Memo for labor

     Ryan Eckes, General Motors, 2018

Lighthouse

Lighthouse, 2017

Concrete, wood, acrylic, oil, iron 

240 x 27 x 28 cm 

Xάρτινο Πιρπιρί ανάγνωσης και εξάσκησης της μνήμης

Δε θα μιλήσεις ποτέ αν δε θυμάσαι διαρκώς'
Xάρτινο Πιρπιρί ανάγνωσης και εξάσκησης της μνήμης
(Αρχιτέκτονες της φάλαινας σε διάλογο με τη Φοίβη Γιαννίση)

Ξαναφτιάχνουμε το πατρόν του Πιρπιρί αλλά αυτή τη φορά από μόνο μία συνεχή επιφάνεια, η οποία κατασκευάζεται από περίπου 1000 ρόμβους. Οι ρόμβοι επιτρέπουν την πτύχωση της επιφάνειας του ενδύματος. Φοριέται κανονικά με το γιλέκο μπροστά ή αντίστροφα σαν ποδιά, με το γιλέκο στην πλάτη. Τα σχεδιασμένα σύμβολα χρησιμοποιούνται ως ‘κείμενο’, σημειογράφημα (ή παρτιτούρα) για αυτοσχεδιασμό απαγγελίας. Ανάλογα με τον τρόπο φορέματος διαβάζουν και αυτοσχεδιάζουν οι γύρω σου κοιτώντας σε ή διαβάζεις εσύ που το φοράς ως ποδιά. Ο ρόμβος είναι το σχήμα που κυριαρχεί στην υφαντική λαϊκή τέχνη σε όλον τον κόσμο, εξαιτίας του τρόπου που εξυφαίνεται η επιφάνεια πόντο πόντο. Οι ρόμβοι όμως την ίδια στιγμή γίνονται ‘ομιλούντα’ σύμβολα, αναπαριστούν τον κόσμο και τις κοσμοαντιλήψεις των κοινωνιών που χρησιμοποιούν τα υφαντά, όπως για παράδειγμα το μοτίβο του Ασπροπόταμου, το οποίο είναι κάτι παραπάνω από τον παραπόταμο του ποταμού Αχελώου και τον τόπο γέννησης του παππού μας. Ο Ασπροπόταμος είναι και ο ουράνιος θόλος με τους 12 αστερισμούς στα μάτια της/του εξασκημένης/νου αναγνωστριας/τη. Τα σύμβολα που φέρουν οι ρόμβοι μας είναι βασισμένα σε ποιήματα της Φοίβης Γιαννίση. Κοπάδια, πλυντήρια, τραίνα, φτέρες, κατσίκια, αυτοκίνητα, μοίρες, τυριά, σιδέρωμα, δουλειά, λεφτά, στρατός, γάμοι και διαζύγια, βουνά, πλαγιές και πεδιάδες, εξωσωματικές γονιμοποιήσεις και άλογα μπλέκονται, επαναλαμβάνονται και ξανα-αποκτούν νόημα όπως όταν ανακαλούμε στη μνήμη τα συμβάντα του παρελθόντος προκειμένου να λύσουμε το γρίφο του μέλλοντος. Το Πιρπιρί ανήκε σε μόνο μία γυναίκα. Τη συνόδευε στον επίγειο βίο της και στο επέκεινα. 

The Greek gods don't come in winter

The Greek gods don't come in winter

and seldom in person. They speak through

others. Even in summer. Their voices seem

far off and very fast. It;s difficult also 

because we can't trust the people who say

they are translating. When the gods come

in the dawn, there is soon the odor

of roses and warm linen. They sit in their 

high-backed chairs and mostly watch

the children. Especially when they are

running and laughing.They applaud

by humming when we read our poems.

They hum differently when the poems

are about lights and parallel geologies

of the sea. But they hum most of all

when the poems are about are about distance and desire

Jack Gilbert

Φλυαξ

The face of this Apulian red-figure bell-krater depicts a phlyax play, a popular burlesque  dramatic form that developed in the Greek colonies in South Italy in the 300s B.C

Christ's Womanly Wounds

Christ’s Holy Wound from the Prayer Book of Bonne de Luxembourg.
Attributed to Jean le Noir, before 1349

Excerpt:

There are medieval religious instructions for praying with this type of illuminated manuscript which invite the viewer to caress and kiss the lacerations. In one existing manuscript, the pigment has been rubbed off of the lips of the wound’s opening by an especially devote patron (Monti). Other illuminated books feature an actual cut in the paper that runs the length of the wound; the viewer is invited to penetrate the slit, fostering a transcendent viewing experience whereby the sensual allows access to a spiritual moment (Monti). Thus, Christ’s vaginal wounds are the ‘‘object of adoration and love but also the object of violence’’ (Lochrie, 190). They are fetishized as mystical parts of a perfect whole and abruptly isolated into bloody ailments subjected to profane treatment. This duality is often apparent in the treatment of women in the contemporary era: they are reduced to the somatic, yet specific body parts are idealized; their beauty is revered, but their sexuality is debased. The fascination with and fear of the female form is a longstanding truth of the human, especially male, psyche. Female sexuality and desires have been dismissed or demonized, as the vagina dentata evidences in its visual incarnations from the Gothic to contemporary periods.

Text by Liz Lorenz 

http://cargocollective.com/lizlorenz/writing-1/Christ-s-Womanly-Wound

https://issuu.com/lizlorenz/docs/recycled_origins_essay

The diary of a seamstress

The Chrism (‘The Court Jesters’ series), 2017-18

acrylic, oil, pencil and oil pastel on canvas

150 x 150 cm

Art meets fashion. Catalyst for this encounter of contemporary Greek artists, fashion designers and “craftsmen of fashion” has been the Notebook (dated  1958) of a seamstress, who studied  at the Couture House of  Tsopaneli.

The finding has been retrieved by Marika Handji’s grandson, the architect George Kalivis and the sewing lessons of Tsopaneli to his students provide us with an alternative reading of modernity.  From the knowledge of savoir vivre, the learning of pattern cutting for women’s clothes to the set of instructions for technical use of sewing machines, those notes not only are the source of interpretation of an era but also the phenomenon in the year 1958 of Greek fashion itself. Besides it was an epoch when modernization is spread over all social layers and diffused throughout new lifestyles, new labor conditions and leisure time, such as entertainment, excursions, parties, and holidays. 

Fashion, gauge of men and women’s behavior, at the end of 1950s, breaks the limits of «decency» and «beauty» of bodies becoming the ultimate example that highlights modernity.  A series of radical changes manifest through fashion (new styling applications, new behaviors, spreading out of mini skirt and other accessories, new body representations, etc.).  Hence, fashion interweaves with gender social phenomena and institutions and therefore contributes to the democratization of the new and especially to the democratization of the desires. Garments concern every relationship of human beings with their body, alike the relationships of human body with the society.

It is the encounter of artistic creation with design practice. Artists and fashion designers show through their artworks their personal reading of this finding. It is their way to examine and recompose the narration of modernity’s diffusion. While they ask themselves questions about the way Greek reality assimilates, processes and appropriates the phenomenon of fashion or even devalues its production.  

The exhibition re-examines the Notebook of Marika Handji as starting point for the 18 invited artists and fashion designers , because it has the characteristic of “written fashion”, namely of fashion that is translated into language and design, with identifiable elements of new behavior (at savoir faire) and decorative abolition (at the patterns).

It is a valuable token by an unknown apprentice seamstress, who reveals the traces of a profession that was eliminated from the historic and artistic research and narration. The minor aesthetic practice of dressmaking that represents this woman may have sunk into oblivion the years that followed, however its worth of revisiting and rescuing it from the silence and “the aftermath of the later ones” – as the British historian E. P.Thompson notes – with a series of other craft activities, such as weaving, cutting fabrics, even the “utopic” craftsman and all those female figures of household economy that developed during the pre-industrial era. And this not because of nostalgic contemplation. But because today they acquire crucial importance and perspective to all versions of post-industrial economy and new cultural developing practices. The Notebook of the apprentice seamstress gives new meaning not just to the subjective “archive fever” but also to a series of neglected aesthetic methods of modernity that are connected to the craftsmanship and during the last three decades many despised them.

“How far could you go?” This is the question that every generation asks itself, looking for the modern it receives multiple answers through the artworks of the participant artists. The Notebook of the seamstress is transformed into a tool of recording and reviewing. As “Diary” it becomes the background of change in social behaviors that influence not just women, sex matters or ethics but also demanding the re-distribution of social power.  Besides, even nowadays the question wording simply changes – “how far can ideas go?” – emphasizes the changes of fashion and clothing. That reinforces the battlefield between the old  guard (the couture houses trapped in the role of the épater le bourgeois of the dominant social classes) and the “new barbarians” that feel that have the right to demand whatever could float in the atmosphere of contemporary air. 

Participating:«A Whale’s Architects», Bespoke Athens (Vassilis Bourtzalas), ΦΙΡΜΑ GYPSY GLOBALES, Angelos Frentzos, Elias Kafouros , Demi Kaia, George Kalivis, Irini Karayannopoulou, Sophia Kokosalaki,  Maria Mastori,  Olga Miliaresi – Foka, Leda Papakonstantinou, Eva Papamargariti, Alexandros Psychoulis, Nana Sachini, Serapis Maritime Corporation, Stefania Strouza, Kostis Velonis, Zeus & Dione.

Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation ( from the archive with clothes by Tsopanelis’ House )

The exhibition “The Diary of a Seamstress. An Imaginary Biography” curated by Efi Falida, is presented at the gallery a.antonopoulou.art. April 20^th –  May 26^th2018