Category: Fellows/Grantees

Sometimes going to the grocery store makes me feel less alone. Sometimes I’m trying to tell someone about this new opening in my life, and I end up feeling closed. When I say opening, I mean the possibility that when Ι feel I won’t feel like I shouldn’t feel. My body in a room with other bodies feeling me feeling my body. When I say this room I mean you. When I say you I mean make room.

On a good day, I write in sentences. On a bad day I write in thoughts. You know when you’re dreaming, and past and present blend together in a way that makes it feel like maybe you can imagine a future? And then you wake up. Dreaming is not quite escape, not quite thinking, not quite feeling, or is it? Because sometimes I feel so much more hopeful when I’m asleep, like this day when everything changes, I mean once I wake up, or maybe I’m already awake, but not quite, because it’s that possibility of living in two times or experiences at once, but in the same body, the one that lets me down as soon as I get out of bed.

– Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, The Freezer Door, 2020

The way in brings together new and existing works by Leah Clements, Christian Friedrich, Aaron Ratajczyk and Iris Touliatou. Video, sound and sculptural installations respond to the architecture of Haus N, proposing an existential exploration of being.

The starting point of this exhibition stems from the recent past – a time when our collective experience of time itself felt different, when the relationships between ourselves and our bodies, our surroundings and others were renegotiated, and when the exploration of interiority, embodied presence, and the desire to connect felt like shared concerns.

We have been working closely with each of the invited artists to develop a scenography that welcomes the viewer into an interior space of memory, feeling and desire. The presented installations make public and palpable elements that are highly intimate and intangible. It is through a specific organisation of space and time that the works move between introversion and entanglement, to convey a sense of containment and opening up. The way in “shifts with the emotion, with the feeling or not feeling, a vibration.”

About the artist contributions:

The continuous tension between (interior) self and (exterior) world, between notions of control and subjugation, between pleasure and pain, finds a cerebral/bodily address in Christian Friedrich’s silent film Untitled, 2010-2011. Alternating shots of freedom and overpowering – a man being repeatedly electroshocked in a sex dungeon, a billowing American flag, a NYC Thanksgiving Day Parade – rhythmically re-appear at a pace too high to grasp, causing images to appear superimposed and the video to become structural rather than discursive. This can be said about most of Friedrich’s work, as well as about the exhibition in general; the focus lies on the artistic rather than the referential impact, on what the work does and how it comes into being rather than what it is about, though without shying away from its references.

Leah Clements explores altered experiences of space and time through a light and sound sequence titled Reprise/Reprieve. The work has grown out of Clements’ text-based video installation in her solo exhibition The Siren of the Deep at Eastside Projects earlier this year, which is centred around the phenomenon of deep-sea divers feeling an overwhelming pull to stay on the bottom of the ocean in a state of awe and never come back up. This new work – developed through a more experiential and somatic approach –uses deep bass sound, warm lights and an installation reminiscent of an abandoned medical experiment, in a sequence that causes a gradual build up and sudden release of tension at set intervals in the gallery.

Presence and its mediation, isolation and connection, intimacy and belonging are explored in Aaron Ratajczyk’s contribution. His installation consists of a tent-like structure made of semi-transparent plastic, entitled Home Ressemblances, and a floor made of flattened cardboard boxes connected to speakers through contact mics, entitled Remote Ressemblances. Found on the streets of Athens and at local convenience stores these materials served as packaging of products from around the world. Viewers are invited to enter Ratajczyk’s open yet contained environment, generating sounds through which togetherness becomes both intimate and alienating.

Iris Touliatou’s contribution What we had expected and for how long is a new work developed through a relational exchange between herself and the curators of the exhibition. As a result Haus N is punctuated with objects, including Touliatou’s 2016 piece Exhausted Lovers, a carefully contained breakup, which the curators carried away from the artist’s home. While being abroad the artist entrusted us with the keys to her house/studio, to extract items of our choosing. The items are containers – drawers, shelves, trays, frames – each holding together very personal and at times useful materials. Through the act of making public, the negotiations and the relational exchange between us, the work engages proximity and public intimacy, agency and co-dependence, togetherness and solitude, optimism and letting go.

About the artists:

Leah Clements’ (b. 1989, based in London) practice spans film, photography, performance, writing, installation, and other media. Her work is concerned with the relationship between the psychological, emotional, and physical, often through personal accounts of unusual or hard-to-articulate experiences. Her practice also focuses on sickness/cripness/disability in art, in critical and practical ways. Clements is currently artist in residence at Serpentine Galleries and has previously been artist in residence at Wysing Arts Centre and Rupert. She has presented her work at Chisenhale Gallery, Somerset House Studios, Science Gallery, Institute of Contemporary Art, Jupiter Woods and Wellcome Collection, London; Baltic39, Newcastle; Vermilion Sands, Copenhagen; The National Gallery of Art, Vilnius; Eastside Projects, Birmingham; La Casa Encendida, Madrid. www.leahclements.com

Ιris Touliatou (b. 1981, based in Athens) engages in a conceptual practice, which transposes the political, environmental and affective, and employs various mediums necessary for each intervention. Manifesting in sculpture, photography, sound, scent and text, her work creates open forms and shared experiences, to comment on time, intimacy, transience, mortality, economies and states of being. Ιris Touliatou has exhibited work at 2021 New Museum Triennial, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; The 7th Athens Biennale, DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art and Radio Athènes, Athens, among others. www.iristouliatou.com

Christian Friedrich (1977, based in Amsterdam and Berlin) investigates the condition, structure and manipulation of subject-object relationships through a variety of media, including video, sculpture, audio and scent. His work frequently employs elements of the sexually outré, played against formalism, aestheticism, and structural contradiction. Friedrich’s work has been shown, among others, at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, PS120, Berlin; Cabinet Gallery, London; NYU, New York; Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen; Grazer Kunstverein, Graz; De Hallen, Haarlem; Goethe-Institut, De Appel, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Städtische Galerie am ZKM, Karlsruhe. In 2017, Friedrich was the recipient of the Cobra Art Prize, in 2013 he was nominated for Prix de Rome.

Aaron Ratajczyk’s (1989, based in London and Berlin) practice explores modes of intimacy and dis-identification, treating the body as a malleable interface. Often expressed through non-verbal affects – mood, atmosphere and poetics – his work takes the form of video, performance, text and installation. His work has been presented at Museum of Modern Art and KEM, Warsaw; Tree Art Museum, Beijing; RCA CCA in partnership with Nottingham Contemporary; Yvonne Lambert, Berlin; Forum for Live Art Amsterdam. Forthcoming projects include group exhibitions at Goldsmiths CCA and South London Gallery (as part of New Contemporaries) and a solo commission by Institute of Contemporary Art, London. www.aaronratajczyk.com

The way in is curated by Panos Fourtoulakis and Titus Nouwens

Graphic design by Sara Ozvaldic

*Panos Fourtoulakis and Iris Touliatou are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

Bodies In Motion, group show curated by Odette Kouzou
Alkinois Project Space – 6, Alkinois Athnes 11852 (Petralona)
Duration: October 17 – November 14, 2021
Artists: Anna Papathanasiou, Antonakis, Despina Charitonidi, Evgenia Vereli, Maria Louizou, Panos Papadopoulos, Rallou Panagiotou, and Sofia Stevi.

* Anna Papathanasiou and Maria Louizou are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

The Collectif MASI (Madlen Anipsitaki and Simon Riedler) with the artists Melissanthi Spei and Georges Salameh, present the works they created during the second cycle of the Station One AIR 2021 residency for emerging artists. The artwork of Collectif MASI “A square with a view – Renewing the self-image of a square” will be in Victoria Square from November 26 until December 3, 2021.

The statue “Theseus saving Hippodamia” breaks its silence! Ιt speaks about its life, its roots and its movements, the bullets that it took, its thoughts about the people of the square. Through paintings and spatial installations, we create a counter-monument, challenging the existing one to revisit its myth in the light of Victoria Square’s contemporary reality. There we set up an open-air exhibition, which consists of paintings on sheets hung from balconies surrounding the square. In the square itself we place four statues that one can climb for an uninterrupted view of the paintings. From that viewpoint, for the first time in years, the living gaze intersects with that of the statue’s. “Theseus saving Hippodamia” comes to life through their eyes, while the living statues reflect on all the things that the statue saw over the years without being able to speak about them.

Program of Station One AIR II

Friday 26 November
11:00 – 17:30 | Collective MASI artwork activation in the square with the community | Victoria square
17:30-20:00 | 4 sculptures presentation in the square, Collectif MASI | Victoria square

Wednesday, 1 December
16:30 | Presentation Collectif MASI | Elpidos 13, Athens
From November 26 until December 3 the Collectif MASI will be in Victoria Square (from 11 AM until 7 PM except on Tuesday 2 PM – 10 PM) activating their artwork by interacting with the community.

Thursday, 2 December
21:00 | Performance “Hippodamia Rising” directed by Melissanthi Spei | Elpidos 13, Athens
The performer Eleni Papaioannou will interact with Melissanthi Spei’s artworks. Starting from the Hippodamia’s myth, the performer will comment on the role of women in contemporary society.

Friday, 3 December
20:00 | Video screening, George Salameh | Elpidos 13, Athens
20:30 | Public Discussion with the artists | Elpidos 13, Athens
The artistic duo Collectif MASI, George Salameh and Melissanthi Spei discuss with the VSP community their experience during the residency program. The discussion will open with a video screening by George Salameh.

Station One AIR 2021 residency for emerging artists focuses on Johannes Pfuhl’s neoclassical sculpture of Hippodamia in Victoria Square. Through their projects, resident artists engaged the Square as a potential locus for intercultural exchange and community building and explored methodologies for using contentious monuments and public art to facilitate consideration and conversation across diverse communities about history, identity, and belonging.

The residency program explores the common ground that emerges when identities come to be viewed as ever-evolving and dynamic and to strengthen community through cross-cultural exchange and artistic production. Station One AIR 2021 is a collaboration between Victoria Square Project and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative (SNFPHI) at Columbia University, supported byCounterpoints Arts and Outset Contemporary Art Fund Greece.

*Madlen Anipsitaki is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow (visual arts)

The choreographer and dancer, Dimitris Mytilinaios, presents his new work “INSEQS- INORGANIC SEQUENCES” in a former car showroom for four performances (December 1-4, 21:00). INSEQS is a remnant of a classic choreographic composition that attempts to highlight the beauty of embarrassment.

The group, consisting of five dancers, a karate teacher who sometimes dances and four musicians, orchestrates a seemingly classical technique and vocabulary – which, while playing in terms of a variety
show, tries to articulate a peculiar stage language.

The work borrows the structure of a classical dance class lesson and unfolds in successive acts. Each act has its own world; each of the performers raises its own cross. Ballet hides behind everything. Rita
Mosss’s noise-punk music -specially written for the show- accompanies the dancers and exposes their agitation, adapting patterns from the classical repertoire and scores for ballet exercises.

By presenting a series of “ill-treated” exercises performed in front of an audience, (assuming that a lesson is the first choreography performed and therefore the archetype for each choreography), the work examines the pile of encrypted information that make up the dance body and the types of look it invites.

Choreography: Dimitris Mytilinaios

Dancers: Nefeli Asteriou, Filippos Vassiliou, Veatriki Kapnisi, Markella Manoliadi, Pagona Boulbasakou, Dimitris Mytilinaios

Music: Rita Mosss (Kostas Kangelaris, Michalis Kalligeris, Michalis Magnis, Dimitris Tsampounaris)

Lighting design: Apostolos Strantzalis

Costumes: Ioanna Tsami

Video / Photos / Graphics: Marina Skoutela

Production manager: Olga Tsatsouli

Press officer: Evangelia Skrombola

Production organization and execution: howtomakeyourlifeharder Non-profit Organization

Supported by the Ministry of Culture

INFORMATION
December 1-4 at 21:00
Estimated duration: 55′
97, Falirou str. Koukaki, Athens

*Dimitris Mytilinaios, Filippos Vassiliou and Nefeli Asteriou are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

2021 marks the 26th anniversary for Art Athina, the leading International Contemporary Art fair of Athens. Two years after the global pandemic Virtual meets Actual and Art Athina presents for the second time Art Athina Virtual as well as a multidisciplinary program featuring performance, new media space, live talks and a podcast series. The online event culminates with its physical counterpart, Art Athina Pop Up at King George Hotel in Athens, November 12-21 2021.

Check below our Fellows’ participation:

GALLERIES

a.antonopoulou.art
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/a-antonopoulou-art
Stefania Strouza

CASK
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/cask/
Irini Miga

CRUX
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/crux-galerie/
Anestis Ioannou

Donopoulos Fine arts
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/donopoulos-international-fine-arts/
Fotis Sagonas

Kalfayan Galleries
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/kalfayan-galleries/
Rania Bellou
Andreas Ragnar Kassapis

Zina Athanasiadou Gallery
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/zina-athanassiadou-gallery/
Maro Fasouli

Zoumboulakis Galleries
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/zoumboulakis-galleries/
Dimitris Efeoglou

CAN Christian Androulidaki Gallery
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/can-christina-androulidaki-gallery/
Petros Efstathiadis
Manolis Daskalakis Lemos
Valinia Svoronou

Eleni Koroneou Gallery
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/eleni-koroneou-gallery/
Eleni Bagaki
Irini Efstathiou

Ileana Tounta Art Center
https://aavirtual.gr/en/galleries/ileana-tounta-contemporary-art-center/
Maria Louizou

PROJECTS

MISC
https://aavirtual.gr/en/project-galleries/misc-athens/
Νικόλας Βεντουράκης
Ναταλία Παπαδοπούλου
Βαλίνια Σβορώνου

Callirrhoë
https://aavirtual.gr/en/project-galleries/callirrhoe/
Βασίλης Παπαγεωργίου
Μαλβίνα Παναγιωτίδη
Αναστασία Δούκα

PERFORMANCE (FILM ACTIVATIONS) PROGRAM
https://aavirtual.gr/en/performance/
Curator: Kostas Stasinopoulos (Assistant Curator, Live Programmes, Serpentine)
Aristidis Lappas, Eleni Bagaki, Malvina Panagiotidi, Vasilis Papageorgiou, Serapis Maritime, Eliza Sorogka, FITA

NEW MEDIA SPACE
https://aavirtual.gr/en/videos/
Eva Papamargariti, Hypercomf, Kosmas Nikolaou, Kyriaki Goni

‘As Uncanny As a Body’ is a video work which documents the constant transition of a dancing body from an abled human state into a glitched, injured, unspecified one.

Based on the development and use of a GAN model, the visual data of a dancer are processed, and figures that manifest this in-between state are produced. What happens when AI is not used in order to optimise the performance of the dancer but rather to generate body types and movements lying beyond fixed standards and classifications? How does a poorly trained AI model perceive the body and how does it affect our perception of it? Does it remain human in all its smudges, cracks and distortions?

With her work ‘As Uncanny As a Body’, Irini provokes painless AI-injuries on the virtual dancing body with tenderness and a wish to bring the uncanny closer to the human.

Acknowledgments:

Concept, Choreography & ΑΙ: Irini Kalaitzidi
Performer: Maria Vourou
Filming and Digital Support: Stathis Doganis
Music: Nick Tsolis
Special Thanks: Daphne Dragona, Orestis Korakitis, Sakis Kostis and studio ΠΛΑΤΩ

‘As Uncanny As a Body’ was created during Irini’s participation in the 2020-21 Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Artist Fellowship Program by ARTWORKS (GR).

The exhibition series “THF Raw” acts like an open invitation to local curators who need a space to experiment, to take chances and to work with artists of their choice. By addressing the alternative non exhibition spaces of the museum, they both give a chance to unseen and unused spaces of the peripheries of the Foundation, while curating work that could be seen with a new set of eyes in these raw but established groundings that exist in the heart of the Athenian city.

The opening of the exhibition “The Swimmer” at the B. & M. Theocharakis Foundation will take place on November 24, 2021, at the balcony of the building from 18:00 to 20:45, and will be followed by a free screening of Frank Perry’s film The Swimmer (1968) at the Foundation’s auditorium at 21:00. Α variation on Natasa Efstathiadi’s solo show of the same title, which was presented at CAN Christina Androulidaki Gallery in Athens in 2014, the exhibition borrows its title from Perry’s film and from John Cheever’s 1964 New Yorker short story on which the film is based.

The Swimmer tells the story of a suburban middle-aged stud (played by Burt Lancaster in the film) who one afternoon, while paying a visit at some friends’ garden, decides to swim home across the county, pool by pool. As his friends are lounging, dog-day lethargic, drinking gin, he pictures “the quasi-subterranean stream that curves across the county,” the string of swimming pools that separate him from his home, and without hesitation he sets out to swim across it. His journey across the “Lucinda River” (he dubs the route after his wife) feels liberating and life-affirming in the beginning, but soon is given over to a haunted feeling. Ηis aquatic journey is quickly revealed to be the catalyst of his imminent disintegration.

Exposed to the elements, laid on the floor on the balcony of the B. & M. Theocharakis Foundation, ten compact pools made of plaster model the succession of swimming pools that appear in the film. Nine of the pools shown here were included in the original The Swimmer 2014 exhibition. The tenth pool, placed to the side of the balcony overlooking the Greek Parliament, is Efstathiadi’s most recent addition to the work, fully rendering the “Lucinda River” into its sculptural echo. The work now seems to address that same confronting question that laces the film’s poster: “When you talk about The Swimmer will you talk about yourself?”

Artist: Natasa Efstathiadi
Curator: Maya Tounta
Artistic Director: Marina Miliou – Theocharakis
Exhibition Production Assistant: Nefeli Siafaka
Copy-editor: EG (Eleanna Papathanasiadi, Geli Mademli)

Duration: November 24, 2021–January 20, 2022
Opening hours: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, 10:00-17:00 hrs, Friday 18:00-22:00 hrs

*Natasa Efstathiadi and Maya Tounta are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

WE THE ENEMY manifesto by SPIT! (Carlos Alejandro Motta, John Arthur Peetz, Carlos Maria Romero aka Atabey Mamasita) where Despina Zacharopoulou (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2021) is performing, will be screened online on https://kirikonline.org/ for the period 25 November- 9 December 2021.

The SPIT! Manifesto was a series of performance interventions at Frieze Projects London (2017) that used speech acts and performative gestures inspired by queer manifestos from the 1960s to the present. SPIT! wrote a series manifestos that respond to contemporary pressing issues of sexual and gender oppression and invited performers Joshua Hubbard, Carlos Mauricio Rojas, Claudia Palazzo, Malik Nashad Sharpe, Daniel Brathwaite-Shirley, and Despina Zacharopoulou to interpret, (in cases) rewrite, and perform them.

​SPIT! also published The SPIT! Manifesto Reader bringing together a selection of historical and contemporary queer manifestos to create a dialogue between radical queer histories past and present. 

​

Promise is Κarolina Krasouli’s first solo exhibition in Greece. She has had two more solo exhibitions in France, in 2016 and 2020. The backbone of Promise is a series of hand-sewn canvases, painted in gesso and oil in soft, pastel colours. These mainly large-scale works evoke windows, doors, books, folded pages, and envelops. They are displayed on the wall, like regular paintings, but can just as well be set on the floor. Most were produced during the last year, specifically for the Arts Centre exhibition.

The overarching theme in this series of works is the book as both object and landscape. The folding and browsing, the abstract language, the irreplaceable space of the book in general – from the unique ambiance of an old bookstore or a good library, handmade stationery, various archival paraphernalia and writing implements to the room itself and to a writer’s cherished tools (a case in point is Roland Barthes’ handmade cards, on which he wrote his journal notes) – these populate the microcosm that Krasouli evokes on her hand-sewn canvases.

Krasouli’s works are complex and elaborate, as sophisticated as an haute-couture garment. Using a time-consuming and laborious process that involves preparing the canvas, painting it, followed by folding, sewing, and ironing, the artist creates paintings that ‘express innocence of mind’, to quote Agnes Martin’s apt remark on the 30 screenprints of On a Clear Day series (1973).

‘This series of works on hand-sewn canvases evolved from my project inspired by Emily Dickinson’s envelop poems in 2016.[i] What I kept from that series is the evocation of paper, of a sheet through painting,’ Krasouli notes and continues, ‘This series came as a result of a small-scale painting (A Further Migration, 2018), in which I painted a stack of paper in a realistic manner. What I loved about this project is how we can sense the spaces of the sheets underneath without actually seeing them. That’s why I made the first cloths – on a much larger scale and using painting materials (canvas, gesso, powders, and oil).

The hand-sewn canvases are complemented by 60 watercolours on paper, titled Depths of Green (2021). ‘Repetition was also at the core of my work for the watercolour series,’ explains Krasouli. ‘When I embarked on this project, I had recently read Virginia Woolf’s The Waves and I made this note (hence the title): ‘Flower after flower is specked on the depths of green.’ I also noted: ‘The real flower on the window-sill was attended by a phantom flower. Yet the phantom was part of the flower, for when a bud broke free the paler flower in the glass opened a bud too.’[ii]

The artist goes on: ‘In this series I loved this concept of the double, the doppelgänger, the mirroring,’ she says, citing as her main influence Mike Kelley’s essay ‘Playing with Dead Things: On the Uncanny’ (1993). ‘Other artists I look at are Anna Oppermann, in terms of repetition and encapsulation, Mark Manders, and especially works involving stationery. I always look at Agnes Martin, Giotto and his colours, a lot of films, especially Leos Carax.’ To that eclectic list of artists cited by Krasouli might be added the Belgian painter Raoul De Keyser (1930–2012), who systematically explored the representational possibilities of abstraction.

What more could be added while looking at Krasouli’s works? Promise is silent art and as such invites contemplation – a visionary ‘contemplation… [that] entails self-forgetfulness on the part of the spectator,’ Susan Sontag aptly argues in her essay ‘The Aesthetics of Silence’. [iii] ‘The spectator would approach art as he does a landscape. A landscape doesn’t demand from the spectator his “understanding,” his imputations of significance, his anxieties and sympathies; it demands, rather, his absence, that he not add anything to it,’ Sontag writes.

Without a doubt, the word promise and the associated verb are weighty words. Like love and I love you, they carry a certain weight – they don’t come out easily. However, Krasouli’s work promises a lot and delivers even more – a new understanding of the meaning of painting today. In its fragmentation and serenity, in the sense of silence it conveys, her paintings annihilate you, take a weight off you. The heaviness of being lightens up, grows wings. Karolina Krasouli’s Promise promises a miracle – a different approach to painting and for that reason deserves our attention.

Christoforos Marinos

Art Historian

OPANDA curator of exhibitions and events

Exhibition Curator: Christoforos Marinos, art historian, OPANDA curator of exhibitions and events
Exhibition Duration: November 25th 2021 until January 23rd 2022

*Karolina Krasouli is visual art SNF ARTWORKS Fellow

—

[i]Specifically, Krasouli was inspired by Emily Dickinson, The Gorgeous Nothings, Christine Burgin/New Directions, New York 2013, Jen Bervin and Marta Werner (eds).

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Susan Sontag, ‘Aesthetics of Silence’, Aspen nos. 5 + 6, item 3, 1967; retrieved from http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/index.html.

The narration of a myth is inextricably linked to the subject of memory. The work ‘Daedala’ explores the mythological element, as the revelation of a memory that is shaped in the present and is relative to the sacred, the hidden, the secret. Two visual arts, photography by Stefania Orfanidou and sculpture by Natalia Manta, meet in a labyrinthine installation and come into dialogue, integration, juxtaposition, crack and deconstruction. Its objects, fragments from excavation and revocation in the depths of a living memory, are recomposed and form a narrative, which, however, is not a recollection. Hidden elements alternate with visible ones, apparently in an uncanny condition. In the exhibition ‘Daedala’, the artists create a mapping of a new landscape to be explored, where the discovery, the reading and the correlation of the findings refer to the mattock and to the research that follows an archeological excavation. The works, like findings, function as presumptions of an imaginary connection with another era, real or mythological. The space turns into a labyrinth, with scattered pieces of a puzzle, which visitors are invited to discover and reconstruct, relating them to their own personal experiences.

‘Daedala’, in ancient Greece, were composite crafts made of metal, wood or fabrics based on the materials’ shredding, complementarity and joining. They were works of art, which reflected reality and were related to light, perception and illusion. Works to be seen, concealing the refined work of a craftsman, the carving details or the coating of one material with another.

PHOTOGRAPHIC & SCULPTURAL INSTALLATION
STEFANIA ORFANIDOU / NATALIA MANTA / GEORG ES SALAMEH
YIALI TZAMI / OLD HARBOUR CHANIA / 4-18 NOVEMBER 2021

With the support:
ΑΝΟΙΧΤΑ ΠΑΝΙΑ 2021 / ΚΕΠΠΕΔΗΧ ΚΑΜ / CHANIA MUNICIPALITY

*Stefania Orfanidou is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2020

The exhibition “The Rules of the Game”, inspired by Jean Renoir’s masterpiece, The Rules of the Game, takes place at the former Nursery School (Pier A, Port of Thessaloniki) from November 6th to December 6th, 2021.

Partipant artists: Marina Velisioti, Nikolas Ventourakis, Xenia Vitou, Kyriaki Goni, Stathis-Alexandros Zoulias, Alexandros Manganiotis, Sofia Stevi, Diamantis Sotiropoulos, Dimitris Tataris and Doreida Tzogou.

Exhibition duration in Thessaloniki: 6/11/2021-6/12/2021. Opening hours 6/11/2021-14/11/2021: 10am-10pm. Opening hours 15/11/2021-6/12/2021:10am-6pm (except Mondays). Exhibition duration in Athens: 16/12/2021-16/1/2022.

A few words about the timeless masterpiece The Rules of the Game (1939) by Jean Renoir

Unconditionally timeless, especially in the liminal times we are living in, as we brace ourselves to greet an emerging meta-world, Jean Renoir’s chef-d’oeuvre grooms us for a much needed and inevitable transition to a new era. A film that reminds us how abruptly the rules of the game can change in a split second and how important it is to redefine them from scratch.

The Rules of the Game, a milestone of world cinema that has been screened strikingly fewer times than the rest of the groundbreaking films that changed the course of cinema history, hit the theaters right before the breakout of World War II, triggering a public outcry as it seemed to foretell the devastation looming over Europe and the entire planet. Renoir, at the heyday of his career at the time, did not hesitate to illustrate the decadence and moral bankruptcy of all social classes in the most vivid way, foreshadowing the painful dawn of a new era.

*Kyriaki Goni and Nicholas Ventourakis are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows.

The solo show “212 Medea (Narratives from a place in limbo)” by Stefania Strouza, curated respectively by Christos Chrysopoulos and Daphne Dragona is presented at the Project Space at Megaron the Athens Concert Hall, from November 4, 2021 until January 23rd, 2022.

With a number of works presented for the first time in Greece –two of which were created especially for the exhibition–, the artist refers to the suspended condition in which the planet finds itself today. She focuses on moments of conflict, on imprints of disaster and on the possibility of reparation and regeneration. The exhibition takes its title from the asteroid named 212 Medea, which occupied Stefania Strouza in the context of her artistic and research work on the myth of Medea. Upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere, asteroids are transformed into shooting stars which are also earth-threatening bodies in the event of a collision. Medea is identified with the unpredictable and the destructive but also with the opposition to the self-evident and the imposed. In studying her story, Strouza focuses on an unexplored aspect of her character that demonstrates the anti-heroine’s relation to natural phenomena, animal instincts and the Earth itself, while at the same time always remaining alienated herself. For the artist, the existence of asteroid 212 Medea is a trigger for producing a visual narrative in which the myth’s modern connotations in relation to the natural environment are revealed.

The exhibition presents three sculptures and one video. The sculptures are suggestive of bodies geological and cosmic, human and non-human, material and active, bodies that bear traces of collision but at the same time can bring about changes. Centrally placed is the sculpture 212 Medea (Perpetual Silence Prevails in the Empty Space of Capital), which resembles both an asteroid on a collision course and a female body, referring to the relation between gender identity and the climate crisis. The sculpture 212 Medea (If only I had stayed the animal I was) refers to the acknowledgment of other living worlds beyond the human, while the smaller sculptures SPK-ID 2000212 (A880 CA), in the form of fragments, are a reference to the flows of matter, to moments of explosion and constant transformation. Finally, the video Monologue (Medean Remix) is based on excerpts from the works of Euripides, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Heiner Müller. In this, Medea recalls and embodies the fundamental relations between ‘nature’ and culture, as well as between humans and other living beings

More info here.

“Head 2 Head” is an exhibitional projects that is presented between Greece and Iceland. It takes place in Athens, between November 5th and November 14th 2021 and in Reykjavík at 2023. The art spaces that join the projects are: 52, PS, 3 137, EIGHT / ΤΟ ΟΚΤΩ, HYLE / ΗΛΗ, backspace, Stoa 42, zoetrope, A-Dash and KEIV.

The artist-run spaces Kling & Bang and A – DASH join with much excitement to the initial phase of the bilateral visual art festival HEAD2HEAD in Athens on the 5 – 14th of November 2021. Below you may find the schedule to these spaces:

More info here.

*Konstantinos Kotsis, Vasilis Zarifopoulos, Konstantinos Giotis and Eleni Papazoglou are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

to see a block of flats as a cave

I started counting distance through fatigue.

Νot experience but fatigue.

I start counting with that that is caused by distance to the neck and feet.

We live in the city.

We live in the block of flats.

We see the block of flats as a cave.

He says:

Look at these plants below. How does it sound like?

From this man? Outside.

What is it heard from inside of the door?

I asked them :

When is it that you are not yourselves? He replied :

I am not myself when I change room.

I started counting distance through fatigue.

Not exactly perspective but fatigue

© Andreas Ragnar Kassapis, 2021

Kalfayan Galleries present the solo exhibition of Andreas Ragnar Kassapis titled “Τo see a block of flats as a cave”.  In his solo exhibition at Kalfayan Galleries, Andreas Ragnar Kassapis presents a diverse installation consisting of paintings, text and archival photography. At the same time, the exhibition is accompanied by a music work that is presented and available digitally. As the artist observes regarding the new series of works: “My subjects are landscapes or at least ‘areas’ that keep within them the objects inseparable. I continue with my investigation into the concept of Nuance and consequently into the concept of Mood (Stimmung); the concept of Duration (la durée) and consequently subjective experience and lived time; the notion of distance and therefore the concept of perspective and its distortions “. Having psychoanalysis, phenomenology and contemporary cultural criticism as basic methodological tools, the work of Andreas Ragnar Kassapis focuses on themes concerning the mechanisms of perception, memory and representation. Having as a starting point cognitive theories of object perception, his paintings raise questions about the imprint of technical images on perception and memory in modern times.

The exhibition opens on Wednesday, 10 November 2021, 18.00 – 21.00
Duration: 10 November – 11 December 2021

*Andreas Ragnar Kassapis is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2020

The 62nd Thessaloniki International Film Festival is returning to its home turf, the movie theaters, prioritizing safety and abiding by all health and safety protocols, from Thursday 4 to Sunday 14, November 2021. This year’s celebration of independent cinema will take place in physical spaces, but online as well.

Within the framework of the 62nd TIFF, 197 films will be screened in the time-honored home ground of the Festival, while the audience will have the chance to watch 144 films online, through the digital platform of the Festival, online.filmfestival.gr.

Check below our Fellows’ movies which will be screen at the 62nd TIFF:

Brutalia, Days of Labour, Manolis Mavris
More info here

Motorway 65, Evi Kalogiropoulou
More info here

ORFEAS2021, FYTA*
More info here

Soul Food, Nikos Tsemberopoulos
More info here

Souls All Unaccompanied, Yorgos Teltzidis
More info here

The Timekeepers of Eternity, Aristotelis Maragkos
More info here

Holy Emy, Araceli Lemos
More info here

Magnetic Fields, Yorgos Goussis
More info here

Moon, 66 Questions, Jacqueline Lentzou
More info here

*Foivos Dousos part of the artistic duo FYTA is Fellow

“Synthesis”, a new performative installation by choreographer Tzeni Argyriou and visual artist Vassilis Gerodimos, tackles the complex event of the Greek War of Independence. Over 30 artists from the whole spectrum of performance and visual arts take part in the creation of the work, summoning the visitor to a unique experience.

“Synthesis” takes the form of a performative assemblage that correlates the process that produced the historical and socio-political network of the Greek War of Independence with that of the collective work, with its own particular, diverse conflicts, contradictions, aporias, transitions and reversals. During the three days of the event, each of whom conceptually corresponds to one of the three stages of the Greek Revolution (the intoxication of the initial outbreak, the middle-period introversion and the late-phase fatigue, but also the resilience which was a constant characteristic of the whole revolutionary decade), the artists cooperate in real time to create an interactive installation in which the spaces of the Alternative Stage lend themselves to a dynamic process of incessant visual and aural mobility. The creators set out to throw light on the invisible aspects of the official history by emphasising under-recognised factors such as financial management, military administration, ideological developments and everyday life of the revolutionary period.

Through the conversion of the Alternative Stage to a workshop space where the limits between “stage” and “backstage” become permeable and the public experience the preparation and final presentation of a series of concurrent and overlapping actions in active dialogue with each other, the creators of Synthesis trace the intertwined historical “lines” that synthesise the premeditated and the random, highlighting the analogies between a performative and a historical event.

More info:

https://www.nationalopera.gr/en/alternative-stage/es-events/item/3658-synthesis

synthesis21.gr

Maro Fasouli, Virginia Mastrogiannaki and Konstantinos Paleologos, all SNF ARTWORKS Fellows, participate in the performative installation.

As part of this years’ SYNASKí programme, COCHLEA res & Georgia Paizi curate a series of open online conversational scores between 4 or 5 each time teacher/artists, followed by a Q&A.

On Sunday 17th October, the third (and last) meeting takes place on zoom, 1-3pm GMT+3
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6909853355
Meeting ID: 690 985 3355

Number of connections is limited to 100. Subscription on facebook fb.me/e/16rwOFZyN

These conversational scores attempt a non-linear mapping of the field of somatic practices, highlight the key concepts and tools brought by these practices and investigate language, poetic imagery, translation, experiential anatomy, and touch, as well as how these practices link and relate to each other, their place within contemporary movement education, their therapeutic side, and whether they contribute to a democratisation of making and training and a sense of community versus individuality in a post-capitalistic era.

SUNDAY 3 OCT
Giorgos Sioras Deligiannia
Georgia Paizi
Marilena Petridou
Marina Tsartsara
Dimitra Charalampidou

SUNDAY 10 OCT
Timos Zechas
Anna Tzakou
Vasiliki Tsagkari
Despina Chatzipavlidou

SUNDAY 17 OCT
Zoi Dimitriou
Mariela Nestora
Ioanna Palamidous
Eleni Panitska
Ireni Stamou

—

SYNASKí investigates the field of somatic practices in education, artistic research and making. SYNASKí includes 105 studio hours, 92 hours of class, 14 different techniques (incl. Alexander Technique, Pilates, Yoga, Axis Sylabus, Rolfing, Antigymnastics, Feldenkrais, SRT, BMC, Franklin, Klein, Authentic Movement, Contemplative Dance Practice, Topf) brought to us 14 different artist/qualified teachers, 4 improvisation jams, 3 open discussions, 1 history & theory session, 1 mentoring session per participant, 1 closing cycle.

Funded by the Greek Ministry of Culture. Supported by Duncan Dance Research Centre Athens.

Collages by Lina Vergopoulou.
Currated by Georgia Paizi & www.cochleares.com

Georgia Paizi is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2021

With Takis’ series of works with magnets and iron filings as our launch pad, and through comprehensible examples and personal experiences, we will awaken the world of our imagination with a magnet. We will follow a sequence of visual art experiments to create our own works of art, while deepening our understanding of the concept of energy flow in nature and in art. A dance of filings and lines will bring to life natural phenomena, magical creatures, stories and, of course, all of our energy to create!

Up to 15 participants
For children aged 6 to 10 years old

Saturday 16 & 30/ 10 | 17.30-19.00
Saturday 13 & 27/ 11 | 17.30-19.00

Maker Space

Free attendance by online pre-registration

For the activity held on 16/10, pre-registration starts on Saturday 09/10 at 12.00
For the activity held on 30/10, pre-registration starts on Friday 22/10 at 12.00

Session #1

We will make “impetuous designs” with ink, filings and our magnet, and awaken the force of a volcano, a twister or, maybe, the waves of the sea? What will become of this momentum? What will it transform into within our artwork?

Session #2

Playing with the concepts of order and disorder, we will unravel a tangle of filings that flows to the rhythm of our magnet. Dots and lines will help us solve this mystery… How do I unravel the tangle with my pencil? How do I impose creative “order” to creative “disorder”?

Session #3

With the help of a magic box that contains filings and plenty of imagination, we will breathe life into the magnetic creatures that will appear before our eyes: are their aliens or, perhaps, mysterious insects? Where do they live, what do they eat, what language do they speak?

Session #4

We will make sculptures out of white clay, filings and small magnets. Tree or insect? Or, perhaps, a volcano? No, it’s a flower… Or a stormy cloud watering an exotic plant!

Design/Implementation: Antigoni Michalakopoulou, Visual Artist/Architect/Educator

*Antigoni Michalakopoulou is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2020 in visual arts

More info: https://www.snfcc.org/en/events/art-workshop-awaken-world-magnet/10407