Author: gourgourini

Nothing but a dull soft-drink.

It’s the dry season. A buffalo sleeps through the heat of the day in one of the last waterholes. Dragons lurk around the margins. The buffalo seems to view them as just an irritation, not a danger. A serious mistake. The dragon is wary, a jab or a kick could injure it fatally. its bites are just flesh wounds but other dragons are alert now. Like sharks they are excited by blood. The buffalo leaves with just a limp. The dragons appear to have failed. Yet they show a peculiar interest to the buffalo and follow it wherever it goes. As the days pass the buffalo’s wounds don’t heal. It starts to weaken. The dragon’s hunting method begins to come clear. A brand- new discovery reveals that the dragon has venom, like a snake. The bite will eventually prove fatal but it’s going to take several weeks. The dragons, however, can afford to wait for the meal of this size. But the process is a long, drawn out one. Three weeks later and the buffalo is very weak. The same night it will be dead. Ten big dragons strip the buffalo to the bone in just four hours.

Stories that excite, usually concern frightful accidents, mysterious criminals, severe passions, exotic places or strange and rare creatures. From early childhood books to cable TV documentaries, everyone has lost himself in such stories; and has surely chosen some to recount when in mood for talk or when simply awkward. We have all been present in occasions where the distance between the discussants, maybe gathered around the table of a common friend, is left behind for a moment, thanks to a bigger distance that they all might share with a serial killer or a flying squirrel, whose story rekindled the conversation that was somehow flabby after the necessary introductions. In the face of all their interest, these stories are often finished, though, and left behind by the coming of the sweet dish.

When asked how he can raise his children among these dangerous animals, a local fisherman, glibly responds that he is more afraid of them drowning in the waves while playing on the sandy beach.

Curated by: Eugenia Vereli, Kostas Efstathiou

Participating Artists: Eugenia Vereli, Zoi Gaitanidou, Phaidonas Gialis, Dimitris Gketsis, Hypercomf, Anastasia Douka, Petros Efstathiadis, Eleni Zervou, Filippos Telesto, Evi Kalogiropoulou, Irini Miga, Theo Michael, Margarita Bofiliou, Ilias Papailiakis, Valinia Svoronou, Thodoris Stamatogiannis, Nikos Tranos

Can anyone think of the future of connectivity beyond surveillance, minimizing the consequences of technological infrastructures on the natural environment? Is it possible for the bond between human and non-human worlds on this planet to be substituted? Can plants, as organisms on which life itself is depended, contribute to the creation and adoption of new practices for the mediated reality? Kyriaki Goni’s new multimedia installation investigates this set of questions by recounting a fictitious narrative that contains elements of truth.

This up-and-coming artist’s new multimedia installation, originally programmed to be presented in March 2020, is being installed in the Onassis Stegi Exhibition Hall and can be visited virtually from September 9 to 20 on onassis.org. And with “Data Garden”, Onassis Stegi is also taking part in the most important digital media festival in the world – Ars Electronica 2020 “In Kepler’s Gardens”, to be held online from September 9 to 13, 2020.

The starting point of this work is the recent scientific research on the data storage capacity of the living organisms’ genetic material, as well as on the challenges and moral dilemmas concurrently posed. The artist invites the audience to envision a network of plants on the Acropolis rock, in which digital information is circulated and stored. The network is protected by a community of users who in this way maintain the self-disposal of their data. As the storage space transitions from the “cloud” to the earth, and as control passes from the companies to the users, the life circle of data follows that of a plant, fostering a relation of interdependence and care. In a peculiar garden, users become the plants’ gardeners, whereas plants in their turn become gardeners of the stored information.
The story unfolds through drawings, prints, videos, sound pieces, and interviews with scientists from the respective fields, and reveals the connections between digital memory and the climate crisis, exploring possible recourses and strategies of resistance. “Data Garden” reminds us of the indissoluble and foundational relation between culture and nature, permitting the audience to reflect on the limits of human intervention and activity in the environment.

In her text “From Cloud to Earth”, curator and writer Daphne Dragona notes: “In her piece “Data Garden,” Kyriaki Goni purposefully interweaves fictitious elements and facts. The use of a hypothetical scenario and the appropriation of elements drawn from a scientific discipline that is currently under development, invite the audience to reflect upon the possible changes triggered by the leverage of DNA as a storage space. For example, the creation of these new, transgenic organisms is by no means detached from questions of ethics. A new condition under which plants become at the same time perceivable as infrastructures holds the danger of a new kind of instrumentalization of nature. The appearance of a new category of “living” infrastructures can possibly become an apple of discord in what concerns the control and ownership over them. However, the story of the piece does not aim at naming possible issues or scaremongering. On the contrary, emphasis seems to be given to the reminder of the indissoluble relation between culture and nature, and to the activation of a dialogue on the character and the boundaries of human intervention and activity. Correlating the architectures of technical networks with networks of nature, next to correlating the intelligence and strategies of a community of users with those of a population of tiny plants, the artwork opens up a discussion on heterarchies, multilingualisms, and symbiopolitics. Revealing the connections between digital memory and climate crisis, “Data Garden” refers to changes that are feasible before the further engineering of nature, while learning from it”.

Credits
Concept, Design & Realization: Kyriaki Goni
Production management: Prodromos Tsiavos, Ηeracles Papatheodorou
Production coordination: Ioanna Margariti
Line production: Irilena Tsami
Produced by: Onassis Stegi

Camera: Alex Dimitriadis
Sound recording voice over: Nikos Konstantinou
Introductory text: Daphne Dragona
AR Programming: George Kairis (enneas.gr)
3D modeling production: Antonis Kalagkatsis
Music: Vassula Delli & Roula Tsernou
Music Performed by: Female vocal ensemble “Pleiades”
Recording & Multi-channel Sound Installatiobn: Aris Delitheos
Lighting consultant: Danilof light + visual perception
Translation & Subtitling: Yourtranslator
Recording Studio: Tone Studio Athens
Digital Fabric Printing Studio: Textum Digital
Printing at Archival Paper: Filmora Photolab
Wall-mounted Frames: Nikos Sdralis

Included in the installation are discussions between
Mél Hogan: Director for the Environmental Media Lab (@EnvMediaLab) and Associate Professor, Communication, Media and Film (CMF), University of Calgary (Canada)
Karin Fister: M.D. University Medical Centre Maribor, Slovenia
Lambros Tsounis: Environmentalist – Oceanographer, MSc Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Environmental Engineering School of Engineering, University of Patras
Edward Perello: Biosecurity consultant, Investor in agricultural biotechnology, London, UK

Watch the virtual tour of Data Garden and a discussion with Kyriaki Goni.on September 9th, at 18:00 on the Onassis YouTube Channel: https://youtu.be/1T8UaQnOVtI ‘

Find out more about the exhibition on: https://www.onassis.org/whats-on/data-garden

IN COLLABORATION

The Syros International Film Festival (SIFF) is happy to announce the Alternate Paths workshop on September 4th, with visual artist and Fellow Dimitra Kondylatou.

The “Alternate Paths” workshops invite participants to follow hikes with local and international artists and filmmakers in unexplored areas of Syros. The aim of “Alternate Paths” is for participants to approach the past and present of the island in a more complex, experiential way. Workshop sessions will include organized walks to destinations that are not usually those of the mainstream trend of tourism, during which participants will record their experiences in digital media.

This year, during the 8th Syros International Film Festival edition, a one-day workshop will be held in collaboration with the Greek visual artist Dimitra Kondylatou, who has chosen to focus on the site of Lazareta.

The current Covid-19 pandemic and its resultant precautionary measures, their direct link to travel and their impact on movement and tourism, find a historical precedent in the “lazaretto” structure type, the first organized quarantine facilities for travelers and goods. The historic lazaretto of Syros and its general neighborhood, now known as “Lazareta” on the island, will be the central site from which to consider historical, geopolitical, theoretical and experiential approaches of space, travel and health management, across different times.

More specifically, the artist will organize a walking session, and, together with the workshop participants, will document the walk and compile a small archive of digital images, which will be the basis for her next moving-image project. The final piece will be presented at SIFF in July 2021.

The workshop will take place once on Friday, September 4th over three hours (17:00 – 20:00) and is offered to the public free of charge. Participants will not exceed the number of ten (10) people.

With ‘Just Before We Introduce Ourselves. We Are’, Eftychia Stefanou (Dance Fellow 2019), in collaboration with Tzitzifriki[a], conveys their failure to be defined as they are constantly becoming something else. Perhaps the futility of this acknowledgement lies in the realisation that they are constantly becoming what they already are.

K-Gold Temporary Gallery presents “Sleeping with a tiger”, its seventh summer show in Lesvos, curated by Nicolas Vamvouklis. The exhibition’s title refers to the homonymous painting by Maria Lassnig who explored body awareness though her sensitive observations of nature.

Collective nouns for groups of animals (swarm of bees, colony of ants, parliament of owls etc.) first appeared in The Book of Saint Albans (1486) by Juliana Berners. These poetic names – based on animals’ behaviour, appearance, and location – reflect a certain societal disposition from humans towards them.

The exhibition focuses on the relationship between human and animal societies by looking at the dynamics of coexistence, dominance, and exclusion. Starting from the notions of reason and instinct, the participating artists explore possible interspecies connections through history, politics, ethics, and tradition.

The context of Lesvos highlights these parallels on social, natural, and cultural level. Besides a focal point of the humanitarian crisis, the island is considered one of the major birdwatching destinations in the Mediterranean due to the seasonal passage of migratory species like flamingos.

Humans and animals are depicted on the limits of borders, areas, and situations. What does the nomadic character of both have in common? What can we learn from the animal societies and the ways in which they develop and coexist?

The narratives in “Sleeping with a tiger” examine how places of turmoil can become hotbeds for revisiting our worldview and how art can be a powerful tool for developing a symbiotic future.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Mike Bourscheid, Alex Cecchetti, Oliviero Fiorenzi, Ody Icons, Konstantinos Kotsis (Fellows 2019), Ana Mendieta, Yoshua Okón, Maria Papadimitriou, Józef Robakowski, Virginia Russolo, Sasha Streshna (Fellows 2019), Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou, Pinar Yolaçan, Iro Vasalou, Cosima von Bonin

PARALLEL PROGRAM
The show is accompanied by a series of parallel events, coordinated by Katerina Zagli and Ioanna Vallina: educational activities, performances, discussions, excursions, screenings, and guided tours. K-Gold Temporary Gallery also partners with Hermitage Sykaminea for the “Isolation and Forms of Community” program, curated by Andreas Sell. All the events are open and free to everyone.

A Greek/English catalog, edited by Christos Mouchas, will be published with contributions by Jean-Luc Nancy, Peter Cross, Phillip Warnell, Florence Fitzgerald-Allsopp, and Nik Pantazopoulos.

INFO
Opening: Friday 7 August 2020, 20:00
Daily, 11:00-14:00 and 19:00-23:00

Agia Paraskevi, 81102 Lesvos, Greece
+30 6942202222
kgoldtemporarygallery.tumblr.com
[email protected]
@kgoldtemporarygallery

Under the auspices of the General Secretariat for Vocational Education, Training and Lifelong Learning of the Hellenic Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs

Co-organised with the North-Aegean Region

With the support of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, the Municipality of Western Lesvos, the Onassis STEGI, the Chatzigakis Foundation, and the Ouzo Plomari Isidoros Arvanitis

Media sponsors: ERT North Aegean, CultureNow

The exhibition series Ammophila aspires to become a new event in the South of Greece, and prepare the ground for new networks and discussions between the local community, audiences and artists. Taking place on the picturesque island of Elafonisos, just off the coast of the Peloponnese, the first exhibition in the series signals a beginning, but also refers to the myth of a deer giving birth on the island, thus giving it its name (elafi is the Greek word for deer). Ammophila on the other hand is a kind of plant that grows in the local sand dunes, which stabilises the sand with its roots and prepares the soil for other kinds of plants to grow. The exhibition presents an impressive roster of no less than thirty one visual artists and texts by ten writers. If you happen to be in the Peloponnese, Kythera or anywhere near, this might be worth the detour.

Participating Artsits: Manolis Babousis, Dionisis Christofilogiannis, Stella N. Christou, Panagiotis Daramaras, Christina Dimakogianni, Eva Giannakopoulou, Christos Giannopoulos, Zoi Gaitanidou, Andreas Ragnar Kasapis, Panagiotis Kefalas, Stavroula Kostakou, Sofia Kouloukouri, Renata Metheniti, Persephone Nikolakopoulou, Ilias Papailiakis, Anna Papathanassiou, Evi Roumani, Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki, Kostis Stafylakis, Alexandros Tzannis, Nikolas Vamvouklis, Kostis Velonis, Poka-Yio, Xenia Vitos, [Kostis Damoulakis, Domna Degaita, Paulo Doda, Pegy Zali, Vasilis Zacharakopoulos, Panagiotis Lianos, Ilias Mokas]

Participating writers: Anna Chatzinasiou, Stephanos Giannoulis, Takis Koubis, Sofia Kouloukouri, Christina Papoulia, Kostis Stafylakis, Theophilos Tramboulis, Nicolas Vamvouklis, Maria Xypolopoulou, Kostis Zouliatis

Info
Ammophila Vol.1 Birth
Curated by Evi Roumani
22-25 August 2020

Elafonisos School
Elafonisos, Greece
Hours 19:00-21:00
Free entry, only with face mask

Four ARTWORKS Fellows, Georgis Grigorakis, Anastasia Kratidi, Neritan Zinxhiria and Jacqueline Lentzou winners at 26th Sarajevo International Film Festival.

Vangelis Mourikis won the Heart of Sarajevo for best actor award for his performance in “Digger”, the first feature film of Georgis Grigorakis in the Competition Programme for Feature Film.  DIGGER is a contemporary Western about a native farmer who lives and works alone in a farmhouse in the heart of a mountainous forest in northern Greece. The sudden arrival of his young son, after a twenty-year estrangement, will make the two enemies under one roof and confront each other head-on, with nature as their only observer.

“In her Steps”, a short film by Anastasia Kratidi won a Special Jury mention in the Competition Programme for Short Film. The film is about Lena who, while attending a reintegration programme, she finds a job that gives her access to the rural jail for minors, where her son is serving his sentence. Born in Volos, Greece, in 1983 Kratidis lives and works in Athens. She studied in various artistic fields: ceramics, drawing, sculpture, and art history. She obtained her Master’s degree in Cinema and Audiovisual from the University of Paris VIII, with a specialization in Film Direction.

For «The Gospel According To Kimon», a film about redemption directed by Neritan Zinxhiria, producer Vasilis Chrysanthopoulos won Eave + AwardIn the Cinelink Co-Production Market Awards 2020. Vasilis Chrysanthopoulos is the co-founder and head producer of the Greek production company PLAYS2PLACE. His credits include the award-winning festival hit MISS VIOLENCE (Silver Lion for Best Director and Coppa Volpi for Best Actor in Venice IFF 2013). Vasilis is a member of EAVE, EDN and Cannes Producers Network. He is an alumnus of the training initiatives EAVE Producers, EAVE Marketing, EAVE Best, MFI Script 2 Film, and MIDPOINT TV Launch workshops and has participated in more than 30 co-production and pitching forums. He was awarded the Midpoint C21 Award during Cinelink 2017.

Jacqueline Lentzou’s first feature “Moon 66 Questions” won Cinelink Iridium Award in Cinelink Work In Progress Awards. The award consists of in-kind post-production services worth 20,000 €. Multi-awarded writer and film director Jacqueline Lentzou was born in Athens, in 1989. Her work revolves around unconventional family constructs, coming-of-age, intimacy, and the dream. Her cinematic language involves finding poetry in seemingly mundane premises. She is a London Film School graduate (Distinction, 2013), a Sarajevo (2014), and Berlinale (2015) Talents alumna. Her semi-feature’s “Fox” has won over 20 awards worldwide, including Best Short from PanHellenic Critics’ Association, Best European Short at Film Du Femme Creteil, and the upmost prestigious Award in the Memory of Ingmar Bergman. Her latest short, “Hector Malot: The Last Day of the Year” (2018), premiered in Cannes’ Semaine de la Critique and won the prestigious Leica Cine Discovery Award.

Sarajevo Film Festival: 14-21 August

Our Fellows Paky Vlassopoulou and Virginia Mastrogiannaki take part in Island Hopping II along with Dora Economou.

There are ways to tell a story. Start from the beginning, middle or end. Narrate events in chronological order, offering them their literal time, or blend them, evaluate and order them according to their importance for the outcome and mood of the story. You can designate characters, decide on one or multiple narrators, choose to tell the story in 1st or 3rd person, and insert dialogues and anecdotes.

Island Hopping departed from Nisyros in 2019 having as a final destination the island of Kastelorizo, the actual final destination of the boat line, with 5 passengers; the five artists and the island of Nisyros as a main character. Along the way, 2 more passengers joined the group, the two cars carrying the artwork created on the island to the next stops, in a sense, bearing gifts from one place to the next. In the course of the story, the two cars took on the role of the narrator. Photos of the two cars in landmarks on the various stops provide evidence of the action before and after the camera click.

In 2020, Island Hopping II, will start its voyage from the port of Piraeus, the actual departure point of the boat line to Nisyros. Spatially, the action in this second part of the story is placed before the action in the first part. Conceptually, this time the participants will recreate scenes of the experience that have brought each one of them to Nisyros. It can be compared to a prequel of a story, where the second part of the story precedes chronologically the first.

The journey will begin with a video presentation of the Island Hopping 2019 artworks on the boat to Nisyros. This will be the first sequence of this new narrative, having as a reference point the first scene of the film “I know what you did last summer”. The new pieces will be installed in various places around the island from the 3rd to the 30th of August.

The project Island Hopping II is taking place with the support of NEON.

The work Factitious Imprints (2016) by Eva Papamargariti (Fellow 2019) is selected from the New Museum to be screened online at the Screen Series program!

In 2016, the New Museum inaugurated a platform for the presentation of new video works by emerging contemporary artists titled Screens Series. Encompassing a combination of screenings in the New Museum theater and on monitors in the Lower Level walls, the series has presented artists working with a range of media—from 16mm film to computer-generated imagery (CGI). While the Museum remains closed due to heightened concerns around the spread of COVID-19, we will feature selected videos by Screen Series artists on a weekly basis, bringing art to the public at home.

Factitious Imprints (2016) features images of landscapes ranging from imagined settings that have been constructed with digital tools to real places that have been transformed through landfills and other human attempts to combine the artificial and the synthetic with the natural. Conflating processes of digital and organic transformation, Papamargariti looks at how surfaces can obscure these processes and questions how nature’s imprint will exist or endure in the future. What will a fossil from our time look like, for example? Incorporating perspectives and camera imagery taken from navigation tools such as drones, Google Maps, and handheld recording devices, Factitious Imprints courses through a distorted landscape of overlapping surfaces—from the artist’s own skin to food containers to simulations of plants and oceans—that shifts and changes form as we move through it.

https://vimeo.com/440333226

Pavlos Tsakonas (Fellow 2018) participates in the group show ‘They Are Already Here, You Are Next’ at Allouche Benias Gallery along with Filippos Kavakas, George Tourlas, and Giorgos Tserionis.

These four artists have been working through a challenging period of self-isolation. Having witnessed social and political changes that result in violently expressed emotions of anxiety, fear and anger, they chose to put on display ironical renditions of everyday situations. Through a broad spectrum of media such as acrylics, color pencils and spray paint, the artists manage to create colorful diversions. Pastel colors, sharp lines, sculptures and pop culture references create a surreal and even comical atmosphere.

Allouche Benias Gallery, 1, Kanari str., Kolonaki, Athens | Duration: July 23 – August 1, 2020

Petros Moris (Fellows 2018) and Lito Kattou on a a two-person exhibition at Galeria Duarte Sequeira in Portugal.

Formed by theories of non-anthropocentric points of view, Lito Kattou develops a new series of aluminum hybrid figures, a combination of bodily, mechanical and ethereal appearances, that question the idea of how contemporaneity thinks about bodies and its relationship with the natural environment. The works engage with the sculptural potentiality of flatness, processes of embodiment and the transfigurations of material properties within the margins of time and space. Imagery on their aluminum surface hints to their inner world, origins and characteristics. These entities extend through the space, accompanied by various elements frozen in time via thermochemical elaborations that represent a physical reminder of nature, or what used to be.

Petros Moris presents a series of geological landscapes that explore the stratifications of the material, the technological and cultural environments, along the fateful interrelations between natural and social phenomena. Stimulated by symmetrical structures, abstract compositions that resemble faces or masks weave together the social construct of time with geological materiality and digital fabrication. Working with marble sourced from quarries in Aliveri, Ritsona, Tinos and Volos, the artist utilizes archaic techniques and contemporary technologies to develop wall-based inlay works that employ the painterly aspects of marble in order to assemble word-based palindromes and anagrams. Embedded into geological matter, these language-constructs reconfigure and fracture perceptions of meaning, materiality and time.

Lito Kattou and Petros Moris create works in dialogue that explore the entangled and transformative relationships between geological matter, language, bodies and subjectivity. Configured through both the embracing and the distancing from anthropocentric perspectives, the exhibition narrates a nonlinear account of juxtapositions and assemblages of cultural and material time.

Duration: 11.07 – 12.09.2020
Galeria Duarte Sequeira: Rua de Galeria, 129, Portugal