Fellow Field: Εικαστικές Τέχνες

Γλώσσα πρωτότυπου κειμένου: Αγγλικά

Text by Danai Giannoglou
Copy edited by EG Figure of Speech (Geli Mademli & Eleanna Papathanasiadi)

When I first told Chrysanthi Koumianaki that I thought she was a performance artist, she laughed. That was the beginning of an intensely interesting ongoing conversation we’ve been having for the past few months, during and after her solo project RSVP, which I curated in September 2022 at the B. & M. Theocharakis Foundation in Athens as part of the THF Raw exhibition series. “I direct events, I orchestrate them,” she keeps telling me, and even though I agree with her that she is most probably not a performer herself, I keep thinking that her practice expands the boundaries and the terminology of performance art.

Chrysanthi Koumianaki, RSVP, installation and performance view, cur. by Danai Giannoglou, B&M Theocharakis Foundation for the Fine Arts and Music, 2022 | Photo by Alexandra Masmanidi

RSVP, which for me is the starting point of all these thoughts around Koumianaki’s work, encapsulates many different aspects of her practice; a performance enacted by the staff of the Theocharakis Foundation responding to the daily ritual of the presidential guard (Evzones in Greek), a stage and a backstage whose essence depend on where the viewer is standing and what they are looking for, a series of sculptures that function as potential and actual props, an invented code, and a careful, profound, and humorous observation of the elements that surround the work within and outside the institution.

Chrysanthi Koumianaki, RSVP, installation and performance view, cur. by Danai Giannoglou, B&M Theocharakis Foundation for the Fine Arts and Music, 2022 | photo by Alexandra Masmanidi

Performance - or orchestrated events - were not always part of Koumianaki’s artistic vernacular. For her solo exhibition Chroachym (2017), curated by locus athens (Maria-Thalia Carras and Olga Hatzidaki) at the MENTIS Center for the Preservation of Traditional Textile Techniques Athens (Benaki Museum), it is the first time that she asks performers to follow a set of instructions she creates. For this project, Pavlina Andriopoulou and Yiota Alexiou were asked to choreographically interpret a score drafted by Koumianaki drawing inspiration from the mechanical movement of the textile machines found at MENTIS. These choreographies were performed, filmed, and presented in the form of videos alongside sculptures.

Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Chroachym, installation view, cur. by locus Athens, Maria-Thalia Carras & Olga Hatzidaki, Mentis / Benaki Museum, 2016 | Photo by Pinelopi Gerasimou

From that moment onwards, Koumianaki has been incorporating more and more performative techniques in her practice. In Statues that don’t move, don’t speak, don’t laugh, a group show curated by Galini Notti in 2020, it is the first time the performance unravels in the physical space. In the middle of a neighborhood basketball court and park in Patissia, actress Eva Vlassopoulos was posing as a live monument on a daily basis, wearing a uniform covered in transcribed graffiti tags.

Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Enchanted life, performance view, part of the show Statues that don’t move, don’t speak, don’t laugh cur. by Galini Notti, public space in the area of Kato Patisia, Athens, 2020 | Photo by Nikos Alexopoulos

Koumianaki’s approach to performance is indeed not always evident, but remains definitely open-ended. She understands most things as performances but her gestures to highlight that are not always performances themselves. A keystone that often appears in her practice is the creation of interactive sculptures that, through a language of translation and deduction, allude to elements of the Athenian public space. However, the public space she is interested in is the one that has already undergone interventions which make the existence of citizens visible within the ‘set’ they inhabit. In Equilibrists (2016), a group show curated by Helga Christoffersen and Gary Carrion-Murayari and organized by DESTE Foundation, Athens, and New Museum, New York, in collaboration with the Benaki Museum, Koumianaki creates sculptures inspired by the broken railings in the streets of Athens, as well as the handles in public transportation vehicles. At the same time, a mural behind the sculptures serves as a score for the visitors, prompting them to interact with them and reflect on different choreographical and bodily uses of such elements commonly found in the public space.

Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Notes for Someone who is 1.67m or Higher and is Bored on a Bus, installation view, part of the show The Equilibrists, curated by Gary Carrion-Murayari & Helga Christoffersen with Massimiliano Gioni, organized by the DESTE Foundation and the New Museum, New York in collaboration with the Benaki Museum, Athens, 2016

For her solo exhibition They Keep Chewing Walls (2018), curated by Els Silvrants-Barclay and Pieternel Vermoortel at Netwerk, Aalst, Belgium, she follows a similar pattern. This time she creates terrazzo-like surfaces on wheels, referring to the pavements and the chewed gums that people throw on them without much thought, as well as curtains with magnified graffiti symbols and poles like the ones carrying traffic lights and signs, always full of stickers and ads. While she borrows the aesthetics of architectural tools such as mood-boards and renders, she is not using them to imagine an ideal city, but to map the existing one in its glorious reality. The ‘insignificant’ elements - the gum, the handles, the broken railings, the tags on the walls - interrupt the experience of the public space in the way it was ideally organized, and become landmarks. They are no longer ephemeral gestures: they create non-verbal vocabularies of disruption which attest to our presence in the city as performers. For Koumianaki, their existence and our co-existence with these elements has vivid similarities with our everyday ritualistic automatizations that become a universal language. Her practice distills this language and turns it into yet another code emphatically twisting the automatization into something pleasingly uncanny that you cannot overlook.

In later projects, such as her piece The Stage is Empty: Part I & Part II (2021), commissioned by NEON Organization for Culture and Development for the exhibition Portals, curated by Elina Kountouri and Madeleine Grynsztejn at the former Public Tobacco Factory in Athens, it is evident that Koumianaki keeps thinking about the living monuments, the use of public space, and our everyday dramaturgy. The first part of the work, which takes place in Kolonos Hill, consists of banners that map the life and activity of the hill in a codified language. The banners were hung throughout the park on existing pillars. The second part, which appears in the Kolonos open-air theater, “is a play realized exclusively through light,” as mentioned in the exhibition’s promotional material. With a light performance loaded with dramaturgical connotations, movement, and expression, Koumianaki leaves the stage seemingly ’empty’ for visitors and passers-by to witness or to be part of it. Scattered around, actors are performing in conversation with everything that is happening on- and offstage.

Chrysanthi Koumianaki, The Stage is Empty, performance view, commissioned by NEON for the group exhibition Portals |Πύλη, 2021 | Photo by Pinelopi Gerasimou

Koumianaki’s relationship to performance as a coherent recognizable language that touches upon recurrent subjects pertaining to the public space and urban environment might begin in 2016, with the exhibition Chroachym; however, it is clear that performative traces appear in her practice long before this. Her work I Love You, You Love Me (2013) might be a digital print, but it derives from a collective performance with Panos Papadopoulos and Albert Mayr. For this performance, Koumianaki had photographed her mouth making all the alphabet sounds and then used the photos to make collages that were “speaking words.” The ultimate goal was to develop a hybrid method of teaching Albert Mayr how to speak Greek. In 2019, in an act during which the performers remain hidden or in the backstage, she collaborates again with Papadopoulos and Mayr - this time in Petra Martinetz Gallery, Cologne.

Chrysanthi Koumianaki, I Love You, You Love Me, digital print on paper, 60*90 cm, 2013

Last but not least, in 2017, together with architect Fanis Kafantaris, she created a map of public space disruptions in the Exarchia neighborhood; its “punctuation marks,” as she often calls them. Consecutively, the two of them brought together museum labels which they placed next to each one of these marks together with mediators that would interact with the audiences, guiding them through the neighborhood.
Koumianaki speaks in tongues, but her codes are far from hermetic. Their existence as wholes, as entities, provide sub-textual tools to access the works, as well as everyday routines unraveling through different prisms. While her language is not revealing, it is in its concealing that matters open up to interpretation.

—

“The City as Orchestra, Language, Ritual. On the Performative Character of Chrysanthi Koumianaki’s Work.” was written in April 2023 by Danai Giannoglou.

Chrysanthi Koumianaki (1985, Heraklion) is a visual artist who lives and works in Athens. In her practice she explores the idea of ​​translation, creating symbolic systems, codings, alphabets that focus on non-verbal communication. She revises and tackles rules and methods of a universal visual language, creating new narratives that reflect different times. Her main work comprises installations that combine various media: prints, ephemeral drawings, videos, sound and metal structures. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in institutions, museums and galleries such as: Netwerk Aalst (2018), Kadist, Paris (2017); Benaki Museum, Athens (2016); DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens (2016); Biennale of Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki (2015); Athens Biennale (2013) and National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (2013). Her work has been shown in institutions and museums, at Fondazione Prada (Milan, 2017) and at New Museum (New York, 2016) among others. Ιn 2012, together with Kosmas Nikolaou and Paky Vlassopoulou, she co-founded the artist-run space 3 137.She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2018).

Danai Giannoglou (Athens, 1992) is an independent curator and writer based in Athens. She is the co-founder and curator of Enterprise Projects, a project space functioning independently and periodically since September 2015 in Athens, as well as the Editor of Enterprise Projects Journal, a publishing initiative by Enterprise Projects uploading newly commissioned theoretical and research essays. She has worked for public and private institutions in Athens and Paris. Between 2018–2019 Danai Giannoglou was the Exhibitions Archive Coordinator at DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art. She has contributed texts in catalogues, publications and online art magazines and she has curated exhibitions in Greece and abroad. Giannoglou holds a BA in Theory and History of Art from the Athens School of Fine Arts and an MA in Cultural Management and Curating from Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne University. She has been resident at Rupert, Lithuania in 2016 and at the 8th Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course, South Korea in 2018. She is a recipient of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Artist Fellowship Program (Curating) 2019/20 by ARTWORKS, as well as of Onassis AiR Emergency Fellowship 2019/20.

Γλώσσα πρωτότυπου κειμένου: Αγγλικά

Alexia Karavela is a collector. Not of art, but of traces of humanity. She goes about life, gathering objects, often relics, old images and stories in which a tiny glimpse of humanity can be detected, despite being veiled at first glance. Particularly when hidden under layers of politics, class divisions, social injustice and gender issues. The grotesque caricatures in her drawings, the ironic puns in her installations, the seemingly cynical critique of the past in her work, all carry a deep sense of empathy for the precedent, the finite, the already determined. Karavela’s gaze retrieves the universal human elements in the publicly demonized and previously ridiculed, in all that has been reduced into a one-dimensional cliché or diminished to aesthetically kitsch. Alexia Karavela has devoted her artistic practice to bringing light to the outcast, to finding the value in anything that the rest of us have given up on, to pointing out the humanity that can be traced in all things good and bad.

When talking to her about her artistic practice, all attempts to elicit any type of contextualization falls flat in the face of her obsessively repetitive response about her trials with different inks, pencils, colors, types of paper and her continuous search to grasp the notion of display. She dwells on the practice of art-making while the content pours out of her instinctively. It takes a rattled life to achieve such determination in the process rather than the purpose. Karavela demands to be judged on her merit. You get the sense that she almost needs to remain unseen behind her artistic process. She agonizes over the gesture that transforms the work from studio effort to exhibit. To the artist, the artwork’s trajectory from private to public carries with it the weight of responsibility. Could a frame be the vehicle that allows the painting to stand autonomously and be seen objectively? The staging of the artwork functions as an additional shield for the artist. Karavela seems to be protecting what must remain hidden in order to ensure that the work is judged for what it is. How much of the artist’s life can be exposed in this process? How can an artist shift the public gaze from how she is being seen to how she sees? This level of integrity could become crumbling and stand in the way of taking up space in the world.

Karavela’s paintings commence from a photograph reference sourced from her endless archive of images of the past, occasionally not even classified chronologically. They are in no way collected as a nostalgic account of the good old days. Each photograph in fact functions as the starting point for the deconstruction of a moment and a reassembling of its features seen in retrospect. Karavela places the emphasis on the universal and timeless drives of humankind rather than the events depicted. They represent an event that has expired and although was once commemorated as a milestone, either collectively or individually, is now rarely remembered and possibly even dismissed.

The series of paintings Political Events from the 90s, 2012, inspired by news media documentation photography includes works entitled after their respective photo caption: Hundreds of thousands of people attended the funeral of Andreas Papandreou, N. Athini-Tsouni slaps D. Liani twice for embarrassing the female gender, A. Samaras giving back the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Prime Minister K.Mitsotakis and Approximately 1000 people protested against the validation of the Schengen Treaty. Such events were both formative and telling about the culture in which the artist was raised but seem to have lost their momentum and even gravitas in the public eye. They are now a collection of moments that have been obscured by the passage of time. Filtered through the knowledge of today, the perspective in which they are seen is reevaluated as nothing particularly noteworthy in the grand scheme of things. Similar to a vanitas still life, they only highlight the ephemerality of life events and the preservation of humankind through them.

In her series of paintings entitled 1989, a seminal year for European history and Greek politics, later known as the Dirty 1989 or Catharsis, Alexia Karavela includes two vastly different events. Ironically named, Trial of the Century (Koskotas Trial), 2019 is a birds-eye view of the full courtroom in which the Koskotas case was tried. The composition of the image, then widely reproduced by national newspapers, is comprised of three layers of authority: the judicial representatives of the Greek higher court elevated in their stands, members of the press crouched down photographing the accused and opposite them, one of the defendants and former member of the government. This trial was the first and only Greek trial to be televised nationally. In the same series, Karavela also includes Détári transcription, 2019. This work depicts a large, overexcited crowd of Greek football fans being controlled by the police as they cheer the welcome of international footballer Lajos Détári to the Olympiacos team, then owned by Koskotas. Détári’s transfer to the Piraeus-based team was marked at the time as the most expensive price paid for a football player, second only to Diego Maradona. The two paintings signify different but interconnected ways in which Greek national identity was being configured at the time. 30 years on, barely anyone recalls either of the two events. Instead of being indicative of a nihilist view on life, this stance functions as a mechanism for survival, a way to achieve continuance.

Similarly, her oil on paper series Offer (Sausage), 2016–2018 comes from an archive of 91 photographs of a single event. Each painting depicts a different individual that has lined up to receive a sausage on a stick by a catering waiter. The nature of the depicted event remains unknown and rather unimportant. The series acts as a collection of portraits of diverse people connected only by what they are being fed. Studying the group of people in these portraits anthropologically seems futile as they vary in age, gender, race and all attributes that reveal social standing. The reactions in their faces though, cover the spectrum of human emotions from joy, laughter, disgust and even offence. By the time you see them all, you start to zoom in on the hot dog instead. In 2013, the artist painted a series of works capturing celebratory meals and the local food that was being served. Papoutsakia and Dolmadakia, 2013 or a portrait of a plate of stuffed tomatoes and pepers, alongside drawings of people dressed in their Sunday best dancing on tables all function as an ethnographic study of middle-class Greece in the 80s. Sustenance is the social stabilizer in both cases.

Alexia Karavela’s work is a visual representation of a tender tragicomedy. The intense colors and exaggerated forms highlight the short distance between joy and monstrosity. Always withholding ethical judgment, she allows what is considered evil and what is accepted as wholesome to co-exist and even interact. Her themes continue to peel off the social layers under which both public and private life are staged. Karavela’s acceptance of the duplicity of all things is gloriously manifested in her 2015 MFA graduate show at the Athens School of Fine Arts, entitled I Hira (trans.: the hand, in Greek, a homophone to the word widow). There, the widow is granted permission to patiently devote her time to weaving her loom in mourning, loyal to the tradition of Penelope, but at the same time also give space to her frustration for being trapped in the role she was cast to play. The artist describes the installation as “a brief monument to man as a machine and the machine as senescent man” attributing the human qualities of deterioration and elapsing even to the loom. A stoic memento mori reminder that all things, human or non, are alloted a short fading time and an unequivocal expiration date to serve the perpetuation of humanity.

Evita Tsokanta is an art historian based in Athens who works as a writer, educator and an independent exhibition-maker. She lectures on curatorial practices and contemporary Greek art for the Columbia University Athens Curatorial Summer Program and Arcadia University College of Global Studies. She has contributed to several exhibition catalogues and journals and completed a Goethe Institute writing residency in Leipzig, Halle 14.

*A loosely translated verse from the Greek popular song, Molyvia by Roma singer Manolis Aggelopoulos recorded in 1988.

Γλώσσα πρωτότυπου κειμένου: Αγγλικά

Some years ago, in 2016, I came across Karolina Krasouli’s name on an artwork label at the Rennes Biennale in France. It was the first contact I had with her work, before I had met her: a series of folder-like forms creased into different shapes and painted in colors, which from afar gave the impression of a mysterious alphabet. It was a reference to Emily Dickinson’s envelope poems, a series of manuscripts and notes on parts of unfolded envelopes. Dickinson, like many other authors that she studied while in high school, such as Sylvia Plath, Shakespeare, Robert Rost, TS Eliot, John Keats, Edgar Allan Poe, and Ted Hughes among others, shaped her adolescent universe before she even knew that she would become an artist. Recently, in an old magazine of the Arsakeio school where I studied, I came across Krasouli’s name again but in a different context — as a 12 year old she had won the Literature Prize for a text she had written as a response to a painting in a school competition. In a strange way, this coincidence made sense to me. Krasouli’s recent works function as reassuring worlds, devoid of distortion, inviting one to get lost in them for a time, like the reprieve a child lost in the oppressive reality of middle school might find in literature.

Seeing today the works of her first solo exhibition in Athens, entitled Promise, I realize that it is clearly a sequel, an enlargement of the folded envelopes of 2016, though this time the paper is replaced by the canvas. A continuous play of scale, perhaps an inversion of it, in which some details refer to objects, but are not exactly familiar to the eye. At the same Biennale, another work dealt with the theme of scale: that of Mark Manders, whose work is a reference for Krasouli. His obsession with objects and scale is usually reported with mathematical precision in the titles of his works, such as Chair (100%) or Kitchen (reduced to 88%). 88% is for him a minimal reduction of scale that you feel more than you see. He refers to photography as the pre-eminent medium that changes the scale of objects and perceives his works as three dimensional photography. The reference to photography and its relationship to the object is something that particularly concerns the work of Krasouli who, except her experimentation with painting, works simultaneously with photography and super 8.

After many years of studying clinical psychology, a fated internship at Saint-Remy de Provence Hospital (next to the psychiatric hospital where Van Gogh was hospitalized) made her realize that not everything can be put into words. She left the scientific community and found herself chasing fake realities instead of real answers; as a way of giving space to these kind of things that do not make any sense. Now, I see in her work remnants of the scientific process — in terms of the obsession, the methodology and the protocols that she establishes in her process. In fact, the working method functions like a personal healing process, a trance-like, meditative process that takes place in the absence of words. This process, especially the one employed in the Promise series, is governed by a very specific, long and arduous protocol. The work begins without any draft sketch, but with a decision on the canvas’s approximate dimensions, which is defined once the color is applied. The traditional process of preparing a canvas in painting, that is, passing several layers with a gesso, becomes the work itself. Mixed with paint pigments of many different colors that give paradoxically a pale tone, the gesso is the material Krasouli uses to create monochromatic surfaces that become so hard that are almost impossible to bend. This difficulty of bending and binding this material becomes the challenge that the artist overcomes by folding the canvas, often more than once, and sewing it with hidden seams that are not visible. The result, hiding the artist’s effort with mastery, gives the illusion of naturalness, like the image of an accidentally folded corner of a thin paper.

Decisions about other monochrome surfaces that are sewn in the background are made in terms of composition; the more specific the form, the more the narrative emerges. One such example is found in her work Departure in which the artist imagines someone who has emptied his/her personal things on a bed and is getting ready to prepare his/her suitcase. Between image and object, these works are hybrids, something like two-dimensional objects or three-dimensional pictures, like an envelope, which is almost, but not exactly, two-dimensional and at the same time has the capacity to contain something, which remains unknown and hidden from the outside.

Like Krasouli’s painting series, super 8 film is an object and potentially an image at the same time. In the same way that scaling and materiality shift in her Promise series, so Super 8, as a medium, presents a dashed reality — a set of sewed images where flow and duration become an almost conscious, but enjoyable, illusion. In her super8 film La Rose Krasouli dives in the ontology of the object by filming a story told about Agnes Martin — another major reference for her work — , where the appearance and the disappearance of a rose raises the question of the beauty contained in the memory of an object more than in the object itself.

In Krasouli’s work there is no recurring theme; instead there is a process and a constant need to illuminate parts of what we call the everyday. Language is present, without ever being included, but appears discreetly through the apparent contradictions that characterize her work; the poetry, the lyricism, the hidden and the uncanny versus systematic research, repetition, and method. Viewing her work, we see narratives featuring time and objects, which invite us to listen carefully to them and learn how to speak their language.

Karolina Krasouli (SNF ARTWORKS Visual Arts Fellow 2019) is a visual artists working with painting, photography and film.

Eva Vaslamatzi (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019) is an independent curator and writer currently based in Athens, Greece.

H ARTWORKS συνεργάζεται με το  Enterprise Projects υποστηρίζοντας το 8ο τεύχος EP Journal (ΕPJ) σε ανάθεση του SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2021 από το πεδίο της επιμέλειας, Πάνο Φουρτουλάκη.

Διαβάστε εδώ το EP J8 με τίτλο “ΓΙΑ ΤΟ ΤΕΛΟΣ ΠΟΥ ΠΟΤΕ ΔΕΝ ΤΕΛΕΙΩΝΕΙ”

Γλώσσα πρωτότυπου κειμένου: Αγγλικά

Nicolas Vamvouklis (NV): Eleni, we first met a couple of summers ago at a beautiful olive grove in Lesvos. You participated in a program of Hermitage Sykaminea focusing on community-making. Do you have any good stories from your stay there?

Eleni Papazoglou (EP): Hermitage Sykaminea is a special place run by the most incredible human, Andreas Sell. It was amazing to meet so many practitioners and have time to talk, think, and share. We ran workshops and rituals ranging from felting, writing collectively, building stairs, and considering loss.

I think meeting Andreas was a revelation. He is so rigorous about playing; something I resonate with. I have a great appreciation for him and his practice. Six months after the residency, Andreas and I were in a bar, and I told him I was bored. He challenged me to do an exhibition right there and then. In about 24 hours, Andreas, Theodoros Tzannetakis, and I organised “I Love You Forever,” a show that took place under the highway bridge of Leoforos Athinon. It included artworks by Alex Zakkas, Panagiotis Tzannetakis, Konstantinos Giotis, Giorgos Athanasiou, Anna Rose Stefatou, Vincent Meyrignac, Irini Stamatiadi, Dimitris Theodoropoulos, Andreas Sell, Iria Vrettou, Chnoubis, Ariadne Strofylla, Alkis Hadjiandreou, Theodoros Tzannetakis and myself. People came through to see the show, and we had tangerines and beers. Iria did a reading. It is still one of my favourite projects.

Eleni Papazoglou, Untitled [Holding], 2022, Vinyl on found signage, 700 x 540 mm. Prizing Eccentric Talents 2, P.E.T. Projects, Athens [GR], curated by Angelo Plessa and George Bekirakis.

NV: It’s fascinating how your research addresses collectivity and participation in diversified contexts, ranging from self-organized to institutional ones. Is there a common line that traverses the exploration of these themes?

EP: Working by, with, and for, or alongside others is always a powerful experience, no matter the context. It involves exchange, alignment, and friction. Negotiation, camaraderie, affect. I am interested in the systems we use to relate to one another, and they exist everywhere. Sometimes those are top-down or inscribed in policy; in other cases, they are practical, necessary, faceless, self-initiated, historical, or circumstantial. Looking at different contexts provides a wide range of lenses to study the same topic.

NV: You’re originally from Athens, and you’ve decided to stay in London after your studies there. Would you consider returning to Greece at some point?

EP: London has a dynamic and vast community I love being part of. I work with different collectives and groups, the most important for me being Crit Club, a closed group of artists that meets once a month to provide peer-to-peer feedback as well as technical support and mentorship. My studio is in a building of 500 artists — another generous support network. There is a lot of energy floating about, even if it’s a tough city to live in.

At the same time, I have been considering moving back to Greece… I am trying to have the best of both worlds and balance the back and forth. In London, I have found ways to support myself through my practice. I’d like to find ways to make this possible in Athens. If you have any thoughts on this, please share — I am curious to know how different practitioners make it work.

Eleni Papazoglou, Untitled [part of Signage for the In-between], 2022, Engraving on trolase, 148.5 x 210 mm. Exhibited at the Collector’s House, Athens [GR], curated by David Kransky.

NV: You should ask this question to the network of the ARTWORKS Fellows; I’m confident this will set up an inspiring conversation. But let’s return to you. So, your background is in illustration and graphic design. In which ways does this knowledge intersect with your artistic practice?

EP: I think in everything! In my opinion, graphic design is integrated with notions of publics. It is everywhere, everyday, and for everyone. It feels closer to today’s world than art; in its application and methods of production. As my work often explores day-to-day systems we share — such as work, language, commerce, and spaces outside the gallery — graphic design is a tool relevant to such contexts.

Graphic design is embedded in storytelling, individual and collective identity, and guidance. It is the visual language of [information] exchange — a reactive process in itself — a call and response between context and visual, status quo and proposed alternatives. When approached critically, it is a system of negation.

Eleni Papazoglou, Curving Kata Fssiiiing [documentation of performance], 2021, Movement with acrylic props, 15 mins. Documented by Jordan Mouzouris

NV: I enjoy how your projects often consist of playful experiments in the realms of sport, work, and transport. What is your idea of performativity?

EP: I use performativity to enact propositions. I was working with instruction-led choreography, re-enactment, clowning, and team-building exercises. I then started making sculptural ‘tools’ to perform with and producing subversive manuals.

Performance in the 1960s Western Europe and North America arrived to disturb notions of value by opposing the commercialisation of the art object. Today, we are all performing: labour, gender, class, knowledge, wokeness, and on social media. What was once a tool for resisting assigned value has become an integral part of it. The science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin said, “We live in capitalism and its power seems inescapable. But so did the divine right of kings.’’ What does resistance look like today? I think enactment (def. the process of putting an idea or suggestion into practice) might be a good start, and it might include performative elements.

Eleni Papazoglou, Alongside [as opposed to against], 2023, Performative intervention. Exhibited at How It Feels, SET, London.

NV: Besides being a visual artist and designer, you also work as a lecturer. What is your experience with education?

EP: Education can mean anything from learning, empowerment, self-organisation, university, having transformative experiences, academia, and certification. I have been teaching at university level for 5 years. Learning environments, like everything else, are not a level playing field; there is a lot of work to do to address inequalities.

I am interested in how we can share. Learning processes have taught me to acknowledge, to not know, to witness, and how much that can mean, to allow, and set boundaries. I am fascinated by how we can co-create environments of trust that allow taking risks.

Eleni Papazoglou, Fsiiing Half Price and Fsooom For Sale, 2021, Acrylic, steel, screen-printing, custom stickers, polythene sheet, tape, found packaging, 850 x 300 mm, 1200 x 380 mm Exhibited at Squeezebox, Collective Ending (London, 2021), curated by Georgia Stephenson, Elliot Fox and Ted Le Swer.

NV: What are you currently working on? Is there any new project you could share with me?

EP: I just finished two projects: an exhibition in and about an ex-evangelical church and community centre with Grace Black, Maddie Banwell, and Daniel Gatenio. I also produced “Rear View,” an exhibition and series of events that took place in the artist reference library Biblioteka (South London). I showed some new assemblage works and invited trusting mechanics [aka Rhoda Boateng], George Lynch, Oisín Roberts, Camille Yvert, Conor Ackhurst, Romeo Roxman Gatt, Nina Porter, Leah Walker, and Georgia Stephenson to share readings and moving image works, responding to the work.

At the moment, I am working towards a body of work that might take the form of a book inspired by general store packaging. I would like to approach my favourite general store to host the presentation of works.

NV: I love this idea and I’m curious about what’s on your reading shelf. Any book recommendations for this summer?

EP: I am reading: Thing Theory (2001) by Bill Brown, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (1925) by Marcel Mauss, and The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1986) by Ursula K. Le Guin. I am not sure these are exactly books for the beach. So here is one more: After the Sun (2018) by Jonas Eika. Enjoy enjoy. Thank you so much, Nicola!

Eleni Papazoglou is an artist, designer, and educator that lives between Athens and London. By using assemblage, writing, and performance, Eleni explores value, systems of exchange, and the structures around them. Recent exhibitions include: Rear View [solo], Biblioteka (London, 2023), How It Feels, SET (London, 2023), Prizing Eccentric Talents 2, P.E.T. Projects (Αthens, 2022), and Alternate Realities, Sheffield Documentary Festival, (2022). She was awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (Athens, 2021–22) and the SET Studio Award (London, 2020–21). She was part of the group residency Peer Forum 2020 researching collective affection, hosted by Camden Arts Center (London, 2020–21) and acted as the educator-in-residence for Supersmashers, a weekly art session for looked-after children in Southwark hosted by the South London Gallery (London, 2020–2021).

Nicolas Vamvouklis is a curator and arts writer. He is the artistic director of K-Gold Temporary Gallery and has curated exhibitions at Mediterranea 19 Biennale, 7th Thessaloniki Biennale, and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Since 2016, he has served as senior curator at the Benetton cultural panorama. He has also collaborated with Béjart Ballet Lausanne, Marina Abramovic Institute, Prague Quadrennial, and Triennale Milano. Vamvouklis contributes to art magazines and publications, including The Art Newspaper and MIT Press. In 2021, he was awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS.

Γλώσσα πρωτότυπου κειμένου: Αγγλικά

Content warning: text & images contain elements of violence that might disturb sensitive audiences.

Publication Histories

The present text is a short version of the article originally published in Performance Philosophy Vol.7, №2 (2022):111–140 [DOI: https://doi.org/10.21476/PP.2022.72360, ISSN 2057–7176], based on the author’s practice-led Ph.D. Thesis in Philosophy & Fine Art (Performance) at the Royal College of Art in London, supervised by Prof. Johnny Golding (Primary) & Prof. Nigel Rolfe (Second, 2015–2019), and supported by the Onassis Foundation Scholarship for Research studies (Scholarship ID: F ZL 027–1/2015–2016).

Introduction

The paper problematizes the ways in which performance art might be philosophy, and vice versa, that is; how philosophy might operate as embodied praxis and method. The performance practice under discussion stands as the research’s starting point, method and output, with all the works brought forward being conceived and performed by myself. However, the deliberate use of a third- person phrasing (e.g. ‘the performer’, ‘the artist’) while describing these performances serves as a strategic methodological choice of narration, so as to avoid oversentimentality, egocentrism, and a sense of diary/confession writing, even more so due to the already quite visceral character of the live works presented.

Performance as Philosophy / Philosophy as Embodied Practice

The main hypothesis adopted is based on the argument that philosophy, though predominantly thought of as a rational ideological construction, is essentially an invitation towards change and a method on how to lead one’s life (Hadot 2001, 148). This position has been particularly stressed by philosophers Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault, who revisited ancient Greek philosophy to indicate how embodied practices might operate as methodologies for leading one’s life. Foucault, in the late years of his life, focused on the notion of parrhēsia (Greek term indicating a particular kind of courageous truth-telling) as practiced by the Cynics and early Christian ascetics (Foucault, 2011), in the context of his research on a new hermeneutics of the subject (Foucault 2005) that would comprise technologies of the body in the form of care of the self and others. It is in that respect that one should look at Foucault’s engagement with sadomasochistic practices; as a laboratory (Rabinow 2000, 151) for “the creation of new forms of life” (Rabinow 2000, 164).

Violence as an Apparatus towards Performance-as-Surface / Life-as-Surface

In light of the above, this text discusses how performance strategies related to violence might suggest a radical re-thinking and revisiting of philosophy as embodied practice and method towards a life-as-surface, that is; a life experienced in its full intensity and in pure joy. Violence in the context of this research is defined as any force exercised among bodies at the moment of their encounter, with its effect having a severe impact on the bodies upon which it is applied. The way that violence operates in the live works put forward, differentiates itself from what seems to be at stake in existing examples in the field of performance art discourse, and brings to light alternative points of view than those already argued in the relevant bibliography (e.g. O’Dell 1998). On the contrary, violence is here rethought of as a technological apparatus for the generation and distribution of intensities within each live work, via the transmutation of the performer’s body into flesh, stripped of any given subjectivities. In so doing, the performance practice at stake, manages to operate as surface: as a field occupied only by intensities, thus also overlapping with Artaud and Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the Body without Organs (Artaud 1988, 571; Deleuze and Guattari 2013, 177– 8). Therefore, the images created by the performer’s postures, movements and/or marks on the skin, would be but a manifestation of forces traversing the artist’s body at any given moment. In this way, the performer essentially takes the risk to reveal — while also protecting — a life which is radically other, a life affirmed as it is and as it is lived, without any ideological or moral presuppositions. Consequently, what is at stake in the works presented, would be contemporary performance art’s ability to operate as a locus of parrhēsia, and as an invitation to a new ethical life.

Works of violence

Following from violence’s definition as any force exercised among bodies at the moment of their encounter, with its effect having a severe impact on the bodies upon which it is applied, the works of violence brought forward could be distinguished into two categories: (a) performances in which violence takes place at a time prior to the performer’s appearance in front of an audience, and (b) works in which violence takes place during the ‘actual’ performance, either live or in a video format reproducing an action that has already happened in the past (during a performance piece or within a private consensual environment). In the first category (a), violence is presented either through marks left on the performer’s body as a trace/remainder, e.g.: bruises, imprints, and/or abrasions, or is implied through rituals of care that would constitute the ‘actual’ performance work, called upon to manage violence’s traumatic remainder.

Given the phrase ‘severe impact’ in the adopted definition of violence above, it would be necessary to investigate how this severe impact gets manifested in the performances discussed. In the following examples of works, this impact would be usually read via its residual expressions that constitute proof, testimony, and memory of the event of violence. Such residual expressions would include:

1. The intensities produced and distributed in the work, accompanied by the production of images of a body in spasm assuming positions and generating images that would be impossible to be engendered without the application of forces on the performer’s body and without the mediation of pain.

2. The creation of marks on the performer’s skin, such as: imprints, bruises, abrasions, or even breakings of the skin tissue (e.g. using body stapling), manifesting trauma-as-corporeal trace.

3. Rituals of care following the effects and affects of the violent forces exerted at a time prior to the performance work, including their residue-as-trauma.

Vulnerability/Affectability

In the performances discussed, the testimony of a body submitted to violence during its encounter with other bodies, would indicate the ability of this body to affect and be affected by other bodies and forces. This ability would be named as affectability or vulnerability. Therefore, what is essentially at stake across this series of works of violence is the performer’s ability to exhibit a vulnerable and sensuous body affirming life as it is.

Towards a Politics of Intimacy & an Ethics of Care

To sum up, works of violence in my performance practice operate as fields occupied only by intensities where parrhēsiastic games take place to reveal life-as-surface, after shattering all essentialist categories and ideological hierarchies. Within this suggested condition of successive entanglements where bodies intra-act with other bodies, the possibility of a new ethics of care emerges. The following question, then, arises: are there any ethical limits within performance-as-surface and, consequently, life-as-surface? What would be the thickness and the porosity of those limits? After dismissing all kinds of morality, what is suggested instead would be the investigation of modes of conduct based on ideas of care; with care understood here as the maintenance of one’s ability to be useful. Given that one agrees with Agamben’s definition of intimacy as “use-of-oneself as relation with an inappropriable” (Agamben 2016, 91), then the performances brought forward would allow for intimate coherences to happen, not on the grounds of possession — and thus exchangeability — but on the uninterrupted circulation of forces via the use of the performer’s body, that would then be able to shapeshift across various fluid subjectivities, through use-of-oneself. In the suggested paradigm, therefore, care would not only be an ethical apparatus to safeguard the performer’s usefulness, but also a potential social contract for a new ethical life towards being surface.

Links for performances discussed (links working at time of publication)

Corner Time (2016) https://mai.art/projects/asone despinazacharopoulou.com/corner-time
vimeo.com/197389133
Introduction (2015) despinazacharopoulou.com/introduction-hzztl
vimeo.com/147328308
Being a threat (2016) despinazacharopoulou.com/being-a-threat
vimeo.com/195880210
Aftercare Ι (2016) despinazacharopoulou.com/blank-1
Love *me* (2017) despinazacharopoulou.com/love-me
D’après S.K. (2017) despinazacharopoulou.com/d-apres-s-k vimeo.com/221403826
Aftercare IΙ (2016) despinazacharopoulou.com/blank-1
Surface (2017) despinazacharopoulou.com/surface-live-to-camera-ii
https://vimeo.com/249317661
Pudeur (d’après F.N.) (2017) despinazacharopoulou.com/pudeur-d-apres-f-n
vimeo.com/265869390
Pudeur II (d’après F.N.) (2018) despinazacharopoulou.com/pudeur-ii-d-apres-f-n
Aphorism (2019) despinazacharopoulou.com/aphorism
Response-ability (d’après K.B.) (2017) despinazacharopoulou.com/response-ability-d-apres-k-b
vimeo.com/249951756

General Bibliography

Abramović, Marina, with James Kaplan. 2016. Walk Through Walls: A Memoir. London: Penguin.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2016. The Use of Bodies. Translated by Adam Kotsko. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Artaud, Antonin. 1988. Selected Writings. Translated by Helen Weaver. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv12101zq
Bataille, Georges. 1985. Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939. Translated by Allan Stoekl with Carl
R. Lovitt and Donald N. Leslie, Jr. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
— — — . 2012. Eroticism. Translated by Mary Dalwood. London: Penguin.
Braver, Lee. 2014. Groundless Grounds: A Study of Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1988. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Translated by Robert Hurley. San Francisco: City Lights Books.
— — — . 1989. Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty by Gilles Deleuze / Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Translated by Jean McNeil. New York: Zone Books.
— — — . 2004. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. London: Bloomsbury.
— — — . 2013. The Logic of Sense. Translated by Constantin V. Boundas, Mark Lester, and Charles Stivale. London: Bloomsbury.
— — — . 2017. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. Translated by Daniel W. Smith. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 2013. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. London: Bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350251984
— — — . 2013. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. London: Bloomsbury.
Douady, Adrien, and John H. Hubbard. 1985. Étude dynamique des polynômes complexes. Orsay: Prépublications Mathémathiques d’Orsay.
Foucault, Michel. 2005. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France, 1981–1982. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
— — — . 2011. The Courage of Truth: The Government of Self and Others II — Lectures at the Collège de France, 1983– 1984. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
Freud, Sigmund. 2005. On Murder, Mourning and Melancholia. Translated by Shaun Whiteside. London: Penguin.
Golding, Johnny. 1996. “Pariah Bodies.” In Sexy Bodies the Strange Carnalities of Feminism, edited by Elizabeth Grosz and Elspeth Probyn, 172–180. London and New York: Routledge.
Greene, Brian. 2000. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory. London: Vintage. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.19379
Hadot, Pierre. 2001. La Philosophie comme manière de vivre. Paris: Albin Michel.
Haughton, Miriam, ed. 2018. Staging Trauma: Bodies in Shadow. London Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53663-1
Heidegger, Martin. 2011. Basic Writings. Edited by David Farrell Krell. London and New York: Routledge.
Holzner, Steven. 2013. Quantum Physics for Dummies. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Johnson, Dominic, ed. 2013. Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey. London: Intellect and Live Art Development Agency.
Kierkegaard, Søren. 1985. Fear and Trembling. Translated by Alastair Hannay. London: Penguin Classics.
Klein, Melanie. 1975. Love, Guilt and Reparation and other works 1921–1945. New York: The Free Press.
Klossowki, Pierre. 1991. Sade my Neighbor. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Chicago: Northwestern University Press.
— — — . 1997. Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle. Translated by Daniel W. Smith. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
— — — . 2017. Living Currency. Translated by Vernon W. Cisney, Nicolae Morar, and Daniel W. Smith. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Krafft-Ebing, Richard Freiherr Von. 1895. Psychopathia Sexualis. Translated by Émile Laurent and Sigismond Csapo. Paris: Georges Carré.
Le Brun, Annie. 2014. “Sade pose la Question de l’Irreprésentable: Entretien avec Annie Le Brun et Laurence des Cars, Commissaires de l’Exposition.” Interview by Florelle Guillaume. In Sade: Attaquer le soleil — Musée d’Orsay, 4–7. Paris: Beaux Arts/Tim Éditions.
Lyotard, Jean-François. 1993. Libidinal Economy. Translated by Iain Hamilton Grant. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Mandelbrot, Benoît. 1973. Les Objets fractals: forme, hasard et dimension. Paris: Flammarion.
Michaud, Philippe-Alain. 2004. Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion. Translated by Sophie Hawkes. New York: Zone Books.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2001. The Gay Science. Translated by Josefine Nauckhoff and Andrian Del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511812088
O’Brien, Martin, and David MacDiarmid, eds. 2018. Survival of the Sickest: The Art of Martin O’Brien. London: Live Art Development Agency.
O’Dell, Kathy. 1998. Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art and the 1970s. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Rabinow, Paul, ed. 2000. Michel Foucault: Ethics — Essential Works 1954–84. Translated by Robert Hurley and others. London: Penguin.
Spinoza, Benedict de (Baruch). 1996. Ethics. Translated by Edwin Curley. London and New York: Penguin.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2005. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by C.K. Ogden. London and New York: Routledge.

Biography

Dr Despina Zacharopoulou is a performance artist, theorist and academic, born in Arcadia, Greece, currently working between London and Athens. Despina completed her practice-led Ph.D. in Philosophy & Fine Art (Performance) at the Royal College of Art, London (Onassis Foundation scholar), supervised by Prof. J. Golding (Primary) and Prof. N. Rolfe (Second, 2015–2019).

Her practice investigates performance art as surface, and philosophy as embodied practice and method towards a life which is radically other. Her work has been presented at events of global impact, e.g.: AS ONE by the NEON Organization & the Marina Abramović Institute (Athens, 2016); London Frieze (2016, 2017); A Possible Island? By the Marina Abramović Institute & the 1st Bangkok Art Biennale (Bangkok, 2018–19), etc. Press/Publications include articles in: Performance Philosophy Journal, New York Times, The Nation Thailand, Liberal Newspaper Greece, The Art Newspaper Greece, etc. Dr Zacharopoulou has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021) and holds the position of the Course Leader of the Contemporary Art Summer School at the Royal College of Art in London.

www.despinazacharopoulou.com

© 2022 Despina Zacharopoulou

Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Γλώσσα πρωτότυπου κειμένου: Αγγλικά

by Danai Giannoglou
Copy edited by EG Figure of Speech (Geli Mademli & Eleanna Papathanasiadi)

In 2016, Ionian Bisai and Sotiris Tsiganos found out about the history of Kallio, a village in Fokida, Greece, which was expropriated by the Greek junta in 1969 and covered by the waters of an artificial lake that would constitute the main water supply reservoir for the city of Athens. While researching and conducting interviews in order to gather more material with regards to this admittedly extraordinary case, not only did they discover that access to information was particularly difficult but also that surprisingly few people were aware of this series of events. Back then, Ionian and Sotiris were struck by the existence of a gap, something that was missing, which for them held a personal but also artistic interest.

To speak about how Latent Community came into being is to speak about this story and about Neromanna – their first video work, which carries the DNA of their practice in terms of subject matter, methodology, medium, and community engagement. The artist duo which was formed around this project, has been attempting to find ways to comprehend the world and our era way before that time, ever since they were teenagers, neighbors, and high-school classmates. Questions on how to position oneself within societies and towards political, societal, and ecological matters have prompted them to explore theoretical and practical tools rather than artistic ones. Later on, their shared practice became a vehicle for their attempt to answer these questions.

Latent Community, NEROMANNA, 2017 (still). Courtesy the artists. Installation view, 23rdBiennale of Sydney, rivus, 2022, National Art School. Photography: Document Photography

When they first visited Kallio and the surrounding areas, they realized that the information, knowledge, and experience they were looking for was in fact contained in the undocumented and non-communicated oral histories of the former residents of the village, the population that had to leave their homes behind “so that Athens can drink water,” as mentioned by them in the film.

Even though Ionian and Sotiris were trained as painters, it was this particular story that turned them to the moving image. To be able to tell this story, it was of utmost importance to find the most ‘immediate’ medium of communication and one that could potentially involve the community itself - either as directors or as subjects standing in front of the camera, reclaiming the narratives around what had happened. However, the duo remained skeptical and careful about the politics of observation and documentation: “The camera is not neutral, it is a separate body that exists within the bodies of the participants, and this surely creates a certain dynamic. However, we are interested in how the camera can oscillate between distant observation and active participation. When we film, we are not flies on the wall, we are actively engaged and we are not concerned about hiding it.”¹

Latent Community portrait

It is clear that their camera is used differently in each of their moving-image works, depending on the needs of the story, subject matter, or project. From the careful use of high production cameras cameras in Otranto, a film about the shipwreck of Katër i Radës in 1997 — the first boat that sank in a naval blockade against migration flows in the Mediterranean Sea, leading to the death of 81 passengers, whose families are still seeking justice; to the use of a mobile phone camera for Horses, a film on the human-animal relationship situated on the Greek island of Lesbos; Latent Community are interested in the power of different filmic tools. For them, the camera always plays a social role and addresses questions of access to image production, representation, and historicization through documentation.

Latent Community, OTRANTO, 2020 (still). Film 24:41, Full HD, Color, Sound, DCP. Courtesy the artists.

Nonetheless, they resist - and rightly so - a possible categorization as documentarists. Profoundly aware of the responsibility that often comes with the subject they choose to work with, they believe that the context itself dictates the filmic narration, the same way that the story dictates the camera style. Through their usage of sound, dialogue, and image - or the absence of them - this approach is becoming more and more evident as their practice evolves from Neromanna, (2017), Otranto (2020), and Horses (2022) to Water Voices (2022).

Locally and regionally rooted, in the sense that they are striving to break the center- periphery binary, and community-based, in the sense that their starting point is always the research on human or non-human societies, Latent Community’s work is its context in itself, usually informed by issues of political, social, and ecological justice. Without turning a blind eye towards privilege, their effort is to speak about communities and places as an immense constellation of interconnected concentric circles where any disruption will travel as a wave and affect different agents in different temporalities and intensities. Obviously and undoubtedly, the less privileged - people, communities, beings, regions - experience in the present time what will slowly but steadily then be the political, ecological, and social future of the rest.

Latent Community, Water Voices, 2022. Imageless Film / Sound Installation 07:06, Stereo Sound.Courtesy the artists.

The key word here is ‘wave.’ From Neromanna to one of their latest works that deals with the Mediterranean Sea, aquatic ecosystems, and how entire cities were built against the water, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Ionian and Sotiris recurrently use the language and voice of water: “It is through water that we understand our relationship with the world. It surrounds us and there are countless stories about it - mainly stories of violence. The Mediterranean Sea is a battlefield and this is intrinsically weaved into the Greek landscape. If you can scratch the surface of the sea, you can find not only lost stories, but also answers.”²

They look at water like an open wound where histories of oppression and extraction are inscribed, but at the same time they understand it as a deep connective tissue between communities. How did humans who were once connected with water, recognizing it as a source of life, have over the years - and especially in Western cultures - taken a stance that goes against it and against nature by and large?

Latent Community, OTRANTO, 2020 (still). Film 24:41, Full HD, Color, Sound, DCP. Courtesy the artists.

Latent Community’s interest in the liquid element manifests their wish to work with what surrounds us and hence to investigate what is our position with regards to these surroundings - physical and non-physical alike. In order to do that, the work has taken many different shapes throughout the years, challenging the moving image, sound and technological tools with abstraction, and they have been involved with different geographies and communities. What is particularly interesting about the evolution of their work, is that however versatile it is becoming, parts of it can always be traced back to Neromanna, reigniting something that creates a cyclical, manifesto-like consistency that runs through Latent Community’s entire practice.

During a visit of Ionian and Sotiris to Kallio for reasons of filming, a former resident tried to reinstate the lost topography of the village by pointing at areas of water and speaking about what was hidden underneath its surface. In that way, Neromanna marked not only the beginning of the collaboration between Jonian and Sotiris, their initiation in the world of the moving image, and the foundation of their recurrent research, but it also became the catalyst for selecting the name of their artistic group. Always delving into communities that are hidden or in hiding, sometimes as a self-defense mechanism and other times as a strategy imposed by the dominant context, delving into whispered stories and invisible presences, the duo writes about Kallio and Neromanna: “The ghost is not the sunken village, but the latent conflicts between the natural and the artificial, between the metropolis and the periphery, between the dominant narratives and the counter-stories.”³

Ionian Bisai (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2020) and Sotiris Tsiganos (SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2021 )are visual artists and filmmakers based in Athens. In 2016, in the context of their long-term artistic collaboration they founded the Latent Community project, an ongoing artistic investigation intertwining fieldwork and moving image in order to tackle contemporary judicial, social and ecological issues. The duo aims to create conceptual and emotional experiences through which a more equal and sustainable future may be imagined. Their work has been presented in several international exhibitions and festivals (Athens Biennale, documenta14 - Public Programs, Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, Polyeco Contemporary Art Initiative, Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete and the Recontemporary cultural association in Turin). Ionian Bisai and Sotiris Tsiganos have been awarded prizes by the LOOP artistic platform in Barcelona and Sharjah Art Foundation (United Arabic Emirates). For the period 2020–2021, they are fellows of Onassis AiR - School of Infinite Rehearsals.

Danai Giannoglou (Athens, 1992) is an independent curator and writer based in Athens. She currently participates in the De Appel Curatorial Programme 2019–2020 in Amsterdam. Giannoglou is the co-founder and curator of Enterprise Projects, a project space functioning independently and periodically since September 2015 in Athens, as well as the Editor of Enterprise Projects Journal, a publishing initiative by Enterprise Projects uploading newly commissioned theoretical and research essays. She has worked for public and private institutions in Athens and Paris. Between 2018–2019 Danai Giannoglou was the Exhibitions Archive Coordinator at DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art. She has contributed texts in catalogues, publications and online art magazines and she has curated exhibitions in Greece and abroad. Giannoglou holds a BA in Theory and History of Art from the Athens School of Fine Arts and an MA in Cultural Management and Curating from Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne University. She has been resident at Rupert, Lithuania in 2016 and at the 8th Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course, South Korea in 2018. She is a recipient of the SNF ARTWORKS Artist Fellowship Program (Curating) 2019/20 as well as of Onassis AiR Emergency Fellowship 2019/20.

¹ Excerpt from a personal interview with Sotiris Tsiganos and Ionian Bisai, conducted on July 3, 2023.

² Excerpt from a personal interview with Sotiris Tsiganos and Ionian Bisai, conducted on July 3, 2023.

³ Excerpt from the text accompanying Latent Community’s participation in the 24th Biennale of Sydney, which is based on the essays “Entangled Visions” (The School of Infinite Rehearsals: Movement II, Scored Invocations, edited by Alkisti Efthymiou, Onassis Foundation, 2021) and “Latent Practices” (RCA — CAP: Moving Image, 2021).

Γλώσσα πρωτότυπου κειμένου: Αγγλικά

Nicolas Vamvouklis (NV): Chara, it’s funny how we first met on a taxi from Rimini to San Marino, where you participated at the Mediterranea 19 Young Artists Biennale. We had this absurd conversation blending popular lyrics with Nicolas Bourriaud’s theories. Do you have any recollection of that ride?

Chara Stergiou (CS): Absolutely! We started chatting about our mutual interest in using popular culture while the radio paid tribute to Raffaella Carrà. It was her funeral day. What stayed with me was talking about this sense of guilt when it comes to taste-making, mostly in institutional frameworks such as the art world or academia. At that time, we were both working through “post-production” — as Bourriaud says — on the broader sense. Working with other people’s words, works, or even songs by making different playlists and producing new meanings.

Chara Stergiou, Listening to an Elusive Geography, 2021, performance, Mediterranea 19 Young Artists Biennale — School of Waters, San Marino. Photo: Angeliki Tzortzakaki.

 

NV: That evening, you also presented a DJ Lecture outside Galleria Nazionale. Again, it was a thrilling momentum with this vibrant sense of freedom right after the quarantine. Could you tell me more about this new format you’ve developed? Do you consider yourself a DJ?

CS: The DJ Lecture belongs to this kind of endeavour that combines the essay form with other media, this time with the sonic. It all started — sarcastically enough before the COVID outbreak — sourcing from a feeling very similar to what we’ve lost or repressed during confinement: the live sense of togetherness. So, in my very first DJ Lectures, I was led by this urge to mediate and transmit sonically to audiences a certain social experience I was talking about then. Montaging a weird mix of songs, voices, lyrics, recorded authorships, translations, bibliographical references, and citations while “sampling almost everything.” A pursuit to deploy theoretical thought to an embodied experience and connect it intrinsically to art practice.

I am certainly not a DJ in its common sense, but they are a very interesting persona. Both a magician playing with the feelings of an audience in a room, “a meta-producer,” or, as it has been noted, “the epitome of the post-modern artist” (Brewster & Broughton, 2014).

NV: To what extent does this methodology relate to curating?

CS: I suppose that selecting existing material, inserting it into a new context, and in meaningful company with other works would be a point of convergence.

NV: Let’s brighten the mood — what kind of music do you prefer? Name your top 3 songs of all time.

CS: To be more accurate, I must rephrase your question: what artist have you listened to non-stop for the past few years? And the answer would be Florence Welch. Such a gifted performer, poet, and songwriter! She has greatly influenced me in many ways and inspired my latest research on the common living spaces where we exist together and the collective experience of audiences, the empirical and social spaces where audibility functions unexpectedly. She’s the definition of an audience witch. Thus, the list would be as follows:

1. What the Water Gave Me

2. King

3. Patricia

All songs by Florence + The Machine.

Chara Stergiou, Listening to an Elusive Geography (A Rehearsal), 2021, performance, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center. Photo: Pinelopi Gerasimou.

NV: That’s a cool selection! Well, it’s refreshing how your multidisciplinary practice centres on the overlap between scientific and artistic research in surprising paths. What is your idea of hybridity?

CS: We often associate hybridity with an unconscious imperative for newness or strangeness. Instead, I see it as a radical act of experimenting towards categorical inconsistency. This remains quite critical both in creating and perceiving. But mostly in trusting your own ways of working. A fruitful — and sometimes seemingly chaotic — mode of engagement based on method, not the result.

Chara Stergiou, Undercommons in the Remix, 2022, radio streaming, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.

NV: In the past year, you’ve set up various workshops on sound and design as expanded fields. How do you approach teaching in these cases?

CS: It is hard for me to use the term “teaching” as it is loaded with a coat of unbearable authority you must have on others. In the framework you described, I want to see my role mainly as a mediator, a moderator that forms a collective call to action and then takes part in it. I owe a lot to “Practices of Attunement,” a collective/study group with whom we participated in wonderful experiments while preparing and leading workshops or even when reading, walking, and studying together.

NV: I’m actually checking now on the encounters you led at the Athens Open Studio. Your first session was entitled “Alles ist Arkitektur” inspired by Hans Hollein. I’m curious about how your architectural studies inform your projects.

CS: I obtained my degree in an extraordinary school born from the significance of transdisciplinarity in practice. I’m referring to the Department of Architecture at the University of Thessaly, and I wonder how many of us ended up working in architecture. In the homonymous manifesto, Hollein does not advocate that everything is architecture. Rather, he challenges perceptions related to tools, media, and critical thinking to conclude that some issues will continue to be solved traditionally. However, is architecture the answer as we understand it? Such a manifesto has stigmatized me, and it feels like we can replicate it in almost everything. Replace “architecture” with anything related to tools, media, and a new world of different affect, to ask: do we still have adequate answers to respond to new conditions? Does this sort of response feel comfortable? This is what motivates me to delve into what I work on. At the same time, it gives you a sense of relief to think of such matters even when you don’t have the answer.

NV: That’s true! You may not have an answer, but I guess the work can evolve organically in an open, collaborative spirit…

CS: Sure, I really enjoyed the turn from the loner space of the DJ Lecturer to the collective address and the invitation to “remix” projects and seminars at State of Concept and Haus der Kulturen der Welt. From the seemingly passive lecture format to more comprehensive “sonic modes of study” and “sampling everything.” I am still working in this direction.

Listen to Chara’s Stergiou ‘Undercommonings in the Remix’ audio streaming, part of the ‘Commonings’ last edition of The New Alphabet School, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 15–19th September 2022.

Chara Stergiou is a research-based practitioner and artist whose interests focus on a theory-through-practice approach. Dealing with knowledge production through possible artistic hybridities, she works independently in projects and programs affiliated with institutions and collectives while conducting workshops, seminars, and presentations of research in several organizations (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Swiss Artistic Research Network, Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean, PACT Zollverein, and State of Concept Athens). In 2020, she was awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS.

Nicolas Vamvouklis is a curator and arts writer. He is the artistic director of K-Gold Temporary Gallery and has curated exhibitions at Mediterranea 19 Biennale, 7th Thessaloniki Biennale, and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Since 2016, he has served as senior curator at the Benetton cultural panorama. He has also collaborated with Béjart Ballet Lausanne, Marina Abramovic Institute, Prague Quadrennial, and Triennale Milano. Vamvouklis contributes to art magazines and publications, including The Art Newspaper and MIT Press. In 2021, he was awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS.

Picture yourself in front of a masterful work of art. Standing there startled, paralyzed, silenced. The flow of emotions take control, words seem to fail you and the only thing left to do is pause in unsettling peace in a desperate attempt to take it all in, not to miss a single second of being there with it, of existing in the presence of ambiguity. Now imagine that work of art surrounding you, allowing you to immerse yourself in its three-dimensional plane while its sheer dimensions remind you of and liberate you from your negligible scale. Picture a work of art that has the power to induce an emotional grasp over a merely intellectual one, reconciling feeling and thinking, reminding you of the unknown as it can only be felt and not fathomed, of the complexity of human nature and consequently habitation. Such is the scope of the art of architecture. This was the experience of architect, photographer and painter Eleni Papanastasiou faced with Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute in La Jolla, California (1963). The affective power, the brilliance, the talent overcame her senses. A pure feeling that no words can be uttered to capture the complexity of visceral reactions, the dual sense of pain and pleasure, the sublimity evoked by the grandness of possibility. It was at that moment that her PhD research formed: finding the words to describe the architecture of emotions. Papanastasiou describes her creative process as interdisciplinary, centered on raw material: nature, language, and tactile structures. This process finds an outcome in the forms of architecture mainly, but also teaching, research, set design, photography, exhibitions, installations and cultural analysis.

Throughout Papanastasiou’s architectural work, the influence of Louis Kahn is evident. The use of béton brut in the name of an honest exposure of raw materials, the play between volumes, the pronounced superimposition of the fundamental triangle, circle and square, the elevation of the pilotis, the expansion of the belvedere perspective, the interchangeable character of interior and exterior spaces, all reveal her preoccupation to design structures that are of the land, not on it. In her 2017 proposal for the New Cyprus Museum international competition, she developed the notion of subtracting material from an elevated, concrete triangular building in order to frame the voids that would allow natural local vegetation, including endangered fauna, to protrude into the building and be explored alongside the antiquities of the collection. Following the prototype of the first Museum of Alexandria, she designed a building intended to highlight equally the natural and the man-made. Both the ground and top floors, sandwiching the historical exhibition, were designed to be green. Papanastasiou included a proposal for the collection display, making sure that navigation, although directed an obstructed at times, allowed for experiencing exhibits in a non-linear, non-didactic sequence, encouraging the viewer to explore artifacts of different eras in relation to one another, prioritizing an emotional intake to a logical one.

Similarly, in her proposal for the Florina Fine Arts School in 2019, she allowed the structure of the building to define its façade, making the use of the space by students and faculty her focal point. Like Kahn, the function of the building was the starting point and the intention was the fluid movement between spaces of different disciplines, allowing the studios of all art forms to be in contact with each other. Once again, Papanastasiou makes sure the surrounding environment and climate are omnipresent in spaces that blend interior and exterior. In both these designs, Papanastasiou concentrates on the experience of the buildings she proposes, on how they will determine the everyday life of the inhabitants and the ways in which they will affect and inspire them to do what they were meant to do there. In essence, she is designing suggestions for navigational experiences, anticipating, if not designating, the psychological trajectory of possible users.

In 2018 at Alphabet City in New York, Papanastasiou published Daydreaming. Diary for a walking distance measure, a photobook of 203 photos of her surroundings. When describing her attraction to the format of artists books, the artist mentions the intimacy and tactility of the medium as opposed to the pedantic dynamic of a wall-mounted object. Much like her architecture, the publication acts as an incitement to walk through and observe intently. In the tradition of psychogeography, Papanastasiou drifts while walking through a spatial reality and documents the outcome of the dérive into a visionary fantasy. The images, all out of focus black and white photos or video-stills read as if they have been layered on top of each other, picturing multiple simultaneous perceptions of the here and now, much like the wanderer who is submerged into a trance. For this optical effect, the artist references Macrovision signals that can cause synchronization failures, like a mistracked videotape that has lost its color. The illustrated surroundings act less as a documentation of a location and more as an imprint of a situation in its natural environment, in its best element. Like in her architecture, the series of photos are a sequence of natural elements within the urban environment, seemingly out of place but actually the protagonists of the story being told.

It isn’t often that an architect calls language a medium and references literature. Papanastasiou explores her interest in the sequence of narration, much like the routes in her buildings, through the format of a book while mentioning the effect induced by the stories of James Joyce, Paul Celan, Sappho and Thomas Symeonidis. She is interested in what has remained unsaid, in the sense of absence. Just like the spatial voids framed by her concrete volumes, the unsaid is implied only by the omissions of actual articulations. In constant quest to demonstrate polar opposites, she plays with binaries in her publication Landscrappings: New York-Sahara (2017). The tactility inferred by the title, prepares the viewer that this tangible experience will be layered and textured. It is an attempt to quietly showcase the close relations of opposites: natural vs. man-made, vast vs miniscule, positive vs negative space, rough vs smooth, empty vs overcrowded, introverted vs extroverted. A series of 12 diptychs, juxtapose shots of the two wildly different landscapes with the intention of depicting that opposites are supplementary. The imaginary line that connects the two is the unuttered by the narrator and left to be discovered by the viewer. The end result creates a complete landscape of silence.

In 2017, Papanastasiou created the set design for the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center Delivery Ceremony to the Greek public. In close collaboration with the director Thomas Moschopoulos, the scenography, and not dramaturgy as she is quick to point out as words are of vital importance to her, consisted of 15 large-scale projections on transparent material that overlapped either fully or partially. Papanastasiou compared the effect of the installation on stage to the layers of a watercolor painting, which is yet another one of her media. Each screening was of a different activity taking place on various parts of the Center. The dream-like atmosphere capturing the multiple potentials of simultaneity throughout the establishment was achieved due to the translucent material of the screens. When all the screens were projected on, the final visual effect became opaque, blurring the lines of what was being shown. The design ultimately showcased the fermentation of all the functions of the center occurring at once: in the Opera House, the Library and the Park. The outcome was the creation of a compete environment in which all actions take place separately but at the same time blend into a complete whole, a cosmos of human activity in the backdrop of the Renzo Piano structure. The sum of the parts became an abstract whole. Once again, the artist demonstrates her infatuation with the vague limits between lucidity and ambiguity and allows doubt to comfortably prevail.

Eleni Papanastasiou lectures at the University of Patras. When discussing about her teaching, she brings up the short-lived educational utopia of the Black Mountain College with the experimental didactic techniques that put forth art making and collective labor as core classes. Predisposed to Barnett Newman’s trial-and-error technique as a more organic and human way of reaching results, she guides her students into exercises in which they succumb to wherever their hand directs them. Patti Smith, famously spoke about the holistic development of the three h’s: head, heart and hand. Papanastasiou engages experience to produce knowledge through praxis, instead of theory. This non-hierachical approach to education, puts emotion and spontaneity in the forefront of creation. She urges the class to trust the effortless, instinctive process and permit the practice to lead to the concept, instead of vice versa. Driven by aesthetics, Eleni Papanastasiou is on a mission to emotionalize architectural design in order to secure its affective absorption. To her there is no linguistic ambiguity in the term kunstwollen. The formative will to art, the artistic volition is “the sum or unity of creative powers manifested in any given artistic phenomenon[1]”.

Evita Tsokanta is an art historian based in Athens who works as a writer, educator and an independent exhibition-maker. She lectures on curatorial practices and contemporary Greek art for the Columbia University Athens Curatorial Summer Program and Arcadia University College of Global Studies. She has contributed to several exhibition catalogues and journals and completed a Goethe Institute writing residency in Leipzig, Halle 14.

[1] Panofsky, Erwin, “On the Relationship of Art History and Art Theory: Towards the Possibility of a Fundamental System of Concepts for a Science of Art.” Critical Inquiry 35, no. 1 (2008): 43–71.

Τελευταία, όταν κυκλοφορώ στην Αθήνα η απώλεια μνήμης μου μοιάζει όλο και πιο απειλητική. Δεν φταίει η ηλικία μου. Ούτε τα χαμένα μου εγκεφαλικά κύτταρα. Η ροή του χρόνου και της ζωής έχει αλλάξει στην πόλη που μεγάλωσα. Η μεταβλητότητα του χώρου συναγωνίζεται τη ρευστότητα των εικόνων και της πληροφορίας στο διαδίκτυο. Βρίσκω τον εαυτό μου εγκλωβισμένο ανάμεσα σε ξενοδοχεία, πολυτελείς μπουτίκ και μαγαζιά πανομοιότυπης αισθητικής που αντικαθιστούν μικρές επιχειρήσεις. Δεν ξέρω προς τα που να κατευθυνθώ. Όλα μου φαίνονται αλλιώτικα και παραδόξως τόσο ομογενοποιημένα. Οι κατασκευές και τα εργοτάξια, μαζί με τα τραπεζοκαθίσματα στο διάβα μου, με περικυκλώνουν και με εκτοπίζουν διαρκώς. Αποπροσανατολίζομαι όσο οι συνδέσεις και οι σχέσεις εμπιστοσύνης που είχα με την Αθήνα, τους ανθρώπους και τις γειτονιές της ξεθωριάζουν. Τη βλέπω να ξεχειλίζει από επιτήδευση, «ποτάρες» και «φαγητάρες», αλλά να ξεμένει από οικεία σημεία αναφοράς, από ανθρώπινο υλικό και κοινωνικό κεφάλαιο.

Η εμπορευματοποίηση και ο εξευγενισμός [1] κάθε σπιθαμής της πόλης «κατεδαφίζει» τα στοιχεία του παρελθόντος, τις χαρές του, τις νίκες του, και σβήνει τον μικτό και λαϊκό χαρακτήρα που γνώριζα. H ορμητική νεοφιλελεύθερη μετάβασή[2] της από το παλιό στο νέο, αγνοεί τις ζωτικές ανάγκες των κατοίκων της και μετατρέπει την αναζήτηση του ανήκειν σε εξαιρετικά ασαφή και αγχωτική διαδικασία. Σε μία πόλη που οι πρωτοβουλίες γειτονιών για τη διασφάλιση της αξιοπρεπούς διαβίωσης αυξάνονται καθημερινά, οι συμμετοχικές/κοινωνικά εμπλεκόμενες καλλιτεχνικές πρακτικές αναδεικνύονται σε δραστηριότητα απόκλισης, που μπορεί να συμβάλλει στην υπεράσπιση του δικαιώματός μας να βιώνουμε τον δημόσιο χώρο ως ελεύθερη περιοχή. Πώς μπορούμε να εκφράσουμε τις απόψεις μας για το είδος της πόλης όπου θέλουμε να κατοικούμε και να συμβιώνουμε μέσω της τέχνης; Με ποιόν τρόπο οι δημόσιες καλλιτεχνικές εκφράσεις αποκαλύπτουν, οριοθετούν ή αμφισβητούν τη νεοφιλελεύθερη αστικοποίηση; Από τη δεκαετία του 1980, η σχέση των καλλιτεχνών με τον αστικό εξευγενισμό θεωρείται αμφιλεγόμενη καθώς έχουν υπάρξει περιπτώσεις που, άθελα τους ή και ηθελημένα, έχουν συνεισφέρει στην ανάπτυξη του. Δεν λείπουν παρ’ όλα αυτά και παραδείγματα που έχουν συντελέσει στο αντίθετο.

Collectif MASI, Tichnos, Collective exhibition Stimoni, MISC.Athens, Αthens, 2023, Photo: Georges Salameh

Ως τέτοια περίπτωση θα μπορούσε να θεωρηθεί η δραστηριότητα της Collectif MASI[3]. Πρόκειται για μια ομάδα που ιδρύθηκε στο Παρίσι το 2018 από τη Μαντλέν Ανηψητάκη και τον Simon Riedler. Πολλαπλοί ορισμοί και χαρακτηρισμοί θα μπορούσαν να αποδώσουν τον πυρήνα της δουλειάς τους, με σταθερό παρονομαστή ωστόσο τον συνδυασμό των γνώσεων και των εμπειριών τους επάνω στην κοινωνιολογία και την αρχιτεκτονική. Πριν μετακομίσουν στην Ελλάδα, είχαν αφήσει το στίγμα τους στο Παρίσι, την πόλη της Γουατεμάλας, το Σαν Χοσέ, τη Λίμα, το Βαλπαραΐσο, το Σάο Πάολο, το Ρίο ντε Τζανέιρο, την Περέιρα, τη Μπογκοτά και την πόλη του Μεξικού με ποικίλα μέσα. Μέχρι στιγμής έχουν δημιουργήσει εφήμερες εγκαταστάσεις στο δημόσιο χώρο, assemblage, τοποειδής (site-specific) παρεμβάσεις, in situ περιβάλλοντα, γλυπτικές κατασκευές, σκηνογραφίες κοινωνικής αλληλεπίδρασης, επιτελεστικά και συμμετοχικά δρώμενα, βίντεο έργα και άλλα. Ανάλογα με τον τόπο στον οποίο βρίσκονται, η εικαστική τους γλώσσα αναδιαμορφώνεται και προσαρμόζεται στον κοινωνικό ιστό, αντικατοπτρίζοντας τις τοπικές συνθήκες. Συχνά μάλιστα αξιοποιούν και δίνουν δεύτερη ζωή σε ευτελή αντικείμενα που βρίσκουν παρατημένα (objet trouvé) προσθέτοντας σε αυτά επιπλέον υλικά καθώς και έντονα χρώματα. Κάθε αντικείμενο που επιλέγουν είναι φορέας προηγούμενων ανθρώπινων εμπειριών, ερμηνειών και χρήσεων. Η επανάχρηση και  η ευφάνταστη αναγέννησή του γίνεται με γνώμονα τις νέες παραδοχές που προέρχονται από τα βιώματα της ομάδας στο χώρο. Η σχέση που αποκτά η Collectif MASI με τα στοιχεία, τα αντικείμενα, και με τις κοινότητες που προσδιορίζουν τον εκάστοτε χώρο, καθορίζει εκ νέου την στρατηγική δημιουργικής σύνθεσης που θα επιλέξει.

Collectif MASI, Persephone, the red carpet, Fertility, Eleusis, 2023, credit Joshua Olsthoorn.

Οι ετερογενείς μεθοδολογίες και προσεγγίσεις της, έχουν σχεδιαστεί με τέτοιο τρόπο ούτως ώστε να προσφέρουν εναλλακτικές και λιγότερο ιεραρχικές μορφές συνύπαρξης, ικανές να επεκτείνουν την κατανόησή μας για την οικοδόμηση των πόλεων και των κοινοτήτων της, όπως επίσης για τη διαφορετικότητα, την πολυπολιτισμικότητα, τη συλλογική ταυτότητα, τη διαπολιτισμική ανταλλαγή και την αναγνώριση των αναγκών εκτοπισμένων και ευπαθών κοινωνικών ομάδων. Στο έργο Πλατεία με θέα. Ανανεώνοντας το αυτοείδωλο μιας πλατείας (2021), που παράχθηκε για το πρόγραμμα φιλοξενίας καλλιτεχνών του Victoria Square Project, Station One AIR 2021, με θέμα Η Ιπποδάμεια εντός Πλαισίου, η ομάδα ενεργοποίησε μια σειρά αλληλεπιδράσεων στην πλατεία Βικτώριας, ένα σημείο της πόλης τραυματισμένο από κοινωνικές και ταξικές αποστάσεις, δίνοντας χώρο για αυτοσχεδιασμό και αυθορμητισμό. Έχοντας ως αφετηρία το νεοκλασικό άγαλμα του Johannes Pfuhl που κοσμεί την πλατεία και αναφέρεται στην Ιπποδάμεια, αρχικά επινόησαν μια παραλλαγή του μύθου της ηρωίδας προκειμένου να της προσδώσουν ένα ενδυναμωτικό τέλος. Σε αντίθεση με τα γεγονότα της πρωτότυπης εκδοχής, στην παραλλαγή της Collectif MASI η Ιπποδάμεια καταφέρνει και σώζει τον εαυτό της. Για την επίτευξη της διάδοσης αυτής της αφήγησης στη γειτονιά, η ομάδα δούλεψε συνεργατικά με κατοίκους της περιοχής. Οι κάτοικοι προσέφεραν φιλοξενία σε οκτώ σεντόνια/πίνακες με διαφορετικές εικόνες που οπτικοποιούν την εναλλακτική ιστορία της Ιπποδάμειας, τοποθετώντας τα στα μπαλκόνια τους. Εκτός από τα σεντόνια/πίνακες, η ομάδα μαζί με παιδιά πρόσφυγες που συχνάζουν στην πλατεία, δημιούργησαν από κοινού τέσσερα κινητά γλυπτά από επαναχρησιμοποιημένα υλικά, όπου Ιπποδάμεια απέκτησε τη μορφή πουλιού. Τα γλυπτά σύντομα μετατράπηκαν σε όχημα/παιχνίδι των παιδιών λειτουργώντας ως αντιπροτάσεις στην στατικότητα και την αποστασιοποίηση που εκπέμπει το υπάρχον δημόσιο μνημείο. Μέσα από αυτήν τη δράση προέκυψαν συμπληρωματικές χειρονομίες δημόσιας σύνδεσης και συμπερίληψης στον χώρο της πλατείας, όπως για παράδειγμα «χαιρετισμοί» ανάμεσα σε άτομα που βρίσκονταν στην πλατεία και σε αυτά που εξέθεταν τα σεντόνια/πίνακες στα μπαλκόνια, προδίδοντας έτσι την κοινή ανάγκη για επικοινωνία, έκφραση και αφύπνιση.

Collectif MASI, Persephone, the red carpet, Innocence, Eleusis, 2023, credit Joshua Olsthoorn

Δύο χρόνια αργότερα, στο πλαίσιο του Προγράμματος 2023 ΕΛΕVΣΙΣ Πολιτιστική Πρωτεύουσα της Ευρώπης στην Ελευσίνα, η Collectif MASI ήταν υπεύθυνη για τη συμμετοχική δράση με τίτλο Περσεφόνη, το κόκκινο χαλί (2023), εμπνευσμένη από τον ομώνυμο μύθο. Για 30 συνεχόμενες μέρες ξεδίπλωνε ένα κόκκινο χαλί μήκους 40 μέτρων και πλάτους 1,5 μέτρου, σύμβολο του θανάτου και της γονιμότητας της ελευσινιακής γης. Πριν την έναρξη της επαναλαμβανόμενης δράσης, η ομάδα είχε έρθει σε επαφή με διάφορες γειτονιές, καθώς και με κοινότητες Ρομά, ώστε να εγκλιματιστεί με την κοινωνική παραγωγή των βιωμένων χώρων της Ελευσίνας και τα υποκείμενα που τους κατοικούν, και να προσκαλέσει τα τελευταία στο δρώμενο. Το χαλί δε βρέθηκε μόνο στο έδαφος, όπως είθισται σε επίσημες περιστάσεις. Μετατράπηκε σε ένα «γλυπτικό» αντικείμενο του οποίου οι όγκοι και η πλαστικότητα καθορίζονταν από την κινησιολογία, τη διάθεση, τη συνεργασία και την πορεία των συμμετεχόντων, που αποτελούνταν από ντόπιους και επισκέπτες. Περιφέρθηκε και απλώθηκε σε διαφορετικά σημεία της Ελευσίνας, μέσα από μία πομπή που έμοιαζε με κατάληψη, αποσυνδεδεμένη από χωρικούς και άλλου είδους διαχωρισμούς. Η πομπή πραγματοποιήθηκε με συνοδεία μουσικής από την τρομπέτα του Ανδρέα Πολυζωγόπουλου, καθώς και χορών και τραγουδιών από τοπικούς συλλόγους (Σύλλογος Μικρασιατών Ελευσίνας – Μουσείο Ιστορίας και Λαογραφίας, Σύλλογος Πελοποννησίων Ελευσίνας, Σύλλογος Ηπειρωτών Θριάσιου Πεδίου, Χιακή Ένωση Ελευσίνος, Συμφωνική Ορχήστρα της Δρέσδης). Ως αποτέλεσμα, μετατράπηκε σε μία θεραπευτική τελετουργία, με ενωτικές και συμφιλιωτικές ιδιότητες, που αντιμετώπισε τον συγκεκριμένο τόπο ως ζωντανό οργανισμό, αναγνωρίζοντας τη σημασία της διάδρασης και της συνυπευθυνότητας για τη διατήρηση της ζωτικότητάς του. Το δρώμενο έχει καταγραφεί και θα παρουσιαστεί στην ομώνυμη ταινία που έχει γυριστεί από τον Joshua Olsthoorn και την Collectif MASI.

Collectif MASI, The Acropolis has left out plate, Collective performance, Eleonas 2023 – Chtonian and Anthropocene, Athens, 2023

Την ίδια χρονιά η ομάδα εργάστηκε επίσης στην υποβαθμισμένη και παραμελημένη περιοχή του Ελαιώνα, και συγκεκριμένα στη γειτονιά Μαρκόνι, για την έκθεση Ελαιώνας ‘23 – Χθόνιο και Ανθρωπόκαινος. Έχοντας περάσει αρκετό χρόνο στη γειτονιά, η Collectif MASI συνέθεσε μαζί με τους κατοίκους την επιτελεστική δράση Έφυγε η Ακρόπολη από το πιάτο μας (2023), που με παιγνιώδη διάθεση ήρθε να δώσει φως στις ανάγκες και τα κρίσιμα ζητήματα που επηρέαζαν την καθημερινότητα τους. Πρόκειται για μία συνάθροιση κατά τη διάρκεια της οποίας κάτοικοι είχαν στήσει ένα τραπέζι έξω από την πόρτα του σπιτιού τους. Σε κάθε τραπέζι είχαν τοποθετήσει ένα πιάτο με ασφαλτικά υλικά και πίσσα που προέρχονταν από τα βουνά μπάζων τα οποία συνθέτουν την τωρινή τους θέα (αντί για την Ακρόπολη που είχαν στο πιάτο πριν), ως προσφορά στους περαστικούς. Μεγάλος αριθμός επισκεπτών πέρασε από κάθε τραπέζι και άνοιξε συζητήσεις με τους κατοίκους, οι οποίοι με τη σειρά τους μοιράστηκαν τις ιστορίες τους αλλά και τα αιτήματα τους για ουσιαστική κρατική μέριμνα. Στη συνέχεια, όλα τα τραπέζια ενώθηκαν σε ένα κοινό. Εκεί συγκεντρώθηκαν οι κάτοικοι για να σπάσουν τα μπάζα με σφυριά ως ένδειξη διαμαρτυρίας αλλά και πράξη συναισθηματικής αποφόρτισης. Ακολούθησε ανοιχτό προς όλους δείπνο, μαγειρεμένο από τους ίδιους, όπου οι συζητήσεις έλαβαν συνέχεια. Η ουσία του έργου εντοπίζεται αφενός στη διαμόρφωση των απαραίτητων συνθηκών οικειότητας και ασφάλειας ώστε να προκύψει αβίαστα ο διάλογος και αφετέρου στην απόδοση του τρόπου με τον οποίο λειτουργεί, ανεπίσημα, μια δημοκρατική διαβούλευση όπου διαφορετικές φωνές εκπροσωπούνται φέρνοντας «στο τραπέζι» ένα πολιτικό ζήτημα. Το να επιτευχθεί η συμμετοχή, τόσο δημιουργικά όσο και κοινωνικά είναι ομολογουμένως μεγάλη πρόκληση. Αξίζει να σημειωθεί πως μετά από δύο βδομάδες ξεκίνησε η διαδικασία απόσυρσης.

Μπορεί τα χρόνια δραστηριότητας της Collectif MASI στην Ελλάδα ως καλλιτεχνική ομάδα να μην είναι πολλά, το κοινωνικό και καλλιτεχνικό της αντίκρισμα στον τόπο όμως δεν είναι καθόλου αμελητέο. Όπως γίνεται φανερό από τα έργα στα οποία αναφερθήκαμε, η δυναμική της πρακτικής τους έγκειται στην αξιοποίηση διαφορετικών τόπων και τρόπων κοινωνικότητας με διακριτικότητα και σεβασμό, και στην ευρηματική ενεργοποίηση όλων εκείνων των δομικών στοιχείων που μπορούν να οικοδομήσουν μια πραγματικά ανοιχτή, ευημερούσα και ενοποιημένη κοινωνία. Είναι γεγονός πως σε εποχές όπως η σημερινή, τέτοιου είδους πρακτικές δεν μπορούν να αντικαταστήσουν την πολιτική δράση, τη διεκδίκηση και την κριτική στους υφιστάμενους κρατικούς θεσμούς. Δεν μπορούν από μόνες τους να σώσουν την πόλη και να κάνουν τους κατοίκους της να ευδοκιμήσουν. Δεν θα επιφέρουν αυτόματα δικαιοσύνη και συστημική αλλαγή. Ωστόσο μπορούν να μας οχυρώσουν από τον κυνισμό, να μας αφυπνίσουν από την απάθεια και να μας κινητοποιήσουν. Μπορούν να γίνουν πολιτικό βίωμα και να μεταλλάξουν την αδράνεια σε αναστοχασμό. Μπορούν να μας βοηθήσουν να αποκτήσουμε (εν)συναίσθηση, να ανακτήσουμε την τρυφερότητά μας και να συντηρήσουμε την απαραίτητη μνήμη προκειμένου να τα επικαλούμαστε πιο τακτικά. Μπορούν ακόμη και να μας υπενθυμίσουν πού πηγαίνουμε και γιατί, σαν μία πυξίδα.

Η Collectif MASI (2018) ιδρύθηκε από την Μαντλέν Ανηψητάκη, αρχιτέκτονα και τον Simon Riedler κοινωνιολόγο. Επικεντρώνεται σε έργα πολεοδομικής σκηνογραφίας και κοινωνικής τέχνης. Έχει πραγματοποιήσει το Δίκτυο σχοινιών στον πολεοδομικό ιστό (Κεντρική και Νότια Αμερική, 2018-2019). H Μαντλέν Ανηψητάκη έχει κερδίσει το βραβείο ARTWORKS και είναι Fellow του Προγράμματος Υποστήριξης Καλλιτεχνών ΙΣΝ (2020). Έχει εκθέσει υλικό αρχείου στο Espace Voltaire, τη Cité internationale des arts (Παρίσι, 2020), το Steinzeit Gallery (Βερολίνο, 2022) και το Evia Film Project (2022). Πειραματίστηκε στη σύνδεση ιδιωτικού και δημόσιου χώρου στο Residency Ateliers Médicis (Pouillenay, 2020) και στο έργο “Crossing Walls” (Nuit Blanche, Παρίσι, 2021). Η συλλογική της περφόρμανς “1 km as the crow flies” (Ecole d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais, 2021) αναγνωρίστηκε ως «εξαιρετική δράση αντίστασης στην πανδημία» από τον Francis Alÿs. Έχει συνεργαστεί με το Victoria Square Project για τα έργα Πλατεία με θέα (2021) και Trikiklo (2022), με την Greenpeace για το έργο Κλεψυδρόγειος (ΚΠΙΣΝ, 2022), με το ΕΛΕΥΣΙΣ 2023 για το έργο Περσεφόνη, το κόκκινο χαλί. Αυτό το φθινόπωρο, η MASI επιλέχθηκε στο Salon de Montrouge (Γαλλία), στο Ελαιώνας 2023 – Χθόνιο και Ανθρωπόκαινος, στο Στημόνι (Misc.Athens) και στο Platforms Project (Αθήνα).

H Μάρη Σπανουδάκη είναι ερευνήτρια, πολιτιστική διαχειρίστρια και επιμελήτρια. Καταπιάνεται με θέματα τα οποία συνδέονται με κοινωνικά κινήματα, πολιτικές ταυτότητας, λαϊκό πολιτισμό και pop κουλτούρα, θεσμική κριτική, μορφές κοινότητας και εγγύτητας, διαχείριση αρχείων και μελέτη εκθέσεων τέχνης. Η εκπαίδευσή της περιλαμβάνει πτυχίο Επικοινωνίας, Μέσων και Πολιτισμού από το Πάντειο Πανεπιστήμιο, μεταπτυχιακό τίτλο Πολιτιστικής Πολιτικής & Διαχείρισης από το City (Πανεπιστήμιο του Λονδίνου) καθώς και μεταπτυχιακό τίτλο στην Ιστορία των Εκθέσεων Σύγχρονης Τέχνης με εξειδίκευση στην έρευνα από το Central Saint Martins (Πανεπιστήμιο των Τεχνών του Λονδίνου). Ασχολείται ενεργά με την παραγωγή, την επικοινωνία και τη διοργάνωση πολιτιστικών εκδηλώσεων, ενώ έχει επιμεληθεί εκδόσεις, κοινοτικά έργα και εκθέσεις σύγχρονης τέχνης στην Ελλάδα, το Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο και τη Γερμανία, τόσο εντός όσο και εκτός διαδικτύου. Υπήρξε υπότροφος του προγράμματος Start – Create Cultural Change (2017-2018), και το 2019 βραβεύτηκε από την ARTWORKS για την επιμελητική της πρακτική, στα πλαίσια του Προγράμματος Υποστήριξης Καλλιτεχνών Ίδρυμα Σταύρος Νιάρχος (ΙΣΝ). Το 2023 επιλέχθηκε να συμμετάσχει στο πρόγραμμα φιλοξενίας UNIDEE «Ούτε στη Στεριά ούτε στη Θάλασσα» (Ενότητα IV) στην Ιταλία. Έχει γράψει κείμενα και άρθρα για καταλόγους εκθέσεων, βιβλία καλλιτεχνών και περιοδικά σύγχρονης τέχνης. Από το 2017, είναι το έτερον ήμισυ της γυναικείας καλλιτεχνικής/επιμελητικής συνέργειας This is not a feminist project, της οποία η δουλειά έχει παρουσιαστεί στο Μέγαρο Μουσικής Θεσσαλονίκης, στο Eleusis European Capital of Culture (Ελευσίνα), στο A-DASH και στο Εθνικό Μουσείου Σύγχρονης Τέχνης (ΕΜΣΤ) στην Αθήνα. Είναι επίσης ιδρυτικό μέλος του Σωματείου Εργαζομένων στη Σύγχρονη Τέχνη στην Ελλάδα, ερασιτέχνις φωτογράφος και dj, και συλλέκτρια αρχειακού υλικού και βινυλίων.

[1] Χαρακτηριστικά παραδείγματα ο Μεγάλος Περίπατος, η Ομόνοια, το Πεδίον του Άρεως, η Ακαδημία Πλάτωνος, η μεταφορά των Υπουργείων από το κέντρο σε «κυβερνητικό πάρκο» στην ΠΥΡΚΑΛ, ο λόφος του Στρέφη (που φαίνεται τελικά ότι σωθεί χάρη στις παρεμβάσεις των κατοίκων), η πλατεία Εξαρχείων, το Μεταξουργείο, το κλείσιμο του κινηματογράφου Ιντεάλ κ.α.

[2] Η ιδιωτικοποίηση και η ανάπλαση περιοχών, η στεγαστική επισφάλεια, η επέλαση των διαμερισμάτων βραχυχρόνιας διαμονής, η έκρηξη των ενοικίων, η μείωση περιοχών πρασίνου σε πάρκα και πλατείες, και η καταστρατήγηση τυπικών προβλέψεων της νομοθεσίας προς όφελος της τουριστικής ανάπτυξης. Δημόσιες διαβουλεύσεις παρακάμπτονται και αρχιτεκτονικοί διαγωνισμοί περιορίζονται ή/και δεν εφαρμόζονται. Όταν ο αστικός σχεδιασμός γίνεται αντικείμενο ιδιωτικής δωρεάς τότε αυτόματα το δικαίωμα στη διαμόρφωση της πόλης παραχωρείται στη διακριτική ευχέρεια ευεργετών που δεν είναι κάτοικοι της εκάστοτε περιοχής, αρχιτέκτονες, ούτε καν ειδικοί επί του θέματος.

[3] Το όνομα Masi προφέρεται όπως η ελληνική λέξη μαζί στα γαλλικά.

Γλώσσα πρωτότυπου κειμένου: Αγγλικά

The trolley bus is taking me to Stefania Orfanidou’s studio in Pagrati, the region of Athens where I grew up and moved from years ago. I know that sense that the day is over when the trolley bus turns right after Kallimarmaron stadium — the sound of the machine as it switches lines, resembling that of a deep, long breath. I think of Rena Papaspyrou, Stefania’s neighbor, an iconic Greek artist, who said to me once that “nostalgia is nonsense”. The recollection of these words comforts me, because it really is nonsense. I’m standing in front of the building where Orfanidou lives and works, among the square and the cafes, and I know, that sense of familiarity is not derived from a nostalgic emotion and -let’s admit it- the illusion of ownership that comes along with it. Right there, on that piece of public space I’m sensing instants of a past life escaping to the present and that transgression is by itself, one charming and uncanny connection with my surroundings, here, now.

Stefania is expecting me in a bright spacious dining room, with its furniture and objects carefully put in place. Beside a gracefully organized workstation, a sleek surface of a dining table accommodates a few of her self-published books: Pendulum, Cold Turkey, Jaguar Sun. Later, she would admit to me that this neat surface was rather busy a few minutes before I arrived. There, on the table and up until the clean empty wall surface of its background, dozens of her printed photographs had been spread over. It is a ritual she performs regularly: she selects a group of printed images and disperses them, she arranges and re-arranges them to discover well-hidden narratives, unconscious linearities that inhabited her lens when these stills had been captured. During this ephemeral display, it is not unusual for her to discover affinities of her more recent images with earlier projects, and in that case, she won’t hesitate to archive them back in the series where they belong. The process is indulging, it enhances her concentration, it allows her to observe strange kinships and contradictions among her images, and ultimately, it endorses her to imagine spaces, as immensely broad this term can be. In fact, when one attempts to delve into Orfanidou’s artistic and professional journey up until today, they come across with the infinite methods one can employ to serve the studies of space.

Stefania Orfanidou studied Architecture at the Polytechnic School of Thessaloniki. Until then, her childhood was shared between Chania, Crete and Kavala — all coastal cities, with a rich cosmopolitan history and evident urban traces of a multitude of cultures, ethnic and religious communities they have inhabited them over the centuries. In Thessaloniki, Stefania joined the student’s Photography Club and along with her studies, she started taking analogue pictures of her everyday life in the city. A few years later, she returned from the faculty’s trip in Tokyo with her first dummy of a photobook. A little after that, she spent a semester in the Photography School in Complutense University of Madrid and that time, she came back with the commitment to register at Stereosis School of Photography. Her visit in L’ Aquila resulted Pendulum, a book she has been working on for four years and one of her most personal works. From Berlin, she came back with the photos that composed Unseen, her 6-copy self-publication that was part of her thesis for the PARA-Poesis Post Graduate Program of the University of Thessaly. Today, Stefania Orfanidou is working as an architect and a photographer, residing in Athens permanently for the first time, and she already has at least three open project files, she feeds with new photos every day.

What occurs to her in those cities? During her studies, each change of location, each travel was an incident that unfolded another chapter of her career as an artist. Today, she avidly extracts material from the cities she inhabits, as well as from her regular excursions away from them. Orfanidou works in such a systematic and conscious way, it is impossible for me to think that she is simply amazed by the impressions from the urban and natural landscape, nor by the life and the character of the various urban and natural environments she finds herself into. Her academic and professional occupation with architecture has evidently provided her the means to get over such clichés. Stefania is blown away by her actual subjects, in the most cinematic way. In Cold Turkey, her body of work with photos taken between 2015 and 2018, a pair of bare feet is floating over our sight, cutting in half a building and a sky of cement. Next take: windows in order, each one covered -or blindfolded- by white sheets. Take three: afternoon at the beach, the figure of a girl in the center of the composition, her back covered in a towel resembling a golden cloak. The photographer drives our gaze towards the subjects, that may be human or non-human forms, objects or architectural elements that, quoting Barthes, “rise from the scene” and stand as “sensitive points and wounds”. Cold Turkey is slang for the sudden abstinence from a substance by an addict.

In Orfanidou’s works living and nonliving elements become storytellers, protagonists in a greater narrative where the lines between space and experience are undistinguishable. As active agents of the emotional or even the mythical, her subjects candidly traverse the layers she meticulously recognizes in the notion of space and visually brings to our notice. In her ongoing project Profanation Exercises, faces, details, material and human bodies, banal objects, intensely present in their own conjunction of time and space, form keyholes from where one can spy on a broader, surreal narrative. Her frames, motionless, yet intense and unquestionably pulsing, come from the domestic, the natural and the public realm, nonetheless, familiarity is equally prevailing in all of them. In Orfanidou’s work “inhabited space transcends geometrical space” as with her lens she follows -discreetly, yet daringly- lived experience, that is after all, what actually transforms our surroundings. In the same series, she might capture a snake-like path in a valley, a plaster statuette forgotten in a backyard, a loved one’s face under the sun. At the same time, the light she chooses to photograph in (afternoon hours, mostly), her gesture, her gaze, all address a unified environment, one that life has marked forever.

The city of L’Aquila in central Italy is one of these environments. There, the artist came to heal with a narrative of two ruptures, a personal and a collective, two major events: L’Aquila is the city where her parents met, and an area severely hit by a catastrophic earthquake more recently. Orfanidou went there to contribute as an architect to the restoration of the city and brought back with her a body of work that constituted her self-published book Pendulum. Within her images, the artist narrates the city’s wounds with gentle affection, reflecting in awe the collective trauma, as this is traced in space, in parallel with the rupturing point of time that signifies the beginning of one’s own existence. The remnants of human motion, the emptiness, the absence, her vague fragmental memories tell a profoundly human and timeless tale.

These nuances of memory that hide below a pile of stones, on a feather stuck on a wooden electricity column, under the tanned skin of someone we love, are also in the core of her ongoing project Cache. Stefania is using as a title this technological term, referring to the “hidden” data storage, to continue her research on the narratives that quietly inhabit the surface of physical reality. As she is out in the city and its outskirts, collecting material to complete the project, she envisions Cache in its final version occupying space itself. I am thinking that this would be inevitable, as her editions already consist 3D environments and I can already imagine how smoothly a viewer could immerse into her work in three dimensions, as naturally as visiting another unknown, yet familiar place.

Stefania Orfanidou was born in 1989. She is a photographer and an architect currently living and working in Athens and Chania, Greece. In 2019 she founded the architecture studio Chora Atelier, that integrates research, architecture and supervision, construction, interior and furniture design, books’ editing and scenography. In February 2019 she published the book Pendulum, a visual recounting of a return journey to the city of L’Aquila in Italy. In 2020 she received the SNF Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS. In 2021 she published the book Cold Turkey that deals with the multiple levels of addiction, the relationship of dependence and mourning, the path to redemption. The same year she co-curated and participated in the art installation Daedala at Yiali Tzami, Chania, Crete. In 2022 she was nominated by VOID to join FUTURES European platform of contemporary photography. In her work, a personal experience or event, real or imaginary, is the starting point for fragments’ stitching and the composition of tales, where the irrational, the reasonable, the uncanny and the secret may coexist harmoniously. Her photographic work has been featured in magazines, galleries and festivals in Greece and abroad. Her work belongs to public and private collections.

Christina Petkopoulou, (Athens, 1992) is a free-lance curator, researcher and writer based in Athens. She has studied Archaeology and History of Art at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and the Paris I-Pantheon-Sorbonne and completed a master’s degree in Cultural Management at the Panteion University of Social Sciences. She is a member and the in-house curator of the A-DASH team, a researcher and curator of the online art projects a time of her own by Zoe Chatziyannaki and Athens Report by Anna Lascari. She has curated exhibitions and public programs (Lipiu, 2020, Playing Ground, Automatic Transmission, 2019, Liminal Aristeidis Lappas solo show, Praxitelous 33, 2016, Choro-graphies-Points of flight, Artscape Athens, 2014 and more). Her texts have been published in several editions and catalogues (The ArtNewspaper Greece, Lipiu, Vera Chotzoglou, Bona Fide, State of Concept, 2021, Ammophila II, Under the Burning Sun, 2021, The Feminine Sublime, 2019 and more). She has worked for the Greek Contemporary Art Institute (ISET) researching and documenting its archive and she has also collaborated with several cultural institutions such as the Athens Biennale (2013, 2015), Art Athina (2014, 2015) and Archaeological Dialogues (2015). In 2016, she was chosen for the Neon Foundation curatorial exchange program in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery and in 2019, she received the SNF Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS. She also works as a teacher and a copy editor.

¹ Talking Heads, Heaven, 1979, from album Fear of Music

² Barthes, R. (1993) Camera Lucida (R. Howard, Trans.), Vintage Classics

³ Bachelard, G. (2014) The Poetics of Space, London, England, Penguin Classics.

Γλώσσα πρωτότυπου κειμένου: Αγγλικά

The imminent threat of the collapse of cultural subjectivities that has steadily been looming, partially due to the torrent of digitization, has brought about a resurfacing of the study of the universality of the senses by multiple disciplines. The sensorial revolution, as defined by anthropologist David Howes, endorses a “more relational, less holistic perspective on “the body” and its various modes of “being-in-the-world”[2]. At the same time several concerns surrounding issues of disembodiment and dematerialization have been explored in theoretical research internationally. Art theorist Fay Zika has suggested that the claim for the unification of the senses and the arts can no longer be limited to the modernist era, rather should be extended to include today’s digital media through which new means of production and forms have emerged[3]. The use of super-media, data bases, mining, search engines, image processors and simulations in the production of art has revealed a dynamic multi-sensual approach to aesthetics, one that includes interactive participation and puts access and management of information in the core of the aesthetic experience. “Digital media is characterized by the multisensorial immersion and interaction”[4], permitting multiple experiences and perceptions of an artwork, one that departs from the singular consumption of a work through the prism of the artist’s intentionality. The artistic practice of Theodoros Giannakis uses these theories as a starting point to explore digital art and further the discourse between aesthetics and technological ethics.

Theodoros Giannakis is in his third year of his PhD at the Athens School of Fine Arts. He is preoccupied with the topic of cosmotechnics, “the unification of the cosmos and the moral through technical activities, whether craft-making or art-making”[5]. The theory, formed by Yuk Hui, presupposes that there is no singular understanding of the notion of technology but several that vary from culture to culture, allowing numerous perceptions of morality to be acknowledged and accepted. Hui warns that “The Anthropocene is a global axis of time and synchronization that is sustained by this view of technological progress towards the singularity”[6], building a case for a rethinking of the definition of technology as formed by the rather dated, Eurocentric Heidegger argument. “To reopen the question of technology is to refuse this homogeneous technological future that is presented to us as the only option.” Giannakis is precisely interested in exploring the variety of subjective experiences of art, not only from culture to culture but even between different states of mind of an individual encouraging thus a reconsideration of technology’s effects.

The artistic practice of Theodoros Giannakis is not articulated in well-defined bodies of work. Instead it takes form as a constant flow with no firm beginning or end, not unalike the constant flow of information we are constantly exposed to. In both his solo shows, in Eleni Koroneou Gallery in Athens in 2018 and Union Pacific in London in 2019, there is a sense that that two did not occur in sequence but in synchronicity. The works fuse into others and co-exist with what has been and what can be imagined to be. The artworks seem to be in perpetual progress, only briefly pausing to be displayed till they rematerialize in other contexts, through different iterations that allow for additions and reductions, but mostly a rethinking of their purpose, use and effect. Much like his existential ponderings that have stigmatized an entire generation that can barely remember a life before digitization, time has been rendered redundant: “the Anthropocene heralds a collapse of the distinction between geological time and human time”[7]. In his solo show Primitivism mirage, Giannakis presented a collection of paintings, sculptures and installations. The works manufactured largely with 3D reconstruction, fabrication and default machine learning algorithms retell narratives of the past, present and future in co-existence. A blending of time through recontextualized symbols and mythologies achieves an atmosphere of otherworldliness, simulating past perceptions of futurism, largely drawn from early science fiction novels with an emphasis on William Gibson’s Neuromancer. The repetition of perspective grids in Giannakis’ practice reveals the desire to achieve a continuity, a view towards what is yet to materialize and a belief in the cyclical passage of time. The video installation of a real-time rendering of the continuous alternation of night and day through endless sunsets and sunrises in front of an infinite ocean accentuate this point even if only realistically but never real.

His following solo show at Union Pacific in London seemed to be a renegotiation of the previous show, fittingly entitled Always Already aka a primitivism mirage again. He repeats the phrase “always already” to himself, as if thinking out loud. It seems imperative to remind himself that this is the single solid, de facto truth to which he must constantly remember to return in order to ground his inside monologue. Always-already in phenomenological terms refers to the irreducible essence of a thing, being is always-already a given. Althusser claimed that an individual is always-already a subject, that their roles are ideologically predetermined. You get a feeling that this doctrine acts as a lifejacket for Giannakis, reassuring the plausibility of his subjectivity and releasing him from the heavy burden of what he feels to be his major responsibility: moralistic, all-encompassing objectivity as a visual artist. Always-already is a constant return to physicality and all its inherent constraints, something to wrap one’s mind around, even if only fleetingly. It allows one to refocus on the essence of things rather than ideas and meta-ideas surrounding them.

Philosophy of mind, the specialized approach to the study of the relationship between the mind and the body and the physical world is always present in the artist’s work. Various iterations of the Gorgoneion symbol, an ancient talisman said to be commonly worn by Zeus and Athena as a symbol of their descent from deities reappear. The Gorgoneion is always a representation of a, rather rare for Greek antiquity, confrontational, terrifying head, seemingly unattached to a body. In various primitive cultures, similar mask-like symbols are thought to have acted as reminders in order to scare the owner from doing something wrong. The gravitas of responsibility, the acceptance of the limitations of the genealogy of subjectivity and the need to remain in the substantial rather than the mental are in constant negotiation in the forms of Giannakis.

More Common Wild Flowers was published in 1948 by botanist John Hutchinson, known for his research in phylogeny of plants and the evolutionary relationships among species. Theodoros Giannakis tweaks the title of this study into More Common Mirrored Wild Flowers, 2016. The verbal addition to the title reveals part of his preoccupation concerning subjectivity and heterodefinition but the artist maintains the essence of the original’s purpose: the attempt to search for the evolved relationships between new-found species of existence. More Common Mirrored Wild Flowers references the term quantum satis, the minimum physical property necessary for any interaction. As if Giannakis is searching for what human relations can be reduced to before being redefined into a different ontology altogether. The classification reference that he carefully selected reveals the need to create a system of categorization of information, data, input, whether digital, emotional or physical. His artists books seem to be part of a much larger exploration for the artistic methodology that would allow the artist to classify and ultimately comprehend the powers at work in the creative process. More Common Mirrored Wild Flowers includes a series of short form essays that read as a stream of consciousness, interspersed by illustrations indicative of his aesthetic that seem indecipherable in a non-scientific context. Giannakis mentions that these artist books are vital to his artistic process as they act as notes in which he is drafting out his thinking. They read as a type of auto-fictional phenomenology, a study of structures of consciousness as experienced by the narrator. Phenomenology proclaims that the central structure of an experience is its intentionality, how it is addressed or directed towards something, an object. Giannakis suggests that the interesting thing about his writing is that it was not initially intended to be read by anyone, it was not therefore addressed to an object, which is what grants him the freedom for unfiltered exposure of sensual experiences.

How does matter compose itself around me? the artist wonders in the essay Wild Night. In possibly the most existential of all the texts included in the book, Giannakis travels through the fragmented materiality of the urban surrounding, alluding to a new-found natural environment. Mentions of nature are interspersed in the texts, in an attempt to return to the always-already safe space. The artist concludes in his own disembodiment, a type of voluntary human extinction in a posthuman future that finally succumbs to AI takeover. The sort of annihilation that can only be caused by vast amounts of matter that clutter the mind. A type of evaporation that can only be sensed and not explained, a unification of the artist’s senses and his artwork. The distinction of senses seems to have collapsed, the capacity to transcend their limits has been achieved, aesthetics and ethics have finally merged and posthumanism has prevailed.

Evita Tsokanta is an art historian based in Athens who works as a writer, educator and an independent exhibition-maker. She lectures on curatorial practices and contemporary Greek art for the Columbia University Athens Curatorial Summer Program and Arcadia University College of Global Studies. She has contributed to several exhibition catalogues and journals and completed a Goethe Institute writing residency in Leipzig, Halle 14.

[1] Theodor G. Tzimas, More Common Mirrored Wild Flowers, epub, artist book, 2016.

[2] David Howes, Charting the Sensorial Revolution, Senses & Society, Vol. 1 Issue 1, Berg, 2006.

[3] Φαίη Ζήκα, Απορία Τέχνες και Σκέψεις Κατεργάζεται, Άγρα, 2018.

[4] David Howes, Charting the Sensorial Revolution, Senses & Society, Vol. 1 Issue 1, Berg, 2006.

[5] Yuk Hui, Cosmotechnics as Cosmopolitics, e-flux journal, Issue 86, 2017.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Interview of Yuk Hui by Giovanni Menegalle, A thousand Cosmotechnics, Research Network for Philosophy and Technology, 2018.

Γλώσσα πρωτότυπου κειμένου: Αγγλικά

The streets (and walls) of Athens have been covered — truly covered — in graffiti for as long as I can remember. As a child visiting from the United States, I didn’t know what to make of these indecipherable tags and scribbles. More broadly, I remember how my feelings about Athens itself were consistently ambivalent. Sometimes I reveled in the city’s chaos; other times I was certain that it was the ugliest place I had ever seen. But as I grew older, and started to travel more widely, Athens’ particularities steadily became more striking to me. Not only did I begin to feel a deep admiration for its flagrant disregard of my opinion, but more specifically, I came to realize how the city’s graffiti contained multitudes. Visiting year after year, a neighborhood walk became many things: a political education (ΕΞΩ ΤΟ ΝΑΤΟ! — NATO, Get Out!); an invaluable source for vocabulary (perhaps best not rewritten here); and finally, a reminder of how a city that always felt both old and new, crumbling yet unchanging, could be the site of ongoing struggle and reinvention. Today, I see these tags and murals as inextricable components of the city’s fabric, as much as the venerated antiquities or devilish topography.

For the multi-disciplinary artist Alexandros Simopoulos, graffiti has also been a near-constant presence in his experience of living and making work in Athens. As early as high school, graffiti served as a creative outlet for Alexandros, establishing an underlying layer that he would later return to and cover over, again and again, in different ways. He continued to produce work while a student in university — where he focused on humanitarian law and international relations, both of which would also express themselves in his artistic work — but still, he could not get graffiti out of his mind. After university, he was once more drawn to the art form, producing graffiti-inspired t-shirts, skateboards, and prints. His timing was propitious: street art was having what Alexandros calls, “its second renaissance in Athens” amidst the growing financial crisis. He quickly realized that his adolescent hobby could become so much more.

Alexandros explains, “The story of graffiti and street art is complex and contradictory. Even the very terms of ‘graffiti’ and ‘street art’ have highly contested histories, which continue to generate intense debate inside and outside the community. In Athens, though, this story had a local twist during the height of the financial crisis. At the time, there were endless reports from major international media outlets about street art in the Greek capital [for example: How Angry Street Art is Making Athens Hip]. The angle was that there must be some key relationship between the country’s economic situation and the city’s street art. The easy narrative: graffiti as resistance, with its images providing an accessible aestheticization of the country’s problems, such as urban poverty, alongside a manifestation of its ‘brave spirit.’ But very few of these articles undertook any in-depth research; rather, I think graffiti provided a free and edgy illustration for their pieces. The crisis put Greece in the spotlight and street art became a handy example.” He then reveals, with a knowing smile, “I am pretty sure that some artists made political work on certain streets because they knew it would be spotted by journalists and later published in, for example, The International New York Times. Easy narratives can be manipulated by both sides…”

Yet as the old adage goes, there is no such thing as bad publicity. As Alexandros explains, “Over the past decade, street art has also created tourism for Athens. Many people travel here to paint — or, at least, they used to — we call them ‘graffiti tourists’. In Greece, it’s easy to work outside, especially since making graffiti is not heavily criminalized and the weather is good. The popularity of street art has certainly contributed to the touristification of the Athenian center, for better and for worse. For my generation, it has certainly been for worse: the recent inundation of visitors, and Airbnbs, has outpriced us all when it comes to housing.” He then reflects, “But what’s important to remember is that there was plenty of street art and political graffiti in Athens before the crisis. Additionally, street art has been used for gentrification for quite some time, all over the world, Berlin being a celebrated example (though we see it in London, New York, Barcelona and other places as well). Artists move where there is space and where it is cheap. All of these phenomena are not confined to a few trendy neighborhoods in post-2010 Athens.”

Alexandros understands these complications better than most: he has engaged with the street art community on many levels, at home and, lately, abroad. In Athens, he not only produced his own work, but collaborated with Cacao Rocks, another prominent practitioner [as well as an inaugural SNFA Artworks Fellow], to run a gallery in the city center dedicated to street artists. As he tells me, “Several years ago, Cacao and I shared a studio in the building’s basement. The gallery was on the ground floor. There, we had more or less free rein to do what we wanted. For over three years, we invited people we knew and gave them a welcoming space to experiment with formats. We even flew in artists from abroad to do mini-residencies and exhibit their work, bringing international points of view to Greece. In addition, the gallery worked as a small arts school for the kids of the neighborhood. It was an amazing experience — at its peak, it was a vibrant hub for varied people to meet, collaborate, experiment, and the spark for many new projects. The gallery was at the core of a small street art scene that was growing bigger and bigger. I remember that Cacao and I once had a completely sold-out show — but no matter how many gallery exhibitions we held and no matter how much work we sold, we lived in a parallel world: we were definitely not part of the contemporary art scene in Athens, nor was it something which we were interested in joining at that time.”

As Alexandros looks back on this heady time, I can hear the mixture of pride and frustration that accompanies the position of the perpetual outsider. Being on the edge — whether as a street artist excluded from contemporary art or as an artist living in Athens, a place that remains on the “periphery” of the global art world — affords a great deal of freedom. But it can also be isolating. Regardless, Alexandros reminds me that periphery is always a relative concept. He refers to the example of the 2017 edition of Documenta to underscore how the art world is never monolithic: at every level, there are insiders and outsiders, irreconcilable narratives, and overlapping spectrums of power. He says, “Documenta portrayed Athens as a locality of chaos and crisis and, at the same time, rebirth and self-determination. It was a narrative drawn from many sources, which made it appealing for different people, especially artists. Still, the event ultimately came from the outside, and thus its narrative exoticized Athens. It didn’t, perhaps couldn’t, explore all the complexities contained here.”

Over the past few years, Alexandros’ own path reveals his efforts to bridge these many competing approaches and gaps — between street and art, politics and space, Greece and abroad. As he tells me, “What’s so special about street art, more than anything, is its directness. It can reach people in their everyday lives. I’m interested in working across worlds, not just speaking to curators and critics. I want to create work that communicates with everyone.” In pursuit of a more legible visual language, Alexandros first left Athens to study illustration and visual arts in London. He then returned, now with a wider focus on making work that deals with the idea of public space — not illegally but as an invited guest. He tells me, “I’m not painting outside much anymore. I don’t even consider myself a street artist at this point. Instead, I am contending with the difference between what I thought I was doing and its perception from the outside. Conceptually, I am thinking about questions such as ‘What happens in your body when you paint graffiti? What happens in your mind? What kind of narratives do you come across, what kind of people, how are they communicated — and how has all of this transformed cities around the world? Concretely, my expanded point of view means I now work with a greater range of people, all of whom have widely disparate perceptions of street art and public space more broadly. Through these interactions, I am exploring my relationship to public spaces from other people’s perspective. I try to actively engage them in the creative process or even make them part of the work.”

As a former student of humanitarian law and international relations, Alexandros’ broadening point of view continues to ripple outward, well outside of Greece. For example, this past summer, he spent three months in Berlin and, prior to that, six months in New Mexico as a Fulbright Fellow. He also received public commissions to paint murals in locations ranging from Hungary to Portugal, and even Greenland. He reflects on the privilege, and challenges, of extending his work in this way. “Traveling creates a global community and network of artists who can exchange skills and ideas. This has always existed in the street art scene — while a piece might not travel, the people who make these public spaces are able to move and bring their knowledge with them to new settings. This does present some complications, though. When I travel to make work, I am confronting a place I’m not from, where I might be unaware of specific tensions or histories. The only way to overcome this deficit is to spend as much time there as possible before making any work and to meet and interact as sincerely as possible with people from different communities. Wherever I go, I try to respond to those around me and make the art meaningful for everyone involved. This has become the most challenging and rewarding part of the process for me.”

Alexandros’ new perspective has not only helped him with his work overseas, but to look at Greece with fresh eyes. This was evident in Still Here Tomorrow, the Artworks group exhibition held at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation last summer. In the show, Alexandros’ piece effectively juxtaposed views from inside and outside, embodying his desire to understand other points of view while retaining his local roots. The installation, titled Best served old (Anti-austerity artists are impressing the tourists), mixed street art motifs such as pigeons and stray dogs with aesthetics taken from ancient Greek art — red and black-figure vase painting and portrait statuary — as well as the pan-Balkan blue evil eye. According to his artist statement, the entire installation was meant to evoke the pandering displays in tacky souvenir shops. But beneath the dark humor, Alexandros had a positive message. “Many of the images on these ceramics relate to stories of tradition. Tradition in Greece (and elsewhere) has been the basis for countless horrible, nationalistic, and extremely conservative narratives. But, in some instances, it can also point us towards more radical ideas. For example, tradition can help foster a connection to the land, by which I mean the actual soil — something that has become revolutionary again today since it runs counter to so many globalized forces.”

Still, as we discuss how to synthesize such opposing views, it seems fitting that we end our conversation on the subject of land. After all, street artists are ever-rooted to their physical surroundings. And so we conclude by returning to the city of Athens one final time, with Alexandros saying, “In so many places in the West, public space is tightly regulated: you go to your work and after you go to designated places to enjoy yourself in very predetermined ways (bar, restaurant, theater). In between, public space is used only as a passage, with few actions produced there. But in the words Martyn Reed, I like to think of streets as ‘repositories of meaning for those who occupy and move through them, as places of contested perceptions and negotiated understanding.’ We can see this in Athens, where public space is chaotic and put under many competing demands. People, bikes, cars, and café tables fight over finite space. It’s not always pleasant, but I love the plethora of communication that happens in these increasingly squeezed plots of land. It excites me to see Athenians using every bit of public space available to them; you find people everywhere. The city’s residents continue to spend a large amount of time outside, together. Here, there is an intensity of community that I don’t find in other cities in Europe or the United States. For me, that’s the essential quality of Athens, that’s a big part of what makes it special.”

Alexander Strecker is pursuing a PhD in Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University. His research explores how artistic practices register the contradictions inherent in ideas of crisis, periphery, and technology, with a focus on how these tensions are felt acutely in contemporary Greece while also resonating worldwide.

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