Wednesday, December 18, 2019

La cuccagna


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQwAU6klke0





La cuccagna, released as A Girl... and a Million, directed by Luciano Salce, 1962 



Saturday, December 14, 2019

Αφηγήσεις της ρυπαρότητας : Βρώμικο και λασπώδες

Αφηγήσεις της ρυπαρότητας : Βρώμικο και λασπώδες 
Dirty and Muddy

Βιβλιογραφία /Bibliography 
REF/ Works Cited / films
White, Anthony,  Lucio Fontana: Between Utopia and KitschGrey Room, No. 5 Autumn, 2001, pp. 54-77 


Lucio Fontana, Ceramica spaziale, 1949 

Galimberti, Jacopo,  The Intellectual and the Fool: Piero Manzoni between the Milanese Art Scene and the Land of Cockaigne, Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 35, No. 1, 2012, pp. 75-93 

Piero Manzoni, Socle du monde (base of the world), 1961 https://kostisvelonis.blogspot.com/2019/12/socle-du-monde.html

Rohrer, Denis, In the land of Cockaigne
https://www.alimentarium.org/de/node/3968


La cuccagna, released as A Girl... and a Million, directed by Luciano Salce, 1962 
PongeFrancis, Η φωνή των πραγμάτων, μτφρ. Χριστόφορος, Λιοντάκης, Αθήνα : Γαβριηλιδης, 1999  


Ghostbusters Movie CLIP - He Slimed Me (1984)


The Green Slime (1968) trailer


Slime People, The 1963 Trailer

Lovecraft Howard PhillipsΟ τρόμος του ΝτάνγουιτςμτφρΠανώριος Μάκης,   Αθηνα : Αιολός,  1986 

Sartre, Jean Paul, Το είναι και το μηδέν, μτφρ. Παπαγιώργης Κωστής, εκδ. Αθήνα : Παπαζήσης, 2008  

Krauss, Rosalind, “Informe” without Conclusion. October, Vol. 78, Autumn 1996, pp. 89-105.1996

Bois, Yve-Alain & Rosalind  Krauss, «Base materialism» in L' Informe. Mode d'Emploi. (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1996).

Bataille, Georges «Le bas materialisme et la Gnose», Documents, no 1, 1930


 Charlotte, HealyA Radical Disregard for the Preservation of Art: Robert Rauschenbergs Elemental Paintings, Interventions Journal, issue 1, Vol.4  


Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helena Iswolsky, Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 1984.
Georges Bataille, Ηλιακός πρωκτός, μτφρ. Παπαγιώργης Κωστής, Αθήνα Νεφέλη, 1980.

Olli  Lagerspetz , Dirt and refuse in a world of Things  

Campkin,  Ben,   Placing “Matter Out of Place”: Purity and Danger as Evidence for Architecture and Urbanism, Architectural Theory Review, 18:1, 46-61, 2013 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13264826.2013.785579



Αδεξιότητα και νεωτερικότητα  (We Are All Clowns)
Τέχνη στο συγκείμενο  ( Art in context )
ΑΣΚΤ -Χειμερινό εξάμηνο
Αμφιθέατρο νέας βιβλιοθήκης,  Πειραιώς 256

Accurata Utopiae Tabula Das ist Der Neu entdeckten Schalk Welt oder des so offt benannten, und doch nmie erkannten Schlaraffenlandes


Accurata Utopiae Tabula, an "accurate map of Utopia”. Johann Baptist Hommann’s map of Schlaraffenland published by matthaus Seutter, Ausburg, 1730 


Socle du monde




Piero Manzoni, Socle du monde (base of the world), 1961
Iron, bronze
82 x 100 x 100 cm

Ceramica spaziale





Lucio Fontana, Ceramica spaziale, 1949 
Polychrome ceramic
60 x 64 x 60 cm

Unfinished Ode to Mud



Our soul resents it. Our feet and wheels trample it. “Mud” is how we address those we hate, paying little attention to the injustice done to the mud. Does it really deserve the constant humiliation, attacked with such an atrocious persistence? Mud, so despised, I love you. Mud is pleasant to the noble hearts because it is despised. In my essay, oh mud, fly in the face of your detractors! How beautiful you look after the rain has softened you — beautiful, you, carried on blue wings! 
When not only the distant, but all that is close-by has turned dark and like in a dream with a funeral, the rain beats suddenly, bruising the earth. That is when the ground starts melting into mud. And those of pure gaze adore it. The azure kneels upon the slimy body broken by the hostile wheels; during long intervals from a deep teal to an opinionated passage, who knows where, liberty and devotion guide our steps. This is how a savage spot turns into a loveliest place giving off a powdered odour.      
From there on, the earth’s finest flower, the bane of artist’s life, mud flies best, and defends itself best against the feet of its detractors. All by itself, it resists our direct approach, forcing long detours on stilts. And it’s not due to the lack of hospitality or a surplus of jealousy, since she immediately attaches herself to whoever is coming by —  that dog of mud keeps jumping on me, holding onto my foot; and she holds with tenacity, no matter her age — the older, the stronger the grip: When I trespass, when I enter her domain, she doesn’t let me go, but fastens onto my limbs, lassos them with elastic traps, grapples them like wrestlers lying on the ground.
What do you think about such lasting connection? You find it overbearing? Not me. An emotional tie I can readily forgive. I certainly prefer it to indifference: better to be caked in mud than making little progress. I adore it, although my pace is slackened; and I am grateful in spite of all the detours forced upon me. 
Mud appeals to the valiant. You left your footprints on her face — she’s got your number and will pay back. Your destiny is sealed. She dies clenching her jaws. Mud perseveres, you have to wait for her to dry before she lets go. Its stick-to-it-ive-ness is that of ivy. You cannot brush her off. Try better scraping with a knife, scratching to dust, — that’s right, dust, which shares the destiny of all the carbohydrates, including ourselves. 
Certain books, whose time has passed — they have done all the damage, as well as all the good  they could, had claimed mud as the origins of man. Man is an imposter and is not without his pretentious claims. Certainly, the claim was meant as derogatory, to keep us down, to strip us of all the pretensions. Actually it is derogatory for both mud and man. There are no obvious ties of close kinship between the two of us. Man’s flesh is too pink for that — we’ll talk about man in his turn. As for the mud’s pretensions, the most important of them is that there’s nothing we can do to it and that we cannot give it any structure. 
It carries on the way snails and earthworms do when they pass through it, and reciprocally, the way mud passes through them – phlegmatically like slime passes through certain fish. If I were poetically inclined, I could continue the way I did earlier when talking about mud-wrestling, lassos and ivy; but myself, just like all the others who happen to be bogged down and should let mud dry, waiting on the side of the road, I need to let it dry now in this text. Although truth be told, I cling to that mud a lot more than the mud clings to my poem; so, it is really up to me to quit putting mud into words, especially since by definition, mud is hostile to form and is the bastion of resistance to all things artistic; in fact, I believe it entices me in order to frustrate. Therefore, the best I can do to its glory andmy  shame is diligently quit wrestling with this unfinished ode….
Francis Ponge 

https://francispongeonlineanthology.wordpress.com/2017/08/02/mud-the-unfinished-ode-a-text-of-francis-ponge-translated-by-vadim-bystritski/


He Slimed Me - Ghostbusters




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_pR6mUYtOo

Ghostbusters, 1984 directed  by Ivan Reitman. 



The Green Slime (1968) trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g79_ljVC5Wk


The Slime People (trailer) 1963

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad8ajnQDbVw



Fiato d'artista di Piero Manzoni



https://youtu.be/7gbQV8nITRw





The forty-five Corpo d’aria (literally: body of air) that Manzoni made in 1959 consist of a large white balloon and a stand in a specially made box. The buyer could purchase only the base and an empty balloon, or the balloon filled with the artist’s breath. This latter version was more expensive: 200 lire per litre of breath. Each balloon can hold 300 litres. In this series Manzoni plays with the aura of the artist and the desire to preserve everything he produces.

Sunday, December 1, 2019

Objects


Inanimate objects are always correct and cannot, unfortunately, be reproached with anything. I have never observed a chair shift from one foot to another, or a bed rear on its hind legs. And tables, even when they are tired, will not dare to bend their knees. I suspect that objects do this from pedagogical considerations, to reprove us constantly for our instability. 
Zbigniew Herbert 

𝙖.𝙊.-𝙗.𝙘.(after Olympics - before crisis)



Kostis Velonis, Athens Community in the Kibbutz 
Hard paper, marble, ceramic, wood, acrylic, brick, 2010

Fifteen years after the end of the 28th Olympic Games in Athens, Greece has not recovered from the crisis. Traveling back to 2004-2010, a re-visiting through the spectrum of culture reveals a lot about the climate then and now. In September 2004, just after the successful hosting of the Olympics, Greece was slowly embarking on a economic downturn, invisible to the majority of the population. It led on April 23rd 2010, to then Prime Minister George Papandreou to announce that Greece was entering the International Monetary Fund (IMF) support mechanism; the beginning to an endless path of austerity.

This exhibition sheds light on a five-year period of rich audio and visual cultural production in the interval between those two events: the end of the Olympics, and the entry into the IMF mechanism. The prevailing global narrative on Greece at the end of the Olympics was a positive one: the cradle of European thinking, the mother of Western culture, succeeded in organising a highly celebrated aesthetically pleasing event that was viewed by millions all over the world. In just five years Greece would have a completely different profile on the front pages of international press, as a bankrupt country, not civilised enough, in a collapsed financial state due to corruption and over-spending of European grants; a country that over-borrowed but was begging for more money. A country that wanted to deceive the economically stable Northern Europe, with Greeks portrayed as "lazy".

This exhibition attempts to trace the footprints of this change over the past five years through examples of cultural production of the period, and to contour what kind of climate was prevailing in Athens by the end of the Olympics, and how it shifted but also to look for possible examples of utopian or dystopian representations for a future for Athens and Greece through the narrative of artists, filmmakers, musicians and designers. 

a.O. - b.c. zooms in specifically on the question of art and its relationship to the fetishistic narrative (both foreign and of the Greek society) of contemporary Greece as a continuation of its ancient heritage as well as its reflection on the concept of “Greekness”, and furthermore aims to unearth the articulation of a glossary that contoured the cultural production of the period. The exhibition aims to highlight the efforts traced in cultural production that formed the basis but also the introduction, to the current international interest in Athens in its post-documenta era.

From artistic collectives, curatorial initiatives and independent movements of filmmakers, to music groups with a newfound political discourse and experimentations through new media, cultural production in Athens between 2004-2010 was a nucleus for the redefinition of national identity, sociopolitical concerns, investigations and positioning but also a ground for a new discourse that described local cultural production in new terms in relation to its past but also the global international scene.

The exhibition serves as a sample presentation of a small section of many examples of initiatives and actions presented at that time, through the memories of State of Concept's team (Vicky Zioga, Electra Karatza, Maria Adela Konomi, Lydia Markaki and iLiana Fokianaki). 


With: 

Loukia Alavanou, Nadja Argyropoulou, Barking Dogs United (Nikos Arvanitis and Naomi Tereza Salmon), Bill Balaskas, Manolis Baboussis, Athens Biennial, Margarita Bofiliou, Mary and the Boy, Amateur Boyz, Voltnoi Brege, Berlin Brides, Kostas Christopoulos, Lydia Dambassina, Dora Economou, DESTE Foundation, Anastasia Douka, Drog A Tek, Erasers, Futura editions, Farida el Gazzar, Eva Giannakopoulou, Marina Gioti, Kyriaki Goni, Yota Ioannidou, Lakis & Akis Ionas / The Callas, Dionysis Kavallieratos, Eleni Kamma, Vlassis Kaniaris, Nikos Kanarelis, Irini Karayannopoulou, Elpida Karaba, Vasilis Karouk, Panos Kokkinias, Panos Koutras, Yorgos Lanthimos, Panayotis Loukas, Greece is for Lovers, Vardis Marinakis, Yolanda Markopoulou, Christoforos Marinos, Dimitris Merantzas, Margarita Myrogianni, Nikos Navridis, Nikos Nikolaidis, Orthologistes, Malvina Panagiotidi, Rallou Panagiotou, Maria Papadimitriou, Ilias Papailiakis, Leda Papakonstantinou, Eftyhis Patsourakis, Tassos Pavlopoulos, Natassa Poulantza, Theo Prodromidis, Kostas Roussakis, Nana Sachini, Kostas Sahpazis, Yorgos Sapountzis, Cristos Sarris, Fani Sofologi, Stixoima, Danae Stratou, Stefania Strouza, Thanasis Totsikas, Sofia Touboura, Nikos Tranos, Alexandros Tzannis, Syllas Tzoumerkas, Panos Tsagaris, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Jannis Varelas, Kostis Velonis, Vangelis Vlahos, Eirini Vourloumis, Tassos Vrettos, Poka-Yio, Despoina Zefkili, Mary Zygouri.

Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA)
 State of Concept
12 Dec-15 Jan



Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Morning Street


The splashing rain
unearthed my father.
I never imagined
him buried thus,
to the din of trolleys
on an asphalt street
giant palm trees slanting on the beach
(and a voice from sleep
to stroke my hair),
as melodies wash up
with lost money
discarded confessions
old papers, glasses, pearls.
To see him exposed
to the damp, acrid air,
that drifts in with the tide
and cuts your breath,
to wish to love him
without deceit
to cover him with kisses, with flowers, with swallows,
to alter time
to offer the warm
of a quiet embrace
from this elderly recluse,
discarded confessions
and a lamb-like truce.
To feel the lack
of inborn strengths
to want to carry him
to the older sofa
of a bygone ranch,
but splashes of rain
but sheets of mud beneath reddish street lamps
but all that exists
of morning and wind
between one nature and another
yawning sheds by the docks
discarded confessions
ingratitude.
What should a man do
at dawn
(a taste of defeat
in his mouth, in the air)
in whatever place?
Everything spoken, drunk, or even pretended
and the rest still buried
in the folds of sleep,
cigarette stubs
the wet glare of streets
discarded confessions
morning defeat.
Vague mountains
greening waves
newspapers already white,
hesitant melody
trying to spawn
conditions for hope
on this gray day, of a broken lament.
Nothing left to remind me
of the seamless asphalt.
Abandoned cellars
my body shivers
discarded confessions:
abruptly, the walk home.
Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Translated from the Portuguese by Thomas Colchie

Sunday, November 24, 2019

On the edge of the Blade we run




Kostis Velonis, Corner Soul, 2016
Concrete, plaster, wood, acrylic, soil 
14 x 45 x 26 cm


On the edge of the Blade we run paraphrases the film’s title Blade Runner, premiered in 1982. The exhibition will take place in the end of November 2019, similarly with the movie’s time of reference. The director Ridley Scott travels in the future time and space of Los Angeles, November 2019.
The concept of the exhibition is constructed around three subject matters;
First, departing from the film’s title, we run on the edge of the blade in order to reconsider the ambiguous times we live in, both on a local and a global scale.
Additionally, questions about the interchange between the corporeal and the existential are raised. When the replicants in Blade Runner developed emotional capacity, simultaneously realized the inevitability of death, something they were not supposed to acknowledge. Consequently, in order to conceal those existential agonies, they started hiding their own corporeality.
Lastly, in Blade Runner, November 2019 is presented as a dystopian environment. In the early ‘80s, when the movie was filmed, the discussion about the destructive impact of capitalism, intensive industrialization and technological culture was initiated in the West, since the ecological catastrophe had begun to be visible, a matter very relevant today. In Blade Runner’ sequel we return in the space and time of the first movie where everything has been turned into ruins- a scrap town.
With this exhibition we aim to investigate whether the director’s predictions about the future have been proved right or wrong, as well as to question the unfulfilled promises derived from the evolution of technology and digital era. We are also looking forward to reconsider the chasm between human culture and nature, to examine a general melancholy and a feeling of despair that characterize our generation, and at the same time to establish a neo-futuristic and neo-gothic aesthetic we meet in everyday life.
 Artists
Eva Papamargariti Zissis Kotionis Rallou Panagiotou Maria Papadimitriou, Alexandra Koumantaki Kostas SahpazisEllie AntoniouNersKostis Velonis Sophia VyzovitiVoltnoi Alexandros Tzannis Loukia Alavanou Markus Selg Lap-See Lam Anastasia Douka Micol Assael Savvas Christodoulides Evita ManjiPegy Zali Evangelia Ledaki Andreas Ragnar Kasapis Iannis Ganas Orestis Mavroudis Jack McConville Steinar Haga Kristensen Aliki Panagiotopoulou Spiros Kokkonis Adrianna Glaviano Margarita Bofiliou Despina Charitonidi Aliki TzifaSpiros Hadjidjanos Vangelis Papathanasiou Antonakis Christodoulou Antigone Blanda Konstantinos Lianos Tatiana Couzis Panos Profitis Nyssos Vassilopoulos Iraklis Kopitas Carina Obukhova Manos Papamichael Saklas Alexander Ruthner 
On the edge of the Blade we run will take place in a former textile industry built in 1936 at Votanikos area.
On the edge of the Blade we run

A show curated by Alexandros Tzannis
Assistant curator: Odette Kouzou
29th of November until December, 8 
PLYFA Factory

Saturday, November 16, 2019

The Witch Doesn't Burn In This One

   Amanda Lovelace, 2018 

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Places of Residence for Accused Witches


Places of Residence for Accused Witches With Timeline

Monday, November 11, 2019

Broken Obelisk


Thomas B Hess, Barnett Newman, NYC: Museum of Modern Art1971

Sunday, November 10, 2019

Σπασμένες πτέρνες και Οβελίσκοι / Broken Heels and Obelisks

Σπασμένες  πτέρνες και οβελίσκοι   / Broken Heels  and Obelisks 


Martin Luther King, I have a dream Speech, delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C



Polcari, Stephen,  Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk, Art Journal, Vol. 53, No. 4, Sculpture in Postwar Europe and America, 1945-59 , Winter, 1994, pp. 48-55
Krauss, Rosalind, Sculpture in the Expanded FieldOctober, Vol. 8, Spring, 1979, pp. 30-44
Jonathan Jones, Newman's Broken Obelisk: the end of a political dream, Guardian 22 oct. 2008 

 Hess Thomas B., Barnett Newman, NYC: Museum of Modern Art, 1971

 VernantJean Pierre, Ο «καλός θάνατος» του Αχιλλέα,  Ανάμεσα στον μύθο και την πολιτική, μτφρ. Γιόση Ι Μαιρη, Αθήνα : Σμίλη, 2003

 VernantJean Pierre, Περί ορίων: Ανάμεσα στον μύθο και την πολιτική ΙΙ,   μτφρ. Γιόση Ι, Μαιρη, Αθήνα : Σμίλη, 2008

EcoUmberto, Η ομορφιά της λίστας,  μτφρ. Δότση Δήμητρα, Αθήνα: Καστανιωτης, 2010

Όμηρος, Ιλιας, ραψωδίες Α-Ω, μτφρ. Μαρωνίτης,  Δημήτρης , Αθήνα: Αγρα, 2012 

Barnett NewmanBroken Obelisk 

Barnett Newman, Achilles 

Brancusi, Endless Column
https://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag02/janfeb02/column/column.shtml