Performance Biennial :“No Future”

The first edition of the Performance Biennial will take place on 23 June to 4 July in Greece. Emerging from DIY self-organised cultural practices appearing during these past years in Athens, in a present without a future, this event seeks to critically interrogate the role of performance, historically and in the present, in relation to political and social materialities and imaginaries. Playfully subverting the term ‘biennial’ into a self-organised practice, the event will test self-instituted forms of culture and politics. Under the title “No Future” this guerrilla biennial will bring together forms of artistic, political and theoretical practice and discourse questioning the potential of a collective refusal to a referred futurity.

The Performance Biennial in its first iteration will begin in the occupied cultural space of Green Park, Athens, open out to embrace the park of Pedion tou Areos (transl. to Field of Mars – one of two central parks in Athens), and then depart via boat from Piraeus to the island of Cythera that geographically belongs to the Prefecture of Athens. Seeking to problematise the role of performance in the neoliberal narrative we will collectively engage in ongoing disruptions between the institution and the self-instituted, between buildings and parks, between the centre and the periphery, between urban and rural. The event will bring together both conventional and non-conventional investigations including: performances, talks, lecture-performances, workshops, discussions, interventions, city walks, community works, actions and screenings.

The notion and the myth of the future based on normative regulatory culture and a capitalist imaginary embraces a drive for ongoing progress, improvement and expansion. The operation of “debt” also implies a bet on the future as Lazzarato argues “by training the governed to “promise” (to honour their debt) capitalism exercises “control over future” … possessing the future in advance by objectifying it’ (2012: 46). What happens to political and cultural practice when it turns its back on “the future”? When the relation to the future appears fugitive? When continuity of the canonical is disrupted and a promised futurity cannot yet be imagined? Can this ruptured futurity offer us new possibilities to engage with the present and produce new relations with time? Can such impotential practices of a “here and now” offer new ways to engage with a “then and there” that in turn sketch different worlds to come?

Building on DIY experiments such as the reactivation of Embros theatre and Green Park in Athens, this inaugural Performance Biennial proposes a series of paradigm shifts in the modes of practicing, and of taking part in the political and cultural in order to critically interrogate the potential for radical experiments in cultural production. This guerrilla Performance Biennial will operate through a practice of “self-curating” as assembling. Resisting hierarchies and categorisations the programme consists of timezones of conflictual “fields” and practices that will be co-curated with the participants in a changing here and now.

Participants

WHW (What, How & for Whom), Ant Hampton, Adrian Heathfield, Britt Hatzius, If I Can’t Dance (Frederique Bergholtz & Susan Gibb), Joe Kelleher, Alan Read, Nick Ridout, PA Skantze & Matthew Fink,  Joulia Strauss, Ash Bulayev, Jonas Staal, Snejanka Mihaylova, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Collective Skart, Miguel Robles-Duran, Urban School of Ruhr (Feredica Menin & Laura Lovatel and others), Andy Field, Ilan Manouach, Kristine Hymoller & Dina Roussou, Thierry Oussou, Gary Anderson, Wayne Lim – Sonia Kazovsky – Giulia Crispiani, Dieuwke Boersma, Katrin Wölger, Andreea Micu, Akoo-o Collective, Chrysanne Stathakos, Kleoni Manousakis, Alice Colquhoun, Mette Sterre, Sakina Shakur, Maria Mavridou, Maria Sarri, Vasia Paspali – Angeliki Chatzi – Alexia Karavela, Extra-Conjugale, KangarooCourt, Platon Mavromoustakos, Chrysanne Stathacos, David Whelan, Chryssa Tsampazi, Tasos Stamou, Georgos Makkas, Elpida Orfanidou, Giorgos Sampatakakis, Evi Prousali, Iliana Fokianaki, Eypraksia, Despina Panagiotopoulou, Demosthenes Agrafiotis,  Letitia Calin, Maria Schina, Elpida Rikou, Chryssa Tsampazi, Alejandro Alonso Diaz, Margarita Athanasiou, Maria Lalou, Maria Gorgia,  Lisa Alexander & Hari Marini, Mediterranean Declaration, Natasha Papadopoulou – Yiannis Loukos – Eleftheria Togia – Stephanos Theodorakis Erica Scourti, Adam Gallagher, Wen Chi, Sara Hamden,  Teresa Maria Diaz Nerio, Giorgos Papadopoulos,Vicky Kyriakoulakou, Sofia Touboura, Michalis Adamis, Dora Economou – Kostas Tsioukas – Leda Dallas, Kostis Velonis, Georgia Karydi & Hypatia Vourloumis, Sofia Simaki, Ioanna Gerakidi, Despina Sevasti, Franscesco Kiais, Chara Kolaiti, Demosthenis Agrafiotis, Christos Giovanopoulos, Ioanna Kleftogianni, Evangelia Ledaki, Marina Gioti, KOSTADIS, Alyssa Moxley, Stefanos Chytiris, Eleni Kalara, Mary Zygouri, Eirene Eftathiou, Iro Apostolelli – Agni Papadeli Rossetou – Danae Papazian, Iliana Dimadi, Nelli Kounelli, Thalia Raftopoulou, Dimitra Kondylaki, Theophilos Tramboulis, Michalis Moschoutis, Nektarios Pappas, Stefanos Pavlakis, Stefanos Chandelis & Eva Koliopantou, Evi Kalogiropoulou,  Το Κοριτσι κοιμαται, Geo Kakoudaki and more.

Initiated and organised by Gigi Argyropoulou, Vassilis Noulas and Kostas Tzimoulis

In collaboration with an expanding collective of people including Natasa Siouzouli, Emi Kitsali, Elisabet Xanthopoulou,  Eleni Kalara, Stefanos Mondelos, Elina Mandidi, Hypatia Vourloumis, Sofia Dona, Myrto Xanthopoulou and more.

Performance Biennial :“No Future”

24 June – 4 July 2016 Athens & Cythera Island

A Self-Organised biennial for Performance, Art and Politics

More Info: https://performancebiennial.org

Every Surface is a Blackboard

Every Surface is a Blackboard, 2016 

Wood, acrylic, plaster, plywood, MDF, chalks

122 x 35 x 6 cm

NA Fund Academy 2016: "We need places where we can fall in love"

In his 1977 lectures "How to live together," Roland Barthes addressed the philosophical problem of the coexistence of individuals through the lens of the everyday: food, things, places… Achieving the utopia of a collective, "idiorhythmic" subject, requires us to overcome arbitrary division as much as to open spaces of shared interests. How can relations of commons be translated into cultural methods to build a convivial society? Can the sense of emplacement give new meaning to our engagement with the global issues of the world? In times of acceleration and separation, intuitive practices of the local and slow life constitute a precious knowledge. A growing number of citizens are becoming involved in a horizontal process of ecological and social "transition" that takes its roots in simple gestures of everyday life: growing food, preserving seeds, bartering knowledge, and building tools of resilience to prepare for the multiple crises that lie at the horizon of our complex, yet fragile systems of organization: debt, peak-oil, anthropogenic climate change, crop yields and a general decline of efficiency rates.

From June 20 to 24, Nature Addicts! Fund will host its fourth mobile academy in the city of Basel, where the fund has a 3-year partnership with Institut Kunst to bring international artists to the new exhibition space Der Tank located within the School of Fine Arts, FHNW Academy of Art and Design .

Curated by Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro, the academy "We need places where we can fall in love" invites 12 emerging European artists to debate on the cultural implications of the shift to relationships of places and commons, interact with local "transitioners" who are developing practical alternatives from urban agriculture to local currencies, and look at how issues of rhythm, space, living and working together, are addressed by a number of artistic initiatives in and around the city.

Participants: Inge Ceustermans, Etienne Chambaud, Sjim Hendrix, Valentina Karga, Sophie Krier, Tiphanie Mall, Katarzyna Przezwańska, Simon Ripoll-Hurier, Paul Smyth, Julia Stern, Hanes Sturzenegger, Yesenia Thibault-Picazo

Contributors: Ugo Bardi, Béla Bartha, Bastiaan Fricht, Chus Martínez, Mathilde Rosier, Pierre Tandille, Isidor Wallimann, Marilola Wili 

Nature Addicts! Fund was founded in 2011 by Bertrand Jacoberger with the objective of supporting artists and arts organizations concerned with environmental and sustainability issues. The mobile academies hosted by NA Fund aim to bring together emerging artists and researchers from all forms of expression to debate, learn from each other and allow new creative impetus to emerge. The traveling format serves as a source of inspiration as each country, each artistic community has its own unique outlook on the world, influenced by its geographic, political, economic and social situation. In 2012, NA Fund was partner of the commission and conference program "On Seeds and Multi-species Intra-Action" at dOCUMENTA (13). In 2013 and 2014, Le Centquatre Paris was funded in a partnership that saw five artists benefit from residencies, productions and exhibitions. In 2015, NA Fund gathered ten critics, curators and scholars in Venice to discuss perspectives and needs of artistic research in the anthropocene.

June 20–24, 2016

Basel

Switzerland

http://na-natureaddictsfund.org/

Περιεχόμενα παράθυρου

Αυτό που συγκινεί το βράδυ του Νοέμβρη για παράδειγμα.

Γεωμετρία κάθετα τοποθετημένων τοίχων του σπιτιουύ

της πίσω αυλής

Η φυσιογνωμία του μπαλκονιού με τα πλυμένα ασπρόρουχα.

Με σινική μελανωμένος ο ουρανός.

Βούρτσες των δέντρων οι σκιές

η και απλά η μπάλα απο σπουργιτιών φτερά,

που πέφτει κατακόρυφα.

Η εικόνα του κομμένου, ανοικτού ορθογώνιου παρηγορεί.

Παρηγοριά της ορατότητας

Helmut Heißenbüttel

μετ.Δέσποινα Kαρασάββα

Mathias We Have a Problem

Mathias We Have a Problem, 2016

(Based on Goeritz's Messages series,1950s–60s)

Wood, oil, acrylic, golden foil, glass, masking tape

70 x 39 x 7 cm

The Equilibrists

The Equilibrists is a project organized by the New Museum, New York and the DESTE Foundation, Athens in collaboration with the Benaki Museum, Athens, on the occasion of DESTE’s 33rd anniversary. This project continues the DESTE Foundation’s history of supporting talented emerging Greek artists. On the occasion of its anniversary, rather than focusing on its past, the Foundation is looking forward with a focus on the future of young art in Greece.

The exhibition is curated by Gary Carrion-Murayari and Helga Christoffersen with Massimiliano Gioni.

The Equilibrists brings together work by a new generation of young Greek and Cypriot artists working in Athens and abroad. The artists were selected by the New Museum curators, Gary Carrion-Murayari and Helga Christoffersen, drawing on their own research and the recommendations of a team of more than 20 advisors made up of curators, artists, and writers in Greece, and following trips to Athens, Thessaloniki, Cyprus, London, and Berlin.

The 33 artists and collaborations in the exhibition have adopted radically diverse approaches towards reflecting and engaging with the world around them. Working across painting, sculpture, drawing, film & video, and performance, the artists in The Equilibrists capture the fragility of the present moment through a shared approach to materiality. Their work touches upon themes as varied as historical memory, shifting notions of cultural identity, the politics of architecture and infrastructure, and the surfaces and flows of the digital realm.

This group of artists, ranging from their mid-20s to mid-30s, has emerged amidst a climate of political and economic instability, part of an international ‘young precariat,’ whose challenges have only increased in the past decade. Instead of being paralyzed by these circumstances, these young creators have responded with a spirit of improvisation and cooperation. The exhibition also reflects the role of these artists in sustaining and invigorating the artistic community through artist run spaces, residencies, and other platforms which continue to gain widespread international attention.

The Equilibrists is in keeping with the spirit of the ongoing DESTE Prize which has honored a promising young Greek artist biannually since 1999. It also reflects one of the fundamental aims of the Benaki Museum, which as a historical museum, regularly seeks to bridge the past with the emerging present. Finally, this project also continues the New Museum’s ongoing commitment to international emerging artists, highlighted by its signature Triennial exhibition which will next take place in 2018.

LOUKIA ALAVANOU,DIMITRIS AMELADIOTIS,MARIA ANASTASSIOU,ELENI BAGAKI,MARGARITA BOFILIOU,MARIANNA CHRISTOFIDES,MANOLIS DASKALAKIS-LEMOS,PETROS EFSTATHIADIS,EIRENE EFSTATHIOU, ZOI GAITANIDOU, GIORGOS GERONTIDES,STELIOS KALLINIKOU,YANNIS KARPOUZIS

LITO KATTOU, KERNEL, IOANNIS KOLIOPOULOS,CHRYSANTHI KOUMIANAKI,ORESTIS MAVROUDIS

IRINI MIGA,OLGA MIGLIARESSI-PHOCA,PETROS MORIS,PERSEFONI MYRTSOU & EVA GIANNAKOPOULOU, MALVINA PANAGIOTIDI,ALIKI PANAGIOTOPOULOU,EVA PAPAMARGARITI,ZOË PAUL,SOFIA STEVI,ANASTASIS STRATAKIS,VALINIA SVORONOU,PAKY VLASSOPOULOU,MYRTO XANTHOPOULOU, NATALIE YIAXI

Duration: June 17 – October 9, 2016

Benaki Museum, Athens

http://deste.gr/exhibition/the-equilibrists/

Le fauteuil du marquis de Sade aux enchères

Une centaine de manuscrits, lettres et objets, ayant appartenu au sulfureux marquis, dont le fauteuil sur lequel il écrivit la plupart de ses oeuvres et de rares pièces de théâtre, sont mis en vente mercredi en France.

Les pièces proposées par la maison de vente parisienne Drouot proviennent des rares documents sauvés des flammes à la mort de Sade le 2 décembre 1814.

Ce qui ne fut pas brûlé fut mis dans un coffre et scellé derrière des étagères de la bibliothèque du château familial de Condé-en-Brie, dans le nord-est de la France.

«De ce jour un tabou total s'est abattu sur la famille», se souvient Thibault de Sade, un descendant du marquis dont les parents ont redécouvert les oeuvres de leur ancêtre peu de temps après la fin de la Seconde guerre mondiale. Devenu «un complet inconnu», le nom même de Sade avait été «gratté sur l'arbre généalogique».

«Toute leur vie, nos parents se sont battus pour faire connaître Sade, contre les préjugés, contre les mensonges et pour la vérité (...) Ils ont donné mission à leur cinq enfants de continuer ce combat pour la connaissance», poursuit Thibault de Sade à l'origine de la vente.

Parmi les pièces proposées figure le fauteuil du marquis de Sade (entre 40'000 et 50'000 euros). C'est dans ce fauteuil, en partie d'époque Louis XIII, que Sade écrivit la plupart de ses textes (y compris quand il fut enfermé à Vincennes, la Bastille ou Charenton).

Un tableau, attribué à Jean-Marc Nattier et représentant le père du marquis est estimé entre 30'000 et 40'000 euros. Comme son fauteuil, ce tableau accompagna Sade de cachot en cachot.

http://www.24heures.ch/news/standard/Le-fauteuil-du-marquis-de-Sade-aux-encheres/story/22105867

The baker with his fiancée

Genredarstellung eines Bäckers am Teigtrog (rechts) und seiner Verlobten beim Verkauf (links). Beischrift: „Johann Georg Kieß Beckenmeister – Regina Hugin – 1804“. Die Nachnamen zeigen, dass es sich nicht um ein Ehepaar handelt. Meist waren solche Kannen Hochzeits- oder Verlobungsgeschenke (ergänzter Henkel)

http://www.durlacher-stichekabinett.de/durlacher-weinkruege/fayence/

Life Styles in the Golden Land

Johannes Schweiger,“Life Styles in the Golden Land / page XVI -1, FSG Classics, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux New York, paperback edition, 2008, designed by Guy Fleming: Joan Didion – Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1961)”, letter press print, black soy-based ink on 100% cotton rag paper (Stonehenge, rising), white, 250gsm, 67 x 33cm, 2012 

Chez Eux: Unseen Collections

Chez Eux: Unseen Collections maps a network that

has not yet been historically recorded. It uncovers

an unseen and intimate contemporary art circuit and

depicts the real and substantial presence of people

intersecting in each other’s lives, revealing influences

on their artistic practices through a reality that is

reliant on memory.

The art collections of 25 Greek artists covering a

spectrum from the 70’s until today, are exhibited in

Chez Eux: Unseen Collections. The project displays

works that have been gifted or acquired through exchange

between artists. These artworks are accompanied

by selective archival material, illustrating the

relationships between them; the archive varies from

books, ephemera, correspondence, photos, drawings,

clothes and other paraphernalia of emotional

value. The artists discuss their relationships in interviews

presented as video installations.

In Chez Eux: Unseen Collections, historiography is

perceived as a creative practice and a form of production,

which ultimately embodies the process of

uncovering and discovering. It uncovers artworks

which may have never been exhibited in the past,

demonstrating the hidden treasure that can be

found in a domestic context and discovers relations

between artists that were shaped in the context of

an intersection of different routes.

Adopting the installation model of the 90’s relational

aesthetics, the basement of Project Space is being

recast into a referential simulation of the actual

domestic environment where the project has been

conceived, formed and developed until the moment

of its final execution and transformation into a group

exhibition.

In this room, the curator creates her own collection

of collections. Her bedroom functions as a spatial

metaphor of a digital mood-board, referring to the

postmodern construction of “pastness” in contemporary

youth microblogs (tumblr, etc). It creates an

aesthetic practice based on self-indulgent nostalgia.

The space takes the form of a “third place”, a location

between a white cube and a domestic environment

that oscillates between the domestic and

public space. Here, the experience of the work is

achieved through participation in this stimulated

representation that extends out of the walls of the

show and enters the project’s website, a platform ultimately

integrated into the curator’s own referential

universe, blurring the lines between historical and

fictional narratives.

In Chez Eux: Unseen Collections, the researcher becomes

the architect, inhabitant, curator and narrator

of the artists’ personal stories

Cur.by Stamatia Dimitrakopoulos

Participating artists:

Loukia Alavanou, Benjamin Verhoeven/Andreas Angelidakis, Dakis Joannou/ Antonakis, James McLardy/Dimitrios Antonitsis, Meret Oppenheim/Manolis Daskalakis Lemos, Florian Goldmann/Panos Haralabous, George Lappas/Dionisis Kavallieratos Elise Provencher and Fillipos Kavakas/ Konstantin Kakanias,Νan Goldin/Katerina Kana,Nino Stelzl/Stelios Karamanolis and Toula Ploumi, Rhinoceros (Audio drama)/ Miltos Manetas,Petra Cortright/Theo Michael, Francis Alÿs/Maria Papadimitriou, Martin Kippenberger/Katerina Würthle and Michel Würthle/Panos Papadopoulos,Elisabeth Penkel/Rena Papaspyrou,Bia Davou/Angelo Plessas, Zoë Paul and Santiago Taccetti/Mima Razelou,Takis/Kostas Sahpazis, Zoe Giabouldaki, Panos Tsagaris, Rachel Garrard/ Alexandros Tzannis, Markus Selg/Jannis Varelas, Ben Wolf Noam/ Kostas Varotsos,Michelangelo Pistoletto/ Kostis Velonis, Johannes Schweiger/Poka Yio,Yorgos Vakirtzis

09.06.16 – 25.06.16

“CHEZ EUX: Unseen Collections”

Circuits and Currents

http://circuitsandcurrents.info

http://www.chezeuxunseencollections.com/