design: Eirini Dafni Sapka
Set Construction: AnotherKindArtSound
Design: Bias
Exhibition Production Assistant: Nefeli Siafaka

*Antonis Theodoridis and Nikolas Ventourakis are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

Have you ever wondered why Siri, Alexa and Cortana are given female voices and names? How do machines see women? Can machines perceive diversity?

The exhibition Her Data looks into the role of data and algorithms in the current age of artificial intelligence through the female perspective. It also explores female and diverse representationin the context of our fast-paced consumption of technology. Stereotypes, different types of bias and taboos seem to come back stronger in the digital sphere, reproducing outdated worldviews, marginalising certain social groups and discriminating between communities.

Four female artists present different stories of how dominant technological narratives influence the way we experience our identities and the world, through social media, search engines and AI applications. Their works raise questions about the use of our data from tech-giants and they invite us to look deeper at the design of current technological systems, exposing how they work and what worldviews they propagate.

In a male dominated tech-industry, where discrimination persists, diversity is at stake. Global statistics show that the tech and AI industry is dominated by males, primarily white, excluding women and diverse communities from positions of power. This imbalance in the industry inevitably brings forward the questions: who designs these technologies and for whom. The growing market of machine learning and the widespread use of pattern recognition and classification algorithms in everyday life further amplify the concerns about the reproduction of social inequity through our technological systems. The exhibition brings alternative perspectives on our current relationship with technologies by exploring the aesthetics, the power structures and the social issues that emerge.

Exhibition Design | Martha Giannakopoulou | if_untitled architects
Art Direction | Korina Gallika
Audiovisual Design | Michalis Antonopoulos, Makis Faros
Press & Publicity | Yorgos Katsonis
Art Mediator | Lydia Panagou

Her Data is taking place with the support of NEON

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Exhibition: Her Data
Participating Artists: Eli Cortiñas (ES/DE), Maria Mavropoulou (GR), Mimi Ọnụọha (NG/USA),
Paola Palavidi (GR)
Curated by Katerina Gkoutziouli & Foteini Vergidou
Venue: Romantso, Anaxagora 3 – Athens
Duration: 23 September – 14 October 2021
Opening Hours: Tuesday – Sunday: 15:00 – 21:00. Closed on Mondays.

* Maria Mavropoulou and Paola Palividi are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

Stefania Strouza receives the Inspire Prize 2021 for the project “She of the Jade Skirt” developed during her residency in Mexico City and presented at MANA Contemporary.

Online award presentation
Tuesday, September 21, 18:00
Link: https://bit.ly/2Xw6DBT (Meeting ID: 833 8276 1492 / Passcode: 254190) .

The group show Mines and Minerals is inspired by the unique landscape of Megalo Livadi bay in Serifos and highlights the dialectical relationships that develop between the natural
environment, the abandoned industrial facilities and the contemporary artworks. Connected with the operation of the iron mines from antiquity until the 60’s but also with one of the first strikes in Greece in 1916, the settlement of Megalo Livadi is today an informal open industrial museum with the underground mines, the rails and the wagons of the facilities as well as the loading bridge resisting the passage of time. The landscape’s natural colors, the rusty aesthetics of the industrial remnants and its historical weight define the common ground of the exhibition, that hosts works of different media and in situ installations, characterized by metallic and black and white elements and references to the concept of labor as well as the role of the artist as craftsman. By displaying works in most part of the bay, in front of the neoclassical mining administration building, and inside an emblematic house on the edge of the settlement, the exhibition Mines and Minerals aims to create a path for the visitor to get acquainted with the place and its history, reactivating through the artworks the echo of the past.

Artists: Micol Assaël, Margarita Bofiliou, Manolis Daskalakis-Lemos, Stelios Kallinikou, Ioli Kavakou, Karolina Krasouli, Christodoulos Panagiotou, Alexandros Tzannis, Flora Yin-Wong

Mega Livadi, Serifos
25/09/2021-29/09/2021
Opening 25/09/2021 5pm
Opening Hours:
25/09 5pm-9pm
26/09 12pm-2pm
27/09-29/09 by appointment (+30 6945906115)

Curator : Alexandros Tzannis
Coordination and texts : Eva Vaslamatzi

The exhibition is supported by NEON Organisation.
Partners : Aegean Speed Lines, Faros Villas Serifos, Δήμος Σερίφου

Special thanks to Dimitris Stathopoulos and Vasilis and Marinos Kallios for their valuable contribution to the show.

*Margarita Bofiliou, Manolis Daskalakis-Lemos, Karolina Krasouli,  Alexandros Tzannis are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

At the slip of my tongue I’m linked to the cosmos, at the blink of an eye the globe is me. Navigating the macro and the micro via the microbe Hypercomf create a carnivalesque cartography where the somatic, the terrestrial and the intergalactic are holistically interlinked. A series of interfaces function like portals whereby different modes of co-existence are assumed – from intimate gatherings, to digital dislocations to mass interconnectivity>reacting, interacting, we are biological beings.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae, yeast, is at the core of this narrative creating commonalities between humans, bread, wine, the internal and external surfaces of much of what we think we know of and understand. Same to different, in small steps, we share the processes of existence as these microbes shift and move. Same to different, in large leaps, the sun, our intestinal cords and bread are connected, ingrained through deep tissue memories. At our very core: you are what you eat could be readily exchanged for you eat what you are. Or as we lubricate thoughts like the inner linings of our intestine: if our stomach is our brain with yeast fermenting altering the ph of our mind, causing love, hate, dreams of change, a state of paranoia could allow for prebiotic management to translate into forms of political control – that quest for balance of our minds.

Using as a starting point NASA’s BioSentinel mission (originally planned to be launched in 2020) which aimed to measure the impact of space radiation on living organisms over long durations beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and specifically to test the biological responses of the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to ambient deep space radiation, NASA will investigate whether there is DNA damage caused to the yeast as well as alterations to its growth and its metabolic activity, exactly due to its commonalities with human DNA. As the NASA mission states, “Yeast is the ideal organism for this mission because of its spaceflight heritage, well-characterized genetic tools, and its capacity to survive long periods in a desiccated state prior to rehydration and growth activation in space. Importantly, yeast’s DNA damage repair process is highly similar to that of humans, making it a robust translational model. “

In one phrase so much is suggested: yeast as our shared DNA, a heating desiccated world, space as a sci-fi testing ground for future human existence, a new site for monetized extraction. As Hypercomf state, “whatever goes to space comes straight back down to earth”, and vice-versa. As yeast is transported outwards, in turn Hypercomf are designing and constructing a solar oven that can bake bread through direct sunlight, translating solar energy into heat, fermenting yeast into bread. Using a tool common to off-grid eco-communities that shun market-place commodities, the solar oven bares down to basic necessities (sun + bread) without intermediaries whilst echoing digital and democratic demands for direct representation here and now. And then there was bread, as a mutually understandable repository of meaning, now a testing ground for where human bodies and science synapse.

And then there was wine, bringing Dionysian joy to the interim between the solar and the intestinal and allowing for a drink, cheers, to the divine. A common breeding ground for yeast, wine in Hypercomf’s BioSentinel marks another biotic landscape. By collecting local plants from seven different Athenian parks and hills and then fermenting them to produce alcohol each brew signifies another territory, through its biological ph balance and ensuing taste. By digesting your neighborhood brew, from a locality where our literal bodies stand, the microbes refract full circle into our gut – a moment where the multiple interfaces of BioSentinel overlay.

Enzymes, in deep inner and outer space, with their shared knowledge, intimate differences, ever so close or light years apart are the matter then of our human dramas, opportunities and contradictions, together we hold in this fermenting fluid world.

Portal A: an internet map / machine-brain / reference playground (connecting the dots with infographics on NASA’s mission, the neighborhood breweries, downloadable plans for diy solar ovens )

Portal B: a clandestine coming together and baking of bread with a DIY solar oven on one of Athens’ hills

Portal C: neighborhood brew from seven parks & hills in and around Athens

Portal D: a bacchanalian exhibition at TAVROS of the brews, solar oven, film starring Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Portal E: Make your own DIY solar oven workshop.

Co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, as part of the project The Table and the Territory.

Supported by:
French Institute of Greece

*Paola Palavidi & Ioannis Kolliopoulos (Hypercomf) are SN

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In his first solo show in Athens, titled “After Sunset”, Anestis Ioannou invites us to enter his personal world where he is concerned with the relationship of the individuals to the architectural environment and to the urban nature. In his large dimension paintings, he replaces the traditional canvas with the jean textile, the canvas here is processed in a different way. Jean is a material originated from denim, invented by Jacob David and Levi Strauss in 1873. It has marked the culture of the last 150 years. Also, it is connected to the labour class, as a symbol of disobedience, which later became the basic paradigm of fast fashion (clothes in low prices produced fast from the mass markets). The artist approaches jean as a fabric of everyday life, addressed to all social strata. Wearing it, people feel familiar and it connects individuals around the world (global cultural transplant). Its social address is evident from the range of its value and the market demands. The question of matter and form, as well as their coexistence in relation to philosophical pursuits, regarding material and its research, are redefined and acquire a new dimension here. Anestis Ioannou watches from the window of a room, the city, the urban landscape, the architecture, the nature, our distance from the natural environment but also our effort to include it in our lives, fragments, such as a flowerpot and a tree in an open-air space, the vain gesture of the individual which reminds us of what we have lost. Starting from this thought, his concrete-like sculptures with neon, wave at us in an ironic mood. When we cannot include the natural element, we replace it with the artificial: a neon plant that grows in cement instead of soil. We follow the process of technology expropriation rooted in everyday life, related to advertising, branding, nightlife, bars in the urban field, and it turns to be a personal story. A narrative like a fragment in urban chaos. All these references are intricately embedded in an apartment of a 1951 building, an excellent example of Greek modern architecture and modernism, which during this era local immigrants left rural life and moved to the city.

Katerina Nikou (independent curator, Greece, Belgium)

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Anestis Ioannou: “After Sunset”
Curator: Katerina Nikou
Dates: June 22nd – October 10th (by appointment)
Opening: June 22nd at 17:00-21:00

In the framework of the solo show of Anestis Ioannou, After Sunset, curator Katerina Nikou, invites international cultural practioners, to respond to the poem written by the artist, Together We Root As A Family.

This project is parallel to the exhibition. The participants comment on the notions which Anestis Ioannou mentions in his poem: the relationship with our ancestors, our roots, time and what we consider today a family.

Participants: Adam Szymczyk, curator at large at Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, Holland)& former artistic director documenta 14 (Athens, Greece, Kassel, Germany), (Zurich, Switzerland), Alexis Fidetzis, artist (Athens, Greece), Andreas Mallouris, artist (Nicosia, Cyprus), Angelo Plessas, artist, documenta 14 (Athens, Greece), Daniel Knorr, artist, documenta 14 (Berlin, Germany), Danny Hiele, cinematographer, director of photography (Los Angeles, USA), Daphne Vitali, curator, National Museum of Contemporary Art Museum (Athens, Greece), Dimitris Rentoumis, artist (Athens, Greece), Eleni Christodoulou, artist (Athens, Greece), Eleni Glinou, artist (Athens, Greece), Fotini Gouseti, artist (Athens, Greece), Isabelle Cordemans, artist (Antwerp, Belgium), Lilou Vidal, independent curator, writer, author, founder of the non-profit organization Bureau des Réalités (Brussels, Belgium), (Torino, Italy), María Magdalena Campos-Pons, artist, documenta 14 (Nashville, Tennessee, USA), Marijke de Roover, artist (Brussels,
Belgium), Meriton Maloku, artist (lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium), Nathan Pohio, artist documenta 14 (New Zealand), Paul B. Preciado, writer, philosopher, curator (former curator of the Public Programs, documenta 14 (Athens/Gr, Kassel, Germany), (Paris, France), Phaedon Giallis, artist, (Athens, Greece), Protocinema, (Kathryn Hamilton/Deniz Tortum, Zeynep Kayan, Jorge González, Mari Spirito), (Istanbul, Turkey), Roman Hiele, music composer (Antwerp, Belgium), Sarah Vanagt, film artist (Brussels, Belgium), Saurabh Narang, artist (New Delhi, India), Simone Keller / Philip Bartels, documenta 14, (ox&öl Produktionen, Zurich, Switzerland), Theo Prodromidis, artist (Athens, Greece), Theophilos Tramboulis, curator, writer, author (Athens, Greece), Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis (VASKOS), (Athens, Greece), Yorgos Yotsas, artist (Athens, Greece)

*Anestis Ioannou, Alexis Fidetzis and Theo Prodromidis are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

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A Poem For You, Curated by Katerina Nikou

Crux Galerie, 4 Sekeri str, Athens, 106 74 (ground floor)
Dates: September 16th – October 10th
Opening: Thursday, September 16th  18:00-22:00 and then by appointment

“Death, drugs, beauty” – the tagline marks the streets, the single words in bold capitals stacked on top of each other. It doesn’t really read as a demand, or as desire, more like a nod to those in the know.

It’s true, though. Death, drugs, and beauty creep up from all sides: from the past and the future, from the earth, the skies and the oceans, from outside and in. Life – living – has become quite intoxicating again. And amid this collective, psycho-passive desperation, in which the same old, same new, has never been so unrealistic if not ridiculous, a new kind of hope seems possible.

In an interview earlier this year, the author McKenzie Wark remarked that:

the key to Guy Debord’s writing (…) is not the concept of spectacle; it’s détournement. It’s related to the English word for detour, but it’s essentially what he describes in an early manifesto as “literary communism”, the idea that all culture is collectively produced and belongs to all of us. And that its appropriation and modification in the direction of hope is a political practice in itself.
(McKenzie Wark, May 2021)

Belonging – an active and layered process by definition – remains an empty word, or phrase, or hope, when not connected to others; to bodies, to pleasures, to loving, making and bringing about change, for others as much as oneself. There will be no offering without suffering, for the beauty of belonging is that its form is fluid and interchangeable. It can be a dance, a promise, a kiss, a broken heart, a play, a trip or a show.

The works by the eight artists in this exhibition respond and reach out to one another in silent gestures of hope. Across two floors they expose their physical existence as animated objects, revealing and articulating the pleasures that come with the crave.

Tell me, I belong
Tell me, I belong
Tell me, I belong
(From Burial’s Archangel, 2007)

Artists: Mark Barker, Suska Bastian, Behrang Karimi, Sinaida Michalskaja, Natalia Papadopoulou, Paul DD Smith, Valinia Svoronou, Nikolas Ventourakis

Curated by Shahin Zarinbal

* Natalia Papadopoulou, Valinia Svoronou and Nikolas Ventourakis are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

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Tell me I belong
MISC ATHENS

17.09.21 – 23.10.21
Opening : 17.09.21 | 18.00-22.00
Exhibition hours: Tuesday – Saturday 12.00 – 18.00

MISC ATHENS. Tousa Mpotsari 20, 11741, Athens, Greece
[email protected]