Category: Fellows news

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.

Room to Bloom programme/ Ecofeminism & Postcolonial Feminism

This Spring 2021, Room to Bloom launches its platform with an open call for applications addressing young artists with a feminist, ecological and/or postcolonial art practice.

Through this call, the platform will collectively select a group of 100 emerging feminist artists to participate in a mix of trainings, workshops and talks throughout the year. All the selected participants will be presented in our online index of artists that will be available on this website and distributed among international cultural institutions.

Selected participants will be offered the possibility to propose works for production (15 works selected) later this year, to be presented during international events and exhibitions (Palermo, Kyiv Biennale, Warszawa Biennale, AthenSYN Festival).

Workshop 1: Eco-Feminism (25-30 June – Athens and online option)
Taking place in one of the most dynamic centers of our rapidly changing world, the ecofeminism workshop taking place online and in Athens invites participants to collaborate in defining and enacting a new role of art. The participants will have a chance to learn from and create together with experts on activist, transindigenous, ecofeminist, revolutionary, and therapeutic practices.

Together, we will work on a sustainable communal art world based on an experience of harmonious coexistence with the environment and the role of the feminine in the cycle of life. What can we learn about our future from communities which still, or again, live in an unmediated relation to their, now drastically changing, living conditions? Our trainers are constitutive participants of the planetary transitioning from the patriarchal perception of nature from ‘resource extraction for human society’ to ecofeminist ‘nature as sacred living organism, of which humans are only one part’. We strive to overcome the loss of equilibrium caused by the onesidedness of Western epistemologies rooted in the discrimination of women and others on the receiving end of the extractivist aggression from the socio-political domain by reconnecting art, feminism, witch knowledge and ecological practices.

On the European continent, the transindigenous concept of “good life” is enacted by the diverse movements in Southern Europe, where, due to austerity, many actors of social change have taken the responsibility for creating sustainable worlds with their own hands. So did the diverse inspiring movements in Athens: an ideal climate for our ecofeminist Room to Bloom Athens. Education is a form of art. Art is a pioneering force to interdisciplinary education. Our series of ecofeminist workshops was developed as an educational experiment and will take place in an artistic environment „Transindigenous Assembly“ by Joulia Strauss, initiator and organiser of Avtonomi Akadimia in the Akadimia Platonos “Jungle”.

The eco-feminist workshops were organized and co-curated by AthenSYN/ Katja Ehrhardt

Workshop 2: Postcolonial feminism (20-24 September – online)
Nadje Al-Ali (feminist writer and researcher) defines the postcolonial as being “characterised by a series of transitions, a multiplicity of processes and developments towards decolonisation and de-centring of the ‘West’”. Postcolonial feminism aims to understand and undo the legacies of colonialism within feminist activism. In other words, postcolonial feminism wants to decolonise feminist activism — reclaim it as more than just a pursuit of the western world and its people. Postcolonial feminist academic writing seeks to understand and interpret everyday lived experiences through a postcolonial perspective, de-centring the white, western, Eurocentric experience. This workshop is designed to allow exchange between young artists on postcolonial feminism.

This workshop will examine the most challenging feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories and artistic practices at a global scale. Its approach will emphasize on the multiplicity of viewpoints on this topic and will include the voices coming from different fields, including visual arts, performance, literature, and more. Within a global world in which contemporary art has turned into a transnational space, feminism, acting at the intersections of gender, postcolonial, and queer studies, must challenge the Eurocentric bias. From this plurality of worlds, we aim to open a discussion and peer-to-peer learning process between different disciplines, opening the possibilities of a wide project of construction, de-construction and co-creation.

The workshop includes theoretical learning, peer to peer exchange and discovery of some artists’ works. It will bring together representatives and prominent voices in the field of postcolonial feminism to share their thoughts, work and experiences.

Workshop 3: Leveraging Obstacles to Women and Migrant artists careers (22-26 November – Palermo and online)
Whereas migrants and women, from Malevich to Picasso, from Tamara de Lempicka to Sonia Delaunay, famously contributed to the making of European Arts, their access to the world of arts remains extremely limited today. Beyond a few famous faces, women and migrants struggle to be effectively contributing to the making of the European cultural and artistic discourse, not from a lack of ideas or capacities but because the structural obstacles they face are not of those that one can easily fight individually. Room to Bloom recognises that it is more than time to build on that and provide artists and cultural operators to navigate patriarchalism and racism in the world of arts and to co-open up the space for new artists to bloom in a transnational Europe.

Room to Bloom aims to create an intercultural platform to empower artists from different backgrounds to reflect and act on eco and post-colonial feminist art. The aim of this workshop is to create a shared understanding of the challenges artists and art institutions face in developing a feminist post-colonial artistic practice, and of the solutions we can find to face those challenges. This workshop is designed to allow exchange between artists and art professionals on obstacles to artists careers and new feminism decolonial approach of arts curation and exhibition. It will provide participants with better tools to operate in the European cultural scene and within international established institutions.

More info: https://www.roomtobloom.eu/programme/

http://www.athensyn.com/

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The following ARTWORKS Fellows have been selected for the Ecofeminism workshop in Athens: Ileana Arnaoutou, Konstantinos Kotsis, Maria Sideri, Irini Kalaitzidi, Antigone Theodorou, Ionian Bisai, Sevastiana Konstaki, Eirini Vlavianou

For the online workshop on Postcolonial feminism was selected: Angelos Papadopoulos

For the workshop on Leveraging obstacles to feminist and migrants artists careers in Palermo was selected: Irini Miga and Pegy Zali

A group exhibition open only June 28, 2pm- 9pm.

Dimitri Angelini, Tjorg Douglas Beer, Luca Bertolo, Chiara Camoni, Olimpia Cavriani, Guenter Foerg, Erró, Konstantinos Giotis, Francesco De Grandi, Hristos Hantzis, Dimitris Karatzas, Dionisis Kavallieratos, Ilias Koen, John Kørner, Angela Liosi, Charlie Masson, Olga Migliaressi-Phoca, Yoko Ono, Manuel Osterholt, Malvina Panagiotidi, Panos Papadopolous, Katerina Papazissi, Benedetto Pietromarchi, Marieta Roussou, Valinia Svoronou, Filippos Telesto, Pavlos Tsakonas, Alexandros Tzannis, Malte Urbschat, Jannis Varelas, Vassilis H, Marina Velisioti, Woozy, Ronnie Yarisal

The german art collectors from Kiel Gunda and Peter Niemann have started their engagement in Athens a few years ago by opening Haus N as an exhibition space for the athenian art scene. https://www.haus-n.gr
The exhibition I CAN SEE YOUR HOUSE FROM HERE. takes place in a second location Haus N Athen 2.
The exhibition is a collaboration between the parttaking artists.

It takes place only for 7 Hours on the opening day June 28 from 2 pm until 9 pm.

Hours
2pm – 9pm

Location
Haus N Athen2
Vatsaxi 6
10438 Athens
Greece
https://www.haus-n.gr

*Konstantinos Giotis, Malvina Panagiotidi, Valinia Svoronou, Pavlos Tsakonas and Alexandros Tzannis are ARTWORKS Fellows

Two Fellows take part in the 9th Syros International Film Festival (SIFF). Eleni Bagaki’s short film The Film will be screening on Friday June 23rd within the Short Films Program, while Dimitra Kondylatous’ short film Backyard With a View  will be on view the next day (Saturday July 24th) during the Program DELLAGRAZIA DRIVE-IN, POSIDONIA. Dimitra will be holding an open discussion the next day around her film at Ploes, Ermoupoli.

The 9th Syros International Film Festival, which takes place on the island of Syros between July 22–26, 2021 and is held with the support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) compirses of films from diverse geographic, social, and cultural contexts, workshops, talks, original commissions, audiovisual installations and performances From classic masterpieces to contemporary experimental cinema and from Russia to the USA and Europe, SIFF combines various art forms, formats, sounds and cultures in repurposed locations across the island!

The edition’s theme “Off Season,” continued from 2020, proposes an alternative perspective in periods of crisis, focusing on different perceptions of time, the different “speeds” at which humanity operates, limits on movement and mobility as well as the management of personal time and leisure as a fundamental human right.

SIFF presents two original commissions that take up these new perspectives of “Off Season” by making use of rare archival materials. Cheirographon by editor Harout Arakelian and music archivist Ian Nagoski is an ode to diaspora immigration to the United States in the first half of the 20th century, using found footage from both archival material and feature films, with an original soundtrack that blends rare recordings from various immigrant communities of that period. Selected texts will be narrated live at the screening, synthesizing archival, mash-up and performative techniques in an invocation of past movements.

The Festival’s second major commission, Launching Ceremony, is a site-specific audiovisual installation conceived by filmmaker and visual artist Marina Gioti, realized with the support of NEON Organization for Culture and Development, and in partnership with the Greek Film Archive. Gioti’s new project focuses on the ceremonial launch of a new vessel, compiling a montage of mid century archival footage from Greek and international newsreels aiming to bring an intentional anachronism face to face with the present moment. Thessaloniki-based composer and thereminist May Roosevelt composes the film’s score, which will be performed live at the opening on July 23 at 21:00. Both the performance and installation are hosted in the historic Tarsanas Shipyard in Hermoupolis, Syros.

SIFF’s Drive-In in Dellagrazia this year includes Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death (United Kingdom, 1946), a humanistic film which traverses time and space to make a case for the transcendent value of love, paired in a double feature program with one of the greatest visual poets of our time, Claire Denis, with her hypnotic images of Beau Travail (France, 1999), an adaptation of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd that culminates in one of the more startling, unforgettable endings of modern cinema.

SIFF’s 2021 programming embraces a wide spectrum of cinematic genres including experimental cinema, art house films and silent movies accompanied by original musical compositions such as the underseen masterpiece of early ethnographic cinema and Soviet propaganda, Salt for Svanetia (USSR, 1930), in which Mikhail Kalatozov documents the harsh conditions of life in an isolated mountain village with visual bravado. Sound artist Costis Drygianakis will present an original musical composition, a soundscape that combines sounds from the film, historical recordings, field recordings, industrial noises and original narrative voices.

Retrospective and contemporary Greek film production is present with The Years of the Big Heat (Greece, 1991) by the influential filmmaker and poet Frida Liappa, a free rendition of Electra’s myth which is set in a completely imaginary state, while visual artist Eleni Bagaki presents the short The Film, part of the project “A book, a film, and a soundtrack,” which was commissioned by Radio Athènes. The film draws inspiration from a failed romantic relationship and leads us to an unlikely encounter between tones, forms, scenes, moods, and desires.

See the SIFF 2021 Program here.

Four artists, Maude Maris, Eva Nielsen, Evi Kalogiropoulou and Malvina Panagiotidi, are invited by HYam to exhibit their work this summer at the island of Hydra.

The exhibition establishes a dialogue between the work of four young women artists on a subject with a symbolic meaning, in the context of the celebrations for 1821: “Dancing in shackles”, a title that symbolizes on the one hand the endurance of the Greek people that they have never lost their identity during the four centuries of Ottoman occupation and, on the other hand, refers to an excerpt from Nietzsche that directly touches on art and creators. According to the philosopher, an artist is obliged to invent difficulties in order to better then give the illusion of an eternal lightness.

HYam chose to set up the exhibition in a historic site that once belonged to a hero of the liberation struggle, Admiral Tombazi. This architectural jewel became from 1936 a branch of the Athens School of Fine Arts where students and artists live in an artistic residence.

Duration: July 10 – August 15, 2021

* Evi Kalogiropoulou and Malvina Panagiotidi are ARTWORKS Fellows