Category: Fellows news

To feature contemporaneity, OMS shows young Greek art whereby “Greekness” is deterritorialized. In what way is locality part of the being if we do not speak about territory any more but about a series of situations? Situatedness can depict embodiment or perspectivism, can reflect the conditionality of knowledge or can refer to the entanglement of mind and world. It can support temporality but sitting between stasis and duration it can also counteract it. We think it cannot only be useful to describe the implications of embodiment but can also be used to emphasize the dynamic of space-time and corporeality of agency. What becomes obvious with the works of the YOUNG GREEK ARTISTS participating in OMS’s inaugural group show for the season “ΕΔΩ ΚΑΙ ΤΩΡΑ“ is the transversal and transgressive character of situatedness that simultaneously connects and detaches past and future and space. To put it in the words of two participating artists :”Coming out of place, makes it easier to come out of time” (Myrto Vratsanou and Anouk Asselineau). Our experience can still be at some previous location while being with embedded in the new. And we have not even begun to talk here of the implications that quantum physics, virtuality and augmented reality might have on situatedness.

OMS’s inaugural group show for the season

“ΕΔΩ ΚΑΙ ΤΩΡΑ“

From September 30th to October 15th 2021
September 30th, 19.30: After a brief introduction by the curators, the artists will speak about the presented work

Artists: Stathis Alexandros Zoulias, Elena Chantzis, Stelios Papagrigoriou, Fi Tsaoules, Myrto Vratsanou (in collaboration with Anouk Asselineau), Grigoria Vryttia
Curated by Nadja Geer and Florent Frizet

*Elena Chantzis is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow

The fragment of antiquity is what we have been left. Only in this dilapidated form can anything be read. The only real integrity that remains is the integrity of the fragment. The only recovered form is the fragmented form. Fragments, which do not seek their wholeness, rather seek their availability, and their preservation in the initial position of zero.

This year’s group exhibition Fragments by The Symptom Projects, curated by Apostolis Artinos, and in collaboration with the Delphi Antiquities Authority, will take place in the halls and garden of the Archaeological Museum of Amfissa, where fifteen contemporary visual artists will attempt to coexist with the Museum’s collection through their work, to coordinate with the energy of its fragments and to interact with their language.

Curator | Apostolis Artinos

Participating artists | Malvina Panagiotidi, Panagiotis Vorrias, Panos Profitis, Christina Mitrentse, Eugenia Vereli, Anastasia Douka, Lizzie Calligas, Dimitris Ameladiotis, Dionisis, Hara Piperidou, Dionisis Christofilogiannis, Ilias Papailiakis, Anna Lascari, Despina Charitonidi, Vasilis Zografos, George Skiloyannis.

The Symptom Project is supported by NEON.

*Malvina Panagiotidi, Panagiotis Vorrias, Panos Profitis and Anastasia Douka are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

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FRAGMENTS

25/09/2021 – 19/11/2021

Archaeological Museum of Amfissa

OPENING

25 September | 8pm

OPENING HOURS

Wednesday to Sunday | 9am – 4pm

Monday – Tuesday | Closed

More Information: the-symptom-projects.blogspot.com

We traverse the landscape caught in-between states. From a point of departure to a delineated or yet unknown destination we find ourselves always in transition. Every step we take is a threshold of becoming, a never-ending return to the state we were in before and an arrival to a new state that is about to emerge. Neither inside nor outside we start grasping the world around us by passing through, by moving from one space to another.

The exhibition “Betwixt and Between” explores those liminal moments of being through a collaborative work by Antonis Theodoridis and Nikolas Ventourakis that takes the form of a photographic installation on the terrace of the B & M Theocharakis Foundation for The Fine Arts and Music building. First introduced by anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in the beginning of the 20th century and then rediscovered by Victor Turner in the 1960s –from whom we borrow the term that serves as the title of the show– the concept of liminality is used to define the intermediary stage in any ritual passage or in any radical situation that marks a transition within society and which comes to constitute it anew. Where social structures cease to be and fixed positions become disarranged the liminal period is one of uncertainty and simultaneously one of potentiality. In times of confinement and of social and physical distancing we are invited to reconsider those liminal spaces and times where what is real has yet to be imagined.

Between darkness and light, the works presented in this exhibition point to that direction. Taking as a starting point the city of Athens with its natural and built environments in constant negotiation Theodoridis and Ventourakis guide us through what resists being at the center, capturing and evoking what we do not expect to see or what lies in between. The exhibition space turns into a waiting space, a liminal space itself, where the boundaries between what is natural and constructed seem to get dissolved.

The ways cities are arranged reveal the social structures that formulate our human experience at the same time that our experience sets the very conditions for social actions that would allow for new structures to emerge. Located in the very center of the city, the National Garden of Athens serves as a landmark and a starting point for this rite of passage. Designed by the architect François Louis Bareaud in the mid 1800s under the careful guidance of Queen Amalia and in the principles of the English Garden, that represents an idealized view of nature, the National Garden constitutes the first organized ornamented green space of the modern Greek state. A natural yet highly constructed space for contemplation and seclusion inside the city’s chaotic realm the Garden becomes a silent frontier as well as a space between, that calls for endless crossings. Captured in long exposure photographs taken during night hours, a lush landscape of tranquility, where one can choose to remain lost, comes into contrast with the intensity of the surrounding city that seems to have remained intact. The antithesis between the natural and manmade gets intensified through another lens that depicts the city not as an organized whole, but rather as a composition that defies any strict order. Out-of-ordinary moments seem to interrupt our everyday practices and invite us to look at the city otherwise. Nature takes over in subtle or sometimes profound ways and thus becomes a new layer that weaves into the cultural and ideological narrative of the places we traverse and inhabit. Accompanying the photographs and audio installation comprising a series of recordings gathered in the Garden completes the setting by revealing the parallel lives of the place during the unsettling silence of the night. Between a fixed structure and a complete disarray, we find ourselves again on the limit, in an inter-structural position that separates us from any predetermined structure and which prepares us for the appearance of a new one.

On the very top of the B & M Theocharakis Foundation building with the direct view to the National Garden and to the symbolic and physical center of the city of Athens, we find ourselves on a liminal point, in and out of time, neither here nor there, yet both “betwixt and between”, immersing ourselves into an otherworldly state where the internal and the external alternate infinitely.

Curated by: Myrto Katsimicha
Artistic Direction: Marina Miliou – Theocharakis
Artists: Antonis Theodoridis and Nikolas Ventourakis
Exhibition Design: Eirini Dafni Sapka
Set Construction: AnotherKindArtSound
Design: Bias
Exhibition Production Assistant: Nefeli Siafaka

*Antonis Theodoridis and Nikolas Ventourakis are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

Have you ever wondered why Siri, Alexa and Cortana are given female voices and names? How do machines see women? Can machines perceive diversity?

The exhibition Her Data looks into the role of data and algorithms in the current age of artificial intelligence through the female perspective. It also explores female and diverse representationin the context of our fast-paced consumption of technology. Stereotypes, different types of bias and taboos seem to come back stronger in the digital sphere, reproducing outdated worldviews, marginalising certain social groups and discriminating between communities.

Four female artists present different stories of how dominant technological narratives influence the way we experience our identities and the world, through social media, search engines and AI applications. Their works raise questions about the use of our data from tech-giants and they invite us to look deeper at the design of current technological systems, exposing how they work and what worldviews they propagate.

In a male dominated tech-industry, where discrimination persists, diversity is at stake. Global statistics show that the tech and AI industry is dominated by males, primarily white, excluding women and diverse communities from positions of power. This imbalance in the industry inevitably brings forward the questions: who designs these technologies and for whom. The growing market of machine learning and the widespread use of pattern recognition and classification algorithms in everyday life further amplify the concerns about the reproduction of social inequity through our technological systems. The exhibition brings alternative perspectives on our current relationship with technologies by exploring the aesthetics, the power structures and the social issues that emerge.

Exhibition Design | Martha Giannakopoulou | if_untitled architects
Art Direction | Korina Gallika
Audiovisual Design | Michalis Antonopoulos, Makis Faros
Press & Publicity | Yorgos Katsonis
Art Mediator | Lydia Panagou

Her Data is taking place with the support of NEON

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Exhibition: Her Data
Participating Artists: Eli Cortiñas (ES/DE), Maria Mavropoulou (GR), Mimi Ọnụọha (NG/USA),
Paola Palavidi (GR)
Curated by Katerina Gkoutziouli & Foteini Vergidou
Venue: Romantso, Anaxagora 3 – Athens
Duration: 23 September – 14 October 2021
Opening Hours: Tuesday – Sunday: 15:00 – 21:00. Closed on Mondays.

* Maria Mavropoulou and Paola Palividi are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

Stefania Strouza receives the Inspire Prize 2021 for the project “She of the Jade Skirt” developed during her residency in Mexico City and presented at MANA Contemporary.

Online award presentation
Tuesday, September 21, 18:00
Link: https://bit.ly/2Xw6DBT (Meeting ID: 833 8276 1492 / Passcode: 254190) .

The group show Mines and Minerals is inspired by the unique landscape of Megalo Livadi bay in Serifos and highlights the dialectical relationships that develop between the natural
environment, the abandoned industrial facilities and the contemporary artworks. Connected with the operation of the iron mines from antiquity until the 60’s but also with one of the first strikes in Greece in 1916, the settlement of Megalo Livadi is today an informal open industrial museum with the underground mines, the rails and the wagons of the facilities as well as the loading bridge resisting the passage of time. The landscape’s natural colors, the rusty aesthetics of the industrial remnants and its historical weight define the common ground of the exhibition, that hosts works of different media and in situ installations, characterized by metallic and black and white elements and references to the concept of labor as well as the role of the artist as craftsman. By displaying works in most part of the bay, in front of the neoclassical mining administration building, and inside an emblematic house on the edge of the settlement, the exhibition Mines and Minerals aims to create a path for the visitor to get acquainted with the place and its history, reactivating through the artworks the echo of the past.

Artists: Micol Assaël, Margarita Bofiliou, Manolis Daskalakis-Lemos, Stelios Kallinikou, Ioli Kavakou, Karolina Krasouli, Christodoulos Panagiotou, Alexandros Tzannis, Flora Yin-Wong

Mega Livadi, Serifos
25/09/2021-29/09/2021
Opening 25/09/2021 5pm
Opening Hours:
25/09 5pm-9pm
26/09 12pm-2pm
27/09-29/09 by appointment (+30 6945906115)

Curator : Alexandros Tzannis
Coordination and texts : Eva Vaslamatzi

The exhibition is supported by NEON Organisation.
Partners : Aegean Speed Lines, Faros Villas Serifos, Δήμος Σερίφου

Special thanks to Dimitris Stathopoulos and Vasilis and Marinos Kallios for their valuable contribution to the show.

*Margarita Bofiliou, Manolis Daskalakis-Lemos, Karolina Krasouli,  Alexandros Tzannis are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

At the slip of my tongue I’m linked to the cosmos, at the blink of an eye the globe is me. Navigating the macro and the micro via the microbe Hypercomf create a carnivalesque cartography where the somatic, the terrestrial and the intergalactic are holistically interlinked. A series of interfaces function like portals whereby different modes of co-existence are assumed – from intimate gatherings, to digital dislocations to mass interconnectivity>reacting, interacting, we are biological beings.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae, yeast, is at the core of this narrative creating commonalities between humans, bread, wine, the internal and external surfaces of much of what we think we know of and understand. Same to different, in small steps, we share the processes of existence as these microbes shift and move. Same to different, in large leaps, the sun, our intestinal cords and bread are connected, ingrained through deep tissue memories. At our very core: you are what you eat could be readily exchanged for you eat what you are. Or as we lubricate thoughts like the inner linings of our intestine: if our stomach is our brain with yeast fermenting altering the ph of our mind, causing love, hate, dreams of change, a state of paranoia could allow for prebiotic management to translate into forms of political control – that quest for balance of our minds.

Using as a starting point NASA’s BioSentinel mission (originally planned to be launched in 2020) which aimed to measure the impact of space radiation on living organisms over long durations beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and specifically to test the biological responses of the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to ambient deep space radiation, NASA will investigate whether there is DNA damage caused to the yeast as well as alterations to its growth and its metabolic activity, exactly due to its commonalities with human DNA. As the NASA mission states, “Yeast is the ideal organism for this mission because of its spaceflight heritage, well-characterized genetic tools, and its capacity to survive long periods in a desiccated state prior to rehydration and growth activation in space. Importantly, yeast’s DNA damage repair process is highly similar to that of humans, making it a robust translational model. “

In one phrase so much is suggested: yeast as our shared DNA, a heating desiccated world, space as a sci-fi testing ground for future human existence, a new site for monetized extraction. As Hypercomf state, “whatever goes to space comes straight back down to earth”, and vice-versa. As yeast is transported outwards, in turn Hypercomf are designing and constructing a solar oven that can bake bread through direct sunlight, translating solar energy into heat, fermenting yeast into bread. Using a tool common to off-grid eco-communities that shun market-place commodities, the solar oven bares down to basic necessities (sun + bread) without intermediaries whilst echoing digital and democratic demands for direct representation here and now. And then there was bread, as a mutually understandable repository of meaning, now a testing ground for where human bodies and science synapse.

And then there was wine, bringing Dionysian joy to the interim between the solar and the intestinal and allowing for a drink, cheers, to the divine. A common breeding ground for yeast, wine in Hypercomf’s BioSentinel marks another biotic landscape. By collecting local plants from seven different Athenian parks and hills and then fermenting them to produce alcohol each brew signifies another territory, through its biological ph balance and ensuing taste. By digesting your neighborhood brew, from a locality where our literal bodies stand, the microbes refract full circle into our gut – a moment where the multiple interfaces of BioSentinel overlay.

Enzymes, in deep inner and outer space, with their shared knowledge, intimate differences, ever so close or light years apart are the matter then of our human dramas, opportunities and contradictions, together we hold in this fermenting fluid world.

Portal A: an internet map / machine-brain / reference playground (connecting the dots with infographics on NASA’s mission, the neighborhood breweries, downloadable plans for diy solar ovens )

Portal B: a clandestine coming together and baking of bread with a DIY solar oven on one of Athens’ hills

Portal C: neighborhood brew from seven parks & hills in and around Athens

Portal D: a bacchanalian exhibition at TAVROS of the brews, solar oven, film starring Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Portal E: Make your own DIY solar oven workshop.

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

Supported by:
French Institute of Greece

*Paola Palavidi & Ioannis Kolliopoulos (Hypercomf) are SN

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In his first solo show in Athens, titled “After Sunset”, Anestis Ioannou invites us to enter his personal world where he is concerned with the relationship of the individuals to the architectural environment and to the urban nature. In his large dimension paintings, he replaces the traditional canvas with the jean textile, the canvas here is processed in a different way. Jean is a material originated from denim, invented by Jacob David and Levi Strauss in 1873. It has marked the culture of the last 150 years. Also, it is connected to the labour class, as a symbol of disobedience, which later became the basic paradigm of fast fashion (clothes in low prices produced fast from the mass markets). The artist approaches jean as a fabric of everyday life, addressed to all social strata. Wearing it, people feel familiar and it connects individuals around the world (global cultural transplant). Its social address is evident from the range of its value and the market demands. The question of matter and form, as well as their coexistence in relation to philosophical pursuits, regarding material and its research, are redefined and acquire a new dimension here. Anestis Ioannou watches from the window of a room, the city, the urban landscape, the architecture, the nature, our distance from the natural environment but also our effort to include it in our lives, fragments, such as a flowerpot and a tree in an open-air space, the vain gesture of the individual which reminds us of what we have lost. Starting from this thought, his concrete-like sculptures with neon, wave at us in an ironic mood. When we cannot include the natural element, we replace it with the artificial: a neon plant that grows in cement instead of soil. We follow the process of technology expropriation rooted in everyday life, related to advertising, branding, nightlife, bars in the urban field, and it turns to be a personal story. A narrative like a fragment in urban chaos. All these references are intricately embedded in an apartment of a 1951 building, an excellent example of Greek modern architecture and modernism, which during this era local immigrants left rural life and moved to the city.

Katerina Nikou (independent curator, Greece, Belgium)

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Anestis Ioannou: “After Sunset”
Curator: Katerina Nikou
Dates: June 22nd – October 10th (by appointment)
Opening: June 22nd at 17:00-21:00

In the framework of the solo show of Anestis Ioannou, After Sunset, curator Katerina Nikou, invites international cultural practioners, to respond to the poem written by the artist, Together We Root As A Family.

This project is parallel to the exhibition. The participants comment on the notions which Anestis Ioannou mentions in his poem: the relationship with our ancestors, our roots, time and what we consider today a family.

Participants: Adam Szymczyk, curator at large at Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, Holland)& former artistic director documenta 14 (Athens, Greece, Kassel, Germany), (Zurich, Switzerland), Alexis Fidetzis, artist (Athens, Greece), Andreas Mallouris, artist (Nicosia, Cyprus), Angelo Plessas, artist, documenta 14 (Athens, Greece), Daniel Knorr, artist, documenta 14 (Berlin, Germany), Danny Hiele, cinematographer, director of photography (Los Angeles, USA), Daphne Vitali, curator, National Museum of Contemporary Art Museum (Athens, Greece), Dimitris Rentoumis, artist (Athens, Greece), Eleni Christodoulou, artist (Athens, Greece), Eleni Glinou, artist (Athens, Greece), Fotini Gouseti, artist (Athens, Greece), Isabelle Cordemans, artist (Antwerp, Belgium), Lilou Vidal, independent curator, writer, author, founder of the non-profit organization Bureau des Réalités (Brussels, Belgium), (Torino, Italy), María Magdalena Campos-Pons, artist, documenta 14 (Nashville, Tennessee, USA), Marijke de Roover, artist (Brussels,
Belgium), Meriton Maloku, artist (lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium), Nathan Pohio, artist documenta 14 (New Zealand), Paul B. Preciado, writer, philosopher, curator (former curator of the Public Programs, documenta 14 (Athens/Gr, Kassel, Germany), (Paris, France), Phaedon Giallis, artist, (Athens, Greece), Protocinema, (Kathryn Hamilton/Deniz Tortum, Zeynep Kayan, Jorge González, Mari Spirito), (Istanbul, Turkey), Roman Hiele, music composer (Antwerp, Belgium), Sarah Vanagt, film artist (Brussels, Belgium), Saurabh Narang, artist (New Delhi, India), Simone Keller / Philip Bartels, documenta 14, (ox&öl Produktionen, Zurich, Switzerland), Theo Prodromidis, artist (Athens, Greece), Theophilos Tramboulis, curator, writer, author (Athens, Greece), Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis (VASKOS), (Athens, Greece), Yorgos Yotsas, artist (Athens, Greece)

*Anestis Ioannou, Alexis Fidetzis and Theo Prodromidis are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

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A Poem For You, Curated by Katerina Nikou

Crux Galerie, 4 Sekeri str, Athens, 106 74 (ground floor)
Dates: September 16th – October 10th
Opening: Thursday, September 16th  18:00-22:00 and then by appointment

“Death, drugs, beauty” – the tagline marks the streets, the single words in bold capitals stacked on top of each other. It doesn’t really read as a demand, or as desire, more like a nod to those in the know.

It’s true, though. Death, drugs, and beauty creep up from all sides: from the past and the future, from the earth, the skies and the oceans, from outside and in. Life – living – has become quite intoxicating again. And amid this collective, psycho-passive desperation, in which the same old, same new, has never been so unrealistic if not ridiculous, a new kind of hope seems possible.

In an interview earlier this year, the author McKenzie Wark remarked that:

the key to Guy Debord’s writing (…) is not the concept of spectacle; it’s détournement. It’s related to the English word for detour, but it’s essentially what he describes in an early manifesto as “literary communism”, the idea that all culture is collectively produced and belongs to all of us. And that its appropriation and modification in the direction of hope is a political practice in itself.
(McKenzie Wark, May 2021)

Belonging – an active and layered process by definition – remains an empty word, or phrase, or hope, when not connected to others; to bodies, to pleasures, to loving, making and bringing about change, for others as much as oneself. There will be no offering without suffering, for the beauty of belonging is that its form is fluid and interchangeable. It can be a dance, a promise, a kiss, a broken heart, a play, a trip or a show.

The works by the eight artists in this exhibition respond and reach out to one another in silent gestures of hope. Across two floors they expose their physical existence as animated objects, revealing and articulating the pleasures that come with the crave.

Tell me, I belong
Tell me, I belong
Tell me, I belong
(From Burial’s Archangel, 2007)

Artists: Mark Barker, Suska Bastian, Behrang Karimi, Sinaida Michalskaja, Natalia Papadopoulou, Paul DD Smith, Valinia Svoronou, Nikolas Ventourakis

Curated by Shahin Zarinbal

* Natalia Papadopoulou, Valinia Svoronou and Nikolas Ventourakis are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

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Tell me I belong
MISC ATHENS

17.09.21 – 23.10.21
Opening : 17.09.21 | 18.00-22.00
Exhibition hours: Tuesday – Saturday 12.00 – 18.00

MISC ATHENS. Tousa Mpotsari 20, 11741, Athens, Greece
[email protected]

Visual artists Gülşah Aykaç, Thomas Diafas, Kostantza Kapsali and Maria Louizou present the works they created within the 1st cycle of the Station One AIR residency program under the subject “Hippodamia in Context”. The exhibition will take place in Victoria Square on 10, 11 and 12 September 2021 from 18.00 to 21.00.

As part of our 3-year research question “Who is the Contemporary Athenian?” and in collaboration with Counterpoints Arts and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative (SNFPHI) at Columbia University, VSP implemented the Station One AIR residency program for emerging artists. During the 1st cycle of the program, Greek and foreign artists were hosted in our city, engaged with the local community and the art scene of Athens and worked collectively on alternative “contextualizations” of the statue “Theseus Saves Hippodameia” at Victoria Square. In the final action of the Program, the creations of the artists will be exhibited in Victoria Square next to the statue aiming to lively interact with the residents and visitors of our neighborhood.

With the collaboration of Counterpoints Arts και the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative (SNFPHI) at Columbia University. With the support of Counterpoints Arts and the Outset Contemporary Art Fund.

Info: https://www.victoriasquareproject.gr/hippodamia-in-context-2021

*Konstantza Kapsali and Maria Louizou are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

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Station One AIR | exhibition | First Part
10 – 11 – 12 September 2021
18:00 – 21:00
Victoria square

“Repairing the Past, Imagining the Present Otherwise” is a three-part conversation series organized by Alexander Strecker that brings together an interdisciplinary group of artists (Stefania Strouza; Elli Papakonstantinou; Petros Moris) and scholars (Brooke Holmes; Erika Weiberg; Dimitris Plantzos) from Greece and the United States. Using the idea of repair as a point of departure, these dialogues trace how oscillatory movements between Athens’ multiple pasts and diverse presents can help us envision alternative ways of inhabiting the world together.

Each event will center around the multi-disciplinary practice of a contemporary artist, putting their work in conversation with a scholar of antiquity. The dialogic format aims to break down disciplinary boundaries, blurring the distinctions between artist, academic, and practitioner. Week by week, as these artists share their work and engage with other points of view, we will together enact the collaborative process of repair, reassembling disparate pieces into configurations unlike preexisting wholes.

Part 1 | Dialogue (Medean Remix)
September 9, 1 PM EST / 8 PM Athens

Visual artist Stefania Strouza will discuss with Prof. Brooke Holmes how she uses sculptural forms to emphasize the fluidity and mobility of fragments. Strouza’s latest project proposes an aesthetic and cultural inquiry into the current geological epoch through the archetypical myth of Medea.

Watch the conversation here

Part 2 | Performing Gender and Greek Tragedy in the Digital Agora
September 23, 1 PM EST / 8 PM Athens

Performer and director Elli Papakonstantinou will share with Prof. Erika L. Weiberg how she sets tragic figures such as Antigone and Alcestis within our contemporary digital agora to bring alive the tension between the individual and collective voice.

Watch the conversation here

Part 3 | Computing Past, Excavating Future
September 30, 1 PM EST / 8 PM Athens

Sculptor Petros Moris will talk with Prof. Dimitris Plantzos about how he mixes materials associated with the past and cutting-edge technologies of the present, thus juxtaposing stratified manifestations of memory with the pending project of the future.

Watch the conversation here

Event Sponsors: AAHVS Visiting Speaker Series; Classical Studies; Franklin Humanities Institute; FHI Social Practice Lab; Theater Studies; The Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts—Duke Arts; Dean of the Graduate School; Dean of the Humanities

“Repairing the Past, Imagining the Present Otherwise” is organized by Alexander Strecker (Duke University)

Stefania Strouza and Petros Moris are visual arts SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

The performance crypsinous (concealed) is an ode to secret love. The nature of this love often requires latency, distance, and accuracy. Due to inadequate communication, there are times it becomes complicated leading to active and attractive mystery or to ambiguity and misunderstanding. Hence, either the two parts will be strongly united or together they will never succeed.

Crypsinous speaks of love through the poetry of Sappho. It is presented by a vocal performance evolved far from the exhibition space, emphasizing the cryptic condition and the remote communication effort.

Crypsinous will be presented on August 20th and 21st. It is a part of the “Lato, safe space” project under the production of Ex Situ and presented in the program “All of Greece, One Culture”, by the Greek ministry of Culture.

More info: https://digitalculture.gov.gr/2021/08/lato-safe-space-archeologikos-choros-latous/

*Virginia Mastrogiannaki is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow in visual arts

For its second volume Ammophila attempts to initiate a discourse around alternative narrations of a sunny framework. “Under the burning sun” aims to create stories of relaxing moments where the sun can warm, comfort but also burn and destroy at the same time. All look well under the light or maybe not? What do we contemplate on when lying down under the most common presence in our lives? Why do we lie there and what do we expect of this warmth?

In an island where the sun is dominant and drives us there anything can happen under a burning sun, from salvation to destruction.

Participating Artists: Marilena Aligizaki, Dionisis Christofilogiannis, Kostas Christopoulos, Anastasia Douka θανος φουντας, Hope Konstantinos Ntagkas, Dionisis Kavallieratos, Panagiotis Kefalas, Giannis Kondaratos, Georgia Kotretsos, Konstantinos Lianos, Maria Mavropoulou, Alexandra Nakou, Ilias Papailiakis, Eva Papamargariti, Alexios Papazacharias, Hara Piperidou, Poka Yio, Valinia Svoronou, Amalia Vekri.

Participating Writers: Ioanna Gerakidi, Ariana E Kalliga, Galini Lazani, Christina Papoulia, Christine Petko, Dimitrios Spyrou, Theophilos Tramboulis, Vicky Tsirou, Maria Xypolopoulou, Stephen Yiannoulis, Costis Zouliatis.

Location/Venue: Elafonisos School, Elafonisos island, Lakonia
Duration: 20-25 August 2021
Visiting Hours: 19:00-21:00
Organization: Ammophila non-profit in collaboration with the Municipality of Elafonisos.
Curator: Evi Roumani

Browse Ammophila vol.2 Under the Burning Sun catalogue here: https://issuu.com/ammop…/docs/ammophila2undertheburningsun

* Anastasia Douka, Maria Mavropoulou, Eva Papamargariti, Valinia Svoronou and Christine Pekto are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows.

Designed to reflect the various aspects of the current transitional experience, the 7th Athens Biennale ECLIPSE aspires to address the viewers’ imagination of potential parallel worlds and futures. ECLIPSE activates a cross-cultural conversation among artistic voices that have historically been pushed to the periphery and orchestrates an experiential shift in art viewing.

In ECLIPSE, narratives from contemporary Black, queer, speculative, and radical artistic voices converse with practices of rituals, worldmaking, and interdependence. ECLIPSE presents a translocal chapter of contemporary thought that champions a revisiting of identities and a queering of history. By counter-offering radical care, virtual, and fluid alternative states through sonic and immersive strategies, ECLIPSE aims to summon transformative powers to usher us beyond the current era into a space of thought and reflection.

Curated by the Berlin-based collective Omsk Social Club and the Ghanaian-American curator Larry Ossei-Mensah, under the artistic direction of the Athens-based artist and curator Poka-Yio, AB7: ECLIPSE from September 24 to November 28, 2021, presents works by more than 80 artists from North and South America, the Caribbean, Africa and Europe:

manuel arturo abreu, Zebedee Armstrong, as they lay w/ Abdu Ali + Markele Cullin*, Sanford Biggers, Billy Bultheel*, Judy Chicago, Contemporary And, Zuzanna Czebatul, Simon Denny, DETACH (Voltnoi & Quetempo)*, Alexandros Douras, Christoph Draeger, Claude Eigan, Awol Erizku, Doreen Garner, Miles Greenberg, Happy New Tears*, HellFun*, Jack Hogan & Trakal*, Deborah Joyce Holman & Yara Dulac Gisler*, Klára Hosnedlová*, Satch Hoyt, Hypercomf*, Yinka Ilori*, Astrit Ismaili*, Tomashi Jackson, Huntrezz Janos*, Olalekan Jeyifous*, Evi Kalogiropoulou, Samson Kambalu, Lito Kattou*, KAYA, Navine G. Khan-Dossos*, Nuri Koerfer, Ndayé Kouagou*, Aristeidis Lappas, Kris Lemsalu & Kyp Malone*, Marissa Malik & Yeshe Bahamon-Beesley*, Rodney McMillian, Steve McQueen, Ana Mendieta, Meleko Mokgosi, Moor Mother*, Petros Moris, Zanele Muholi, Nascent*, Kayode Ojo, Omsk Social Club*, Zohra Opoku, Vasilis Papageorgiou*, Nektarios Pappas*, Ebony G. Patterson, Primitive Art*, Yorgos Prinos, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Andrew Roberts, Victoria Santa Cruz, Jacolby Satterwhite, Jonas Schoeneberg*, Erica Scourti, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Juana Subercaseaux, Valinia Svoronou*, Taka Taka*, Ayesha Tan-Jones*, Filippos Telesto, The Critics Company, the Mycological Twist*, Hank Willis Thomas, Iris Touliatou*, Tourmaline, Suzanne Treister, Theo Triantafyllidis, Wu Tsang, Eugenia Vereli, Cajsa von Zeipel*, Julian Weber, YESSi PERSE*.
*An asterisk denotes a new production or premiere.

The artists participating in ECLIPSE inhabit a cluster of three neighbouring landmark venues in the historic centre of Athens: the former Department Store Fokas, the former Santaroza Courthouse, and Sina Hall. These closely knit emblematic ghost buildings portray various aspects and different eras of the Athenian urban landscape and its historic and cultural narratives. The former department store Fokas, the main venue of ECLIPSE, acts as a symbol of the bankruptcy of contemporary Greece and a possible post-capitalist era; its eight, formerly buzzing floors and still full of evidence of their commercial use, have been abandoned since 2013. The former Santaroza Courthouse in Justice Square opposite of Fokas is a classical building raised soon after the birth of the modern Greek Republic. It has served as the first state print house and then as a courthouse that tried, amongst others, the famous communist and Resistance partisan Nikos Beloyannis. Its stripped-bare shell has been sealed and muted for thirty years. Opposite to it rises the ghostly Sina Hall, an eclectic neo-baroque building, one of the oldest and largest buildings of Athens that was converted into offices and gradually got abandoned during the last 15 years.

The 7th Athens Biennale is co-financed by the Hellenic Republic and the European Union through the Regional Operational Programme of “Attica” in the framework of NSRF 2014-2020, performs under the auspices of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports and the City of Athens and is realised in partnership with Onassis Culture.

Evi Kalogiropoulou, Aristeidis Lappas, Hypercomf (Paola Palavidi & Ioannis Koliopoulos), Petros Moris, Vasilis Papageorgiou, Valinia Svoronou & Iris Touliatou are visual arts SNF ARTWORKS Fellows.

More info: https://athensbiennale.org/

annexM, continuing its curatorial policy of site specific exhibitions and projects for the fourth year, under the artistic direction of Anna Kafetsi, is organizing a two month summer exhibition in the Garden of the Athens Concert Hall. The exhibition is open every day from sunset until midnight and entry is free to all.

annexM launches this year’s programme, which opens a meditative, underground dialogue with both the anniversary year of 2021 and 200 years of national existence, with an exhibition entitled Marginalia with the participation of artists Virginia Mastrogiannaki, Nina Pappa, Ilias Mamaliogas and Spiros Vrachoritis.

The exhibited works, with one exception, are new projects created specifically for this exhibition, while two performances by S. Vrachoritis and V. Mastrogiannaki have been put on and videoed in the Concert Gall Garden and Atrium.

The title of the exhibition (from the Latin margo, marginis: margin) in its literal meaning refers to notes and all kinds of marks and images written or drawn by readers on the margins of books or texts, a practice which can be traced back centuries to the notes and comments made by the copyists of biblical and classical manuscripts for functional and interpretative use. It also refers to a particular category of publishing, in which the author or editor gather together brief texts, scattered thoughts and fragmentary material.

More info:  https://www.megaron.gr/event/marginalia/

*Virginia Mastrogiannaki is a visual arts SNF ARTWORKS Fellow

“Intimacy: A modern tyranny” the exhibition of the Thessaloniki Film Festival that brings cinema and the visual arts to a direct dialogue, is presented for the first time in Athens, at The Project Gallery (Normanou 3, Monastiraki) from Thursday 15 July to 15 September 2021, with free entrance for the public.

The exhibition was inspired by the book written by the American sociologist Richard Sennett The fall of public man / The tyranny of intimacy (published by Nefeli). Prophetic when it was first released in 1977 and now relevant today because of the pandemic we got through – guided the 61st Thessaloniki International Film Festival to compose the official competition program. Meanwhile, the Festival commisioned 12 Greek visual artists to watch and comment in any way they wanted, on a film from the film festival which are inspired by the book.

The exhibition, curated by Orestis Andreadakis, was supposed to be presented at the Experimental Arts Center of the Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts (MoMus) of Thessaloniki in November 2020. The second lockdown, however, forced the Festival to present the films online and keep the original works in storage, while 130 reproductions of them were hung on the walls, columns and lampposts all over the city, reinforcing the promise of a public art which (may or should) resist the tyrannical intimacy of which Senet spoke about.

The difficult months of lockdown that followed, forced us to redefine our new habits and the functioning in the public sphere.

Now, on the verge of the pandemic social and political effects, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival presents the exhibition “Intimacy: A Contemporary Tyranny” at The Project Gallery. We try to see with in a different way the connection of images – moving or static and let the 12 works open a new dialogue for an overall experience of creating, viewing, and participating in everything public.

Participating artists: Ileana Arnaoutou, Maria Varela, Zoi Gaitanidou, Petros Efstathiadis, Iasonas Kampanis, Vasilis Karouk, Aristeidis Lappas, Iliodora Margellos, Yassonas Megoulas, Margarita Bofiliou, Paola Palavidi, Sofia Rozaki

*Ileana Arnaoutou, Maria Varela, Zoi Gaitanidou, Petros Efstathiadis, Iasonas Kampanis, Aristeidis Lappas, Yassonas Megoulas, Margarita Bofiliou and Paola Palavidi are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

Organized by: Thessaloniki Film Festival

Duration: 15/ 07/ 2021 – 15 / 09 / 2021

Opening Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 12.00 – 20.00

Curator: Orestis Andreadakis

Production & Coordination: Thanos Stavropoulos

https://www.filmfestival.gr/
https://www.theprojectgallery.gr/

Entrance: free

The short film “Brutalia, Days Of Labour” directed by Manolis Mavris (Fellow 2018) won the Canal+ film prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Perfectly identical girls in military uniforms, work day and night. A matriarchal and oligarchic society. What would happen if we replaced bees with humans? Anna observes the universe of her hive. Not being able to consent to the violence that surrounds her, she will have to make a radical decision.

Sofia Dona (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2020 in visual arts) is taking part in the exhibition at Haus Gropius in Dessau, with her work GAMEKEEPERS.
GAMEKEEPERS is the result of a three months residency at the Bauhaus Masters’ Houses during spring 2021.

Gropius House
daily 10 am – 5 pm
Over the past weeks and months, the artists Sofia Dona and Andrea Acosta as well as the writer Mara Genschel have dealt intensively with the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Masters’ Houses in Dessau from the perspective of infrastructures, the annual theme of the Bauhaus Dessau. The result is new, impressive works that bring the often hidden foundations of everyday life to light. In terms of content, they are devoted to the playful to brutal relationship between man and animal, the claimed mastery of the historical building and the stones with which the master houses were once built.

Artworks and artistic processes create specific, new accesses to the world and are fictional in this sense: the term is derived from the Latin verb ‘fingere’ and means nothing else than ‘forming, shaping, conceiving’. Fiction thus does not entail first and foremost the creation of a separate world, but can likewise denote shaping the existing world, the real. Fiction is thus also a way to gain distance, to interrogate realities, to see them anew.

In their work, artists also explore how meaning and value are constituted in a specific present. What is narrated for what reason and in what way? And what differences, points of friction, and overlays arise when fictions are dedicated to the same topic, but realized by different artists with different means?

The artists
Sofia Dona works on interventions in space as an architect using the means of art. With targeted interventions in the architecture and structures on site, she creates forms of alienation that enable us to perceive the seemingly familiar anew. During her residency in Schlemmer House, Dona dedicated herself in particular to hunting, which attempts to achieve a balance in nature and thus asserts an infrastructural character itself.

Gamekeepers reflects the relationship between hunter and hunted, human and animal, power and powerlessness in a playful way. The hunter usually shoots the animal, which is subsequently presented mounted as a trophy, from an ­elevated hide. In Gropius House, however, the elevated hide itself becomes the trophy on the wall and greets visitors from directly over the entrance.

In her previous works, Mara Genschel has repeatedly interrogated the established forms and requirements of literature anew. Her texts and performances find new possibilities for producing and perceiving literature based on processes from visual art and contemporary music. Genschel’s publications thus go beyond what we are generally familiar with from publishing houses. They disrupt the practiced gaze.

Genschel found the starting point for her new work in Gropius House in the brochures mediating the historical buildings and the programme of the foundation laid out for visitors by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. Pretending to be in Dessau takes up this textual infrastructure of the exhibition and multiplies the number of brochures laid out.

A programme in cooperation with Literaturhaus Berlin and Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig.

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Exhibition of the Bauhaus Residency

Sofia Dona and Mara Genschel
8 July – 12 Sep 2021

Andrea Acosta
8 July – 14 Nov 2021

Gropius House
daily 10 am – 5 pm

The Collection Kerenidis Pepe and the Association Phenomenon are pleased to announce φαινόμενα, a one-week program of contemporary art taking place on the Aegean island of Anafi, Greece, between 5–12 July, 2021, in collaboration with the invited art centres 3 137, EIGHT, Enterprise Projects, The Island Club and State of Concept Athens, from Greece and Cyprus.

φαινόμενα —pronounced ‘phenomena’— is an alternative plural incarnation of the biennial project Phenomenon initiated in 2015. φαινόμενα reflects and responds to a period where space, social interactions, travel, and scale, have been warped and revealed as constructs of institutional powers. φαινόμενα hopes to explore these times as an opportunity to rethink space, in particular public space, not as an external container, but as something that both gets created by and shapes bodies in a continuous, political struggle. Questions of spatialities, heterotopias, small-scale initiatives, togetherness, and care that can be negotiated through research, art projects, and social activities, will serve as the start for our work together, always in close relation to the island of Anafi, its present, its histories and its human and non-human inhabitants.

Each invited art centre will have one day to orchestrate an event, a performance, a screening, a workshop, a lecture, a discussion, a reading, a display, that would function as a chapter in a longer open-ended story that unfolds over the week. Public open spaces will be given preference both as a direct relation to the project research and also to mitigate covid-related risks. All necessary precautions will be implemented to protect the inhabitants of Anafi, the participants and the visitors.

More information on the program and the related events will be announced closer to the dates.

3 137  is an artist run space in Athens founded by Paky Vlassopoulou, Chrysanthi Koumianaki and Kosmas Nikolaou. All three artists are ARTWORKS Fellows

Enterprise Projects is an Athens based project by Danai Giannoglou and Vassilis Papageorgiou. Both are ARTWORKS Fellows.