Author: gourgourini

In a letter dated September 29, 1962, writer Nikos Kachtitsis (1926–1970) addresses his friend Epameinondas Ch. Gonatas (1924–2006), writer of O Taxidiotis [The Traveller] (1945), with dismay at the latter’s doubts about the aforementioned debut short story of his: “…I am stunned by your cruel and dismissive manner vis-à-vis this little masterpiece of yours, which made me outraged by pleasure [exo frenon apo efcharistisi] … while the entire work is based on the absence of even the slightest plausibility, at no time is the reader not assured that all of this is real.”* The exhibition and events titled outraged by pleasure start from the ambivalent co-existence of outrage and pleasure in this paradoxical utterance within the sociocultural, literary and political context of its times, and moves on to explore what the phrase may mean in the present and in the future and in relation to the fields of life and art amidst various crises and urgencies.

Outraged by pleasure tries to make sense, with and through all that participates in it, of pleasure in its shapeshifting and multiversality within current “outrageous” circumstances: complex artistic practices, fights and assertions related to gender and sexuality, activist initiatives, communal (re)formations, a tidal turn to conservative politics and the painful fail of progressive ones, a pervading feel of doom-and-gloom induced by the destruction of the natural environment, the rapid reign of immaterial communications and digital economics, the extraordinary normalization of inequalities.

Outraged by pleasure wishes to trace the possibility of another connection to joy, delight, excitement, enjoyment; to imagine into existence the possibility of reclaiming “outrageous pleasure” from the technocapitalist imaginary and its diminishing futurology, from the far right’s macho perversion of wildness, from colonialist-type censorial abuses within wokeculture claims, from all-levelling practices of commoning and institutional appropriations.

Outraged by pleasure wishes to examine the (re)connection of pleasure to post-growth practices of environmental care and social justice; to processes of descaling and mutuality; to reconsiderations of an architecture of enjoyment; to queer approaches of care, generosity, solidarity; to native traditions and anti-colonial movements (such as buen vivir, quilombismo, etc.); to humour as a transformative power of subversion (as this appears in the work of Sara Ahmed and Silvia Federici); to rewilding and the untamed “aesthetics of bewilderment” (Jack Halberstam); to the ecstatic accuracy (found in Kachititsis’s “rabid readings,” in Gonatas’s “literature of subversion,” in the hitherto unknown paintings of pioneer filmmaker Antoinetta Angelidi, in the surrealistic visionary works of Marie Wilson- Valaoritis, in the political aesthetics of Kostas Sfikas’s cinema, in the solitary experience of Thanasis Totsikas’s craftsmanship, in the collectively-developed-over-many-years activism of Teos Romvos and Chara Pelekanou for the salvation of the insular environment); to the complex sense of reciprocity described by Michael Taussig; to the ambiguity of inconvenient objects such as the jumping beans that drove a wedge between Caillois and Breton; to Michel Serres’s “marvellous trampoline”; to the detection of radical futurisms attempted by T. J. Demos; etc.

Outraged by pleasure unfolds in space as a convivial collective study, with the intense physicality, the disquieting mood and unhierachical emergence of the questions it poses: How often do insurrectionary dynamics turn into guilt, or transform into (self-)punitive didacticism, paralyzing grief, numbness, or even neoliberal self-improvement technologies and soft philosophies, in the face of the relentless politics of destruction and the cosmogony that legitimize and prolong them? How do friendship, love, solidarity, radical pedagogy, the perception of multiple shades, the “from the bottom up” demands materialize today, in the various different contemporary circumstances and possibilities of affirmation, denial, representation? How does the phrase “outraged by pleasure” translate into different linguistic environments and hence different philosophical worldviews or cognitive approaches (e.g. enjoyment, jouissance, etc.), or how could it be perceived beyond the boundaries of language? What might be the stance towards it of independent entities and initiatives of the public sphere (the “dark matter” according to Gregory Sholette)? How can we even perceive “outraged by pleasure” in the more-than-human world? Outraged by pleasure is conceived, and will attempt to unfold, as a world of many worlds, an oddkin created by all invited people and entities, with or without material characteristics. Invited artists and curators from Greece and abroad co-shape and co-animate its “outraged by pleasure” body in many different directions.

Outraged by pleasure will be held in the half-finished, under-construction “Nobel” building in Chalandri, a space that is associated with both the idiosyncratic desire of its founder George Markou (1946–2017) and, primarily, the resilient persistence of the City of Chalandri to claim its socially and culturally extrovert presence (something that was already marked by the interdisciplinary event “The Forest’s Riddle,” September 2022–January 2023). The program of events, attached hereto, will be successively updated in detail. It includes performances, tributes on queer initiatives and collectives, film screenings in special curatorial groups, performative speeches on social ecology and degrowth, musical events, etc. It will be updated during the course of the show. A detailed description of each curatorial intervention will be included in the exhibition’s leaflet.

Outraged by pleasure is curated by Nadja Argyropoulou and shared by the following artists, art entities, curators:

Antoinetta Angelidi, Patricia Apergi & Aerites Dance Company, Tosh Basco, The Callas (Lakis Ionas & Aris Ionas), Daglara, Sofia Dona, Navine G. Dossos with James Bridle, Georgia Fambris, Family Business, iLiana Fokianaki (with Danae Io, Harun Farocki, Mary Zygouri), FYTA, Ιoanna Gerakidi (with Yianna Charachlianni, Leah Clements, Anna Savvatopoulou), Pinelopi Gerasimou, Hypercomf, Dimitris Ioannou, Xenia Kalpaktsoglou with [Pegy Zali, Sofoklis Koutsourelis, Panagiotis Lianos] and Athina Koumparouli, Lito Kattou, Dionisis Kavallieratos, Blaise Kirschner, Katerina Komianou, Konstantinos Ladianos, LALA, Kostas Lambridis, Iris Lykourioti, Irini Miga, Rashaad Newsome, Nionia Films (Maria F. Dolores, Sofia Dona, Alkisti Efthymiou, Smaro Papaevangelou), Malvina Panagiotidi, Aggelos Papadimitriou, Eva Papamargariti, Agnieszka Polska, Filipa Ramos (with Rosalind Fowler, Goutam Ghosh & Jason Havneraas, Mariana Murcia, Lea Porsager, Ani Schulze), Teos Romvos & Chara Pelekanou, Kostas Sfikas, Gabriella Simossi, Panos Sklavenitis, Kostis Stafylakis & Theo Triantafyllidis, Nancy Stamatopoulou (with Nicoleta Chatzopoulou, Makis Faros, Tassos Vrettos), Eva Stefani, Valinia Svoronou, Temporary Academy of Arts, Eleni Tomadaki, Thanassis Totsikas, Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou / Bunny, VASKOS (Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis), Marina Velisioti, Nikos Velmos, Hypatia Vourloumis (with Jackie Abhulimen, Maria F. Dolores, Eleni Ikoniadou, Maria Sideri, Taka Taka), Iria Vrettou, Rea Walldén, Marie Wilson-Valaoritis (with Zoe Valaoritis & Katerina Valaoritis)

Curator: Nadja Argyropoulou
Curatorial Assistant: Adrianos Efthymiadis
Visual Identity and Print Material: Eva Papamargariti
Audiovisual Design and Installation: Makis Faros, Antonis Gkatzougiannis
Contributing Architect: Sofia Tektonidou
Εvents Αssistant: Stephanie Orati
Lighting Design: Nikos Vlasopoulos
Text Editing: Fotini Pipi
Transport and Installation of Artworks: Move
Art Insurance: Karavias
Underwriting Agency S.A. Production: Laika Productions, AtoZ communication & strategy P.C.C.
The works of Nikos Velmos are exhibited courtesy of The American College of Greece Art Collection, Gift of Takis Efstathiou

Organization: City of Chalandri
Sponsor: FLYA, Municipal SA for the Management of the City of Chalandri’s Real Estate
Sponsor: Karavias Underwriting Agency S.A.

Duration of Exhibition: Friday, Sept. 29 to Sunday, Nov. 12, 2023
Visiting Hours: Wednesday – Friday 18:00–21:30 Saturday & Sunday 12:30–18:00 (Closed on Saturday, Oct. 28)
Admission to the exhibition and all events is free of charge.
“Nobel” building – cultural space in the City of Chalandri Ivis 30 & Tymphristou, 152 34 Chalandri M3, Chalandri stop | OASA, line 447, Ardittou stop
The building is accessible for the disabled only on its ground floor.
Contact: [email protected]
Follow us on Instagram: @outragedbypleasure

The third presentation of the one work show series is presenting a new body of work by the artist duo Ileana Arnaoutou and Ismene King under the title All the sticks, spears and swords, blades entwined . Drawn to questions concerning the environment and femininity, the artist duo explores fragmented structures within immediate surroundings. The site specific approach evolves around the re-use of materials which already exist, the re-assemblage of fragmented shapes as well as re
– thinking the perception of our realities.

As part of the new production Arnaoutou and King collected fragments of a wind turbine which was destroyed during a storm by a strike of lightning. The broken turbine parts were found and selected at the Perme recycling site in Ritsona, Greece. Arnaoutou and King were particularly drawn to fragments that revealed both, the aerodynamic shape as well as the industrial character of the firm structures. When looking at the chosen structures, one can interpret them as a dichotomy of materiality. The material is alienated from its natural state and only through the artistic practice it is re- trans
ated into an organic form. Once firm and heavy, Arnaoutou and King bend the structures of the wind turbine just like weaving any organic fiber. This translation of visible shapes symbolizes notions of regeneration.

All the sticks, spears and swords, blades entwined
Ileana Arnaoutou & Ismene King
05–27 October 2023
Opening day: 05 October 2023, 7 pm–10 pm

https://callirrhoe.info/

*Ileana Arnaoutou and Ismene King are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows.

Four musicians, a video with landscapes of Tinos and Northern Norway, a party on board, and AI developers meeting in the belly of a whale. A surrealistic cruise from the Mediterranean to the northern countries, with the journey of Pytheas the Greek—the unassailable explorer of antiquity—in its very center.

Do you find it hard to float through life? Do you feel tangled in the nets of your daily routine and seek escape? Embark on one of the state-of-the-art vessels of Pytheas Travels cruise fleet and become part of the most oceanic experience of your life. A musical cruise with four musicians of the Ergon Ensemble as passengers and a video screening as a backdrop: a compilation of animation, live shootings on board and in various locations in Tinos and Northern Norway, as well as green screen footage, all inspired by the sea element. The immersive experience of “Pytheas Travels” includes furthermore many surrealistic touches that involve opulent parties, a great wildfire, as well as AI developers that meet in the belly of the whale. Shall we hop on board?

The title of the performance refers to the historical journey of Pytheas the Greek—the Columbus of antiquity—where in 325 BC sailed north from Marseilles to a place he called Ultima Thule, the mythical island, to reach the “frozen seas.” Unable to extend the exploration of the mythical lands of Northern Europe, Pytheas returned to the Mediterranean to document his legendary journey in a manuscript titled “On the Ocean” which vanished forever in the great fire of the Library of Alexandria.

“Pytheas Travels” is a staged audiovisual simulation of the experience of being on board a passenger vessel, traveling from the Mediterranean to the Northern Seas. It is a maritime story, an imaginary journey, and a critical insight into the mass tourism industry and its consequences on environmental, cultural, and societal structures.

The music score is courtesy of pioneering Norwegian composer and performer Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, for whom in 2015 the Financial Times noted that “she brings a feral disregard for conventional form, combined with an extravagant imagination, linking it all to a fascination with the human voice and its communicative possibilities. Her works are dramatic, engaging, and wildly diverse.”

13.10 —15.10.2023

Athens, Onassis Stegi

* Hypercomf (Paola Palavidi & Ioannis Kolliopoulos) are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows.

Symbiotics, by the miss dialectic curatorial team, was chosen through an open call process by EMΣΤ | National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, for the submission of proposals for a group exhibition. A contemporary narrative on coexistence, which focuses on the process of communication through female art practices, defines the conceptual core of the project, which comprises a group exhibition, framed by a broad programme of public events. The exhibition presents works by four contemporary Greek visual artists – Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Karolina Krasouli, Christina Mitrentse, and Maria Varela – as well as by the artist group Phantom Investigations (Giannis Delagrammatikas and Ino Varvariti). Compositions by Chryssa, Bia Davou, and Nausica Pastra, from the EMΣT collection, complete the exhibition, whose starting point, in fact, according to the curatorial team, is the series of drawings Serial Structures 2 – Odyssey by Bia Davou. The Symbiotic Discourses of the public programme include workshops and educational events (by Karolina Krasouli, Christina Mitrentse, and Maria Varela), performances (by Chrysanthi Koumianaki), and a performative lecture (by Phantom Investigations).

The use of the grid as a common structural component of the works in the exhibition functions in a unifying manner, defining a literal, or even an imaginary, space within which the concepts of equilibrium, seriality, repetition, succession and – potentially – liberation and expansion into the real and the public space, are dynamically imposed. The grid, in addition, is connected to weaving – an activity that has been traditionally linked to the place and role of women. Weaving is here elevated as a fine art practice, turning the process of handicraft into a tool of empowerment of the female in contemporary art and connecting it to different versions of the visual, textual, scientific, and technological language. This medium is common in the practice of the visual artists taking part in the exhibition, heightening the symbiotic and conceptual system of their coexistence. At the same time, they share features such as the reuse of motifs and symbols (also) from their earlier works, which are inherent in and converse with their subsequent proposals.

Emphasising the process of creation through fragmentary images and codes, using a broad range of art mediums, the works presented in the Symbiotics exhibition create space and rhythm, become poetic gestures and contemplations on contemporary reality and the history of art itself, and weave their own narrative on the female in art, “in a room of one’s own” (Virginia Woolf).

At the opening of the exhibition, three performances by Chrysanthi Koumianaki are presented from 20:00 in the exhibition space as well as in other common areas of the Museum.

You can find more here.

*Klea Charitou and and Kelly Tsipni-Kolaza, co-founder of miss dialectic are SNF ARTWORKS Curatorial Fellows. Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Karolina Krasouli,  Maria Varela and Giannis Delagrammatikas member of the group Phantom Investigations are SNF ARTWORKS Visual Fellows.

For the 29th Athens International Film Festival 47 short movies directed by Greek filmmakers competed for the awards.

Check below the SNF ARTWORKS Fellows (moving image) awardees:

Golden Athena Award
LIGHT OF LIGHT by Neritan Zinxhiria (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2018)

Silver Athena Award
UNORTHODOX by Konstantinos Antonopoulos (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019)

Best Director Award
MIDNIGHT SKIN by Manolis Mavris (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2018)

Special Mention
ANGRY FISH by Kostas Chaliasas (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2022)

More info here.

Congrats to all!

The compositions created by Ilias Sipsas and Apollon Glykas present an original concept of viewing, transforming and interpreting reality and the human condition. Their collaboration also forges a unified intervention, a multifaceted visual environment that evolves dynamically, an environment rich in content and open to multiple readings and diverse approaches. The starting point for the duo is their combination of photography and sculpture.

Simple, fortuitous, anonymous photographs with no artistic assertions or intentions, images that simply document and capture people and ordinary moments of our life and world -temporally and on paper-, such fragments of memory serve as the material and thematic axes of their work.

By enlarging, processing and dissecting these photographs, by selecting parts rather than the entirety of the images, by fragmenting and intervening on their surface, and, typically, by detaching their subject from its temporal and social context, integrating the images into wall or spatial constructions, they create a new condition defined by its coherent character. However, in their use of photographs, they maintain their individual, distinctive style, with each establishing his own sensibility, perspective and aesthetic.
Ilias Sipsas explores the analogies between photographic and physical/real space. His large-scale photographic collages conceptually communicate with his sculptural constructions, in which he resourcefully combines objets trouvés with an assortment of materials (metals, clay, plaster, stones, glass, wood, plastic). Often, his works make structural use of light and are distinguished by their materiality, elegance and brittleness, their Dadaist spirit and their subversive-surrealist mood.

Apollon Glykas’ works originate from a process of connections, as he works with various materials and techniques. His projects combine photographs (often from his personal archive) with metal elements that allude to technological culture, such as antennae, struts, parts of communication systems, bases. He uses these elements as they are, without interfering with the texture or colour of the material. Meanwhile, motion and light play a key role in his work. The indeterminate -in terms of their intended use and purpose- constructions where the photographs are embedded are constructivist in their approach. These surprising and paradoxical encounters between constructions and photographs create narratives in which time is the dominant dimension, with the notions of the past and future positioned at their core – these images-“messages” are fragments of an antediluvian life in a future world.

On 21 and 22 October, 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture presents the ten works that were created in the framework of the third iteration of the artist-in-residence programme Mystery 19 Visual Arts Initiator III – But Don’t Tell Anyone, in a live performance exhibition at the archaeological site of Ancient Eleusis.

Five emerging artists, selected after an open call to participate in the programme, and five international guest artists drew inspiration from the Eleusinian Mysteries, listened attentively to the city and its stimuli, were initiated by each other, experimented, and now present ten original works in interaction with each other, under the guidance of the globally renowned curator Joanna Warsza.

Starting from speculations about the unique pagan rites of the Eleusinian Mysteries, both the residency programme and the ensuing exhibition seek to reinterpret the current meaning of concepts such as initiation and secrecy, extending them in various social, political and poetic directions. The works open up possible readings of death and loss, while reflecting on notions pertaining to the restoration of knowledge, the connection to the planet, the need to overcome any kind of fear and harness hope for a possible afterlife.

When a secret is entrusted to someone, part of the charm is that the recipient of the secret gains the power to reveal it, if they wish, to third parties – discreetly, of course. The Eleusinian Mysteries rank among the most secret and, simultaneously, the most democratic rites performed in ancient Greece. Revealing any information about them was punishable by death. Thousands of people were initiated every year, including women, slaves and non-Greek citizens, swearing an oath of secrecy in order to partake in the mysteries of Demeter. These rites − which touched on the afterlife, the cult of agriculture and rebirth, spirituality, psychedelic and communal experience over the course of almost two millennia − remain an unsolved enigma right down until today, and are still core to the identity of the town, which has since become a major Greek industrial hub.

Contributors:
Participating artists: Vlad Brăteanu (RO) / James Bridle (UK) / Athina Koumparouli (GR) / Esmeralda Momferratou (GR) / Susan Philipsz (UK) / Angelo Plessas (GR) / Yorgos Sapountzis (GR) / Flavia Stagi (IT) / Heidi Voet (BE) / Alex Wolframm (DE)
Curator of Mystery 19 Visual Arts Initiator III – But Don’t Tell Anyone: Joanna Warsza (PO)
Concept of legacy project Mystery 19 Visual Arts Initiator: 2023 Eleusis
Production: Delta Pi

An event by 2023 Eleusis
Supported by the Goethe-Institut Athen

Information
Dates: Saturday 21 & Sunday 22 October 2023
Exhibition hours: 10.00 – 15.00
Venue: Archaeological site of Ancient Eleusis
Guided procession: Saturday & Sunday, 16.00 – 18.30
Meeting point: Entrance of the archaeological site of Ancient Eleusis
Arrival time: 15.30
Admission: 6 euros (The price is the ticket to the Archaeological Site and is issued at the entrance – The site does not have a POS machine)

To participate in the procession, pre-booking is required.
In case of attendance without pre-booking, entry will only take place upon availability due to a limited number of spectators required by the special conditions of the venue.

Athina Koumparouli is a visual arts SNF ARTWORKS Fellow (2022).

“Make everything that you need for yourself and attempt to not need what you cannot make, that is the ending view that we never arrive at.”Raymond Duncan interviewed by Orson Welles (1955)

The PLANT project evolves in 3 interrelated stages – dream, design, and celebrate – following an ongoing dialogue between what we need, what we make, and what routes and tools we activate in this process. During its first stage, from 27th to 29th October 2023, the Duncan Dance Research Centre in Athens presents: “Just For Today”, a three-day event drawing from Raymond Duncan’s legacy, routes and traces. Conceived under a situated and historical perspective, the event serves as a starting point from which to investigate the intimate threads that connect us with the physical and conceptual territories we co-inhabit. It questions notions of learning and ways of seeing, hearing and imagining in a shared manner, and explores the interdependence of our work to our daily lives and ultimately to a larger whole.

By interweaving different temporalities, the program presents practices from distinct fields (conceptual, movement, labor) and is willing to enact a framework for contemporary creation that can be textured by the particularities and imaginaries of diverse communities. “Just For Today” is an invitation to nurture a common space by visiting and translating examples of contemporary eco-communities, critical thinking and ancestral knowledge. At the same time, it offers encounters and hands-on activities that seek to widen the perspective of our actual needs and help us identify and reconsider our next steps. The event features workshops, talks, food preparation and sharing, ways of listening, screenings, walks and an exhibition focused on the figure of Raymond, with the participation of Vaskos (Vasilis Noulas and Kostas Tzimoulis), Marlen Mouliou, Anna Tzakou, Julie Loi, Iris Nikolaou, Vasiliki Tsagkari, Maro Pantazidou, Andreas Sell, Napoleon Xifaras, Samantha & Hermes Savvantoglou, rosanayaris (Rosana Sanchez & Aris Spentsas) and nyamnyam (Ariadna Rodriguez & Iñaki Alvarez).

The participation to the event is free of charge with the need for previous reservations for certain activities of the program. These reservations can be made through the email: [email protected]. When booking your activities, please let us know your name, phone number & email address, as well as which activities you’ll be attending. If you have any questions, feel free to contact the Duncan Dance Center through the same email or by phone at 0030 6945714119.

The event will include seasonal and local food for the days of the event, provided by Samantha and Hermes Savvantoglou, grown and collected with the kids at Children’s Orchard, a space for children and adults, a warm household with the door open for everyone with a beautiful garden in a small village of Northern Greece. Please let us know, upon making your reservations, if you wish to join us for breakfast and/or lunch on October 28th, and for lunch on October 29th.

Location
Duncan Dance Research Center
Chrisafis 34, Vironas 162 32, Athens, Greece
https://www.duncandancecenter.org/
https://www.facebook.com/DUNCANCENTERATHENS
https://www.instagram.com/duncan.center/

Credits
Curation: Penelope Iliaskou, Rosana Sánchez Rufete, Aris Spentsas
Administration: Anny Hadjikonstantinou
Graphic Design: Sara Jorge
Visual Documentation: Myrto Apostolidou
Communication: Mare Spanoudaki
Production Management: Maria Adela Konomi

Megaron the Athens Concert Hall, as part of the annexM’s summer art programme, presents the monographic essay exhibition of Maria Papanikolaou entitled Free from what, curated by Anna Kafetsi.

The artist presents 5 new in situ space works specifically for the exhibition in the Service Courtyard, namely: 3 sculptural installations and 2 multi-channel video installations presented on projection and TV monitors.

Maria Papanikolaou, one of the most important artists of the younger generation based in Athens, studied law at the University of Athens, sculpture at the Royal Academy of Arts in the Netherlands and then at the Postgraduate School of Visual Arts of the ASFA, where she received her PhD in 2022. In her artistic work she combines sculpture, photography, video and performance in an attempt to explore a theme that has been with her since her early studies at the Law School: the restriction of freedom, imprisonment, incarceration, but also the possibility of escape and transgression of limits.

The exhibition – Maria Papanikolaou’s first solo show in Greece – includes new works especially for the industrial space of the Service Yard. Minimalist in situ interventions, sculptural installations and video installations will be presented in an imperceptibly dialogical relationship with each other, creating a low-voiced poetic universe. The ambiguous title phrase [free/of what], suspended between question and statement, sets the tone for the internal, deeply reflective nature of the exhibition.

The artist herself says of her works: “I make models and sculptures that depict spaces of potential escape, but also resilient tools that bear witness to imaginative ways of disentanglement and escape. Throughout human history, thousands of people have tried to escape from slavery, war, poverty, authoritarian regimes, concentration camps and prisons of all kinds. Combining data with imagination, my work traces through a variety of forms whether the stories of these people can be turned into a kind of textbook for the recovery of human freedom. In Art History we often see the incarcerated person presented as a passive victim who evokes our pity and sympathy. My artistic production is instead based on a series of experiments aimed at presenting man as that creative subject who invents ways of escape, satisfying his basic instinct for life and freedom. The works I am exhibiting are therefore proposals to break the bonds that may pin each or every one of us down in different states of unfreedom.”

Opening hours:
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday 12:00 – 20:00
Thursday 12:00 – 22:00 (free entrance)
Monday closed

During the exhibition “Free from what”, Maria Papanikolaou will present the lecture-performance Motivation in the Project Room of the Service Yard. Dates: 12.10, 14.10 & 29.10 (16.00- 20:00)

* Maria Papanikolaou is a Visual Arts SNF ARTWORKS Fellow (2018).

Caterina Stamou is 2023 Book Art Research Fellow at the Center for Book Arts in New York. Caterina will conduct on-site reserach at the Center for Book Arts which will later be presented in a public talk. Subsequently, the research will be published in Book Art Review, a magazine that promotes and strengthens book art criticism.

Center for Book Arts (CBA) is the oldest non profit dedicated to uplifting and furthering the book arts & book art through education, preservation, exhibition, art making, and community building. Through the Book Art Research Fellowship, researchers and scholars have the possibility to conduct research draws upon CBA’s unique collections of materials related to book art.

During the fellowship (16 – 28 October 2023), Caterina will develop part of her research on the poetics and politics of repair as manifested in the practices of contemporary artists and art publishing collectives. She will focus on the organization’s collection which includes fine art, exhibition catalogues and a reference collection, and she will visit community-based archives and art spaces.

Caterina Stamou is a curatorial SNF ARTWORKS Fellow (2022).

Texts, as a daily practice, creation and discovery, construct the memory of the city in the present. They are constantly knitted and unknitted as if the threads of a warp (stimoni in Greek), over and under which other threads are passed to make cloth. STIMONI exhibition is an articulation of nine artistic multimedia projects and performances by eleven artists. The works, chosen for the different practices they incorporate, write with their different gazes and media the text of their own experiences of Athens. Woven with the personal warp of each artist, they compose narratives, and form new writings. They weld their matter in space, surrendering to the act of looking, inviting one to wander and discover diverse spatio-temporal experiences. Like shells, or scraps of personal or collective memories, they preserve part of the city’s whole. In STIMONI, the text unfolds in all its parts; as construction, as weaving, as an acoustic composition, and finally, or primarily, as fallen matter lying on the ground.

Artists: Myrto Xanthopoulou, Antonis Theodoridis, Stelios Papagrigoriou, Collectif MASI, Yannis Stournas, Yorgos Karailias, Filippos Vasiliou, Alexandros Mistriotis, Giorgos Varoutas, Anna Linardou

Concept & curation: Stefania Orfanidou

Graphic design: Blind Studio
Exhibition duration: Thursday 23 November – Sunday 10 December 2023
Opening: Thursday 23 November 2023, at 19:00
MISC Athens Tousa Botsari 20, Athens 11741
Opening hours: Thurday 2-8 pm / Friday 2-8 pm / Saturday 12-6 pm / Sunday 12-6 pm www.miscathens.com

Free entrance

*Myrto Xanthopoulou, Antonis Theodoridis, Stelios Papagrigoriou, Madlen Anipsitaki (member of Collectif MASI), Filippos Vasiliou and Stefania Orfanidou are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

In Memory of Memory
Nov 10, 2023–Nov 18, 2023
Atelier W, 6 avenue Weber 93500, Pantin, Paris

Opening on Friday, November 10th at 18:00 p.m.

Participants: Nicole Economides, Athanasios Kanakis, Athina Koumparouli, Sofia-Danae Vorvila
Curator: Ariana Kalliga

In Memory of Memory examines the interplay of ancestry, memory, and performance as historiography. It brings together five artists working with photography, sculpture, installation, and performance, as well as prints and ephemera, gathered during the artists’ visits to neighboring antique stores and flea markets, which formed the starting point for the artists’ research during their short-term residency at Atelier W. The exhibition borrows its title from the fictional memoir/travelogue by Maria Stepanova, which explores the complex histories embedded within souvenirs, letters, and family photographs. The narrator attends to the materiality of these objects as an attempt to overcome intergenerational silences and historical wounds. In the exhibition, ephemera and photographs act as prompts for the artists, several of whom translate this visual imagery into their artworks or respond to their cues in the form of improvisational scores. In Memory of Memory unfolds both within and beyond the boundaries of the city, conveying past and present memories of the urban environment. Throughout the duration of the residency, the exhibition space functioned as both a studio and a collective gathering space for daily activities, writing sessions, and rehearsals. The artworks on display were produced on-site, forming an assembly of lived traces in direct dialogue with each other.

Opening Hours:
Saturday, November 11th and Sunday, November 12th from 14:00 p.m. until 20:00 p.m.
or by appointment untill November 18th.

All participants are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows 2022

Desired (Im)possibilities opens on Thursday 9 November at Galeria Arte Graça in Lisbon with works by Eunice Gonçalves Duarte, Irit Batsry, Juliana Matsumura, Natalie Woolf, Sofia Sá, Pinelopi Triantafyllou, Lior Eshel, Laurence Bonvin, Tiago Rocha Costa και Andrea Paz.

There is a sense of order in nature, a pattern prescribed to things, a cyclical sequence that forms, nurtures, destroys, and recreates everything. And life invariably adheres to this order. From the changing seasons to birth and death, everything is part of a cycle. All living organisms are born, they grow, they consume or produce, and they eventually die, giving space for new life to come.
The exhibition features 10 works exploring different modes of dealing with the duality of [Im]possibilities. Some of them encompass personal experiences of success and failure, the interplay of doubt and certainty, hope and disappointment, reason and irrationality, or the visible and the unseen. While others question their artistic practices by experimenting with the boundaries of materials, and their representations.
Above all, “Desired (Im)possibilities” serves as a profound celebration of the human spirit, acknowledging its boundless potential to transform, recreate, adapt, reclaim, and continually reinvent itself.

Information:

Dates: 9 November – 26 November 2023
Opening: 9 November, 17:00
Curated by Alexia Alexandropoulou

Collective reading as practice

Although we perceive reading as primarily a solitary activity, for most people throughout history communal reading, that is to say reading aloud with others, has been the norm. Books have had audiences rather than readers. For example, Eric García-Mayer describes oratorial reading among Cuban literary exiles in the United States in the nineteenth century and Elizabeth McHenry investigates African-American reading societies in the twentieth century.[1] The labour of reading could be shared, acting as a catalyst for creating communities; it can even be the remedy in times of hardship, or it can shape new alliances amongst a newly-formed group of readers/listeners.

The programme Around the Shelf is a series of monthly gatherings, bringing together various practitioners across disciplines as facilitators for collective reading processes. Through these gatherings, we will be imagining what reading together can manifest. Reading groups have been historically one of the many tools that various feminist groups utilized as a way to create an empowering and safe environment for their communities. Echoing the feminist practice of giving voice to the voiceless,[2] this series of monthly gatherings invites guests from activism, literature, and visual arts, intending to create empowering and safer spaces for feminist and queer discourse.

Slowing down fast

The methodologies that will be employed aspire to establish a slower temporality of reading, inspired by the notion of Slow down fast, A toda raja[3] as articulated by Camila Marabio and Cecilia Vicuña. In their conversation, Marabio and Vicuña propose to slow down at full speed,[4] feeling a collective pulse as an antidote to the contemporary condition in Chile based on neoliberal monetary and currency policies and colonial oppression. Slowing down processes of reading defines the spirit of Around the Shelf, to develop slow, collective reading methodologies. The gatherings will not require prior preparation, as the group will be reading out loud excerpts from poems, essays, film scripts, artist books, amongst others, and stopping at every sentence or paragraph to reflect and brainstorm together.

When reading with others, we are becoming one whole collective reading body. As Marabio & Vicuña put it, “you are losing your Self and subtracting your-self from the continuity of an existent structure …the thinnest existence of a possible assurance of an “I” gets lost.”[5] It is this entry into a collective consciousness that this series aspires to explore, inviting us to become collective readers and listeners.

To listen with all our senses

Reading in institutions and academia comes with some sort of silence. Library spaces dictate a sonic order, amongst other things, and thus a specific way of approaching texts. How can we bring printed words to life by activating our senses? When reading this out loud, we become listeners of our voice or the voices of others; our ears slowly get used to different accents, timbres, and vocal tones. We can think of listening as a sonic correspondence of reaching out voices which are reflected to our ears; echoes of different subjectivities that move through space by means of sound. Considering the limitations of academia and institutions in relation to active listening and shared living experiences, this programme brings together sound practitioners and performers as facilitators for reading-listening sessions.

Take I with Deniz Kirkali, Thursday 9th November 2023, 8pm

This session, led by independent curator Deniz Kirkali, will initiate a series of collective readings, focusing on attentivity as a methodology for learning from and with others. Directing the attention to the body, this gathering will use material feminisms and posthuman studies as a grounding base for collective explorations on the “arts of noticing”, as articulated by anthropologist Anna Tsing. Deniz will introduce us to practices of attuning through examples from her curatorial work, speculating how we can live, work, feel, and experience differently. The group will also develop a slow reading methodology to delve into excerpts from Bayo Akomolafe’s writings, which call us to attune to the “wisdom of soil”. Drawing inspiration from alternative narratives, how can we challenge our entanglements with the all-living world, and challenge epistemological power?

Duration:
9th November 2023 – 13rd June 2024

Set dates & time:
Every second Thursday of the month (unless indicated otherwise) at 8pm

Curator:
Eirini Fountedaki*

Guests:
Federica Bueti, Vassilia Kaga, Deniz Kirkali, Danae Stefanou and others (tbc)

TAVROS
Anaxagora 33 (1st floor), 17778, Tavros, Greece

*Eirini Fountedaki is SNF Curatorial ARTWORKS Fellow 2020

[1] Eric García-Mayer, “Narrating Nation Aloud: Oratory, Embodied Reading Practices, and the Cuban Imaginary in Villaverde and Mariño’s El Independiente, “Folklife in Louisiana: Louisiana’s Living Traditions”, 2013, http://www.louisianafolklife.org/LT/Articles_Essays/lfmnarrating.html, accessed 15 October 2023; Elisabeth McHenry, Forgotten Readers Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.

[2] Samia Malik in “Reading as Activism: the WOCI Reading Group” in Shelf Documents: Art Library as Practice, ed. Heide Hinrichs, Jo-ey Tang, Elizabeth Haines, Antwerp: Pascale De Groote, 2000.

[3] Camila Marambio and Cecilia Vicuña, Slow Down Fast, A Toda Raja, Berlin: Errant Bodies Press, 2019.

[4] “A toda raja” is a Chilean expression with multiple colloquial uses. It can mean at full speed, intensely or with great sentiment. See Marambio and Vicuña, Slow Down Fast, A Toda Raja, 5.

[5] Marambio and Vicuña, Slow Down Fast, A Toda Raja, 10.

From November 18 to January 28, 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture presents the group exhibition Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below featuring the participation of acclaimed artists from Greece and abroad and showcasing a series of new productions, curated by Panos Giannikopoulos.

Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below explores the political dynamics of the body in motion from a simultaneously geological and cultural underground point of departure. Alchemical wanderings from the historical past towards mythology and a post-industrial present culminate in a delirious dance. Inebriation, intoxication, revulsion, euphoria, release, vent, and ascent; a circular path from the body to the ground and back again.

The exhibition’s narrative unfolds through the myths and history of the city of Elefsina and its Mysteries, with dance serving as a means of climax, a sacred ritual, and a method for exploring concepts of death and loss. In Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below, we witness dance and its affinity with the ailing body or even itself as illness and therapy, dance in a state of crisis, as exhaustion that brings pleasure displacing social exhaustion, as escape and counteraction.

Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below focuses on the potential for creating corporeal archives, nonlinear knowledge transmission, and storytelling with unexpected cross-cultural affinities. The ephemeral, physicality, uncertainty, and performativity elements serve as critical starting points and accompany the audience through the viewing and participation process.

Through installations, painting, sculpture, sound, and performance, the exhibition seeks to redefine the boundaries of dance, reflecting on the (collective) body and its absence, memory, and the necessity of movement. It contemplates utopian declarations of dance subcultures, their glorification, thwarting, and commercial exploitation, hovering between desire, disappointment, and expectation. It examines the relationship between dance movements and community formation, as well as demands for social justice, portraying dance as a translinguistic activity for creating a new world: a delirious grammar that is impossible to parse, slippery in mind and unwieldy in the mouth, passing through muscle spasms, chemical compounds, machines and pixels.

Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below coincides with the celebration of “Mesosporitissa” connecting different historical periods of Elefsina while marking the transition into winter.

The opening of the exhibition features the performances by Odete and Nkisi and an all-night party with local and international Djs, Fofi Tsesmeli, Odete, Amateurboyz, Ayshel & GRΞTA.

Information:
Duration: November 18, 2023 – January 28, 2024
Opening hours:
Wednesday to Friday, 17.00 – 20.00
Saturday & Sunday, 13.00 – 20.00
Location: Old Oil Mill Factory
Opening: Saturday November 18, 20.00

Opening Programme:
20.00 | Opening
21.30 | Cicada/Cicala, Odete – Performance
22.15 | Nkisi – Performance
23.00 | DJ sets – Line-up
Fofi Tsesmeli
Odete
Amateurboyz
Ayshel
GRΞTA

Contributors:

Participating artists: Theodoros Giannakis / Viktor Gogas & Kostas Kostopoulos / Captain Stavros / Lito Kattou / Petros Moris / Nkisi / Katerina Papazissi / Georgia Sagri / George Sapountzis / Baratto & Mouravas / Flux Office / Greek Visions / Klaus Jurgen Schmidt / Odete / Diana Policarpo / Wu Tsang
Curated by: Panos Giannikopoulos
Curatorial director: Zoi Moutsokou
Public Program / Publication: Angeliki Tzortzakaki
Architectural Design: Trail Practice
Research: Georgia Liapi
Production management: WILD REEDS
Texts: Leandros Kyriakopoulos, McKenzie Wark, Panos Giannikopoulos, Angeliki Tzortzakaki
Lighting: Aslight
Scaffolding: Greenskal

2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture

*Theodoros Giannakis and Petros Moris are SNF ARTWORKS Visual Arts Fellows

The video-performance Construction Insight presents a process of exploration and shaping of a partially demolished construction site and the materials it contains. Simultaneously, this process is linked to the search for and shaping of human identity. The work constitutes an alchemical experiment with structural materials and bodies in a ritualistic journey inward.

Video-performance CONSTRUCTION INSIGHT
«The beauty and its rival»

Centrally located on Agias Eirinis Square in the heart of Athens, stands the shell of the old Athenian Hotel
“Byron”. Its construction began 190 years ago under the name Hotel “Anatoli” during the first half of the
19th Century (1833-39) when Athens had just become the capital of the newly established Greek state
(1834). It was the most distinguished hotel of the time, hosting prestigious receptions and galas for the
Athenian society. It is believed to have accommodated King Othonas upon his arrivals in Athens. Βetween
1839 and 1842, it had housed the National Observatory of Athens before relocating to the hill of Nymphs
in the historic area of Thissio. The ground floor contained a collection of small shops for clothes and
pesticides. In 1987 the building was classified as a historical monument by the Hellenic Ministry of
Culture.

In a city that we love to hate either because we don’t consider it to be ours, or we see ourselves as mere
bystanders or we like to complain, changes are constantly taking place. Considering these developments,
are we prepared? Does the new-old Athens keep us captive to its ideology? A course of visual ideas open
discussion on the future city model. Gotham city, Limnopolis, Athens is the new Berlin (without money
though), Athens/Kabul. This serves as inspiration for artists as they respond, along with conversations led
by architects, poets, engineers, and shopkeepers, to the conceptualization of the ‘ideal’ city model. The
shell of the old Athenian Hotel “Byron” which is undergoing restoration will host experimental
installations, screenings and performances, bringing after decades, new life the building’s empty rooms
and shops.

Noam Assayag, Katerina Botsari, Capten, Stella Dimitrakopoulou, Alexandros Kontogeorgakopoulos/
Odysseas Klissouras, Lah Porella, Helen Polychronidou, Natassa Poulantza, Hector Theoulakis,
Theodoros Zafeiropoulos.

Curated by: Georg Georgakopoulos

25 – 28.11.2023
Opening: Saturday, November 25, 19:00 – 22:00
Hours: Daily and weekends, 18:00 – 22:00
Former hotel «Byron»
38 Aiolou str. Athens 105 51, entrance from Agias Eirinis Square

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