Author: gourgourini

The Collection Kerenidis Pepe and the Association Phenomenon are pleased to announce φαινόμενα, a one-week program of contemporary art taking place on the Aegean island of Anafi, Greece, between 5–12 July, 2021, in collaboration with the invited art centres 3 137, EIGHT, Enterprise Projects, The Island Club and State of Concept Athens, from Greece and Cyprus.

φαινόμενα —pronounced ‘phenomena’— is an alternative plural incarnation of the biennial project Phenomenon initiated in 2015. φαινόμενα reflects and responds to a period where space, social interactions, travel, and scale, have been warped and revealed as constructs of institutional powers. φαινόμενα hopes to explore these times as an opportunity to rethink space, in particular public space, not as an external container, but as something that both gets created by and shapes bodies in a continuous, political struggle. Questions of spatialities, heterotopias, small-scale initiatives, togetherness, and care that can be negotiated through research, art projects, and social activities, will serve as the start for our work together, always in close relation to the island of Anafi, its present, its histories and its human and non-human inhabitants.

Each invited art centre will have one day to orchestrate an event, a performance, a screening, a workshop, a lecture, a discussion, a reading, a display, that would function as a chapter in a longer open-ended story that unfolds over the week. Public open spaces will be given preference both as a direct relation to the project research and also to mitigate covid-related risks. All necessary precautions will be implemented to protect the inhabitants of Anafi, the participants and the visitors.

More information on the program and the related events will be announced closer to the dates.

3 137  is an artist run space in Athens founded by Paky Vlassopoulou, Chrysanthi Koumianaki and Kosmas Nikolaou. All three artists are ARTWORKS Fellows

Enterprise Projects is an Athens based project by Danai Giannoglou and Vassilis Papageorgiou. Both are ARTWORKS Fellows.

Room to Bloom programme/ Ecofeminism & Postcolonial Feminism

This Spring 2021, Room to Bloom launches its platform with an open call for applications addressing young artists with a feminist, ecological and/or postcolonial art practice.

Through this call, the platform will collectively select a group of 100 emerging feminist artists to participate in a mix of trainings, workshops and talks throughout the year. All the selected participants will be presented in our online index of artists that will be available on this website and distributed among international cultural institutions.

Selected participants will be offered the possibility to propose works for production (15 works selected) later this year, to be presented during international events and exhibitions (Palermo, Kyiv Biennale, Warszawa Biennale, AthenSYN Festival).

Workshop 1: Eco-Feminism (25-30 June – Athens and online option)
Taking place in one of the most dynamic centers of our rapidly changing world, the ecofeminism workshop taking place online and in Athens invites participants to collaborate in defining and enacting a new role of art. The participants will have a chance to learn from and create together with experts on activist, transindigenous, ecofeminist, revolutionary, and therapeutic practices.

Together, we will work on a sustainable communal art world based on an experience of harmonious coexistence with the environment and the role of the feminine in the cycle of life. What can we learn about our future from communities which still, or again, live in an unmediated relation to their, now drastically changing, living conditions? Our trainers are constitutive participants of the planetary transitioning from the patriarchal perception of nature from ‘resource extraction for human society’ to ecofeminist ‘nature as sacred living organism, of which humans are only one part’. We strive to overcome the loss of equilibrium caused by the onesidedness of Western epistemologies rooted in the discrimination of women and others on the receiving end of the extractivist aggression from the socio-political domain by reconnecting art, feminism, witch knowledge and ecological practices.

On the European continent, the transindigenous concept of “good life” is enacted by the diverse movements in Southern Europe, where, due to austerity, many actors of social change have taken the responsibility for creating sustainable worlds with their own hands. So did the diverse inspiring movements in Athens: an ideal climate for our ecofeminist Room to Bloom Athens. Education is a form of art. Art is a pioneering force to interdisciplinary education. Our series of ecofeminist workshops was developed as an educational experiment and will take place in an artistic environment „Transindigenous Assembly“ by Joulia Strauss, initiator and organiser of Avtonomi Akadimia in the Akadimia Platonos “Jungle”.

The eco-feminist workshops were organized and co-curated by AthenSYN/ Katja Ehrhardt

Workshop 2: Postcolonial feminism (20-24 September – online)
Nadje Al-Ali (feminist writer and researcher) defines the postcolonial as being “characterised by a series of transitions, a multiplicity of processes and developments towards decolonisation and de-centring of the ‘West’”. Postcolonial feminism aims to understand and undo the legacies of colonialism within feminist activism. In other words, postcolonial feminism wants to decolonise feminist activism — reclaim it as more than just a pursuit of the western world and its people. Postcolonial feminist academic writing seeks to understand and interpret everyday lived experiences through a postcolonial perspective, de-centring the white, western, Eurocentric experience. This workshop is designed to allow exchange between young artists on postcolonial feminism.

This workshop will examine the most challenging feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories and artistic practices at a global scale. Its approach will emphasize on the multiplicity of viewpoints on this topic and will include the voices coming from different fields, including visual arts, performance, literature, and more. Within a global world in which contemporary art has turned into a transnational space, feminism, acting at the intersections of gender, postcolonial, and queer studies, must challenge the Eurocentric bias. From this plurality of worlds, we aim to open a discussion and peer-to-peer learning process between different disciplines, opening the possibilities of a wide project of construction, de-construction and co-creation.

The workshop includes theoretical learning, peer to peer exchange and discovery of some artists’ works. It will bring together representatives and prominent voices in the field of postcolonial feminism to share their thoughts, work and experiences.

Workshop 3: Leveraging Obstacles to Women and Migrant artists careers (22-26 November – Palermo and online)
Whereas migrants and women, from Malevich to Picasso, from Tamara de Lempicka to Sonia Delaunay, famously contributed to the making of European Arts, their access to the world of arts remains extremely limited today. Beyond a few famous faces, women and migrants struggle to be effectively contributing to the making of the European cultural and artistic discourse, not from a lack of ideas or capacities but because the structural obstacles they face are not of those that one can easily fight individually. Room to Bloom recognises that it is more than time to build on that and provide artists and cultural operators to navigate patriarchalism and racism in the world of arts and to co-open up the space for new artists to bloom in a transnational Europe.

Room to Bloom aims to create an intercultural platform to empower artists from different backgrounds to reflect and act on eco and post-colonial feminist art. The aim of this workshop is to create a shared understanding of the challenges artists and art institutions face in developing a feminist post-colonial artistic practice, and of the solutions we can find to face those challenges. This workshop is designed to allow exchange between artists and art professionals on obstacles to artists careers and new feminism decolonial approach of arts curation and exhibition. It will provide participants with better tools to operate in the European cultural scene and within international established institutions.

More info: https://www.roomtobloom.eu/programme/

http://www.athensyn.com/

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The following ARTWORKS Fellows have been selected for the Ecofeminism workshop in Athens: Ileana Arnaoutou, Konstantinos Kotsis, Maria Sideri, Irini Kalaitzidi, Antigone Theodorou, Ionian Bisai, Sevastiana Konstaki, Eirini Vlavianou

For the online workshop on Postcolonial feminism was selected: Angelos Papadopoulos

For the workshop on Leveraging obstacles to feminist and migrants artists careers in Palermo was selected: Irini Miga and Pegy Zali

A group exhibition open only June 28, 2pm- 9pm.

Dimitri Angelini, Tjorg Douglas Beer, Luca Bertolo, Chiara Camoni, Olimpia Cavriani, Guenter Foerg, Erró, Konstantinos Giotis, Francesco De Grandi, Hristos Hantzis, Dimitris Karatzas, Dionisis Kavallieratos, Ilias Koen, John Kørner, Angela Liosi, Charlie Masson, Olga Migliaressi-Phoca, Yoko Ono, Manuel Osterholt, Malvina Panagiotidi, Panos Papadopolous, Katerina Papazissi, Benedetto Pietromarchi, Marieta Roussou, Valinia Svoronou, Filippos Telesto, Pavlos Tsakonas, Alexandros Tzannis, Malte Urbschat, Jannis Varelas, Vassilis H, Marina Velisioti, Woozy, Ronnie Yarisal

The german art collectors from Kiel Gunda and Peter Niemann have started their engagement in Athens a few years ago by opening Haus N as an exhibition space for the athenian art scene. https://www.haus-n.gr
The exhibition I CAN SEE YOUR HOUSE FROM HERE. takes place in a second location Haus N Athen 2.
The exhibition is a collaboration between the parttaking artists.

It takes place only for 7 Hours on the opening day June 28 from 2 pm until 9 pm.

Hours
2pm – 9pm

Location
Haus N Athen2
Vatsaxi 6
10438 Athens
Greece
https://www.haus-n.gr

*Konstantinos Giotis, Malvina Panagiotidi, Valinia Svoronou, Pavlos Tsakonas and Alexandros Tzannis are ARTWORKS Fellows

Two Fellows take part in the 9th Syros International Film Festival (SIFF). Eleni Bagaki’s short film The Film will be screening on Friday June 23rd within the Short Films Program, while Dimitra Kondylatous’ short film Backyard With a View  will be on view the next day (Saturday July 24th) during the Program DELLAGRAZIA DRIVE-IN, POSIDONIA. Dimitra will be holding an open discussion the next day around her film at Ploes, Ermoupoli.

The 9th Syros International Film Festival, which takes place on the island of Syros between July 22–26, 2021 and is held with the support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) compirses of films from diverse geographic, social, and cultural contexts, workshops, talks, original commissions, audiovisual installations and performances From classic masterpieces to contemporary experimental cinema and from Russia to the USA and Europe, SIFF combines various art forms, formats, sounds and cultures in repurposed locations across the island!

The edition’s theme “Off Season,” continued from 2020, proposes an alternative perspective in periods of crisis, focusing on different perceptions of time, the different “speeds” at which humanity operates, limits on movement and mobility as well as the management of personal time and leisure as a fundamental human right.

SIFF presents two original commissions that take up these new perspectives of “Off Season” by making use of rare archival materials. Cheirographon by editor Harout Arakelian and music archivist Ian Nagoski is an ode to diaspora immigration to the United States in the first half of the 20th century, using found footage from both archival material and feature films, with an original soundtrack that blends rare recordings from various immigrant communities of that period. Selected texts will be narrated live at the screening, synthesizing archival, mash-up and performative techniques in an invocation of past movements.

The Festival’s second major commission, Launching Ceremony, is a site-specific audiovisual installation conceived by filmmaker and visual artist Marina Gioti, realized with the support of NEON Organization for Culture and Development, and in partnership with the Greek Film Archive. Gioti’s new project focuses on the ceremonial launch of a new vessel, compiling a montage of mid century archival footage from Greek and international newsreels aiming to bring an intentional anachronism face to face with the present moment. Thessaloniki-based composer and thereminist May Roosevelt composes the film’s score, which will be performed live at the opening on July 23 at 21:00. Both the performance and installation are hosted in the historic Tarsanas Shipyard in Hermoupolis, Syros.

SIFF’s Drive-In in Dellagrazia this year includes Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death (United Kingdom, 1946), a humanistic film which traverses time and space to make a case for the transcendent value of love, paired in a double feature program with one of the greatest visual poets of our time, Claire Denis, with her hypnotic images of Beau Travail (France, 1999), an adaptation of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd that culminates in one of the more startling, unforgettable endings of modern cinema.

SIFF’s 2021 programming embraces a wide spectrum of cinematic genres including experimental cinema, art house films and silent movies accompanied by original musical compositions such as the underseen masterpiece of early ethnographic cinema and Soviet propaganda, Salt for Svanetia (USSR, 1930), in which Mikhail Kalatozov documents the harsh conditions of life in an isolated mountain village with visual bravado. Sound artist Costis Drygianakis will present an original musical composition, a soundscape that combines sounds from the film, historical recordings, field recordings, industrial noises and original narrative voices.

Retrospective and contemporary Greek film production is present with The Years of the Big Heat (Greece, 1991) by the influential filmmaker and poet Frida Liappa, a free rendition of Electra’s myth which is set in a completely imaginary state, while visual artist Eleni Bagaki presents the short The Film, part of the project “A book, a film, and a soundtrack,” which was commissioned by Radio Athènes. The film draws inspiration from a failed romantic relationship and leads us to an unlikely encounter between tones, forms, scenes, moods, and desires.

See the SIFF 2021 Program here.

Four artists, Maude Maris, Eva Nielsen, Evi Kalogiropoulou and Malvina Panagiotidi, are invited by HYam to exhibit their work this summer at the island of Hydra.

The exhibition establishes a dialogue between the work of four young women artists on a subject with a symbolic meaning, in the context of the celebrations for 1821: “Dancing in shackles”, a title that symbolizes on the one hand the endurance of the Greek people that they have never lost their identity during the four centuries of Ottoman occupation and, on the other hand, refers to an excerpt from Nietzsche that directly touches on art and creators. According to the philosopher, an artist is obliged to invent difficulties in order to better then give the illusion of an eternal lightness.

HYam chose to set up the exhibition in a historic site that once belonged to a hero of the liberation struggle, Admiral Tombazi. This architectural jewel became from 1936 a branch of the Athens School of Fine Arts where students and artists live in an artistic residence.

Duration: July 10 – August 15, 2021

* Evi Kalogiropoulou and Malvina Panagiotidi are ARTWORKS Fellows

State of Concept is very proud to announce the exhibition ‘Weaving Histories: Margaret Kenna and Anafi’ in collaboration with Association Phenomenon. The exhibition is organised in collaboration with the Benaki Museum Athens, and is supported by the British Council and the British School at Athens.

The exhibition is the third exhibition we host in response to our research platform “The Bureau of Care” (following the solo exhibitions of Chto Delat and Kader Attia) that looks into the politics and ethics of care. The show is focusing on the care practiced through the work of anthropologist Margaret Kenna who has been conducting research on the small island of Anafi in Greece since 1966.

Margaret Kenna is an anthropologist and researcher, and has devoted most of her academic work to the island of Anafi, her research begun in May 1966 and continues to this day. Kenna has
been looking into the island and the way of life of the islanders for more than fifty years. In 2006, the Municipality of Anafi declared her an honorary citizen of the island. The anthropologist in 2019 decided to donate all her research material to the British School at Athens, a donation that has not been completed due to the global pandemic of SARS COVID-19. Prior to this, Kenna has donated a great part of her photographic archive to the Benaki Museum in Athens. Audiences will have the opportunity to see a small part of her diligent work and research, for the first time.

This project, conceived in dialogue with Association Phenomenon, who has been organising a biennial contemporary visual arts project in the island since 2015, aims to bring together, the colossal work of an anthropologist, with contemporary artistic practices, aiming to direct towards care-fully enacted dialogues between anthropology and visual arts.

The exhibition gives the public the opportunity to see unique documents and recordings of life on the remote island, which portray the various changes that occurred in the island’s social fibre in the pre and post-dictatorship periods until today. It is a unique perspective, on a miniature and unique example of social organisation and how it has radically developed through the decades, posing many questions in relation to tradition, the ties between citizens in small communities, the role of women in them, but also decentralisation, modernisation and the isolation in remote islands such as Anafi, its citizens known in greek as ‘akrites’ (ακρίτες).

Three artists were invited to respond to Kenna’s work and archive, and were commissioned to produce new works, presented together with fragments of Kenna’s archive. Hellen Ascoli, Zoe Hatzigiannaki and Maria Varela, have each focused on specific aspects of the varied research trajectories Kenna’s academic work has taken throughout the years.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication with texts by iLiana Fokianaki, Margaret Kenna, Piergiorgio Pepe & Iordanis Kerenidis and Antonis Arvanitis, former president of the Anafiots Worldwide Association.

Weaving Histories: Margaret Kenna and Anafi
a project curated by iLiana Fokianaki and Phenomenon

Opening: 27th of June 2021, 18:00-22:00
Exhibition duration: June 27th-September 11th 2021

*Maria Varela is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019 in visual arts

Anastasia Pavlou & Sebastian Lloyd Rees

“Atmosphere”

Opening Thursday, July 1, 2021, 12:00-20:00

44, Eptanisou str., Kypseli, 11361, 4th floor, Zouropoulos

Closes Saturday July 10, 2021

*Anastasia Pavlou is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow (2019) in visual arts

Nykyaika Gallery hosts the SYZYGY – Spatial cuts and merging orbits, a duo solo exhibition of Athens based artists Apollon Glykas & Ilias Sipsas co-curated by Zoe Kalfa & Sebastian Boulter, a dialogue between photography and sculpture. The exhibition is an étude on the art of photography; questioning and revising its technical abilities, its artistic qualities and its cultural perceptions –ultimately, its limits. Harnessing up the rather unappealing reputation of photography –as an exact documentation of reality–, Athens based artists Apollon Glykas and Ilias Sipsas are carrying out a whole universe of peculiar beings, new objectivities and spatial arrangements. Their primary material comes from an archive of anonymous photographs, shot mainly for the purpose of documenting moments of everyday lives, rather than as artistic gestures.

Sipsas and Glykas treat these photographs as what they actually are, allegedly limitlessly reproducible yet very fragile and potentially mislaid objects, only to disturb and reverse this perception. The results they generate through a series of genius disruptions and rearrangements of their material are dramatically multiplying and astonishing, as they denude these photographs from their contexts –the particular space and time of their capture but most importantly, their unfailing connection to death. For, all photographs are an uncomforting reminder of the vulnerability and ephemeral nature of all existences, whether human or animal lives, buildings, objects and landscapes are portrayed.

Hosted in a Finnish gallery, the proposed exhibition, with its own particular references to the Greek identity and to Greekness, also aspires, therefore, to function as an open door, a door step, for a fruitful cultural interaction and dialogue –just as the exhibits suggest.

Curated by:
Zoe Kalfa
Sebastian Boulter

Lighting: Liisa Makinen
Catalogue design: Talc studio

Special thanks:
Sebastian Boulter, Panos Matthaiou & Vaso Panayiotopoulou (Talc studio), Pirjo Koskinen, Ville Kurki (photographs), Embassy of Greece in Finland, George Syrmas (MINU), Kostas Kostopoulos

Opening: Friday 4, June 2021, 16.00
Duration: June 4 to July 5, 2021

Valokuvakeskus Nykyaika Gallery
Kauppakatu 14, 33210 Tampere, Finland
​

*Apollon Glykas is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019

​

In the exhibition Six Breaths per Minute, Maria Louizou presents a sculptural installation combined with a vocal performance. Upon entering the ground floor of the gallery, the visitors encounter three large-scale clay constructions, in which the three performers step into in order to “use” the sculptures as speakers for a composition created by the artist herself.
For these large clay sculptures, Louizou drew her inspiration from the Greek tradition, ancient and contemporary, and the end result is a combination of different pottery forms, chosen to serve both the artistic vision of the artist, but also to create the necessary conditions to achieve the desired acoustics. The earthy material of the sculptures matches the colour of the performers’ costumes, which, standing still, become one with them. The sound of their voice travels in the room and activates another of the viewers’ senses, thus enhancing their connection with the artworks.

On the day of the opening the performances will take place from 12:30 to 20:30.
Afterwards, until July 17th the performances will take place every Thursday from 17:00 to 20:00 and every Saturday from 12:30 to 15:30.
The rest of the hours there will be a video recording of the performance in the exhibition space.

Maria Louizou lives and works in Athens. Her work consists of sculptural installations in which vocal compositions that she herself creates are hosted. She studied sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts and theory of composition of classical and electronic music. In 2020 she received the ARTWORKS award, while her research entitled Physicality in modern sculpture, vocal and Greek tradition was funded the same year by the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports, YPOA. IN 2019, her work was presented in New York, at the annual Tabula Rasa exhibition under the artistic direction of Robert Wilson, as well as in BEIJING, where she won the China Taiyuan International Youth Metal Sculpture Creations Award 2018.
Her work has also been presented in Theorimata exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (EMST), while her participation in the Watermill Center summer residency was funded through a donation from collectors Cornelia Long and Franz Wassmer. Her first solo exhibition 22°C took place in Rome, at the Sinestetica gallery, in 2019, and she is about to present a collective work as a member of the residency Station One Air 2021 Hippodamia in Context in collaboration with Columbia University and the Victoria Square Project team.

Performers:
Aliki Siousti, soprano
Katerina Nounopoulou, soprano
Maria Louizou, soprano

Exhibition text: Christoforos Marinos
Flyer design: Studio Lialios Vazoura
Invitation photo: Petros Toufexis
Documentary and performance video: George Makris

Grand sponsor:

TERRANEO MYKENE HELLAS

The research for the project was funded by the Greek Ministry of Culture.

*Maria Louizou is ARTWORKS Fellow 2020 in visual arts.

The emblematic building of the former Public Tobacco Factory opens its doors for the first time, introducing a new contemporary cultural centre in Athens, open to all. This project is the result of a collaboration between the Hellenic Parliament and NEON to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Greek War of Independence.

The new 6,500m2 cultural space, renovated with funding from NEON, will be inaugurated by an international group exhibition, Portals, featuring 59 artists from 27 countries including 15 new site-specific installations commissioned by NEON. Among them, 18 Greek artists are exhibiting new works or works whose framework of creation and presentation have been renewed to make them site-relevant.

With this year’s commemoration of the Greek War of Independence and continuing to live through the pandemic, “Portals” aspires to give rise to new messages, ideas, and reflections regarding contemporary artistic creation, through the prism of a newly-formed reality composed of change and disruption.

The exhibition takes place in all renovated areas of the building: the atrium, corridors, halls and mezzanines, bathrooms, the former Customs Office, the surrounding area, on the roof / façade of the building and on Kolonos Hill.

The inspiration for the exhibition originates from an article by author Arundhati Roy on the Financial Times on April 2020 which states that “the pandemic is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.” Considering that the rift created by the pandemic on an individual and collective level opens a portal, it is up to us to deal with our transition through it. “We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world.”

The exhibition represents a pluralism of ideas and touches upon issues related to collectivity, cultural understanding of history and politics, public space, and our common past, present and future.

Alongside the physical exhibition, we have also created an online ‘portal.’ The free mobile NEON app enables visitors to virtually browse the exhibition, see and learn about the works and artists, as well as receive notifications on the exhibition’s parallel events.

ΝΕΟΝ app is available for iOS and Android.

Participating Artists

Nikos Alexiou, El Anatsui, Dimitrios Antonitsis, Kutluğ Ataman, Kostas Bassanos, Vlassis Caniaris, Joana Choumali, Anastasia Douka, Eirene Efstathiou, Brendan Fernandes, Apostolos Georgiou, Jeffrey Gibson, Robert Gober, Vangelis Gokas, Sonia Gomes, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Shilpa Gupta, Elif Kamisli, Kapwani Kiwanga, Panos Kokkinias, Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Jannis Kounellis, Louise Lawler, Glenn Ligon, Liliane Lijn, Maria Loizidou, Tala Madani, Teresa Margolles, Steve McQueen, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Marisa Merz, Ad Minoliti, Alex Mylona, Nikos Navridis, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Duro Olowu, Maria Papadimitriou, Dimitris Papaioannou, Cornelia Parker, Adam Pendleton, Solange Pessoa, Francis Picabia, Gala Porras-Kim, Michael Rakowitz, Ed Ruscha, Dana Schutz, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Elias Sime, Christiana Soulou, Do Ho Suh, Anna Tsouhlarakis, Alexandros Tzannis, Adriana Varejão, Erika Verzutti, Adrián Villar Rojas , Danh Võ, Daphne Wright, Myrto Xanthopoulou, Billie Zangewa.

The new commissions are by artists: Anastasia Douka, Brendan Fernandes, Elif Kamisli, Panos Kokkinias, Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Glenn Ligon, Maria Loizidou, Teresa Margolles, Ad Minoliti, Duro Olowu, Gala Porras-Kim, Michael Rakowitz, Alexandros Tzannis, Adrián Villar Rojas and Danh Võ.

*Anastasia Douka, Eirene Efstathiou, Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Alexandros Tzannis and Myrto Xanthopoulou are ARTWORKS Fellows.

PORTALS

11/06/2021 – 31/12/2021

former Public Tobacco Factory – Hellenic Parliament Library and Printing House

A collaboration between the Hellenic Parliament and ΝΕΟΝ

Curated by Elina Kountouri, Director, ΝΕΟΝ and Madeleine Grynsztejn, Pritzker Director, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Organised by NEON

Opening Hours:
Monday & Tuesday: Closed
Wednesday, Friday, Saturday: 12-8 pm
Thursday: 12-9 pm
Sunday: 11 am-2pm & 5-9 pm
Free Entrance

Please note that in accordance with public health guidelines, entry to the exhibition is only by timed ticket, booked in advance via neon.artsvp.co

Nefeli Asteriou, Nodas Damopoulos, Danae Dimitriade, Giorgos Nikopoulos, Yorgos Maraziotis, Dimitris Mytilinaios, Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, Martha Pasakopoulou and Andi Tzouma participate in the Athens Epidauros Festival.

Andi Tzouma is the choreographer of the performance Oikodomi (Construction Site). Giorgos Nikopoulos joins as a musician. The universe of Oikodomi (Construction Site) encompasses notions and symbols derived from two very different yet parallel worlds: rebetiko and hip-hop culture. Combining aspects of rebetiko music and history with kinesiology and hip-hop technique, this performance aims to create a space within which music, rhythm, and narratives merge together, jointly composing a uniform language of communication. A language that can be easily understood by everybody everywhere: this is the goal. Through the performance of four dancers and two musicians, Oikodomi (Construction Site) addresses human relationships and power relations, communication and isolation, life and death.

Danai Dimitriadi choreographs together with Dionisio Alamano the dance performance Free At Last: Rerooted με τον Διονύσιο Αλαμάνο. Mystical imagery and dark atmosphere. Greek tradition is deconstructed and linked with the present, as the legendary Dance of Zalongos inspires an original choreography. Two young, internationally acclaimed choreographers, Danae Dimitriadi and Dionysios Alamanos, carry the emotionally charged dance on the edge of the cliff to the stage, featuring original music and choreography inspired by traditional dances, Greek and foreign alike. A performance that vividly brings to life the creatures of the natural world. Free At Last premiered in June 2019, produced by Theater Rotterdam, with the support of Stichting Droom en Daad, RIDCC and Big Story Productions. The Free At Last: Rerooted version will be presented for the first time at the Athens Festival 2021.

Ioanna Paraskevopoulou participates in the performance  ANNNA³. The Worlds of Infinite Shifts in choreography of Alexandra Waierstall. The female body is transformed through an electrifying, emotional and existential dance trio. Three exceptionally skilful dancers cross the space around them full of both uncertainty and courage, celebrating the freedom of physical expression. They appear and disappear, hold tight and let go. Born in Britain and raised in Cyprus, acclaimed choreographer Alexandra Waierstall reimagines female bodies as sites of reflection, connectedness, and resistance, in collaboration with famous composer and pianist Hauschka and French lighting designer Caty Olive.

Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, Martha Pasakopoulou and Nefeli Asteriou (performance – video creation and editing) and Yorgos Maraziotis (space design) join the performance of Iris Karagian, A Dance as a Dance. How do we experience dancing as a practice of becoming? What happens to our senses when we dance and how are they transformed? Can the practice of dancing be connected to a need of redefining our existence and a desire for transcendence? These are some of the questions posed by choreographer Iris Karayan in her new production entitled A dance as a dance. Working with archival material that studies the movement vocabulary and dances of different cultures, Karayan explores the body, its pulses and breaths, creating a performance that focuses on dancing and liveness as a condition of being in the world.

Dimitris Mytilinaios is assistant of choreographer, as well as performer at the show of Lenio Kaklea Age of Crime. Paris-based choreographer Lenio Kaklea has been commissioned by the Athens Festival to create Age of Crime, on the occasion of the Greek War of Independence bicentennial. The artist encourages us to observe the official narratives that shaped national memory. The artist draws on vampire figures in order to comment on how customs and rituals build a kind of imaginary community. Based on first-person Ottoman narratives of the Greek War of Independence, she reveals how a nation seemingly cleansed from the influences of the Ottoman occupation is, in fact, fraught with tension.

More info:http://aefestival.gr/

The exhibition proposes to reflect upon ‘craft as power’, as an ability or capacity to act in order to reclaim the knowledge of design and artistic autonomy. The research on Robinson Crusoe as a maker lies at the very centre of this narrative. The exhibition refers to the example set by Daniel Dafoe’s hero who, initially stuck at an impasse, reaches completion and proves his value when he is forced to act and to find solutions to problems he has never faced before. During the period when a large part of the Benaki Museum’s permanent display of 19th-century material is relocated from the 3rd floor of the Benaki Museum of Greek Culture to the Benaki Museum / Pireos 138 for the anniversary exhibition ‘1821; Before and After’, this contemporary art exhibition ‘occupies’ the galleries and reflects on their transitional stage.

Ηere, craft’s critical dynamic, which relates to the search for authenticity, the rejection of mass production and the reflection on concepts like ‘tradition’, ‘means’ or ‘process’, becomes a medium and a strategic practice for redefining the priorities between the artist, the artwork and the audience. The 36 participating artists present their works inside this overcharged with significance space by paraphrasing, using and upsetting the museum’s construction, the representation of history and the viewing conditions of the artwork. The exhibition thus explores the relations between the autonomy of art and the ‘heteronomy’ of everyday life by activating practices from the full spectrum of creativity and interpretive concepts like work, performance, functionality, production, bricolage and reuse.

Participating artists: Vanessa Anastasopoulou, Maria Antelman, Margarita Bofiliou, Martha Dimitropoulou, Anastasia Douka, Petros Efstathiadis, Zoi Gaitanidou, Maria Georgoula, Giorgos Gyparakis, Hope, Dionisis Kavallieratos, Ilias Koen, Zissis Kotionis, Virginia Mastrogiannaki, Irini Miga, Maro Michalakakos, Oryo, Malvina Panagiotidi, Aliki Panagiotopoulou, Maria Papadimitriou, Nina Papaconstantinou, Eva Papamargariti, Antonis Pittas, Alexandros Psychoulis, Yorgos Sapountzis, Nana Sachini, Kostas Sahpazis, Stefania Strouza, Alexandros Tzannis, Thanassis Totsikas, Nikos Tranos, Panos Tsagaris, Giorgos Tserionis, Jannis Varelas, Alexandros Vasmoulakis, Eugenia Vereli, Paky Vlassopoulou, Α Whale’s Architects, Theodoros Zafeiropoulos.

*Margarita Bofiliou, Anastasia Douka, Petros Efstathiadis, Zoi Gaitanidou, Virginia Mastrogiannaki, Irini Miga, Malvina Panagiotidi, Eva Papamargariti, Stefania Strouza, Alexandros Tzannis and Paky Vlassopoulou are ARTWORKS Fellows.

Chara Stergiou (Fellow 2020), as a member of the Practices of Attunement, takes part at the organization of the same titled workshop of New Alphabet School #Instituting at The Eight, Athens and organized by Haus der Kulturen der Welt in collaboration with The Eight & Goethe-Institut Athens.

The Practices of Attunement workshop is a proposition that takes “instituting” as a nonfinite verb, a call to collective action: a never-ending form of speculation, adopting attentiveness, receptivity and movement as its constituent elements. It seeks to extend Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s notion of “study”: an encounter “where you allow yourself to be possessed by others,” instituting a mode of counter-maintenance, generating and maintaining felicitous conditions for encounters. For New Alphabet School #Instituting, PoA invites participants to join in extended sessions that focus on maintaining, triggering or establishing the conditions for study via remote(ly) collective practices of attunement occurring (a)synchronously across multiple sites.

For workshop registration here.
More about the program here.
Participation is limited and registration will be closed as soon as the workshops are fully booked.

Invited writers Fred Moten and Stefano Harney give a collaborate lecture on “Instituting” and its relation to the “Undercommons” and to talk about their ongoing work, including their forthcoming book “All Incomplete” while part of the artist collective ruangrupa, will deliver a participatory lecture on aspects of “Instituting” given their diverse ongoing collective practice.

The event and program on #Instituting is curated by Gigi Argyropoulou and Kostas Tzimoulis.

PRIZING ECCENTRIC TALENTS

Curated by Georgo Bekirakis and Angelo Plessas

Opening: Wed, 9th June 2021 at 16:00 until 22:00
Duration: 09.06.2021 – 31.07.2021
Open by appointment

P.E.T PROJECTS @petprojectsathens
Kerkyras 87, Kypseli, Athens

Participating artists:

Andreas Angelidakis , Danai Anesiadou , Eleni Bagaki, Despina Charitonidi , Savvas Christodoulides, Manolis Daskalakis-Lemos  , Theodoros Giannakis, Katerina Komianou , Irini Miga  , Maria Papadimitriou , Rena Papaspyrou, Panos Profitis  , Socratis Socratous , Amalia Vekri.

* Eleni Bagaki, Manolis Daskalakis-Lemos  , Theodoros Giannakis, Katerina Komianou , Irini Miga and Panos Profitis are ARTWORKS Fellows.

ΠΕΙΡΑΩ Group Show
Opening: Thursday June 10th 17:00-21:00 pm.

Opening hours: Monday-Friday, 12:00-18:00 pm,
Duration: June 10th -July 1st, 2021

Participant Artists:
Venetia Molin
Evi Kalogiropoulou
Claudio Coltorti
Theo Prodromidis
Ioannis Augoustis
Elena Demetria Chantzis
Angelos Akrida
Kyveli Zoe Stenou
Anna Savidou Yiaxi
Theodora Kanelli

Kyan ΑΘΕΝΣ, 60 Εm. Benaki st, Exarcheia, Athens

* Evi Kalogiropoulou, Theo Prodromidis, Elena Demetria Chantzis and Theodora Kanelli are ARTWORKS Fellows

Kala azar, the feature film of Janis Rafa (Fellow 2020), will be screening at the open air cinema Anesis, as part of this year’s Iris Awards of the Hellenic Film Academy.

Kala azar. Janis Rafa, 85′, Netherlands, 2020

A canary, a dog, a cat – even a fish. The young couple employed by the pet crematorium collect them all. She mumbles something about forms that have to be filled in at this difficult time and ashes that will be returned within 24 hours. He wraps the departed pet in a blanket and puts it in the back of the jeep. They hardly speak during the rest of the day. They drive through a post-apocalyptic landscape on the shabby periphery of an industrial city. They make love, swim and are surprised by the large numbers of dead animals strewn along the roadside. When they hit a stray dog, their relationship starts to derail. The universe has lost its harmony.

In Kala azar, the camera regularly hangs at dog’s eye level, so we see mainly feet and legs. Humans and animals communicate in similar ways: without words, with a growl and a shove. This also applies to the girl’s parents, who live with a pack of dogs, and the silent migrant workers in a dusty chicken hatchery. Only the hunters at the neighbouring shooting range are loud and heartless – a different archetype.

Kala azar is named after an infectious disease decimating the canine population of Southern Europe. But this enigmatic debut is mainly about the thin line between life and death, the spiritual connection between human and animal and the fragility of love between humans.

Winner IFFR 2020 KNF Award.

Anesis Open Air CInema
Kifisias Avenue 14, Ampelokipoi
Tel: 2107487912

Everything Is in a State of Change is a project conceived by curator Daphne Vitali (GR/IT) on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Joseph Beuys’s birth following an invitation of the Goethe-Institut Athen. In order to pay homage to one of the most important and influential artists of the post-war period, the curator has invited two mid-career international artists Jennifer Nelson (GR/US) and Janis Rafa (GR/NL) to produce new works, referring to and dialoguing with Joseph Beuys’s diverse body of work and artistic research.

Jennifer Nelson and Janis Rafa are two artists whose artistic preoccupations are related to Beuys’s vast artistic practice, methodologies, and ideas as well as his stand on ecology. The artists’ new commissioned works engage – directly or indirectly – with environmental issues and more specifically with the relationship and interconnection between the human and the animal worlds. Both artists are drawn to the animal kingdom and focus on the biological, ethical, and philosophical connections that bind us to animals by creating artworks that are filtered by abstractions and metaphors, tackle social issues, and create an open perception of reality. The two new video works by the two artists each create a very different universe and visual narrative, yet both reflect on trauma, existence, violence, and change. Moreover, both works describe an abuse and a state of being trapped in a place or a disturbed landscape as well as being in an uncertain and unfavourable condition with no real escape. The healing, transformative, and ritualistic processes of art – important interests for Beuys himself – are also significant aspects of Janis Rafa’s and Jennifer Nelson’s works.

The artists attempt to visually examine connections between the natural and animal world and human existence but also poetically suggest the healing potential of art for a humanity seeking – in times of Covid – self-revitalisation and a sense of renewed hope for the future, as was the case in the post-war period that Beuys lived through. The title of the project, Everything Is in a State of Change, is a quote from Beuys referring to his artistic process, and it is used here to speak about the artists’ new works, the transformative possibilities of art, and the times we are now living in.

H Janis Rafa is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow (2020) in visual arts.

GOETHE-INSTITUT ATHEN
Panepistimiou 57
Athens

Duration:
27.05.2021 –  22.07.2021

More info:
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gr/el/ver.cfm?event_id=22164747&fuseaction=events.detail&

Visual artist and Fellow Eleni Bagaki is exhibiting at Eleni Koroneou Gallery

Opening: Friday 4 Ιουνίου, 12-9 pm
June 4 – July 17 2021

Reclining artist, the artist is reclining

I am taking a break

I stop to think, enjoy, absorb

What is there left to make?

I take it easy, I slow down, I look back

Joy and desire

What can I reclaim?