Author: gourgourini

Aggeliki Bozou, Maria Varela and Ilektra Stamboulou (all of them SNF ARTWORKS Fellows in visual arts) participate in the exhibition A thousand stories stitched on a piece of cloth. 1821-2021. The exhibition includes small stories within a larger one, having as a point of reference the garment, its transformations, its symbolic dimension as well as its political and other uses from the Revolution era to today.

Through indicative examples from different time periods, interconnected and redistributed, the exhibition blends yesterday with today, local with universal, as well as “tradition” with “fashion”. From the foustanela of the revolution fighters and the versions worn by “King Otto” and by the Evzones, to Mick Jagger’s famous “heretic” variation but also to that of “Iasonas” of Bost’s Medea. From the women of Zalongo to their “motion picture” and other analogues and from the black uniforms of the Sacred Band to those of the Messolonghi Philarmonic Band in their image. In a parallel manner, from the ottoman salvar all the way to the fashion of the bloomers and the spandex, and from the philhellenic fashion à la Bobelina to the commemorative scarf of Hermès Fashion House, offering alternatives and maybe unexpected narrations.

Through the instrumental contribution of contemporary visual artists, the subjects are developed through Video/Digital Art, where old “materials” and stories are recycled to new compounds with unexpected meanings and sometimes with symbolic ramifications pertaining to the modern reality. The combined total of the works forms a serial streaming exhibition concluding in 12 individual episodes, each one with a different scenario, different protagonists and contributors. The subjects will be posted on the web as a work in progress, every Friday at 18:21p.m. Parallel to that they will be distributed through the facebook page and youtube channel of the Museum of the History of the Greek Costume of the Lykeion ton Ellinidon, inviting the public to “follow” the exhibition and to keep track of its continuity. Applying however a “phygital” (physical and digital) model of the exhibition’s evolution, selected thematic unities will be presented at the headquarters of the Museum of the History of Greek Costume and at the Central Building of the Lykeion ton Ellinidon, combining thus the physical with the digital world.

Participant visual artists: Marilena Aligizaki, Alexandra Anagnostopoulou, Maria Varela, Iro Vouvoueli, Mary Thivaiou, Maria Kotsou, Aggeliki Bozou, Elektra Stampoulou

Concept – Supervision and texts: Tania Veliskou, museologist

Exhibition links:

Website: https://1821.lykeionellinidon.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GreekCostumeMuseum 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lykeionellinidon 

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEdjn6Uw13hCEgXOrZT2MSw

The Hellenic Film Academy (HFA) announces the appointment of Phaedra Vokali as the organization’s new General Director.

Phaedra Vokali graduated with honors from the Marketing and Communication Department of the Athens Univeristy of Economic and Business in 2005 and got her MA in Film Studies from UCL in 2008. Before entering the production terrain, she has worked in distribution, as a buyer. She has also worked as head of programming of the Athens International Film Festival, and editor in chief of CINEMA Magazine. She has been working as a producer in Marni Films since October 2013 and she is an alumnus of the EAVE Producers Network and the Torino Film Lab (Script&Pitch, Framework). Her first completed feature film production, SUNTAN by Argyris Papadimitropoulos, was awarded with Best International Feature in Edinburgh International Film Festival and was nominated for the 2016 LUX prize as well as selected for the 2016 European Film Awards. It also landed in IndieWire’s list of 20 best films of 2016 from around the world. Her second feature, AFTERLOV, by Stergios Paschos, premiered in Locarno 2016 where it got the Best Film Award by the Youth Jury and it has also been awarded in Thessaloniki IFF, Transilvania IFF and elsewhere. She has produced more than ten short films and plans to keep working on this format, while she aims working with first-time directors and supporting more female-driven narratives.

Phaedra Vokali is  SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2020 (moving image)

On March 20 and 21, ONASSIS STEGI will be presenting the first edition of its New Choreographers Festival to have been created specially to live online.

For two days The Onassis NEW CHOREOGRAPHERS FESTIVAL 8 is stepping off the stage to connect with audiences in the only place we can currently be “together”: online, via the Onassis Foundation YouTube Channel.

Vasilis Vilaras (“RED RIDING SHOES”), Nadi Gogoulou (“The Cooking-with-Nadi Show”), Myrto Delimichali and Stathis Doganis (“Pose_Transpose”), Irini Kalaitzidi (“yaGrid”), the Besuch Team (“Besuch”), Anna Papathanasiou (“Axel’s Just Dreaming”), Ioanna Paraskevopoulou (“All She Likes Is Popping Bubble Wrap”), Konstantinos Papanikolaou (“The Diving Horse and Other Mythologies”), Natasha Sarantopoulou (“ILISSOS / limbo eξótica”), ody icons (“YES HALLO HI”), and the Stereo Nero Dance Co. (“442, or A Game Without Score”) are all choreographing ATHENS, Greece, and the entire world in this strange year that is 2021.

Irini Kalaitzid, Ioanna Paraskevopoulou and Nefeli Asteriou, Efthimios Moschopoulos & Dimitris Mytilinaios – member of the dance group Besuch – are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows.

The first feature of Jacqueline Lentzou (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2018), “Moon, 66 Questions”, was selected at the section “Encounters” of the 71st edition of the Berlinale.

When a grave illness strikes down her father Paris, Artemis decides to return home to Greece after an absence of some years.Being the sole child of divorced parents, she is the only one who can look after Paris, who requires daily care. Father and daughter embark on a journey into knowledge and revelation, which heralds a new beginning for their relationship.
After a series of surprising short films, Moon, 66 Questions is the long-awaited feature debut of Jacqueline Lentzou. It initially defines itself as “a film about flow, movement and love (and lack of them)”. Delineating a psychoanalytical portrait, the film accompanies the flow of the unconscious, vivifies the grey areas of family life and restores the love between Paris and Artemis. The road is long and hard, taking in Paris’ old home movies as well as the journal Artemis keeps: writing is the only escape. It is all part of the journey she takes to bring her body closer to that of her ailing father. The structure of this beautiful, touching film is rather like the astral patterns of tarot cards: for a few moments, the sun and the moon converge and even touch in a mutual, caring embrace – just like the one between Paris and Artemis.

The competitive section “Encounters” was introduced in 2020. Its goal is to support new voices in cinema and to give more room to diverse narrative and documentary forms in the official selection. A three-member jury will choose the winners for Best Film, Best Director and a Special Jury Award, and will announce them during the Berlinale Industry Event in March. The award ceremony will take place at the Summer Special in June. This year’s line-up comprises twelve titles from 16 countries, of which seven are first features.

Maria Varela (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019) works with codes, languages and skills that are often rooted in traditional cultures and linked to female domestic labor.

In her new work she refers back to rituals and symbols that belong to the tradition of female craft-making and decorated breads aiming to update their vocabulary and mode of production but also to experience the ritualistic patterns of their production process.

Using bread as a starting point, both as a basic food right but also endowed with symbolic potentialities, Varela re-packages the production process forming a hybrid meta-form, where producer and consumer, online and offline, interface and face-to-face, present and past, individual experience and collective labor, symbols and matter intersect.

Varela created a database of symbols, where wishes / requests / orders will be archived; she also created an algorithm which will select the wishes that will be materialized which in turn will be matched with the coded symbols that relate to each wish; the coded wishes are produced by Varela over a series of days at TAVROS and will be broadcast live via a web performance.

The next stage of the process is the formation of a social network of women who will knead, decorate and weave onto bread. Some of these women are well versed in the process and its symbolic gestures, others will be new to the process, learning and experimenting on the way through their artistic practice. The network will be completed by academics who will contribute to the discourse from an anthropological, folk and museum studies perspective.

The social network is the artwork. The code is the artwork.

The ritual
Self Practice
1. research into symbols / bibliographic research
2. contact with Female Agricultural Collective Aiantis, specializing in decorated breads
3. learning to make decorated bread, trial runs with Mrs Aggeliki Kavakaki (Female Agricultural Collective Aiantis)

Collective Practice
4. open call > collection of wishes/requests and taxonomy into a database > algorithm codification
5. web performance by Maria Varela making of decorated breads
6. workshop with decorated breads: Female Agricultural Collective Aiantis – five female artists
7. making of decorated breads by the five artists
8. podcasts by academic contributors / curated by Despina Catapoti

Presentation
9. presentation of decorated breads
10. uploading of podcasts and web performance

Participants
Aggeliki Kavakaki, Director of the Female Agricultural Collective Aiantis
Maria Georgoula, Artist
Anastasia Douka, Artist (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019)
Malvina Panagiotidi, Artist (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2018)
Stephania Strouza, Artist (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2018)
Paky Vlassopoulou, Artist (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2018)
Despina Catapoti, Assistant Professor in Cultural Theory and Digital Culture, Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean
Yannis Drinis, Head of the Department of Intangible Cultural Heritage and
Intercultural Relations, Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports
Βασιλική Κράββα, Επίκουρη Καθηγήτρια Κοινωνικής Ανθρωπολογίας, Τμήμα Ιστορίας και Εθνολογίας, Δημοκρίτειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θράκης
Vassiliki Kravva, Assistant Professor Social Anthropology, Department of History and Ethnology, Democritus University of Thrace
George Manginis, Academic Director, Benaki Museum
Despina Nazou, Social Anthropologist, Postdoctoral Fellow , University of Crete

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

Support:
Polyeco Contemporary Art Initiative PCAI , French Institute of Greece.

Watch live Decorated Bread, a web performance by Maria Varela on tavros.space Youtube channel.

Until 26 February, 10:00 -18:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFJQSzaN1es&feature=youtu.be

The short documentary “Stefanos Rokos: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ No More Shall We Part, 14 Paintings, 17 Years Later”, directed by Rinio Dragasaki and Araceli Lemos, has won the award for “Best Short Documentary” at the 16th Cinema On The Bayou Film Festival, Louisiana’s (USA) second oldest film festival, that took place this January!

Synopsis: The filmmakers Rinio Dragasaki and Araceli Lemos document three years of contemporary Greek painter Stefanos Rokos’ work on the making of his exhibition “Stefanos Rokos: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds No More Shall We Part, 14 paintings 17 years later.” The filmmakers capture his daily routines, artistic process, spontaneous inspirations, and his creative dialogue with legendary musician Nick Cave.

Find more about the festival, all nominees and winners here: https://cinemaonthebayou.com

Rinio Dragasaki and Araceli Lemos are both moving image SNF ARTWORKS Fellows 2019.

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.