Author: gourgourini

Twelve art publications in print and digital format compose Pixels created by artists from the “To Pikap Community” in Thessaloniki curated by miss dialectic commissioned and supported
by Goethe-Institut.

Departing from the interactive installation “The Disappearing Wall,” organized by the Goethe-Institut and presented in different European cities (including Thessaloniki) in Fall 2020, miss dialectic curates Pixels, an art publication that unfolds both as an online and an offline project. With the aim to unravel the connection between Thessaloniki’s urban imprint and its visual arts community, miss dialectic invited twelve artists from the “To Pikap Community” to open a creative dialogue with quotes that found their place in “The Disappearing Wall.”

The city, architecture and nature, domesticity, sensuality and affection, everyday rituals and ruptures, were only a few of the themes that emerged. Works in progress, drawings, photographs, and collages form the backbone of a collective publication project devised by twelve graphic designers living in Thessaloniki and orchestrated by Post-Spectacular Office.
Pixels, comprising twelve hybrid artists’ books, aims to mark a certain moment in the creative history of Thessaloniki. Each artist, similarly to a single pixel, allows us to experience a sample of their worlds, adding to a fragmented but authentic image.

Curated by: miss dialectic

Artists: Maria Andrikopoulou, Dimosthenis Bogiatzis, Stelios Chatzivasileiou, Fousti Lamé, Sofia Karasavvidou, Giannis Karavasilis, Maria Kriara, Loopo, Ilektra Maipa,
Theofanis Nouskas, Theodora Prassa, Stella Tsoumatidou

Publications’ Graphic Design: Andreas Avakoumidis, Elli Christaki, Stergios Galikas, Evelina Garantzioti, Tasos Gkaintatzis, Vasilis Gkountinas, Olympia Kokkorou, Vasilis Kotsikas, Dimitris Lelakis, Achilleas Polychronidis, Juan Solano, Mariza Tsakona & Post-Spectacular Office

Kelly Tsipni-Kolaza and Klea Charitou, co-founders – together with Eleanna Papathanasiadi of “miss dialectic”,  are curatorial SNF ARTWORKS Fellows 2020.

Participating artists Maria Kriara and Ilektra Maipa SNF ARTWORKS Fellows in visual arts.

Discover the Pixels here: pixelsthedisappearingwall.com

Supporters: Pixels was commissioned by the Goethe-Institut Athen as part of a European project that culminates in the interactive installation “The Disappearing Wall” and is supported by special funds from the Federal Foreign Office for the German EU Council Presidency 2020.

Working at the intersection of multiple disciplines, drawing inspiration from the everyday, giving value to the barely noticeable, focusing on the relationship between the artist and the audience, working as an artistic duo, thinking queer art as an expression of resistance, moving from grassroots practices to projects placed within institutional frameworks; these were some of the topics discussed during the 3rd round of our Fellows’ presentations. Thank you Eirene Efstathiou, Andreas Ragnar Kassapis, Irina Miga , Madlen Anipsitaki, Elena Demetria Chantzis , Aimilia Liontou, Foivos Dousos -1/2 of FYTA with Fil Ieropoulos- Anestis Ioannou , Ilektra Maipa, Christos Mouchas  and everyone who attended! Until next time 👋🏻

GREECE IN USA launches its program with the group exhibition “The Right to Silence?” that the non-profit platform organizes in New York under the auspices of the Greek Ministry of Culture at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, City University of New York and at other cultural venues from December 2020 until May 2021.

GREECE IN USA conceives and produces projects that build long-lasting partnerships with leading institutions and individuals who actively engage with Greece. In this context the opening exhibition consists of two parallel streams addressing different political and geographical contexts, focusing on Greece/Cyprus at Gallery X curated by Sozita Goudouna. GREECE IN USA has also invited curator and professor Thalia Vrachopoulos to respond to the theme with a focus on Asian Artists. GREECE IN USA invites numerous artists, curators and scholars to respond to “The Right to Silence?”.

A number of contemporary compositions seem to deny the presence of the beholder in their arrangement nevertheless what primarily matters to the canon of art today is its dialogue with the beholder. Acknowledging the beholder’s presence and the “to-be-seenness” of the artworks has also been the decisive contribution to the ongoing visual discourse on modernism. But how can the limits of this canon be tested in relation to the broader society. What if the beholder remains hidden from the public unable to be in any kind of dialogue with the artwork. Facing the wall, in a concrete cell with no windows or sitting blindfolded in a tiny concrete cube in perfect silence, waiting for an interrogator. A constitutive element of the prison is silencing – the silencing of lives, often of justice, of suffering and political expression. Mass incarceration has been discussed in terms of degrees of in/visibility but not so much in terms of the range of processes that reveal the in-between of representational languages that could be called in acoustic terms silence and in visual terms invisibility. Is silence connected to invisibility in a cause and effect relationship? The prison’s status as a silent and invisible space was challenged and is still being challenged today primarily by incarcerated artists who are working with communities most affected by prisons and policing so as to examine prison privatization and the politics and economics of the massive increase of the U.S. prisoner population since the 1970s. Prisoners, ex-prisoners, their families, social activists, academics, and professionals founded in the ‘70s a voice-magnifying attack on the prison’s own foundations that was called GIP (or the Prisons Information Group) and aimed to relay information about prisons between prisoners themselves, as well as from prisoners and the outside world. They lifted the veil that obscured their experiences from public view. Featuring pieces by visual and performing artists the group exhibitions attempts to uncover the profound and complex sense of silence that characterizes the prison industrial complex so as to examine whether art and aesthetics can break the silence about crucial political issues such as mass incarceration and criminal justice reform, as well as corruption/abuse, transgender-juvenile rights and solitary confinement in prisons. The exhibition also addresses the relationship as well as the discrepancies between the current self-confinement and self-isolation conditions and actual incarceration by examining the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual tensions that humans have to endure while in isolation. As Mischa Twitchin notes ‘what might be the “echoes” of silence, in what social space or locations might that be pertinent (or, in the privilege of “privacy,” how might it be resisted)…and what is to be understood by “remote” in these circumstances, after all?” Acknowledging the impact of practices that encourage the wider public to empathize with prisoners through art or the ways that art can heal incarcerated people the exhibition will also draw on forms of representation that have the potential of pointing beyond themselves to the unseeable and the unsayable.

Gallery X Curation: Sozita Goudouna
Participating Artists: Antelman Maria, Antoniou Klitsa, Athanasiou Margarita, Bofiliou Margarita, Bourgoin Veronique, Charalambides Nicos, Chatzipavlidou Despina & Mouriadou Anthi, D’Agostino Tim, Dimitriadi Christina, Finley Karen, Frangouli Nayia, Georgiou Alexandros, Geyer Andrea & Hayes Sharon, Giannakopoulou Eva, Gizeli Kleio, Hadjigeorghiou Yioula, Haritou Kleopatra, Harvey Steve C., Hunt Ashley, Inglessi Marion, Kavalieratos Dionysis, Kliafa Peggy, Kotretsos Georgia, Lappas Aristides, Lemos Manolis, Linardaki Eirini, Logothetis Aristides, Magnati Renee, Manouach Ilan, Mattis Daina, Migliaressi-Phoca Olga & Damaskou Despoina for SPAGHETTO, Papafigos Yorgos, Piperidou Hara, Salpistis Vassilis, Sklavenitis Panos, Spyrou Efi, Stamatakis George, Stathacos Chrysanne, Susin Juli, Twitchin Mischa, Venieri Lydia, Vlahos Vangelis, Volanakis Adonis, Zygoury Mary.

Gallery XX Curation: Thalia Vrachopoulos
Participating Artists: Bul dong Park, Chen Hui & Zeng Han, Chin Chih Yang, Chong Gon Byun,Goro Nakamura, Han Ho, Hobong Kim, Hoyoon Shin, Jaiseok Kang, Jeongsoo
Shim, Jong-gu Lee, Kenichi Nakajima, Kyung Hyo Park, Maelee Lee, Mary Ting, Ok-Sang Lim, Pan Xing-lei, Seung Wook Sim, Sunairi, Vasan Sitthiket, Wonhee Noh, Xu Jin.
Participating Artists: Bul dong Park, Chen Hui & Zeng Han, Chin Chih Yang, Chong Gon Byun, Goro Nakamura, Han Ho, Hobong Kim, Hoyoon Shin, Jaiseok Kang, Jeongsoo Shim, Jong-gu Lee, Kenichi Nakajima, Kyung Hyo Park, Maelee Lee, Mary Ting, Ok-Sang Lim, Pan Xing-lei, Seung Wook Sim, Sunairi, Vasan Sitthiket, Wonhee Noh, Xu Jin.
Production Associates: Georgia Kalogeropoulou, Eva Kostopoulou, Odette Kouzou.

Margarita Bofiliou, Aristides Lappas and Manolis Lemos are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows.

More info: https://shivagallery.org/featured_item/the-right-to-silence/

Under the Aegis of the Hellenic Republic Ministry of Culture and Sports  and John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Ersi Varveri (Fellow 2020) gives a video presentation related to her contribution ‘pages’ in the book shelf documents: art library as practice.

shelf documents emerges out of the project second shelf (second-shelf.org), a collaborative book acquisition project initiated by artist Heide Hinrichs in 2018 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, with a group of advisors. They integrated 223 new titles by nonbinary, women and queer artists as well as artists of colour in art libraries as a way to fill gaps, to amplify voices, to seek out the self-initiated and the overlooked. In thinking about diversity in collections, the publication proposes art libraries as sites of intersubjective communion, spanning practices that range from personal bookshelves and the libraries of art schools and universities, to those of spontaneous collectives and the ones associated with major museums.

In this session, contributors to shelf documents will unfold different modes of listening and voicing, including through Hinrichs’ drawing practice that gave shape to Inscriptions, a series of drawings presented in Risquons-Tout. Participants are invited to reflect and remake their own practices.

shelf documents: art library as practice is edited by Heide Hinrichs, Jo-ey Tang and Elizabeth Haines. It features contributions by Sara De Bondt, Rachel Dedman, Elizabeth Haines, Heide Hinrichs, Laura Larson, Samia Malik, Melanie Noel, Marisa C. Sánchez, David Senior, Jo-ey Tang, Ersi Varveri and Susanne Weiß. It is published by Track Report, Antwerp, and b_books, Berlin, in 2021 and benefits from the support of RAFA Antwerp, KIOSK, Ghent, Beeler Gallery at Columbus College of Art & Design and WIELS, Brussels.’

Info: https://www.wiels.org/fr/events/heide-hinrichs-shelf-documents-art-library-as-practice

Vasilis Papageorgiou wins the First Acquisition Prize at Premio Montani Tesei Under 35 Award.

The 2020 edition of ArtVerona sees the collaboration with a new partner, a young and prestigious subject that will support the under-35 artists present at the Fair with an acquisition award. The Studio Montani Tesei law firm is specialized in art law, protects companies and individuals in their relationship with the art system and its mission focuses in particular on those forms of awareness of the world of culture and collecting aimed at creating awareness and adequate knowledge of the current regulatory system. Under these premises, it was natural to come up with the idea of instituting an acquisition prize dedicated to the younger artists, those who are most in need of support and at the same time can be the harbingers of ideas capable of improving and innovating the system even outside the art scenario. Therefore, the selection will concern all under-35 artists exhibited at ArtVerona without medium or language barriers!

The lawyer Virginia Montani Tesei, founder of the firm, born in 1986, comments with a touch of irony on her decision to support an under-35 award, an anything but banal choice but in this case also very personal: “I think supporting the generation of artists of my age group seems the most natural thing to do. I think of my peers and I, who were born in the year of the Chernobyl explosion and graduated during the Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy and who now, at almost 35 years of age, have to deal with the Covid pandemic which puts projects and ambitions at risk. So, to support my generation – often unfairly defined as that of ‘big babies’ – seems to me the best way to make a small contribution to Italian art in such complicated times“.

The Award will trigger the engagement of the ArtVerona public: the jury panel – made up of Sveva and Francesco Taurisano (CollezioneTaurisano, Naples), Sabrina Comin (Project Manager of TRA Treviso Ricerca Arte) and Virginia Montani Tesei – will select 8 under 35 artists among those represented by the galleries participating in the Fair. Their names will be shared on the Instagram page of ArtVerona and can be voted for. The jury will assign the Award by choosing one of the three names most voted for online. The shortlist of the eight finalists will also be published on the Fair’s website and on the Artshell platform.

Vasilis Papageorgiou is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2018.

The Creative Excellence Award worth $10,000 went to Greece-France-Japan project “Titanic Ocean” from director Konstantina Kotzamani and producer Maria Drandaki. It will be Kotzamani’s debut feature following a string of successful short films.

The jury said that “Titanic Ocean” was “a daring project which is supported with flair and savviness by the producer and director. A sensual blend of fantasy and realism, Titanic Ocean presents itself as a sure-fire hit of tomorrow.”

Konstantina Kotzamani is a moving image SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2018.

F.A.R. explores the ways in which Athens is inhabited. It stems from the need to understand the different types of transformations that have been taking place in Athens in the past recent years. Despite the economic recession of the last decade and the political instability in the wider Mediterranean region, the city has become a place to be. At the same time, over the last five years, we have seen the local art scene changing; the number of art spaces is growing and venues and initiatives of varying scale are developing.

On December 8th, the program begins with F.A.R. RADIO, a temporary web radio station, broadcasting via www.3137.gr. At the same time, four interventions by Can Altay, Zoe Giambouldaki, Diohandi and Kostis Velonis will be installed outside 3 137, accessible 24/7. The interventions aim to comment on the use and design of public space and reflect on stories of cultural heritage and language.

Invited guests of F.A.R. RADIO are several art initiatives of the city, individuals with a research interest in housing and collective/individual property, as well as employees or owners of small businesses in ​​Exarcheia neighborhood. The guests will develop a 50-minute show—featuring sounds, music and discussion—about their activity, their daily habits, and the city networks within which they engage.

This radio project is a follow-up to Babylon Radio, which was organized by 3 137 in 2014 and to Radio Rhodiola, commissioned by Alserkal Arts Foundation in Dubai in 2019.

RADIO shows by:

Α-Dash Space, Aetopoulos Athens, Daphne Aidoni, Antonakis, Nikolas Arnis, Athens Zine Bibliotheque,Electra Barouni, Bayard, Gordon Beeferman, Callirrhoë, Elena Demetria Chantzis, Klea Charitou, Maria Chatzopoulou, Co-Hab Athens, Communitism, Ilaria Conti, DELIVERART project, Dolce Publishing, Vasilis Dimitrakas, Dora Economou, Enterprise Projects, Eftichis Euthimiou, Florent Frizet, Afroditi Gogoglou, GRACE, Stavia Grimani, Haus N, Hydroexpress Project Publication, Laure Jaffuel,Daphne Kalliga, Eleni Kamma, KEIV, Kelly Tsipni-Kolaza, Leefwerk, LULU, Michalis Markatselis, Giorgos Mitsios, ΝΟΤUS studio, Ntizeza, Malvina Panagiotidi, Eleanna Papathanasiadi, Maro Paraskevoudi, Michalis Pavlidis, Perienth Hotel, P.E.T Projects, Phenomenon, Phoenix Athens, Caroline Pradal, Eleni Riga, Rodeo Gellery, Kleanthis Rousos, Sofia Sabani, Erica Scourti, Snehta Residency, Panagiotis Sotiris, Evi Sougkara, Hristiana Stamou, Kostas Stasinopoulos, State of Concept Athens, Mina Stone, Alexander Strecker, Sub Rosa Space, Katerina Tsellou, Tsev, Marina Miliou-Theocharaki, THE EIGHT, Typical Organization, Eva Vaslamatzi, Daphne Vitali, Eva Vlassopoulos, Weekend, Yellow Brick, Vasilis Zarifopoulos, Zoetrope.

Interventions outside 3 137 by:

Can Altay, Diohandi, Zoe Giabouldaki, Kostis Velonis

F.A.R., Floor Area Ratio is realized with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Sports (2020), Outset Contemporary Art Fund Greece and Mécène / Mycanae (members of 3 137).

Modern Love explores the state of love and intimate relationships in the age of the Internet, social media, neo-liberal capitalism, and globalisation. It probes the societal patterns and challenges as well as possibilities that the Internet and social media present to our intimate relationships.

Digital technology and consumerism have significantly transformed love and social relationships. The experience of the virtual has increasingly dissolved the boundary between private and public. This influences how we communicate and interact with one another, especially with those closest to us.

On the one hand, the Internet and social media have facilitated the expression of non-heteronormative identities, forms of desire, and alternative ways of being. On the other, they have played a problematic role in cultivating pathologies such as narcissism, obsessive self-performativity, digital dependency within relationships, and the commodification of emotion.

The conflation of reality and fantasy has created complex psychological and relational entanglements, which are explored – among other things – in this exhibition.

In cooperation with Tallinna Kunstihoone (Estonia) and IMPAKT, Utrecht (Netherlands).

Participating artists: Gabriel Abrantes, Hannah Toticki Anbert, Melanie Bonajo, Laura Cemin, Benjamin Crotty, Kyriaki Goni, David Haines, Juliet Jacques, Mahmoud Khaled, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Maria Mavropoulou, Kyle McDonald, Marge Monko, Peter Puklus, Marijke De Roover, Margaret Salmon

Kyriaki Goni and Maria Mavropoulou are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows in visual arts (2018 and 2019 respectively)

𝐋𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬: 𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞

Who is silenced when another voice takes the stage? What happens when we speak another’s words?
𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘦, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘫𝘰𝘺 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘺 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 is the work developed for 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸𝘀 𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸 by Mercedes Azpilicueta and Angeliki Tzortzakaki with performer Maria Sideri. Based loosely on encounters recorded in the marketplaces of Athens, it takes the form of a script studying emotional affect in the languages of solidarity and communion shared between women in the public realm.
https://backtalks.city/project/you-bring-joy-into-my-life/

The artists will discuss the work with project curator John Bingham-Hall as a microcosm of the politics and processes of giving and taking voice. Questions in the making of this work become debates about the ways we hear, ignore, record, edit, and speak the words of others in the public sphere.
How can we make audible that which is edited out and make visible our own positions by revealing what is not there? For city-makers, these questions are crucial: how to translate the everyday narration of experience into the language of urban ‘decision-making’? Could scripts be seen as infrastructures for sharing the work of voicing what it means to live together in the city?
______________________________________________
Part of 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸𝘀 𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸, a program that brings together architects, urbanists, activists, artists, and anthropologists to explore the voicings of contemporary Athens. A collaboration between Onassis Stegi and Theatrum Mundi.
More info: https://www.onassis.org/whats-on/city-talks-back

Discussion and live reading group featuring Mercedes Azpilicueta, Angeliki Tzortzakaki, Maria Sideri and John Bingham-Hall

Maria Sideri is a visual arts SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2018

FREE LIVE STREAM https://backtalks.city/live/

25.11.2020
18.00 GMT // 19.00 CET // 20.00 EEST

Can an exhibition be like a Coven, curated on the basis of autonomy, sharing knowledge and radical care?

The idea of the exhibition as coven, stems from our need to initiate a conversation within the personal and political experiences of the present, raising the question of the relationship between intersectional feminism and curatorial practice. For this, as curators, we wish to create the setting for the coexistence of multiple voices and identities, and to highlight the collective relationships in the conformation of our present quests. Witchcraft is approached in a twofold way: on one hand, it operates as an archetype of empowerment and point of reference for the feminist struggles, since it underlines the historical evolution of capitalism, colonization and patriarchy (Federici). On the other hand, it acts out as a metaphor for the gender and class aspects that characterize artistic production, in a way that it plays a key role in the decisions regarding the exhibition’s realization and the question of its autonomy. At the center of the artists’ interest are emotions and embodied experiences coming from systems of oppression. Their framework is transnational, whilst memories and imaginaries of collective action emerge, as well as possibilities of healing in micro-worlds open to change.

Coven was born in January 2020 through discussions about how to come close, exchange healing and supportive practices and make space for each other in new ways of conviviality within an art exhibition context. Both, the first and the second, lockdowns forced us to postpone the show. This in turn made us redefine an idea, which at its core, is about proximity in a physical space.  We decided to turn Coven into a journey from the online to the offline world and create a community of care beyond the limits of physical space through a series of workshops, conversations and reading groups that will eventually lead – covid permitting – to the exhibit’s realization at the hospitable space of Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research.

“The more you share, the less you need”, Larry Mitchell wrote in his queer-feminist tale, The Faggots and Their Friends between Revolutions, about a rebellious utopia.

Thus, with the embracement of a feminist perspective outside the competitive environment of the dominant profit and non-profit cultural institutions, Coven as a concept wishes to embody the “love politics” it dreams of.

Curated by: Vassilia Kaga & Caterina Stamou

Vassilia Kaga is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2020 in curating

Participating artists: Margarita Athanasiou, Khaleb Brooks, Rabab El Mouaden, Marie-Andrée Godin, Eliza Goroya, Graham Kolbeins,
Vassiliki Lazaridou, Rory Midhani,  Sotiris Batzianas, Sofia Rozaki, Myrto Stampoulou, Dorian Wood.
Marie-Andrée Godin

Coven/Care – WWW³ (WORLD WIDE WEB /
WILD WO.MEN WITCHES /
WORLD WITHOUT WORK)
Coven/Care – WWW³ (WORLD WIDE WEB / WILD WO.MEN WITCHES / WORLD WITHOUT WORK) is a collective online gathering to remember (or if not, invent) and activate our faculties of care. We are going to share words and lived experiences through collective reading, grounding exercises and (their/her/his) story telling, with the intent of developing a safer spaced caring practice.

Marie-Andrée Godin was born in Canada and works between Canada and Finland, where she now lives. Her research has focused on the figure of the witch as a feminist figure and explores the concepts of a-hierarchy, craft, holistic and anti-anthropocentric thinking and knowledge as a source of potential power or oppression. She is now trying to see how magic, post-capitalism and diverse political forms or systems can be intertwined to help manifest the future. She conducts this research under the title WWW³ (WORLD WIDE WEB / WILD WO.MEN WITCHES / WORLD WITHOUT WORK) more thoroughly as a doctoral candidate at Aalto University (Finland) since 2018. This research is also supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Her artistic work is mainly based in the fields of installation, performance art and socially engaged practices, and has been shown so far in Canada, the United States, Japan, Finland and Italy.

WHEN: 28.11.2020 at 18.00 Athens / 17.00 Berlin
WHERE: Online
DURATION: 2 h
LANGUAGE: English

The number of participants is limited to 15 in order to encourage comfortableness and equal space for expression among the individuals.
Please send us an e-mail with subject “Coven/Care” and your name at [email protected] to receive an invitation link for the event.