Nephele Grant
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY | TTS
The Nephele Grant is open to all creative professionals of all disciplines, of all ages and nationalities, who have at least 10 years’ experience in their respective fields. Nephele (pronounced “NEF-eh-lee”) is a Greek nymph’s name meaning “cloud.” Two grants of €1000 each will be awarded to compelling and engaging proposals, which critically address the subjective visual intake of the applicants.
Deadline: Friday, April 10th, 2020
The two grantees will be announced on THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY on June 1st, 2020
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY | TTS
Arts & Culture Research Lab Observatorium
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY, Arts & Culture Research Lab Observatorium is a nonprofit organisation registered in Athens, Greece. Through the filter of philosophy, science, technology, and religion, TTS focuses on the transdisciplinary production of knowledge as that is perceived in the creative arts & culture in Greece and abroad. TTS advocates for a viable visual-diet, an ecology of art production and equal opportunity. By connecting the North with the South and the East with the West, we endeavour to foster exchanges, collaborations, and publications in the Balkans, the rest of Europe, in the wider region of the Mediterranean, and MENA. All TTS research will be published and distributed.
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY is a registered nonprofit organization in Athens, Greece. It was founded by artist, Georgia Kotretsos in 2019 and it is privately supported by friends and donors of TTS. It is governed by the founding member in close collaboration with the TTS Ambassador, the TTS Financial and Legal advisors of the Board.
HOMEMADE EXOTICA
Freiraum in der Box
Organized by AthenSYN, curated by Sotirios Bahtsetzis
Nov. 14th – Feb. 1st, 2019
Since the beginning of the European idea, Athens has been an exoticized utopia. Recently, as a result of the 2009 worldwide financial crisis, Athens has become the exotic scene of a global drama that has attracted many, including the curators of the recent documenta14.
What can “learning from Athens” mean in a time of upheaval for Europe, in which all values rooted in European soil that underpin our cultural heritage are questioned? What is left after the demystification of a country which has been subject to stereotyping since 18th century philhellenism, labeled a tourist paradise, and imprinted with the stigma of the crisis? Why are these questions essential for social coexistence in an ethically corroded system?
In lectures and panel discussions during the program ATHENS TALKS on15 -16 November 2019, artists investigate co-existence in a world full of preconceived notions and expectations of the Other, the practices of art production in a failing market, and survival strategies based on communality, mutual support, and individual contribution to the community. At the same time, they discuss why Athens remains a hub of challenges and transformations that should be addressed by a European culture that seems to have reached its present state of exhaustion.
Participating artists and their works
Dionisis Christofilogiannis / George Drivas / Alexandros Kaklamanos / Dionysis Kavallieratos /Georgia Kotretsos/ James Lane / Yorgos Maraziotis / Georgia Sagri/ Yorgos Stamkopoulos/ Joulia Strauss / Vassileia Stylianidou / Yiannis Theodoropoulos / Stefanos Tsivopoulos/ Dimitris Tzamouranis / Zafos Xagoraris / Theodoros Zafeiropoulos
MON NORD EST TON SUD
La Kunsthalle Centre d’art Contemporain Mulhouse
Sept. 13th – Nov. 11th, 2018
Curated by Sandrine Wymann n
Avec la participation de Bertille Bak (FR), Chto Delat (RS), Gil & Moti (NL), Jan Kopp (DE), Georgia Kotretsos (GR), Katrin Ströbel (DE), Youssef Tabti (FR), Clarissa Tossin (USA), Maarten Vanden Eynde (BE).
L’idée de cette exposition développée entre La Kunsthalle Mulhouse et le Museum für Neue Kunst de Freiburg im Breisgau est née d’une observation locale, d’une comparaison de deux villes, Mulhouse et Freiburg-im-Brisgau, géographiquement proches et qui pourtant se caractérisent par leurs différences.
Leurs deux réalités éloignées tendent à prouver qu’une unité géographique n’implique pas forcément de multiples rapprochements. Elle répond au seul principe d’une localisation qui subit par ailleurs l’influence de facteurs de différenciation exogènes.
Les œuvres présentées dans l’exposition de La Kunsthalle visent à dépasser la situation régionale pour faire apparaître le caractère universel de l’observation.
Mon Nord est Ton Sud est construite autour de l’idée de la pluralité des espaces et de la différence de leur perception. Les espaces géographiques, politiques, sociaux, économiques sont indépendants et complémentaires, ils se comprennent à des échelles individuelles, parfois collectives, mais surtout ils sont les lieux physiques ou virtuels d’expériences subjectives, de relations complexes, voire de situations duales.
Une proposition de Sandrine Wymann
Die Idee dieser Ausstellung, die von La Kunsthalle Mulhouse und dem Museum für Neue Kunst de Freiburg im Breisgau entwickelt wurde, ist aus einer lokalen Beobachtung entstanden, aus dem Vergleich zweier geografisch naher Städte, Mulhouse und Freiburg im Breisgau, die sich jedoch durch Unterschiede auszeichnen.Ihre beiden, entfernten Realitäten neigen zu beweisen, dass eine geografische Einheit nicht unbedingt vielfache Ähnlichkeiten voraussetzt. Sie leistet einzig und allein dem Prinzip einer Lokalisierung Folge, welche im Übrigen den Einfluss von exogenen Differenzierungsfaktoren auf sich nimmt.
Die in La Kunsthalle ausgestellten Werke zielen darauf ab, über die regionale Situation hinauszugehen, um den universellen Charakter der Beobachtung zum Vorschein zu bringen.beide
Mon Nord est Ton Sud (Mein Nord ist dein Süden) artikuliert sich um die Idee der Vielfältigkeit der Räume und der Unterschiede, in der Weise, wie man sie wahrnimmt. Die geografischen, politischen, sozialen, wirtschaftlichen Räume sind unabhängig voneinander und ergänzen sich zugleich, sie verstehen sich auf einer individuellen und manchmal kollektiven Ebene. Vor allem aber sind sie die physischen oder virtuellen Orte von subjektiven Erfahrungen, komplexen Beziehungen, oder gar dualen Situationen.
En partenariat avec le Museum für Neue Kunst qui présente jusqu’au 07.10.2018 l’exposition Your North is my South.
Des bus seront mis en place entre Mulhouse et Freiburg im Brisgau pour permettre au public de découvrir les deux expositions.
In Zusammenarbeit mit dem Museum für Neue Kunst, das bis zum 07.10.2018 die Ausstellung Your North is My South zeigt.
Busse werden zwischen Mulhouse und Freiburg eingesetzt, um dem Publikum zu ermöglichen, beide Ausstellungen zu besichtigen.
L’exposition bénéficie du soutien de la Fondation Entente Franco-Allemande et du fonds PERSPEKTIVE pour l’art contemporain & l’architecture, une initiative du Bureau des arts plastiques de l’Institut français, soutenu par le Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication et le Goethe-Institut.
”4 CENTS: ON SHOW FOR 500 YEARS
Curated by Sotirios Bahtsetzis
blueFest Crete18 Culture & Beyond
The G. & A. Mamidakis Foundation presents the first blueFest Crete | Culture & Beyond!”:http://www.gnamamidakisfoundation.org/bluefest-crete18-culture—-beyond_en
(June 30th – July 2nd), 2018
From 30 June to 2 July, overlooking the beautiful city of Agios Nikolaos, Crete, the G. & A. Mamidakis Foundation organizes this year a 3-day festival of cultural events on the occasion of the proclamation of 2018 as European Year of Cultural Heritage.
The vision for the implementation of blueFest Crete is the revival of a tradition that began 30 years ago in Crete with the organization of the 1st Symposium at the Minos Beach art hotel and is in line with the Foundation’s mission to showcase the cultural wealth of the country. This year’s event is aimed at offering a breath of culture and entertainment to the residents of Crete and its visitors.
The blueFest Crete 18 program links the rich cultural heritage and of our country with new and traditional forms of artistic expression through a variety of artistic activities such as visual arts, theater, music and cinema.
Fine Art Exhibition Opening by Georgia Kotretsos
Art on Blue Art Series, which promotes Greek artists, starts with projects specially designed for the beach of Minos Beach art hotel. The sculpture installation “4 Cents” by artist Georgia Kotretsos will be presented on the rocky surfaces of the beach of hotel Minos Beach art hotel. Georgia Kotretsos expresses her art in the form of sculptures, installations, but also of photographs, texts, recordings and performances.
More information can be found on the blueFestCrete website and on the Facebook page of theG. & A. Mamidakis Foundation n.
LA FUNDACION ALMAYUDA
Curated by Abdellah Karroum
The Phototropics: Myths, Ways, & Tales | #1 Ithaki | Ionian Islands, Greece | Friday, April 22nd, 2016 38°20’19.99”B 20°44’18.63”A
The Phototropics: Myths, Ways, & Tales | #2 Merzouga | Desert, Merzouga, Morocco | Friday, October 7th, 2016 | 31.099449 -3.987303
The Phototropics: Myths, Ways, & Tales | #3 Hercule’s Cave | Hercule’s Cave, Morocco | Wednesday, February 28th, 2018 | 35”45’57”N 5”56’28”W
The Almayuda Foundation supports new “Expeditions to the End of the World”, run by L’appartement 22 and its founder, Abdellah Karroum. “Help” is a Mediterranean-wide project that stages ephemeral artistic performances to help the cause of refugees. More than providing spaces for events, this artistic gesture invites us to reflect on the principles that underpin humanity.
La Fundación Almayuda respalda nuevas «Expediciones del confín del mundo» (Expéditions du bout du monde) de la mano de L’appartement 22 y de su fundador, Abdellah Karroum. Help es un proyecto a la escala del Mediterráneo que realiza intervenciones artísticas efímeras en apoyo a la causa de los refugiados. Estas acciones artísticas, al margen de las salas de eventos, invitan a reflexionar sobre los principios que fundan la humanidad.
La Fondation Almayuda accompagne de nouvelles « Expéditions Le Bout du Monde » portée par « L’appartement 22 » et son fondateur Abdellah Karroum. « Help » est un projet à l’échelle de la Méditerranée, qui met en scène des performances artistiques éphémères au service de la cause des réfugiés. Au-delà des espaces d’événements, ce geste artistique invite à réfléchir sur des principes qui fondent l’humanité.
space52 | Booth 5
School of Fine Arts (A.S.F.A.), at the “Nikos Kessanlis” exhibition venue, 256 Peiraios street, Athens, Greece
(Thursday, 17 May 2018 to Sunday, 20 May 2018)
http://platformsproject.com/platforms/space52/
Participants Artists: Dionisis Christofilogiannis, Georgia Kotretsos, Andrei Nuţu, Andreas Mallouris, Eva Mitala, Pantelis Vitaliotis-Magneto, Iraklis Fovakis, Vasilis Zografos
FORTHCOMING – Προσεχώς
Curated by Louis Papachristou, Space52
(27th Jan – 10th Mar 2018)
Artists: Dimitrios Antonitsis, Irini Bahlitzanaki, Hariton Bekiaris, Dionisis Christofilogiannis, Martha Dimitropoulou, Iraklis Fovakis, Georgia Kotretsos, Nikos Kyriakopoulos, James Lane, Antonis Larios, Υorgos Maraziotis, Maro Michalakakos, Eva Mitala, Jennifer Nelson, Poka-Yio, Nefeli Papanagiotou, Artemis Potamianou, Georgia Sagri, Giorgos Tserionis, Nicolas Vamvouklis, Pantelis Vitaliotis/Magneto, Vasilis Zografos
Forthcoming #1, curated by Louis Papachristou, is the inaugural exhibition in a series of future emergences. It showcases art works, archival material and notes by Athens-based artists. There are myriad paths one could choose to narrate a tale about our recent past and immediate present. The broad scope of creative practices occurring here makes up the sum of a multitude. Looking more deeply at Athens, it is unmistakable that highly edited gestures are being manifested in abundance by above all remaining serene.
Each artist presents fragments or complete works representative of his most recent inquiry. By doing so, Space52 is collective transformed into an inclusive artist-studio, a reservoir of ideas and proposals. The selected works explore equal parts of theory and practice. At a first glance they may appear incongruous and eclectic yet, a closer look will reveal the unanimous overtone of memory, fragility and sensory experiences.
http://www.space52.gr/
Sponsor: Psaroulis Wines http://psarouliswines.gr/
TTHE SCHOOL OF EVERYTHING
by Joulia Strauss with AthenSYN in Kassel, DEU
(June 11, 12, 13, 2017)
A meeting of initiatives dedicated to transforming the educational system of Europe. Organized by AthenSYN in collaboration with Allianz Kulturstiftung.
June 11
The School of Everything – Constituitive and Critical Elaborations on Art-as-education
With: Sotirios Bahtsetzis, Luca di Blasi, Jean-Pierre Rammant, Max Spielmann, Joulia Strauss, Jonas Tinius, Vasyl Cherepanyn, Mathilde ter Heijne
June 12
The School of Everything – Concrete examples of alternative and reflective educational formats
With: Helmut Batista, Agnès Rammant-Peeters, Katja Ehrhardt, Noah Fischer, Mriganka Mudhukallya, Elad Lapidot, Arnisa Zeqo, Lindsay Parkhowell, Sebastian Lütgert, Jan Gerber, Artur Żmijewski, Maarten Vanvolsem, Johanna Scherf, Georgia Kotretsos, Sotiris Tsiganos, Jonian Bisai, Mischa Schaub, Andrea Iten
June 13
The School of Everything as Continuation of Universitas and Krytyka Polityczna
With: Ahmad Alkhatieb, Sotirios Bahtsetzis, Katja Ehrhardt, Judith Holzer, Paul B. Preciado, Sebastian Schäfer, Joulia Strauss
Assembly: working on a new collective curriculum
Posted in Calendar
15 CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS FOR THE 175th ANNIVERSARY OF THE NATIONAL BANK OF GREECE
National Bank of Greece
(June 1 – 30th, 2017)
On Thursday, June 1st, National Bank of Greece, in honor of 175th anniversary of its establishment, exhibited works by 15 contemporary artists which were collected in the framework of an art contest, aiming to encourage and support visual artists.
The exhibition took place at the Old Stock Exchange Hall, on Sophocleous Street.
SYNANTISEIS #6 – DOCUMENTA14 ek sê
Clare Butcher and Georgia Kotretsos
(May 25, 7- 10 pm, 2017)
Koukles Club, Zan Moreas 26, Koukaki, Athens
We were not a destination, not part of the extended map. There was land, but we were not en route. The South was not news but still posed a logistical challenge for the usual professionals in transit. Naïve, yes, to assume that a biennial could drop into a blank, untouched terrain—if anything it was quite the contrary. Isolated, no, as it came as a coalescent symptom of the bigger picture, wedged tightly between documenta X and 11: a dense era bursting at the seams with pathologies, conflicts, contradictions, imposed strategies, maps, routes, and more. Much-needed audiences were recruited—but for most part, to this day, the event exists as an echo, a rumor, a thought, a press release.
The 2nd Johannesburg Biennale: Trade Routes – History & Geography in 1997 joined in the euphoric state of South Africa’s Rainbow Nation, bringing along with it creative paraphernalia and the franchise of the known. Distance mattered at the time, and the notion of everything North was pervasively impacting lives in a pre-Internet media frenzy. Grounded at the southernmost tip of Africa, the event was all a rather hazy version of reality, its resonance resembling that of underwater acoustics. Yet it was devoured with unparalleled appetite—everything that had been out of reach for so long. It felt as if the South had teeth, a wet tongue, a gut, and a voice.
Our unorthodox exhibition history traces a web of trade routes over space and time, taking full advantage of our position as a secondary audience, a tardy public. documenta X in 1997 was curated by the institution’s first female artistic director, Catherine David, in 1997. The 2nd Johannesburg Biennale followed shortly thereafter, pulled off the same year by a young Okwui Enwezor, who immediately went on to produce documenta 11 in 2002. Now, twenty years after where we began, another edition has landed in Athens. For those physically present, these exhibitions are real, urban, and gritty. For others, they may remain shadows, outlined by weighty mother catalogs circulating among trustworthy hands.
Hence the time for storytellers is nigh (nè?)—those who neither confirm nor deny the past, testaments to the high strung, spun, loose-tongued and looped-lipped lingering at the doors of mega events. Faded facsimiles and post-truths play fictive witness. What does this knowledge become in the flesh, when word becomes mouth? Who is excluded in our effort to continuously include, re-route and re-educate the (art) world? What is there left to sê?
Clare Butcher is a member of the documenta 14 aneducation team. Originally from Zimbabwe, Clare cooks as part of her practice and has organized reading, writing, and research programs with students at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, the Piet Zwart Institute’s Masters of Education in Art & Design, and the University of Cape Town.
Georgia Kotretsos is a visual artist and a professional spectator based in Athens, Greece. She moved to South Africa from Greece in her early teens while the abolition of apartheid was underway. With her work, she critiques the conformity of seeing by studying, and proposes and practices liberating and anarchic approaches of looking at art.
Posted in Public Education
UNIVERSITAS Group exhibition
(April 7 at 7pm, 2017)
At Trii Art Hub, Drakou 9, Athens, Metro Station: Sygrou-Fix
Opening Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 10:00-20:00
The exhibition runs from 7/4/2017 – 7/5/2017.
On April 7 at 7pm, AthenSYN launches an exhibition on the subject of migration and learning in
collaboration with the Avtonomi Akadimia and the Athens Biennale at Trii Art Hub, Drakou 9 (metro station
Syggrou Fix). The exhibition presents works by Sebastian Bayse Schäfer (D),Vilelmini Vilma Andrioti (GR),
Gudrun Barenbrock (DE), Manaf Halbouni (SY), Thomas Kilpper (DE), Georgia Kotretsos (GR), Joulia
Strauss (DE), DimitrisTzamouranis (GR),Dionisis Christofilogiannis (GR) and LiwaaYazji (SY), based on a
series of artist workshops curated by Katja Ehrhardt. The formats of the UNIVERSITAS exhibition range
from film,video, text, photography, to painting, installation and object. The exhibition is curated by Sotirios
Bahtsetzis and marks an attempt to conduct a discussion about common learning in today’s Europe with an
eye to our common future.
The exhibition UNIVERSITAS is supported by the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany
in Athens.
The workshops UNIVERSITAS have been supported by Allianz Cultural Foundation and
UNIVERSITAS
(February 16-28, 2017)
a community of teachers and learners
with workshops by artists from Syria, Greece and Germany
At Eleusis and Skaramangas Camps, Khora Athens and the premises of the Athens Biennale
We invite you to join! Workshops held in English with Arabic translation, entrance free
Artists from Syria, Greece and Germany offer creative workshops to migrants and Athenians to develop a vision of our common future in which we grow together and learn from one another. Stories and dreams contributed by migrants and Athenians to artists will be part of a world’s history that we write together. This new collective story will be presented to the public as part of the exhibition of the Athens Biennale and published as a book.
Organized by AthenSYN, Avtonomi Akadimia, the Athens Biennale and community center Khora Athens
In collaboration with Allianz Cultural Foundation, supported by the Creative Europe program of the European Union
Organizers and supporters:
AthenSYN is an non-profit organization initiating international artistic collaborations with Greece, founded and organized by cultural scientist Katja Ehrhardt and art historian, curator and art critic Sotirios Bahtsetzis.
Avtonomi Akadimia , founded and organized by Berlin and Athens based artist Joulia Strauss http://joulia-strauss.net, provides an opportunity for artists, philosophers, scientists, political activists from Berlin, Athens and many other places to give seminars in the Public Garden of Akadimia Platonos.
The Athens Biennale functions within an international network of large-scale periodic contemporary art events. It emerged from the intense cultural activity that makes Athens one of the most interesting places for contemporary art, and it aims to be an agent of constant change and innovation, provide a context for creativity and dialogue and constitute a wide platform for the designation and the critical engagement of local artistic production, as well as a forum for discussion and exchange with the international scene. The Athens Biennale is directed by Poka-Yio and Nayia Yiakoumaki.
The Allianz Cultural Foundation is a non-profit organization of public interest that supports and initiates cross-border, transdisciplinary cultural and educational projects in Europe and the Mediterranean region.
Creative Europe is the European Commission’s framework program for support to the culture and audiovisual sectors.
Documentation: Kalliopi Vagiannaki
With support of Trans Geographic Cinema School
For more information in English, please email info@athensyn.com or call 690-6912882
HEROES WE LOVE, TIRANA, ALB
(Dec. 2, 2016 – Jan. 28, 2017)
Double Feature is an exhibition format introduced by Tirana Art Lab with the aim of systematically displaying in our premises, two artistic positions to the Albanian, the regional and international audience. Triple Feature # 5 is a special edition of this format, where we exhibit together the works of Albanian art collective Çeta , Greek artist and researcher Georgia Kotretsos and Albanian artist Pleurad Xhafa.
Triple Feature # 5 presentation, is part of “Heroes We Love ” collaboration and multidisciplinary project on the controversial topic of socialist heritage of the 20th century European art. The show will consist of works exhibited for the first time at Tirana Art Lab as well as two artistic interventions in the public space by Çeta and Georgia Kotretsos, commissioned by Tirana Art Lab . Tirana Art Lab wants to engage contemporary artists of younger generation into the project through the art intervention on the selected socialist era monuments. The interventions aim to stimulate public debate, initiate new interpretations and envisage the potentials of those art works of the past.
Triple Feature #5 is dedicated to the intersection between art and activism, art activism and the extended role of the artist as an engaged citizen, trying to make a change not only inside the art system but also outside of it, in real life.
INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS IN BERN RESIDENCY, BERN, CHE
(September 2016)
The referendum of May 2009 has cleared the way for the long-term usage of the PROGR building as an atelier house. The PROGR foundation bought the building from the city of Bern and offers workspace for local artists to favorable conditions. It is in this optimal framework that residency.ch was founded in 2011 by artists as a non-profit association.
THE IMAGINARY REPUBLIC
PART 1:
Artists: Kotretsos, Guerra, Heier, LaBelle
Opening: September 9th, 19:00h
September 10th – 18th
PART 2:
Artists:
Frichot, Lewandowska, Rotman, Skou
Opening: September 22nd
September 24nd – October 16th
During September and October The Image Republic will unfold in two editions at Tag Team Studio, showing works by national and international artists, including Marianne Heier, Marysia Lewandowska, Hélène Frichot, Luis Guerra, Georgia Kotretsos, Brandon LaBelle, Diego Rotman, and Lise Skou. Through propositional and speculative works the exhibition focuses on questions and experiences of public life and culture.
The Imaginary Republic looks at questions of public life and civic culture in today’s global environment, and considers how ongoing economic, social and political unrest has led to an intensification of grass-roots initiatives, artistic activism, alternative instituting and forms of commoning.
As a network of related participants, the project develops through shared methods and modes of experimental pedagogy, critical togetherness, public and creative instituting, and looks to identify through their expressions possibilities for political imagining. The political imagination is posited as a tool for problematizing and negotiating contemporary crises, enabling an understanding of public assembly as being founded upon intensely creative and psychic labors that equally contain secret desires, generative noises, breaks in identity and community, and assemblages of deviant knowledge.
In his book, Disagreement, Jacques Rancière identifies two sides to the governmental, what he calls “the political” and “the police”. As he states, often what we imagine as “the political” is only a mode of policing. Such a dichotomous view, while providing an important perspective, may overlook the more nuanced, in-between articulations found in grass-roots movements, civic cultures, radical dreaming, unlikely friendships and acts of (non)work, the daily rituals and encounters between neighbors and strangers, as well as the deep poetics of relating to what is not yet, through which agency and collective actions find their future footing.
The exhibition at Tag Team Studios, divided into two editions, brings together works, propositions, and documents that consider relations between individual determination and social and institutional structures. Questions of art and economy, biopolitics and vacancy, transience, piracy and infrastructures of the poor are brought forward as critical and creative arenas of struggle.
Organized with support from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design.
THE PHOTOTROPICS: MYTHS, WAYS, & TALES
Artist : Georgia Kotretsos
Curator : Abdellah Karroum
Ithaki, Ionian Islands, Ionian Sea, Greece | Friday, April 22nd, 2016 | 38°20’19.99”B 20°44’18.63”A
The Expedition 16 takes place as a research trip to explore the phenomenon of Phototropism applied to human movements and the relationship to the political status of natural elements.
Artist and researcher Georgia Kotretsos writes in her trip notes : “The Phototropics are an ambiguous minority, primarily situated east of the Prime Meridian – often seen at the Mediterranean coastline. They have historically kept their myths, ways and tales secret from outsiders and non-initiated Phototropics, thus rumours about them have arisen. The etymology of their name echoes the phenomenon of phototropism, when plants turn to follow the light. Their name in Ancient Greek means phōs (generally phōtos), a light + τρόπος (trópos, “a turn, way, manner, style, a trope or mood in logic”), from τροπή (tropḗ, “turn ; solstice ; trope”), the two words literally explain the natural inclination of this group to be drawn to the sun.”
Day 1 :
Artist Georgia Kotretsos, curator Abdellah Karroum travelled to the Island of Ithaki, in search of the peculiar phenomenon of HELP. They soon discovered, that the unprecedented numbers of people taking dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean in search of a new home propelled the bold gesture. The Phototropics question their immediate geography – the edge of their very land as it suddenly defined territories without obstructing the gaze, by constructing utopias and dystopias dominated by rupture. Sites of polarities were created , and unspoken rules of who is welcomed and who is not, were established.
Day 2 :
On this first of its kind expedition, Kotretsos and Karroum realised that this is only the prelude of a series of ephemeral gestures to be taking place all along the Mediterranean coastline. The Phototropics strategically signaled HELP from the island of Ithaki for its strong symbolic association with notions such as that of the journey (whether mythical or literal), the notion of home, feeling lost, hope, hospitality, being-in-need and being-needed on both sides of the shore. By borrowing the English and Arabic language when facing the sea, HELP hopes to awake epic myths, create tales and invent ways for this larger-creative-gesture-to-be around the Mediterranean.
Day 3 :
And at last, would like to leave you with a question even the Phototropics struggle to answer with clarity just yet. How and where in terms of location can “history” be written when there are unlimited and complex social, cultural, economic, political religious and class constructs are at play ?
SIRENSWAVE
SIRENSWAVE is a platform created and edited by Georgia Kotretsos & Kutloano Skosana Ricci.
In Greek mythology, the Sirens (Greek singular: Σειρήν Seirēn;[1] Greek plural: Σειρῆνες Seirēnes) were dangerous yet beautiful creatures, who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island. Roman poets placed them on some small islands called Sirenum scopuli. In some later, rationalised traditions, the literal geography of the “flowery” island of Anthemoessa, or Anthemusa,[2] is fixed: sometimes on Cape Pelorum and at others in the islands known as the Sirenuse, near Paestum, or in Capreae.[3] All such locations were surrounded by cliffs and rocks. Wikipedia
The time has come to sound the alarm and add your vibrations to this alluring song in dialogue with Abantu Bomlambo.
In Southern African mythology, Abantu Bomlambo, are people of the water. They are the guardians of seafarers and adventurers …“They are kind and good, fearing for a person who swims in the sea in case he should drown, and chasing small children from the sea by sending warning waves rushing at them to scare them away.“ Penny Miller, Myths and Legends of Southern Africa, 1979
After maintaining our silence for a while – we are now back. This providential return is marked by our desire to once again allure. Our water guardians will keep an eye on you on your journey to this melodious source of truth.
At a time of intersectional urgency Sirens from around the world are called to sound the alarm and create a new song that pierces through the vacuous cacophony pervasively blazoned on the web.
Sirens go further than the ‘headline’ – they raise awareness, question, guard, propose solutions, act as mediators, share knowledge, celebrate their peers and give a fresh perspective on patriarchy, imperialism, racism, sexism, among many other issues standing in the way of progress for the human race today. sirenswave@gmail.com
KLIMA
[“I do not at all believe in what I call automatic democracy. I believe in reflection, not reflex.”-Paul Virilio]
by Georgia Kotretsos & Carolina Trigo
KLIMA is a project initiated by artists Georgia Kotretsos and Carolina Trigo, who came together to compile content and conduct research for a Volume entitled KLIMA.
Phase #1 July 1st – 30th, 2015 – Paros
There are times we encounter the other within us, and those times may expose a symptom so telling of a state. A politically-charged state where the lines between self and other tremble; struck by difference at the site of the instance. These very attributes create the urgency to study a moment, that any minute may no longer be. KLIMA looks at recently formed eccentrics found in advanced societies and the developing world for their characteristics. Argentina in early 2000s serves as the departure point of the research, leading us all the way to Greece in 2015-16, right through to the end of 2017. The editors of this Volume interviewed and engaged in dialogue and met in person with some of those so-called professional “exotics” of our times (artists, writers, economists, human rights lawyers) to find out what happens when “zones of autonomy” engage in productive disagreements with themselves. What happens when alterity tinctures sameness? When nearness stretches itself into distance?
Phase #2 July 1st – 30th, 2016 – Athens/Kalamata
As the political and aesthetic tensions between exposure and shelter, frailty and sovereignty – we ask: how are “we”shaped? By our sense of self? By what which we cannot control? What positions do we assume or disavow when hit by a storm – be it personal, cultural, socio-economic, political or atmospheric? What happens when borders of self and territory escape us like air? The project is an acclimatisation in thought and form to that which strikes us. The purpose of the project is to cultivate a space for wonder and unforeseen coincidences to take-place. To disseminate ideas that challenge the relations between private, public, personal and political climates.
OPEN ARTISTS STUDIO FOUNDATION: under construction | C9 MAXIMILIANSFORUM | MUNICH, DEU
(September 8th – OCTOBER 8th, 2015)
The OPEN ARTISTS STUDIO FOUNDATION (OASF) is a visionary 10-year project proposal and exhibition. OASF is an innovative artist studio model, where upon the physical rehabilitation of MaximiliansForum will offer diverse and interdisciplinary fabrication spaces and technical support at its premises; and access to a network of specialized professionals and services via its online platform to contemporary artists. OASF hopes to serve both as a creative crossroad and a hub in the heart of Munich, right on Maximilianstrasse as well as globally through its engaging manifold network.
OPEN ARTISTS STUDIO FOUNDATION: under construction aims to assemble at MaximiliansForum on September 8th, the Munich art community, the Department of Arts and Culture of the city, and representatives of the Maximilianstrasse flagship luxury brand stores to present and propose an organically-born creative evolution of the space. OASF further invites us to contribute to the formation of its structure by initially taking action towards its pilot phase. OASF will remain open under conceptual construction for an entire month.
The needs of the mobile, omni-cyber and boundless nature of today’s contemporary artists practice give birth to a social studio apparatus – OASF – one that wishes to house and support universal human creativity across the board.
MaximiliansForum is a 1600m² public exhibition space in Munich. It is located at the underpass of the intersection on Maximilianstrasse and Altstadtring. It is situated right under one of the main thoroughfares and most expensive streets of Munich – Maximilianstrasse, after which, the exhibition-space is named. The underpass was built from 1968 to 1969 as part of the Munich transport master plan.
Venue | MaximiliansForum, Maximilianstr. 31, D-80539 Munich, Germany
Welcoming remarks | Department of Arts and Culture , City of Munich & C9
Presentation | Georgia Kotretsos
Guest speaker | Bernd Fesel , Chair European Creative Business Network, Rotterdam
Video presentation featuring | Mehul Sangham , Innovation Leadership and Strategist, Cape Town
Opening Hours | 24/7 – Office: Tuesdays 10.00 -19.00 and by appointment (Mob.:+49 (0) 172 418 46 59)
The MaximiliansForum is now used as a municipal exhibition space. Currently a realignment of the space is taking place. Three artists of the Artist-Initiative COLLABORATIONproject are currently exploring creative possibilities for future use. Philipp Messner, Alexander Steig and Thomas Thiede are the curators of this very project C9 .
MaximiliansForum in Transformation is a year-long project by C9 , that explores creative alternatives in relation to the spatial and cultural position of MaximiliansForum.
C9 shifts the focus of the space – from being a place of exhibition, to becoming a space of artistic practice.
Special thanks to Designer and Collaborator, Alexandros Politis; friend and COLLABORATION Colleague, Beate Engl ; Co-founder of Mataroa, Antonis Papadopoulos ; my beloved sister Creative Content Editor and Producer, Sophia Kotretsos ; friend and Artist/Activist, Joulia Strauss ; friend and Artist, Aspassio Haronitaki; Phd in Leisure Mobility, Georgia Zouni ; and last but not least HAECCCC, 0+865 for supporting the realization of the OPEN ARTISTS STUDIO FOUNDATION: under construction.
OPEN ARTISTS STUDIO FOUNDATION: under construction is supported by: C9 ; NEON ; Department of Arts and Culture , City of Munich; Mataroa and European Creative Business Network .
THE IMAGINARY REPUBLIC | BERGEN, NOR
(August 28th – September 1st, 2015)
The Imaginary Republic is a research project developed by professor Brandon LaBelle at KHiB. International participants will present and discuss the project at Landmark, Bergen Kunsthall, Monday, 31 August at 19.00. Free entrance.
Participants at Landmark: Dr. Hélène Frichot , KTH Stockholm; Georgia Kotretsos, Athens; Brandon LaBelle , Bergen Academy of Art and Design; Dr. Diego Rotman , Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Lise Skou , Aarhus.
The Imaginary Republic considers the dynamics of civic culture in today’s global environment, and how developments in economic, social and political realities have led to an intensification of public argument and creative imagination. Utilizing the extraordinary wealth of civic imagining at play in contemporary culture, The Imaginary Republic aims to rethink utopian tendencies, shared space and the architecturally contested, hopes and dreams for non-capitalistic economies and commoning, and the productions of dissident publics.
The Imaginary Republic is a research project being developed by Prof. Brandon LaBelle from the Department of Fine Art at KHiB. It sets out to converse with current social movements across Europe and elsewhere, and sets out to explore transformations in political consciousness. In particular, it aims to research creative expressions of political subjectivity with an emphasis on emancipatory practices. For instance, protests around social housing in Berlin have prompted a drive toward “re-communalization” which reconfigures the relation between local and migrant communities, drawing in the arts community through questions of gentrification. Or the ongoing alignment between neoliberal economy and education in Britain has sparked the emergence of independent schools and free pedagogical platforms, leading to new forms of shared work and knowledge production. These examples act as counter-narratives to major structures of national and regional governance, and embody a creative political consciousness – an insurrectionary drive. What consequences do such expressions have for understanding civic culture and its resistances? What knowledges might the interaction between the arts, the critical imagination and the political generate today? Is there an imaginary republic to be found within the drives and mechanisms of global capitalism, and from which new solidarities can be assembled?
HAECCCC, 0+865 | STANGLERHOF , BOLZANO, IT
(August 5th – August 26th, 2015)
Residency program invited by HAECCCC, 0+865.
MANDALA RESIDENCY | KLIMA | MARPISSA, PAROS ISLAND, GRC
(July 1st – July 31st, 2015)
KLIMA is a project initiated by artists Georgia Kotretsos and Carolina Trigo , who — supported by curator and anthropologist, Martin Brauen and philanthropist, Alfonso T. Anez — come together in the island of Paros to compile and edit content for a Volume entitled KLIMA.
This project was conceived in a series of dialogues with writer and Legal Consultant Bronwyn Lay (Vesancy), Curator Lara Khaldi (Amsterdam), artist and researcher Carolina Trigo (Marseille), artist and researcher Georgia Kotretsos (Athens) and researcher Tyna Fritschy (Zürich).
KLIMA: The riddle of autonomy.
We conceive of Klima as the unfinished day by day. As the political and aesthetic tensions between exposure and shel- ter, frailty and sovereignty. We ask: how are ‘we’ shaped? By our sense of self? By what surrounds us? By that which we cannot control? What positions do we assume or disavow when hit by a storm — be it personal, political or atmos- pheric? What happens when borders of self and territory escape us like air?
The project is a retreat, an acclimatization in thought and form to that which strikes us. We embrace the concept of a retreat as an aesthetic technique. We refer to aesthet- ics as sense and perception, and to technique (techne) as an activity — a making or doing that is concrete, variable, and context-dependent (where the significance of concrete is derived from concrescere, ‘to grow together’). We pair techne with Poïesis, where poïesis refers to a threshold occasion whereby something moves away from its stand- ing as one thing to become another. The purpose of the project is to cultivate a space for wonder and unforeseen coincidences to take-place. To disseminate ideas that chal- lenge the relations between private, public, personal and political climates.
I do not at all believe in what I call automatic democracy. I believe in reflection, not reflex. — PAUL VIRILIO.
There are times we encounter the other within us, and those times may expose a symptom so telling of a state. A politically-charged state where the lines between self and other tremble; struck by difference at the site of the in- stance. These very attributes create the urgency to study a moment, that any minute may no longer be. Klima looks at recently formed nomads found in advanced societies and the developing world for their characteristics. The editors of this Volume will interview, engage in dialogue and meet in person some of those so-called exotics of our times to find out what happens when ‘zones of autonomy’ engage in productive disagreements with themselves. What hap- pens when alterity tinctures sameness? When nearness stretches itself into distance? We will be looking precisely at what that tincturing and stretching implies.
IMPLODE RESIDENCY - SONIC TOPOGRAPHIES | EUBEAN ISLAND GRC
(June 2nd, 2015 – June 16th, 2015)
Implode is an artistic platform founded in 2013 dedicated to new forms of sound and visual arts. Based in Greece and the Netherlands, Implode focuses in conceptualising and materialising projects that each time are characterised by a particular theme derived by philosophical idioms, rhetorical questions, everyday concerns and accidental moments of naivety. Via a wide range of innovative events such as experimental performances, residencies and festivals, we promote established and emerging artists. Our purpose is to bridge the extrovert nature of the interdisciplinary field of arts with the introvert process of a creative practise. is an artistic platform founded in 2013 dedicated to new forms of sound and visual arts. Based in Greece and the Netherlands, Implode focuses in conceptualising and materialising projects that each time are characterised by a particular theme derived by philosophical idioms, rhetorical questions, everyday concerns and accidental moments of naivety. Via a wide range of innovative events such as experimental performances, residencies and festivals, we promote established and emerging artists. Our purpose is to bridge the extrovert nature of the interdisciplinary field of arts with the introvert process of a creative practice.
On the occasion of Implode Residency 2015, four contemporary artists who specialize on the sonic art field were invited to live and work for 2 weeks at culturally and historically notable locations of the Greek island, Evoia.
The artists were invited to make use of the natural sound resources that each location has to offer, in order to use them as their primary reference. Furthermore each artist, could closely explore the cultural and historical references of the location, while living in the island of Evoia in order to create an audio and/or video composition.
As a result upon our research, we came up with four sites. Each location has a unique historical and cultural background while all of them consider to have played major role in the Ancient Greek history. Therefore, the locations are closely connected with the selected artists in terms of artistic practice, statement and specialization.
Participating artists and locations:
Jacob Kirkergaard : The Euripus Strait, is a narrow channel of water separating the Greek island of Evoia in the Aegean Sea from Veotia in mainland Greece. The distance between Evoia island and mainland is consider to be one of the nearest in the world (40 meters). The strait is subject to strong tidal currents which reverse direction approximately four times a day. Tidal flows are very weak in the Eastern Mediterranean, but this strait is a remarkable exception. Water flow peaks at about 12 km/hour, either northwards or southwards, and boats are often incapable of sailing against it. When nearing flow reversal, sailing is even more precarious because of vortex formation. The currents are influenced by moon, the natural satellite of the earth, which creates the phenomenon of tides. This unique phenomenon employed ancient Greeks, particularly Aristotle and Eratosthenes as well as many other scientists of the last century.
Ilios : The most impressive monument of ancient Eretria, one of the oldest known theatres, lies in the western section of town, between the western gate, the stadium and the upper gymnasium; the temple of Dionysos was found at its south-west end. As indicated by the architectural remains of the scene, the initial construction phase followed the invasion by the Persians and the reconstruction of the city in the fifth century BC, whereas the fourth century BC marked the site’s peak. The theatre seated 6,300 spectators and is reminiscent in form to the Theatre of Dionysos in Athens, after transformation of the latter in 330 BC. There are still the impressive remains of the scene, especially the vaulted underground passage leading to the orchestra centre.
Yiorgis Sakellariou : According to history (Iliad of Homer) the Greek fleet gathered in Aulis near the Euripus Strait to set off for Troy, to force the return of Helen. While there, king Agamemnon killed a stag sacred to the goddess Artemis. The enraged deity caused a contrary wind and eventually forced the king to agree to sacrifice his daughter Iphigeneia in order to ensure a favorable wind for the Greek fleet.
and Georgia Kotretsos: The Medieval Castle of Casteli, is located on the top of the hill of Phylla village. It was build in 13th century by Licario, a noble knight of Lord Guiberto Dalle Carceri. This castle was build in the upper part of the village in order to have a clear view of the entire area. The castle is also visually connected with two other towers which used by the knights in order to communicate with the castle.
PERFORMING at FIELD MEETING TAKE 2: An Afterthought | A ACAW COLLATERAL EVENT DURING THE 56TH VENICE BIENNALE, IT
Friday May 8th 2015, 2:30 – 5:30 pm
Hosted by My Art Guides: Venice Meeting Point
A reunion- gathering for leading artists, curators, and art professionals-participants of Asia Contemporary Art Week’s inaugural FIELD MEETING 2014 New York. FIELD MEETING Take 2: An Afterthought reflects on and celebrates the success of FIELD MEETING 2014 (New York), now an ongoing curatorial platform that focuses on creative process, conceptual exchange, and collaboration in an effort to advance artistic endeavors.
Curated by Leeza Ahmady with intimate interviews, performances, talks, & discussions by:
Haig Aivazian (Beirut) ; Mathieu Borysevicz (Beijing); Burçak Bingöl (Istanbul); Umer Butt (Dubai); Alexis Destoop (Sydney / Brussels); Beatrice Glow (New York); Jitish Kallat (Mumbai); Reena Kallat (Mumbai); Georgia Kotresos (Athens); Barbara London (New York); MAP Office (Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix; Hong Kong); Naeem Mohaiemen (Dhaka & New York); Xin Wang (New York); Craig Yee (Beijing & Seattle) ; Zheng Chongbin (San Francisco).
By invitation only! RSVP is now CLOSED due to space capacity.
Supported by DEREE, the American College of Greece and Angeles Mira.
PERFORMING at the ASIAN CONTEMPORARY ART WEEK | FIELD MEETING, NY, USA
(October 22nd, 2014 – November 3rd, 2014)
I will be presenting in a lecture/performance Socially engaged? Better, socially married?:
[...] I will cite a story; a story I was made aware of in a clandestine manner, a seductive and alluring one.
It’s a story that touches on and rubs off like stand-paper on the entire value system of Greek society. I have a lot of thoughts, and my first one is that silence is a form of complicity; but I am not a snitch. I will tell you everything I know, but not what I suspect. I will disclose all that the storyteller allows me to share.
Last May, the storyteller came to me genderless, faceless, voiceless, and unidentified. The mechanics of the contact will only make this presentation ever more elusive. I am guilty, though, of devouring the uncanny bait of the initial provocation to engage in a discussion to the point I even surprised myself. To be the chosen “one” soon came with great responsibility. I welcomed the rules of communication, the manipulation, the game, and the risk of falling victim to the elaborate trap of a skilled “trickster”.
That possibility equally excited me. I was open to believing, but also to being fooled. This person has not been blathering on; the level of ingenuity, tenacity and persuasiveness captivated me.
When it comes to sharing this story with you, I have to admit that I struggled. Soon after the initial contact I reached out to friends and colleagues. Leeza Ahmady, director of the Asian Contemporary Art Week, instantaneously extended an invitation to me to present this unusual experience at the FIELD MEETING in NYC. At that point I was still apprehensive about the developments of the situation I was caught up in. I accepted the invitation to present, and from August onwards, my inclination to satisfy my curiosity about the world by raising questions was instrumentalized to the max.
The presentation will be based on an interview I have been working on in Greek since May 2014. It took some time for trust to be established and the process found me in the grip of a frenzied state of mind over the summer months. I often had to exist in order to correspond to the needs of this communication.
I am about to present to you a provocative endeavor of a Greek artist who is manipulating civil rights in the form of repeated marriage with third-country citizens (non-EU) to bring foreign artists/intellectuals to Greece, effectively recruiting intellectual engagement through a personal residency program for a waning state weighted down by financial crises.
Supported by Angeles Mira | Architecture & kpdesign plus
ASIAN CONTEMPORARY ART WEEK
Inspired by and born of the intense field work carried out by all practitioners of art, FIELD MEETING foregrounds the immediacy of these dynamic exchanges by bringing together over 40 artists, curators, scholars, and institutional leaders whose works variously relate to and problematize the cultural, political, and geographical parameters of contemporary Asia. As a curated platform, FIELD MEETING capitalizes on this fall’s citywide museum and gallery exhibitions shedding light on various aspects of contemporary Asian art through highlighting individual and regional practices; simultaneously, the intensive two-day forum facilitates another kind of exchange beyond established institutional representation and discourse to expose the field’s creative practices in a more timely and less mediated fashion. Through lectures, performances, discussions, and most crucially, the presence of the art practitioners both on stage and in the audience, FIELD MEETING presents contemporary art from Asia in its present tense and as a working process that dynamically interacts with creative energies worldwide while challenging its own boundaries.
FIELD MEETING recognizes that a critical inquiry into the conditions of making and thinking about art in Asia has profound implications in rethinking global contemporaneity. The application of the term “postmodernism” presumes a homogenous modernity, a narrative that still perpetuates in the power
structure of today’s art world, for instance, in the relentless generational thinking that ignores local genealogies and modes of pedagogy; mirroring the well-worn yet unresolved East-West dichotomy are still finer hierarchies, misunderstandings, and post-colonialism within the Asian continent. These pressing problems have inspired artists to respond in ever more thought-provoking ways, which have become more nimble and effective than entrenched academic debates.
The FIELD MEETING thrives on the possibilities of unexpected undercurrents, connections, and reflections on a variety of relevant subjects. Over the past few years more artists in and from Asia have established presence on the rosters of blue-chip galleries and international biennials, while research and
academic inquiries within Asia have also expanded considerably. FIELD MEETING acknowledges the field’s achievements and challenges; it advocates nuanced approaches to unearth our recent past and, more urgently, to critically and radically envision the future. Leeza Ahmady & Xin Wang
For more information follow the following announcement: e-flux
NOMINATED for the FUTURE GENERATION ART PRIZE:http://www.futuregenerationartprize.org/en/about , THE VICTOR PINCHUK FOUNDATION, KIEV, UKR
The Future Generation Art Prize established by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation in 2009 is a worldwide contemporary art prize to discover, recognize and give long-term support to a future generation of artists. The Prize is a major contribution to the open participation of younger artists in the dynamic cultural development of societies in global transition.
The Prize is an innovative new international award for artists up to 35 years of age, investing in the artistic development and new production of works. Awarded through a competition, judged by a distinguished jury, the Prize is founded on the idea of generosity, a network of outstanding patron artists and institutional partners, and a highly democratic application procedure.
JURY : Francesco Bonami, Doris Salcedo, Bisi Silva, Philip Tinari, Jan Fabre, Adam Szymczyk, and Eckhard Schneider.
NOMINATED for the RESIDENCY AND GRANT FOLLOW FLUXUS - AFTER FLUXUS 2014, WIESBADEN, DEU
Georgia Kotretsos has been nominated for the residency and grant Follow Fluxus ‒ After Fluxus 2014 which we have launched in 2008 in cooperation with the state capital of Wiesbaden.
The grant’s goal is to support international artists whose works suggest ideas inherent to the Fluxus art movement in order to keep the art current alive. The establishment of the grant was inspired by the “International Festival of Very New Music” which took place in Wiesbaden in 1962. This Fluxus event provided the first broad impact for this new art movement.
The endowment will total 10,000 Euro to be used within three months, from June through August. Living quarters and studio space will be provided by NKV during this time. The work stipend will conclude with an exhibition of the artist’s created work in the following year between September and May and will include a publication. The grant holder should reside predominantly in Wiesbaden for the duration of the grant period. Both national and international artists between can be nominated for this grant. The grant is open to all mediums of Visual Arts including Performance Art.
The NKV has invited representatives of international art institutions whose emphasis lies on contemporary art to nominate up to three possible candidates for this grant. An independent jury will make their selection from the nominated candidates in February 2014.
ARTIST RESIDENCY AT THE INTERNATIONAL STUDIO & CURATORIAL PROGRAM (ISCP), BROOKLYN, NY, USA
(FORTHCOMING 2014)
At the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) each artist is provided with a private and furnished studio space and 24-hour access to all communal facilities. Residents at ISCP are encouraged to take advantage of the in-house community of artists and curators, offering invaluable international connections, professional conversations and critique.
A residency at ISCP is typically three to six months, although artists and curators can apply for up to one year. While in the program, all residents are invited to participate in a number of activities in and outside of ISCP including the four core program activities: Visiting Critics, Field Trips, Salons and Open Studios.
During the forthcoming three-month residency, a research based new body of work will be produced and exhibited at ISCP.
ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE AT L’APPARTEMENT22, RABAT, MAR
(December 15th, 2013 – January 15th, 2014)
Georgia Kotretsos is the artist-in-residence at L’appartment22, Rabat, from 15 December 2013 to 15 January 2014. It is Kotretsos’ first time in Morocco but she has followed the program of the space and the path of its founder, Abdellah Karroum , since 2007. At the end of her residency, L’appartement 22 will host an exhibition of work produced during her stay in Morocco (15 January – 28 February 2014). In Rabat, Kotretsos will conduct research on the city’s independent art spaces and museums, while looking for emblematic images and artworks, in relation to their surroundings, and their audience. For the artist, this approach stimulates her art practice and leads to new works and inquiries.
In her work, Kotretsos studies liberating and anarchic approaches to art viewing. She has created an interdisciplinary body of work in an effort to support her belief that art reception is subjective and that audience members are accountable for their art knowledge. Her practice is research based and whether it manifests as an artwork, an interview, or an audio recording, it always encourages speculative approaches to how art knowledge is produced.
For L’appartment22, the artist is working on a photography-based project entitled KARFI (Greek : Kαρφί). In Greek, KARFI literally means nail but the word is also layered with metaphorical and playful connotations that draw attention to elements of our surroundings that otherwise would have escaped us. When personified, it is about the one who tells on others.
During Kotretsos’ residency at L’appartement 22, two Moroccan artists, Touda Bouanani and Fatima Mazmouz, will contribute to the realization of WWT’s project in Rabat. During the final week of the residency, Kotretsos and Papadopoulou will join Bouanani for the collective’s first initiative. Spring Cleaning is a public performance first conceptualized for Syntagma Square (Constitution Square) in Athens. The version presented in Morocco will be adapted to Rabat’s city center. Once again, the performance is an editorial gesture that wishes to erase, to wipe off, to cleanse instead of adding to the public sphere. It is an effort to re-introduce space and surface, a hope to excavate the recent past by only removing its outermost layer : the veil of dirt. This veil is nothing but the traces civilians leave behind. Dirt is a poignant reminder of the passing of time and the Spring Cleaning performance will attempt to unveil the dermis of the most politically charged site in the heart of Rabat, right on Mohamed V Avenue from 9 to 11 January 2014.
WOMEN WITH TALENTS, ATHENS, GRC
(Fall 2013)
Georgia Kotretsos recently founded the collective WOMEN WITH TALENTS (WWT) along with Athens based visual artist, Natasha Papadopoulou . Female artists may join WWT or collaborate with or propose projects to the founding members at any point.
ARCHIVE PUBLIC PART II
(December 7th, 2013)
Symposium Platform of 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, co-ordinated and curated by Elpida Karaba and Panos Kouros, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, GRC
A lecture performance will be presented in response to Archive Public and it will be presented at the Symposium Platform.
The first Archive Public took place at the city of Patras under the auspices of the University of Patras, Department of Architecture, funded by K. Karatheodoris Research Program. Severn projects created projects that responded in various ways to Archive Public.
SAVE
Opening: Wednesday, 16th October, 2013 at 20:00
Duration: 16 .10 – 15.11.2013
Curated by: George Tserionis
(To make safe; to procure the safety of; to preserve from injury, destruction, or evil of any kind; to rescue from impending danger; as, to save a house …)
“SAVE” participants will submit a critical commentary on the relationship between contemporary cultural and the political conditions in our country. A country with cracks in the perspective of modernity which prompted once the romantic request for a total experience of Utopia beyond the limiting distance overcoming space and time. “Is this the end or the beginning of the nightmare?” Each answer remains pending until viewers search for possible participation in the universe of the image and they find their own “Native Land” through this journey.
On the occasion of the above considerations, the exhibition deals with the conditions of protection, rescue, and healing from potential risks in a morally changing world.
“SAVE” is curated by George Tserionis and is held in collaboration with ENTROPIA Theater. The exhibition constitutes part of its new international production «P.I.G.S», which has been conceived and directed by Marilli Mastrantoni.
Participating artists: Andreas Voussouras, Georgia Kotretsos, Lina Gaki, Nikos Palaiologos, Efi Fouriki, Giannis Sinioroglou, Giorgos Tserionis, Lea Petrou, Babis Karalis, Giannis Christakos, Dionisis Christofilogiannis, Maria Tsagkari, George Gyzis, Panos Famelis, Kostantinos Stamatiou, Natasha Poulantza, Villy Manolakou, Kostantinos Ladianos
RESIDENCY AT LA KUNSTHALLE MULHOUSE, FRA
(MARCH – MAY 2013)
Before Our Eyes (Part 1)*
SOUS NOS YEUX DIALOGUE AND SOUND ENTITLED BELIEVE HALF OF WHAT YOU SEE AND NONE OF WHAT YOU HEAR IS A RADIO PROGRAMME CREATED GEORGIA KOTRETSOS AND CURATED BY ABDELLAH KARROUM
Believe Half of What You See And None of What You Hear will provide a daily newscast ; dialogues ; present-time Griot historicizations as well as occasional heuristic sound pieces . This radio program is an invitation to consider our auditory perception of the art world and our proximal or distal milieu.
For the 2013 La Kunsthalle and UNIVERSITY RESIDENCY, The University of Haute Alsace welcomed artist Georgia Kotretsos. She worked in partnership with Radio Campus and develop a space for dialogue and a prolongation of the exhibition with R22 radio.
The UNIVERSITY RESIDENCY is reserved for artists whose methods include research and collaboration. Every year La Kunsthalle and the University of Haute Alsace Cultural Action Service invite an artist to spend two months benefiting from the material and intellectual resources available to both institutions.
R22 radio : www.radioapartment22.com
A proposition by Abdellah Karroum, curator at La Kunsthalle Mulhouse for the 2013 season.
Sous nos yeux (“Before our eyes”) is a project made up of several parts, including encounters, exhibitions and publications. This project has been conceived as a laboratory exploring the forms an exhibition can take when its objective is to link the production of each work as a proposition, a response to the world. The everyday and the immediate interact with the distant and the historical. Work is displaced from its production site, like a gesture, to its exhibition venue, in an image of this gesture or its repetition. Dialogue is constructed through this translation from object to subject, work to artist, to allow for an encounter with the public and thus with history.
This first part will take place in various physical locations, filled with artworks, with La Kunsthalle as its headquarters. R22 radio is associated with the project as the setting for dialogue, led by artist/writer Georgia Kotretsos, in collaboration with Mulhouse university radio (Radio Campus).
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY | TTS
The Nephele Grant is open to all creative professionals of all disciplines, of all ages and nationalities, who have at least 10 years’ experience in their respective fields. Nephele (pronounced “NEF-eh-lee”) is a Greek nymph’s name meaning “cloud.” Two grants of €1000 each will be awarded to compelling and engaging proposals, which critically address the subjective visual intake of the applicants.
Deadline: Friday, April 10th, 2020
The two grantees will be announced on THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY on June 1st, 2020
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY | TTS
Arts & Culture Research Lab Observatorium
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY, Arts & Culture Research Lab Observatorium is a nonprofit organisation registered in Athens, Greece. Through the filter of philosophy, science, technology, and religion, TTS focuses on the transdisciplinary production of knowledge as that is perceived in the creative arts & culture in Greece and abroad. TTS advocates for a viable visual-diet, an ecology of art production and equal opportunity. By connecting the North with the South and the East with the West, we endeavour to foster exchanges, collaborations, and publications in the Balkans, the rest of Europe, in the wider region of the Mediterranean, and MENA. All TTS research will be published and distributed.
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY is a registered nonprofit organization in Athens, Greece. It was founded by artist, Georgia Kotretsos in 2019 and it is privately supported by friends and donors of TTS. It is governed by the founding member in close collaboration with the TTS Ambassador, the TTS Financial and Legal advisors of the Board.
HOMEMADE EXOTICA
Freiraum in der Box
Organized by AthenSYN, curated by Sotirios Bahtsetzis
Nov. 14th – Feb. 1st, 2019
Since the beginning of the European idea, Athens has been an exoticized utopia. Recently, as a result of the 2009 worldwide financial crisis, Athens has become the exotic scene of a global drama that has attracted many, including the curators of the recent documenta14.
What can “learning from Athens” mean in a time of upheaval for Europe, in which all values rooted in European soil that underpin our cultural heritage are questioned? What is left after the demystification of a country which has been subject to stereotyping since 18th century philhellenism, labeled a tourist paradise, and imprinted with the stigma of the crisis? Why are these questions essential for social coexistence in an ethically corroded system?
In lectures and panel discussions during the program ATHENS TALKS on15 -16 November 2019, artists investigate co-existence in a world full of preconceived notions and expectations of the Other, the practices of art production in a failing market, and survival strategies based on communality, mutual support, and individual contribution to the community. At the same time, they discuss why Athens remains a hub of challenges and transformations that should be addressed by a European culture that seems to have reached its present state of exhaustion.
Participating artists and their works
Dionisis Christofilogiannis / George Drivas / Alexandros Kaklamanos / Dionysis Kavallieratos /Georgia Kotretsos/ James Lane / Yorgos Maraziotis / Georgia Sagri/ Yorgos Stamkopoulos/ Joulia Strauss / Vassileia Stylianidou / Yiannis Theodoropoulos / Stefanos Tsivopoulos/ Dimitris Tzamouranis / Zafos Xagoraris / Theodoros Zafeiropoulos
MON NORD EST TON SUD
La Kunsthalle Centre d’art Contemporain Mulhouse
Sept. 13th – Nov. 11th, 2018
Curated by Sandrine Wymann n
Avec la participation de Bertille Bak (FR), Chto Delat (RS), Gil & Moti (NL), Jan Kopp (DE), Georgia Kotretsos (GR), Katrin Ströbel (DE), Youssef Tabti (FR), Clarissa Tossin (USA), Maarten Vanden Eynde (BE).
L’idée de cette exposition développée entre La Kunsthalle Mulhouse et le Museum für Neue Kunst de Freiburg im Breisgau est née d’une observation locale, d’une comparaison de deux villes, Mulhouse et Freiburg-im-Brisgau, géographiquement proches et qui pourtant se caractérisent par leurs différences.
Leurs deux réalités éloignées tendent à prouver qu’une unité géographique n’implique pas forcément de multiples rapprochements. Elle répond au seul principe d’une localisation qui subit par ailleurs l’influence de facteurs de différenciation exogènes.
Les œuvres présentées dans l’exposition de La Kunsthalle visent à dépasser la situation régionale pour faire apparaître le caractère universel de l’observation.
Mon Nord est Ton Sud est construite autour de l’idée de la pluralité des espaces et de la différence de leur perception. Les espaces géographiques, politiques, sociaux, économiques sont indépendants et complémentaires, ils se comprennent à des échelles individuelles, parfois collectives, mais surtout ils sont les lieux physiques ou virtuels d’expériences subjectives, de relations complexes, voire de situations duales.
Une proposition de Sandrine Wymann
Die Idee dieser Ausstellung, die von La Kunsthalle Mulhouse und dem Museum für Neue Kunst de Freiburg im Breisgau entwickelt wurde, ist aus einer lokalen Beobachtung entstanden, aus dem Vergleich zweier geografisch naher Städte, Mulhouse und Freiburg im Breisgau, die sich jedoch durch Unterschiede auszeichnen.Ihre beiden, entfernten Realitäten neigen zu beweisen, dass eine geografische Einheit nicht unbedingt vielfache Ähnlichkeiten voraussetzt. Sie leistet einzig und allein dem Prinzip einer Lokalisierung Folge, welche im Übrigen den Einfluss von exogenen Differenzierungsfaktoren auf sich nimmt.
Die in La Kunsthalle ausgestellten Werke zielen darauf ab, über die regionale Situation hinauszugehen, um den universellen Charakter der Beobachtung zum Vorschein zu bringen.beide
Mon Nord est Ton Sud (Mein Nord ist dein Süden) artikuliert sich um die Idee der Vielfältigkeit der Räume und der Unterschiede, in der Weise, wie man sie wahrnimmt. Die geografischen, politischen, sozialen, wirtschaftlichen Räume sind unabhängig voneinander und ergänzen sich zugleich, sie verstehen sich auf einer individuellen und manchmal kollektiven Ebene. Vor allem aber sind sie die physischen oder virtuellen Orte von subjektiven Erfahrungen, komplexen Beziehungen, oder gar dualen Situationen.
En partenariat avec le Museum für Neue Kunst qui présente jusqu’au 07.10.2018 l’exposition Your North is my South.
Des bus seront mis en place entre Mulhouse et Freiburg im Brisgau pour permettre au public de découvrir les deux expositions.
In Zusammenarbeit mit dem Museum für Neue Kunst, das bis zum 07.10.2018 die Ausstellung Your North is My South zeigt.
Busse werden zwischen Mulhouse und Freiburg eingesetzt, um dem Publikum zu ermöglichen, beide Ausstellungen zu besichtigen.
L’exposition bénéficie du soutien de la Fondation Entente Franco-Allemande et du fonds PERSPEKTIVE pour l’art contemporain & l’architecture, une initiative du Bureau des arts plastiques de l’Institut français, soutenu par le Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication et le Goethe-Institut.
”4 CENTS: ON SHOW FOR 500 YEARS
Curated by Sotirios Bahtsetzis
blueFest Crete18 Culture & Beyond
The G. & A. Mamidakis Foundation presents the first blueFest Crete | Culture & Beyond!”:http://www.gnamamidakisfoundation.org/bluefest-crete18-culture—-beyond_en
(June 30th – July 2nd), 2018
From 30 June to 2 July, overlooking the beautiful city of Agios Nikolaos, Crete, the G. & A. Mamidakis Foundation organizes this year a 3-day festival of cultural events on the occasion of the proclamation of 2018 as European Year of Cultural Heritage.
The vision for the implementation of blueFest Crete is the revival of a tradition that began 30 years ago in Crete with the organization of the 1st Symposium at the Minos Beach art hotel and is in line with the Foundation’s mission to showcase the cultural wealth of the country. This year’s event is aimed at offering a breath of culture and entertainment to the residents of Crete and its visitors.
The blueFest Crete 18 program links the rich cultural heritage and of our country with new and traditional forms of artistic expression through a variety of artistic activities such as visual arts, theater, music and cinema.
Fine Art Exhibition Opening by Georgia Kotretsos
Art on Blue Art Series, which promotes Greek artists, starts with projects specially designed for the beach of Minos Beach art hotel. The sculpture installation “4 Cents” by artist Georgia Kotretsos will be presented on the rocky surfaces of the beach of hotel Minos Beach art hotel. Georgia Kotretsos expresses her art in the form of sculptures, installations, but also of photographs, texts, recordings and performances.
More information can be found on the blueFestCrete website and on the Facebook page of theG. & A. Mamidakis Foundation n.
LA FUNDACION ALMAYUDA
Curated by Abdellah Karroum
The Phototropics: Myths, Ways, & Tales | #1 Ithaki | Ionian Islands, Greece | Friday, April 22nd, 2016 38°20’19.99”B 20°44’18.63”A
The Phototropics: Myths, Ways, & Tales | #2 Merzouga | Desert, Merzouga, Morocco | Friday, October 7th, 2016 | 31.099449 -3.987303
The Phototropics: Myths, Ways, & Tales | #3 Hercule’s Cave | Hercule’s Cave, Morocco | Wednesday, February 28th, 2018 | 35”45’57”N 5”56’28”W
The Almayuda Foundation supports new “Expeditions to the End of the World”, run by L’appartement 22 and its founder, Abdellah Karroum. “Help” is a Mediterranean-wide project that stages ephemeral artistic performances to help the cause of refugees. More than providing spaces for events, this artistic gesture invites us to reflect on the principles that underpin humanity.
La Fundación Almayuda respalda nuevas «Expediciones del confín del mundo» (Expéditions du bout du monde) de la mano de L’appartement 22 y de su fundador, Abdellah Karroum. Help es un proyecto a la escala del Mediterráneo que realiza intervenciones artísticas efímeras en apoyo a la causa de los refugiados. Estas acciones artísticas, al margen de las salas de eventos, invitan a reflexionar sobre los principios que fundan la humanidad.
La Fondation Almayuda accompagne de nouvelles « Expéditions Le Bout du Monde » portée par « L’appartement 22 » et son fondateur Abdellah Karroum. « Help » est un projet à l’échelle de la Méditerranée, qui met en scène des performances artistiques éphémères au service de la cause des réfugiés. Au-delà des espaces d’événements, ce geste artistique invite à réfléchir sur des principes qui fondent l’humanité.
space52 | Booth 5
School of Fine Arts (A.S.F.A.), at the “Nikos Kessanlis” exhibition venue, 256 Peiraios street, Athens, Greece
(Thursday, 17 May 2018 to Sunday, 20 May 2018)
http://platformsproject.com/platforms/space52/
Participants Artists: Dionisis Christofilogiannis, Georgia Kotretsos, Andrei Nuţu, Andreas Mallouris, Eva Mitala, Pantelis Vitaliotis-Magneto, Iraklis Fovakis, Vasilis Zografos
FORTHCOMING – Προσεχώς
Curated by Louis Papachristou, Space52
(27th Jan – 10th Mar 2018)
Artists: Dimitrios Antonitsis, Irini Bahlitzanaki, Hariton Bekiaris, Dionisis Christofilogiannis, Martha Dimitropoulou, Iraklis Fovakis, Georgia Kotretsos, Nikos Kyriakopoulos, James Lane, Antonis Larios, Υorgos Maraziotis, Maro Michalakakos, Eva Mitala, Jennifer Nelson, Poka-Yio, Nefeli Papanagiotou, Artemis Potamianou, Georgia Sagri, Giorgos Tserionis, Nicolas Vamvouklis, Pantelis Vitaliotis/Magneto, Vasilis Zografos
Forthcoming #1, curated by Louis Papachristou, is the inaugural exhibition in a series of future emergences. It showcases art works, archival material and notes by Athens-based artists. There are myriad paths one could choose to narrate a tale about our recent past and immediate present. The broad scope of creative practices occurring here makes up the sum of a multitude. Looking more deeply at Athens, it is unmistakable that highly edited gestures are being manifested in abundance by above all remaining serene.
Each artist presents fragments or complete works representative of his most recent inquiry. By doing so, Space52 is collective transformed into an inclusive artist-studio, a reservoir of ideas and proposals. The selected works explore equal parts of theory and practice. At a first glance they may appear incongruous and eclectic yet, a closer look will reveal the unanimous overtone of memory, fragility and sensory experiences.
http://www.space52.gr/
Sponsor: Psaroulis Wines http://psarouliswines.gr/
TTHE SCHOOL OF EVERYTHING
by Joulia Strauss with AthenSYN in Kassel, DEU
(June 11, 12, 13, 2017)
A meeting of initiatives dedicated to transforming the educational system of Europe. Organized by AthenSYN in collaboration with Allianz Kulturstiftung.
June 11
The School of Everything – Constituitive and Critical Elaborations on Art-as-education
With: Sotirios Bahtsetzis, Luca di Blasi, Jean-Pierre Rammant, Max Spielmann, Joulia Strauss, Jonas Tinius, Vasyl Cherepanyn, Mathilde ter Heijne
June 12
The School of Everything – Concrete examples of alternative and reflective educational formats
With: Helmut Batista, Agnès Rammant-Peeters, Katja Ehrhardt, Noah Fischer, Mriganka Mudhukallya, Elad Lapidot, Arnisa Zeqo, Lindsay Parkhowell, Sebastian Lütgert, Jan Gerber, Artur Żmijewski, Maarten Vanvolsem, Johanna Scherf, Georgia Kotretsos, Sotiris Tsiganos, Jonian Bisai, Mischa Schaub, Andrea Iten
June 13
The School of Everything as Continuation of Universitas and Krytyka Polityczna
With: Ahmad Alkhatieb, Sotirios Bahtsetzis, Katja Ehrhardt, Judith Holzer, Paul B. Preciado, Sebastian Schäfer, Joulia Strauss
Assembly: working on a new collective curriculum
Posted in Calendar
15 CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS FOR THE 175th ANNIVERSARY OF THE NATIONAL BANK OF GREECE
National Bank of Greece
(June 1 – 30th, 2017)
On Thursday, June 1st, National Bank of Greece, in honor of 175th anniversary of its establishment, exhibited works by 15 contemporary artists which were collected in the framework of an art contest, aiming to encourage and support visual artists.
The exhibition took place at the Old Stock Exchange Hall, on Sophocleous Street.
SYNANTISEIS #6 – DOCUMENTA14 ek sê
Clare Butcher and Georgia Kotretsos
(May 25, 7- 10 pm, 2017)
Koukles Club, Zan Moreas 26, Koukaki, Athens
We were not a destination, not part of the extended map. There was land, but we were not en route. The South was not news but still posed a logistical challenge for the usual professionals in transit. Naïve, yes, to assume that a biennial could drop into a blank, untouched terrain—if anything it was quite the contrary. Isolated, no, as it came as a coalescent symptom of the bigger picture, wedged tightly between documenta X and 11: a dense era bursting at the seams with pathologies, conflicts, contradictions, imposed strategies, maps, routes, and more. Much-needed audiences were recruited—but for most part, to this day, the event exists as an echo, a rumor, a thought, a press release.
The 2nd Johannesburg Biennale: Trade Routes – History & Geography in 1997 joined in the euphoric state of South Africa’s Rainbow Nation, bringing along with it creative paraphernalia and the franchise of the known. Distance mattered at the time, and the notion of everything North was pervasively impacting lives in a pre-Internet media frenzy. Grounded at the southernmost tip of Africa, the event was all a rather hazy version of reality, its resonance resembling that of underwater acoustics. Yet it was devoured with unparalleled appetite—everything that had been out of reach for so long. It felt as if the South had teeth, a wet tongue, a gut, and a voice.
Our unorthodox exhibition history traces a web of trade routes over space and time, taking full advantage of our position as a secondary audience, a tardy public. documenta X in 1997 was curated by the institution’s first female artistic director, Catherine David, in 1997. The 2nd Johannesburg Biennale followed shortly thereafter, pulled off the same year by a young Okwui Enwezor, who immediately went on to produce documenta 11 in 2002. Now, twenty years after where we began, another edition has landed in Athens. For those physically present, these exhibitions are real, urban, and gritty. For others, they may remain shadows, outlined by weighty mother catalogs circulating among trustworthy hands.
Hence the time for storytellers is nigh (nè?)—those who neither confirm nor deny the past, testaments to the high strung, spun, loose-tongued and looped-lipped lingering at the doors of mega events. Faded facsimiles and post-truths play fictive witness. What does this knowledge become in the flesh, when word becomes mouth? Who is excluded in our effort to continuously include, re-route and re-educate the (art) world? What is there left to sê?
Clare Butcher is a member of the documenta 14 aneducation team. Originally from Zimbabwe, Clare cooks as part of her practice and has organized reading, writing, and research programs with students at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, the Piet Zwart Institute’s Masters of Education in Art & Design, and the University of Cape Town.
Georgia Kotretsos is a visual artist and a professional spectator based in Athens, Greece. She moved to South Africa from Greece in her early teens while the abolition of apartheid was underway. With her work, she critiques the conformity of seeing by studying, and proposes and practices liberating and anarchic approaches of looking at art.
Posted in Public Education
UNIVERSITAS Group exhibition
(April 7 at 7pm, 2017)
At Trii Art Hub, Drakou 9, Athens, Metro Station: Sygrou-Fix
Opening Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 10:00-20:00
The exhibition runs from 7/4/2017 – 7/5/2017.
On April 7 at 7pm, AthenSYN launches an exhibition on the subject of migration and learning in
collaboration with the Avtonomi Akadimia and the Athens Biennale at Trii Art Hub, Drakou 9 (metro station
Syggrou Fix). The exhibition presents works by Sebastian Bayse Schäfer (D),Vilelmini Vilma Andrioti (GR),
Gudrun Barenbrock (DE), Manaf Halbouni (SY), Thomas Kilpper (DE), Georgia Kotretsos (GR), Joulia
Strauss (DE), DimitrisTzamouranis (GR),Dionisis Christofilogiannis (GR) and LiwaaYazji (SY), based on a
series of artist workshops curated by Katja Ehrhardt. The formats of the UNIVERSITAS exhibition range
from film,video, text, photography, to painting, installation and object. The exhibition is curated by Sotirios
Bahtsetzis and marks an attempt to conduct a discussion about common learning in today’s Europe with an
eye to our common future.
The exhibition UNIVERSITAS is supported by the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany
in Athens.
The workshops UNIVERSITAS have been supported by Allianz Cultural Foundation and
UNIVERSITAS
(February 16-28, 2017)
a community of teachers and learners
with workshops by artists from Syria, Greece and Germany
At Eleusis and Skaramangas Camps, Khora Athens and the premises of the Athens Biennale
We invite you to join! Workshops held in English with Arabic translation, entrance free
Artists from Syria, Greece and Germany offer creative workshops to migrants and Athenians to develop a vision of our common future in which we grow together and learn from one another. Stories and dreams contributed by migrants and Athenians to artists will be part of a world’s history that we write together. This new collective story will be presented to the public as part of the exhibition of the Athens Biennale and published as a book.
Organized by AthenSYN, Avtonomi Akadimia, the Athens Biennale and community center Khora Athens
In collaboration with Allianz Cultural Foundation, supported by the Creative Europe program of the European Union
Organizers and supporters:
AthenSYN is an non-profit organization initiating international artistic collaborations with Greece, founded and organized by cultural scientist Katja Ehrhardt and art historian, curator and art critic Sotirios Bahtsetzis.
Avtonomi Akadimia , founded and organized by Berlin and Athens based artist Joulia Strauss http://joulia-strauss.net, provides an opportunity for artists, philosophers, scientists, political activists from Berlin, Athens and many other places to give seminars in the Public Garden of Akadimia Platonos.
The Athens Biennale functions within an international network of large-scale periodic contemporary art events. It emerged from the intense cultural activity that makes Athens one of the most interesting places for contemporary art, and it aims to be an agent of constant change and innovation, provide a context for creativity and dialogue and constitute a wide platform for the designation and the critical engagement of local artistic production, as well as a forum for discussion and exchange with the international scene. The Athens Biennale is directed by Poka-Yio and Nayia Yiakoumaki.
The Allianz Cultural Foundation is a non-profit organization of public interest that supports and initiates cross-border, transdisciplinary cultural and educational projects in Europe and the Mediterranean region.
Creative Europe is the European Commission’s framework program for support to the culture and audiovisual sectors.
Documentation: Kalliopi Vagiannaki
With support of Trans Geographic Cinema School
For more information in English, please email info@athensyn.com or call 690-6912882
HEROES WE LOVE, TIRANA, ALB
(Dec. 2, 2016 – Jan. 28, 2017)
Double Feature is an exhibition format introduced by Tirana Art Lab with the aim of systematically displaying in our premises, two artistic positions to the Albanian, the regional and international audience. Triple Feature # 5 is a special edition of this format, where we exhibit together the works of Albanian art collective Çeta , Greek artist and researcher Georgia Kotretsos and Albanian artist Pleurad Xhafa.
Triple Feature # 5 presentation, is part of “Heroes We Love ” collaboration and multidisciplinary project on the controversial topic of socialist heritage of the 20th century European art. The show will consist of works exhibited for the first time at Tirana Art Lab as well as two artistic interventions in the public space by Çeta and Georgia Kotretsos, commissioned by Tirana Art Lab . Tirana Art Lab wants to engage contemporary artists of younger generation into the project through the art intervention on the selected socialist era monuments. The interventions aim to stimulate public debate, initiate new interpretations and envisage the potentials of those art works of the past.
Triple Feature #5 is dedicated to the intersection between art and activism, art activism and the extended role of the artist as an engaged citizen, trying to make a change not only inside the art system but also outside of it, in real life.
INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS IN BERN RESIDENCY, BERN, CHE
(September 2016)
The referendum of May 2009 has cleared the way for the long-term usage of the PROGR building as an atelier house. The PROGR foundation bought the building from the city of Bern and offers workspace for local artists to favorable conditions. It is in this optimal framework that residency.ch was founded in 2011 by artists as a non-profit association.
THE IMAGINARY REPUBLIC
PART 1:
Artists: Kotretsos, Guerra, Heier, LaBelle
Opening: September 9th, 19:00h
September 10th – 18th
PART 2:
Artists:
Frichot, Lewandowska, Rotman, Skou
Opening: September 22nd
September 24nd – October 16th
During September and October The Image Republic will unfold in two editions at Tag Team Studio, showing works by national and international artists, including Marianne Heier, Marysia Lewandowska, Hélène Frichot, Luis Guerra, Georgia Kotretsos, Brandon LaBelle, Diego Rotman, and Lise Skou. Through propositional and speculative works the exhibition focuses on questions and experiences of public life and culture.
The Imaginary Republic looks at questions of public life and civic culture in today’s global environment, and considers how ongoing economic, social and political unrest has led to an intensification of grass-roots initiatives, artistic activism, alternative instituting and forms of commoning.
As a network of related participants, the project develops through shared methods and modes of experimental pedagogy, critical togetherness, public and creative instituting, and looks to identify through their expressions possibilities for political imagining. The political imagination is posited as a tool for problematizing and negotiating contemporary crises, enabling an understanding of public assembly as being founded upon intensely creative and psychic labors that equally contain secret desires, generative noises, breaks in identity and community, and assemblages of deviant knowledge.
In his book, Disagreement, Jacques Rancière identifies two sides to the governmental, what he calls “the political” and “the police”. As he states, often what we imagine as “the political” is only a mode of policing. Such a dichotomous view, while providing an important perspective, may overlook the more nuanced, in-between articulations found in grass-roots movements, civic cultures, radical dreaming, unlikely friendships and acts of (non)work, the daily rituals and encounters between neighbors and strangers, as well as the deep poetics of relating to what is not yet, through which agency and collective actions find their future footing.
The exhibition at Tag Team Studios, divided into two editions, brings together works, propositions, and documents that consider relations between individual determination and social and institutional structures. Questions of art and economy, biopolitics and vacancy, transience, piracy and infrastructures of the poor are brought forward as critical and creative arenas of struggle.
Organized with support from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design.
THE PHOTOTROPICS: MYTHS, WAYS, & TALES
Artist : Georgia Kotretsos
Curator : Abdellah Karroum
Ithaki, Ionian Islands, Ionian Sea, Greece | Friday, April 22nd, 2016 | 38°20’19.99”B 20°44’18.63”A
The Expedition 16 takes place as a research trip to explore the phenomenon of Phototropism applied to human movements and the relationship to the political status of natural elements.
Artist and researcher Georgia Kotretsos writes in her trip notes : “The Phototropics are an ambiguous minority, primarily situated east of the Prime Meridian – often seen at the Mediterranean coastline. They have historically kept their myths, ways and tales secret from outsiders and non-initiated Phototropics, thus rumours about them have arisen. The etymology of their name echoes the phenomenon of phototropism, when plants turn to follow the light. Their name in Ancient Greek means phōs (generally phōtos), a light + τρόπος (trópos, “a turn, way, manner, style, a trope or mood in logic”), from τροπή (tropḗ, “turn ; solstice ; trope”), the two words literally explain the natural inclination of this group to be drawn to the sun.”
Day 1 :
Artist Georgia Kotretsos, curator Abdellah Karroum travelled to the Island of Ithaki, in search of the peculiar phenomenon of HELP. They soon discovered, that the unprecedented numbers of people taking dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean in search of a new home propelled the bold gesture. The Phototropics question their immediate geography – the edge of their very land as it suddenly defined territories without obstructing the gaze, by constructing utopias and dystopias dominated by rupture. Sites of polarities were created , and unspoken rules of who is welcomed and who is not, were established.
Day 2 :
On this first of its kind expedition, Kotretsos and Karroum realised that this is only the prelude of a series of ephemeral gestures to be taking place all along the Mediterranean coastline. The Phototropics strategically signaled HELP from the island of Ithaki for its strong symbolic association with notions such as that of the journey (whether mythical or literal), the notion of home, feeling lost, hope, hospitality, being-in-need and being-needed on both sides of the shore. By borrowing the English and Arabic language when facing the sea, HELP hopes to awake epic myths, create tales and invent ways for this larger-creative-gesture-to-be around the Mediterranean.
Day 3 :
And at last, would like to leave you with a question even the Phototropics struggle to answer with clarity just yet. How and where in terms of location can “history” be written when there are unlimited and complex social, cultural, economic, political religious and class constructs are at play ?
SIRENSWAVE
SIRENSWAVE is a platform created and edited by Georgia Kotretsos & Kutloano Skosana Ricci.
In Greek mythology, the Sirens (Greek singular: Σειρήν Seirēn;[1] Greek plural: Σειρῆνες Seirēnes) were dangerous yet beautiful creatures, who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island. Roman poets placed them on some small islands called Sirenum scopuli. In some later, rationalised traditions, the literal geography of the “flowery” island of Anthemoessa, or Anthemusa,[2] is fixed: sometimes on Cape Pelorum and at others in the islands known as the Sirenuse, near Paestum, or in Capreae.[3] All such locations were surrounded by cliffs and rocks. Wikipedia
The time has come to sound the alarm and add your vibrations to this alluring song in dialogue with Abantu Bomlambo.
In Southern African mythology, Abantu Bomlambo, are people of the water. They are the guardians of seafarers and adventurers …“They are kind and good, fearing for a person who swims in the sea in case he should drown, and chasing small children from the sea by sending warning waves rushing at them to scare them away.“ Penny Miller, Myths and Legends of Southern Africa, 1979
After maintaining our silence for a while – we are now back. This providential return is marked by our desire to once again allure. Our water guardians will keep an eye on you on your journey to this melodious source of truth.
At a time of intersectional urgency Sirens from around the world are called to sound the alarm and create a new song that pierces through the vacuous cacophony pervasively blazoned on the web.
Sirens go further than the ‘headline’ – they raise awareness, question, guard, propose solutions, act as mediators, share knowledge, celebrate their peers and give a fresh perspective on patriarchy, imperialism, racism, sexism, among many other issues standing in the way of progress for the human race today. sirenswave@gmail.com
KLIMA
[“I do not at all believe in what I call automatic democracy. I believe in reflection, not reflex.”-Paul Virilio]
by Georgia Kotretsos & Carolina Trigo
KLIMA is a project initiated by artists Georgia Kotretsos and Carolina Trigo, who came together to compile content and conduct research for a Volume entitled KLIMA.
Phase #1 July 1st – 30th, 2015 – Paros
There are times we encounter the other within us, and those times may expose a symptom so telling of a state. A politically-charged state where the lines between self and other tremble; struck by difference at the site of the instance. These very attributes create the urgency to study a moment, that any minute may no longer be. KLIMA looks at recently formed eccentrics found in advanced societies and the developing world for their characteristics. Argentina in early 2000s serves as the departure point of the research, leading us all the way to Greece in 2015-16, right through to the end of 2017. The editors of this Volume interviewed and engaged in dialogue and met in person with some of those so-called professional “exotics” of our times (artists, writers, economists, human rights lawyers) to find out what happens when “zones of autonomy” engage in productive disagreements with themselves. What happens when alterity tinctures sameness? When nearness stretches itself into distance?
Phase #2 July 1st – 30th, 2016 – Athens/Kalamata
As the political and aesthetic tensions between exposure and shelter, frailty and sovereignty – we ask: how are “we”shaped? By our sense of self? By what which we cannot control? What positions do we assume or disavow when hit by a storm – be it personal, cultural, socio-economic, political or atmospheric? What happens when borders of self and territory escape us like air? The project is an acclimatisation in thought and form to that which strikes us. The purpose of the project is to cultivate a space for wonder and unforeseen coincidences to take-place. To disseminate ideas that challenge the relations between private, public, personal and political climates.
OPEN ARTISTS STUDIO FOUNDATION: under construction | C9 MAXIMILIANSFORUM | MUNICH, DEU
(September 8th – OCTOBER 8th, 2015)
The OPEN ARTISTS STUDIO FOUNDATION (OASF) is a visionary 10-year project proposal and exhibition. OASF is an innovative artist studio model, where upon the physical rehabilitation of MaximiliansForum will offer diverse and interdisciplinary fabrication spaces and technical support at its premises; and access to a network of specialized professionals and services via its online platform to contemporary artists. OASF hopes to serve both as a creative crossroad and a hub in the heart of Munich, right on Maximilianstrasse as well as globally through its engaging manifold network.
OPEN ARTISTS STUDIO FOUNDATION: under construction aims to assemble at MaximiliansForum on September 8th, the Munich art community, the Department of Arts and Culture of the city, and representatives of the Maximilianstrasse flagship luxury brand stores to present and propose an organically-born creative evolution of the space. OASF further invites us to contribute to the formation of its structure by initially taking action towards its pilot phase. OASF will remain open under conceptual construction for an entire month.
The needs of the mobile, omni-cyber and boundless nature of today’s contemporary artists practice give birth to a social studio apparatus – OASF – one that wishes to house and support universal human creativity across the board.
MaximiliansForum is a 1600m² public exhibition space in Munich. It is located at the underpass of the intersection on Maximilianstrasse and Altstadtring. It is situated right under one of the main thoroughfares and most expensive streets of Munich – Maximilianstrasse, after which, the exhibition-space is named. The underpass was built from 1968 to 1969 as part of the Munich transport master plan.
Venue | MaximiliansForum, Maximilianstr. 31, D-80539 Munich, Germany
Welcoming remarks | Department of Arts and Culture , City of Munich & C9
Presentation | Georgia Kotretsos
Guest speaker | Bernd Fesel , Chair European Creative Business Network, Rotterdam
Video presentation featuring | Mehul Sangham , Innovation Leadership and Strategist, Cape Town
Opening Hours | 24/7 – Office: Tuesdays 10.00 -19.00 and by appointment (Mob.:+49 (0) 172 418 46 59)
The MaximiliansForum is now used as a municipal exhibition space. Currently a realignment of the space is taking place. Three artists of the Artist-Initiative COLLABORATIONproject are currently exploring creative possibilities for future use. Philipp Messner, Alexander Steig and Thomas Thiede are the curators of this very project C9 .
MaximiliansForum in Transformation is a year-long project by C9 , that explores creative alternatives in relation to the spatial and cultural position of MaximiliansForum.
C9 shifts the focus of the space – from being a place of exhibition, to becoming a space of artistic practice.
Special thanks to Designer and Collaborator, Alexandros Politis; friend and COLLABORATION Colleague, Beate Engl ; Co-founder of Mataroa, Antonis Papadopoulos ; my beloved sister Creative Content Editor and Producer, Sophia Kotretsos ; friend and Artist/Activist, Joulia Strauss ; friend and Artist, Aspassio Haronitaki; Phd in Leisure Mobility, Georgia Zouni ; and last but not least HAECCCC, 0+865 for supporting the realization of the OPEN ARTISTS STUDIO FOUNDATION: under construction.
OPEN ARTISTS STUDIO FOUNDATION: under construction is supported by: C9 ; NEON ; Department of Arts and Culture , City of Munich; Mataroa and European Creative Business Network .
THE IMAGINARY REPUBLIC | BERGEN, NOR
(August 28th – September 1st, 2015)
The Imaginary Republic is a research project developed by professor Brandon LaBelle at KHiB. International participants will present and discuss the project at Landmark, Bergen Kunsthall, Monday, 31 August at 19.00. Free entrance.
Participants at Landmark: Dr. Hélène Frichot , KTH Stockholm; Georgia Kotretsos, Athens; Brandon LaBelle , Bergen Academy of Art and Design; Dr. Diego Rotman , Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Lise Skou , Aarhus.
The Imaginary Republic considers the dynamics of civic culture in today’s global environment, and how developments in economic, social and political realities have led to an intensification of public argument and creative imagination. Utilizing the extraordinary wealth of civic imagining at play in contemporary culture, The Imaginary Republic aims to rethink utopian tendencies, shared space and the architecturally contested, hopes and dreams for non-capitalistic economies and commoning, and the productions of dissident publics.
The Imaginary Republic is a research project being developed by Prof. Brandon LaBelle from the Department of Fine Art at KHiB. It sets out to converse with current social movements across Europe and elsewhere, and sets out to explore transformations in political consciousness. In particular, it aims to research creative expressions of political subjectivity with an emphasis on emancipatory practices. For instance, protests around social housing in Berlin have prompted a drive toward “re-communalization” which reconfigures the relation between local and migrant communities, drawing in the arts community through questions of gentrification. Or the ongoing alignment between neoliberal economy and education in Britain has sparked the emergence of independent schools and free pedagogical platforms, leading to new forms of shared work and knowledge production. These examples act as counter-narratives to major structures of national and regional governance, and embody a creative political consciousness – an insurrectionary drive. What consequences do such expressions have for understanding civic culture and its resistances? What knowledges might the interaction between the arts, the critical imagination and the political generate today? Is there an imaginary republic to be found within the drives and mechanisms of global capitalism, and from which new solidarities can be assembled?
HAECCCC, 0+865 | STANGLERHOF , BOLZANO, IT
(August 5th – August 26th, 2015)
Residency program invited by HAECCCC, 0+865.
MANDALA RESIDENCY | KLIMA | MARPISSA, PAROS ISLAND, GRC
(July 1st – July 31st, 2015)
KLIMA is a project initiated by artists Georgia Kotretsos and Carolina Trigo , who — supported by curator and anthropologist, Martin Brauen and philanthropist, Alfonso T. Anez — come together in the island of Paros to compile and edit content for a Volume entitled KLIMA.
This project was conceived in a series of dialogues with writer and Legal Consultant Bronwyn Lay (Vesancy), Curator Lara Khaldi (Amsterdam), artist and researcher Carolina Trigo (Marseille), artist and researcher Georgia Kotretsos (Athens) and researcher Tyna Fritschy (Zürich).
KLIMA: The riddle of autonomy.
We conceive of Klima as the unfinished day by day. As the political and aesthetic tensions between exposure and shel- ter, frailty and sovereignty. We ask: how are ‘we’ shaped? By our sense of self? By what surrounds us? By that which we cannot control? What positions do we assume or disavow when hit by a storm — be it personal, political or atmos- pheric? What happens when borders of self and territory escape us like air?
The project is a retreat, an acclimatization in thought and form to that which strikes us. We embrace the concept of a retreat as an aesthetic technique. We refer to aesthet- ics as sense and perception, and to technique (techne) as an activity — a making or doing that is concrete, variable, and context-dependent (where the significance of concrete is derived from concrescere, ‘to grow together’). We pair techne with Poïesis, where poïesis refers to a threshold occasion whereby something moves away from its stand- ing as one thing to become another. The purpose of the project is to cultivate a space for wonder and unforeseen coincidences to take-place. To disseminate ideas that chal- lenge the relations between private, public, personal and political climates.
I do not at all believe in what I call automatic democracy. I believe in reflection, not reflex. — PAUL VIRILIO.
There are times we encounter the other within us, and those times may expose a symptom so telling of a state. A politically-charged state where the lines between self and other tremble; struck by difference at the site of the in- stance. These very attributes create the urgency to study a moment, that any minute may no longer be. Klima looks at recently formed nomads found in advanced societies and the developing world for their characteristics. The editors of this Volume will interview, engage in dialogue and meet in person some of those so-called exotics of our times to find out what happens when ‘zones of autonomy’ engage in productive disagreements with themselves. What hap- pens when alterity tinctures sameness? When nearness stretches itself into distance? We will be looking precisely at what that tincturing and stretching implies.
IMPLODE RESIDENCY - SONIC TOPOGRAPHIES | EUBEAN ISLAND GRC
(June 2nd, 2015 – June 16th, 2015)
Implode is an artistic platform founded in 2013 dedicated to new forms of sound and visual arts. Based in Greece and the Netherlands, Implode focuses in conceptualising and materialising projects that each time are characterised by a particular theme derived by philosophical idioms, rhetorical questions, everyday concerns and accidental moments of naivety. Via a wide range of innovative events such as experimental performances, residencies and festivals, we promote established and emerging artists. Our purpose is to bridge the extrovert nature of the interdisciplinary field of arts with the introvert process of a creative practise. is an artistic platform founded in 2013 dedicated to new forms of sound and visual arts. Based in Greece and the Netherlands, Implode focuses in conceptualising and materialising projects that each time are characterised by a particular theme derived by philosophical idioms, rhetorical questions, everyday concerns and accidental moments of naivety. Via a wide range of innovative events such as experimental performances, residencies and festivals, we promote established and emerging artists. Our purpose is to bridge the extrovert nature of the interdisciplinary field of arts with the introvert process of a creative practice.
On the occasion of Implode Residency 2015, four contemporary artists who specialize on the sonic art field were invited to live and work for 2 weeks at culturally and historically notable locations of the Greek island, Evoia.
The artists were invited to make use of the natural sound resources that each location has to offer, in order to use them as their primary reference. Furthermore each artist, could closely explore the cultural and historical references of the location, while living in the island of Evoia in order to create an audio and/or video composition.
As a result upon our research, we came up with four sites. Each location has a unique historical and cultural background while all of them consider to have played major role in the Ancient Greek history. Therefore, the locations are closely connected with the selected artists in terms of artistic practice, statement and specialization.
Participating artists and locations:
Jacob Kirkergaard : The Euripus Strait, is a narrow channel of water separating the Greek island of Evoia in the Aegean Sea from Veotia in mainland Greece. The distance between Evoia island and mainland is consider to be one of the nearest in the world (40 meters). The strait is subject to strong tidal currents which reverse direction approximately four times a day. Tidal flows are very weak in the Eastern Mediterranean, but this strait is a remarkable exception. Water flow peaks at about 12 km/hour, either northwards or southwards, and boats are often incapable of sailing against it. When nearing flow reversal, sailing is even more precarious because of vortex formation. The currents are influenced by moon, the natural satellite of the earth, which creates the phenomenon of tides. This unique phenomenon employed ancient Greeks, particularly Aristotle and Eratosthenes as well as many other scientists of the last century.
Ilios : The most impressive monument of ancient Eretria, one of the oldest known theatres, lies in the western section of town, between the western gate, the stadium and the upper gymnasium; the temple of Dionysos was found at its south-west end. As indicated by the architectural remains of the scene, the initial construction phase followed the invasion by the Persians and the reconstruction of the city in the fifth century BC, whereas the fourth century BC marked the site’s peak. The theatre seated 6,300 spectators and is reminiscent in form to the Theatre of Dionysos in Athens, after transformation of the latter in 330 BC. There are still the impressive remains of the scene, especially the vaulted underground passage leading to the orchestra centre.
Yiorgis Sakellariou : According to history (Iliad of Homer) the Greek fleet gathered in Aulis near the Euripus Strait to set off for Troy, to force the return of Helen. While there, king Agamemnon killed a stag sacred to the goddess Artemis. The enraged deity caused a contrary wind and eventually forced the king to agree to sacrifice his daughter Iphigeneia in order to ensure a favorable wind for the Greek fleet.
and Georgia Kotretsos: The Medieval Castle of Casteli, is located on the top of the hill of Phylla village. It was build in 13th century by Licario, a noble knight of Lord Guiberto Dalle Carceri. This castle was build in the upper part of the village in order to have a clear view of the entire area. The castle is also visually connected with two other towers which used by the knights in order to communicate with the castle.
PERFORMING at FIELD MEETING TAKE 2: An Afterthought | A ACAW COLLATERAL EVENT DURING THE 56TH VENICE BIENNALE, IT
Friday May 8th 2015, 2:30 – 5:30 pm
Hosted by My Art Guides: Venice Meeting Point
A reunion- gathering for leading artists, curators, and art professionals-participants of Asia Contemporary Art Week’s inaugural FIELD MEETING 2014 New York. FIELD MEETING Take 2: An Afterthought reflects on and celebrates the success of FIELD MEETING 2014 (New York), now an ongoing curatorial platform that focuses on creative process, conceptual exchange, and collaboration in an effort to advance artistic endeavors.
Curated by Leeza Ahmady with intimate interviews, performances, talks, & discussions by:
Haig Aivazian (Beirut) ; Mathieu Borysevicz (Beijing); Burçak Bingöl (Istanbul); Umer Butt (Dubai); Alexis Destoop (Sydney / Brussels); Beatrice Glow (New York); Jitish Kallat (Mumbai); Reena Kallat (Mumbai); Georgia Kotresos (Athens); Barbara London (New York); MAP Office (Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix; Hong Kong); Naeem Mohaiemen (Dhaka & New York); Xin Wang (New York); Craig Yee (Beijing & Seattle) ; Zheng Chongbin (San Francisco).
By invitation only! RSVP is now CLOSED due to space capacity.
Supported by DEREE, the American College of Greece and Angeles Mira.
PERFORMING at the ASIAN CONTEMPORARY ART WEEK | FIELD MEETING, NY, USA
(October 22nd, 2014 – November 3rd, 2014)
I will be presenting in a lecture/performance Socially engaged? Better, socially married?:
[...] I will cite a story; a story I was made aware of in a clandestine manner, a seductive and alluring one.
It’s a story that touches on and rubs off like stand-paper on the entire value system of Greek society. I have a lot of thoughts, and my first one is that silence is a form of complicity; but I am not a snitch. I will tell you everything I know, but not what I suspect. I will disclose all that the storyteller allows me to share.
Last May, the storyteller came to me genderless, faceless, voiceless, and unidentified. The mechanics of the contact will only make this presentation ever more elusive. I am guilty, though, of devouring the uncanny bait of the initial provocation to engage in a discussion to the point I even surprised myself. To be the chosen “one” soon came with great responsibility. I welcomed the rules of communication, the manipulation, the game, and the risk of falling victim to the elaborate trap of a skilled “trickster”.
That possibility equally excited me. I was open to believing, but also to being fooled. This person has not been blathering on; the level of ingenuity, tenacity and persuasiveness captivated me.
When it comes to sharing this story with you, I have to admit that I struggled. Soon after the initial contact I reached out to friends and colleagues. Leeza Ahmady, director of the Asian Contemporary Art Week, instantaneously extended an invitation to me to present this unusual experience at the FIELD MEETING in NYC. At that point I was still apprehensive about the developments of the situation I was caught up in. I accepted the invitation to present, and from August onwards, my inclination to satisfy my curiosity about the world by raising questions was instrumentalized to the max.
The presentation will be based on an interview I have been working on in Greek since May 2014. It took some time for trust to be established and the process found me in the grip of a frenzied state of mind over the summer months. I often had to exist in order to correspond to the needs of this communication.
I am about to present to you a provocative endeavor of a Greek artist who is manipulating civil rights in the form of repeated marriage with third-country citizens (non-EU) to bring foreign artists/intellectuals to Greece, effectively recruiting intellectual engagement through a personal residency program for a waning state weighted down by financial crises.
Supported by Angeles Mira | Architecture & kpdesign plus
ASIAN CONTEMPORARY ART WEEK
Inspired by and born of the intense field work carried out by all practitioners of art, FIELD MEETING foregrounds the immediacy of these dynamic exchanges by bringing together over 40 artists, curators, scholars, and institutional leaders whose works variously relate to and problematize the cultural, political, and geographical parameters of contemporary Asia. As a curated platform, FIELD MEETING capitalizes on this fall’s citywide museum and gallery exhibitions shedding light on various aspects of contemporary Asian art through highlighting individual and regional practices; simultaneously, the intensive two-day forum facilitates another kind of exchange beyond established institutional representation and discourse to expose the field’s creative practices in a more timely and less mediated fashion. Through lectures, performances, discussions, and most crucially, the presence of the art practitioners both on stage and in the audience, FIELD MEETING presents contemporary art from Asia in its present tense and as a working process that dynamically interacts with creative energies worldwide while challenging its own boundaries.
FIELD MEETING recognizes that a critical inquiry into the conditions of making and thinking about art in Asia has profound implications in rethinking global contemporaneity. The application of the term “postmodernism” presumes a homogenous modernity, a narrative that still perpetuates in the power
structure of today’s art world, for instance, in the relentless generational thinking that ignores local genealogies and modes of pedagogy; mirroring the well-worn yet unresolved East-West dichotomy are still finer hierarchies, misunderstandings, and post-colonialism within the Asian continent. These pressing problems have inspired artists to respond in ever more thought-provoking ways, which have become more nimble and effective than entrenched academic debates.
The FIELD MEETING thrives on the possibilities of unexpected undercurrents, connections, and reflections on a variety of relevant subjects. Over the past few years more artists in and from Asia have established presence on the rosters of blue-chip galleries and international biennials, while research and
academic inquiries within Asia have also expanded considerably. FIELD MEETING acknowledges the field’s achievements and challenges; it advocates nuanced approaches to unearth our recent past and, more urgently, to critically and radically envision the future. Leeza Ahmady & Xin Wang
For more information follow the following announcement: e-flux
NOMINATED for the FUTURE GENERATION ART PRIZE:http://www.futuregenerationartprize.org/en/about , THE VICTOR PINCHUK FOUNDATION, KIEV, UKR
The Future Generation Art Prize established by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation in 2009 is a worldwide contemporary art prize to discover, recognize and give long-term support to a future generation of artists. The Prize is a major contribution to the open participation of younger artists in the dynamic cultural development of societies in global transition.
The Prize is an innovative new international award for artists up to 35 years of age, investing in the artistic development and new production of works. Awarded through a competition, judged by a distinguished jury, the Prize is founded on the idea of generosity, a network of outstanding patron artists and institutional partners, and a highly democratic application procedure.
JURY : Francesco Bonami, Doris Salcedo, Bisi Silva, Philip Tinari, Jan Fabre, Adam Szymczyk, and Eckhard Schneider.
NOMINATED for the RESIDENCY AND GRANT FOLLOW FLUXUS - AFTER FLUXUS 2014, WIESBADEN, DEU
Georgia Kotretsos has been nominated for the residency and grant Follow Fluxus ‒ After Fluxus 2014 which we have launched in 2008 in cooperation with the state capital of Wiesbaden.
The grant’s goal is to support international artists whose works suggest ideas inherent to the Fluxus art movement in order to keep the art current alive. The establishment of the grant was inspired by the “International Festival of Very New Music” which took place in Wiesbaden in 1962. This Fluxus event provided the first broad impact for this new art movement.
The endowment will total 10,000 Euro to be used within three months, from June through August. Living quarters and studio space will be provided by NKV during this time. The work stipend will conclude with an exhibition of the artist’s created work in the following year between September and May and will include a publication. The grant holder should reside predominantly in Wiesbaden for the duration of the grant period. Both national and international artists between can be nominated for this grant. The grant is open to all mediums of Visual Arts including Performance Art.
The NKV has invited representatives of international art institutions whose emphasis lies on contemporary art to nominate up to three possible candidates for this grant. An independent jury will make their selection from the nominated candidates in February 2014.
ARTIST RESIDENCY AT THE INTERNATIONAL STUDIO & CURATORIAL PROGRAM (ISCP), BROOKLYN, NY, USA
(FORTHCOMING 2014)
At the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) each artist is provided with a private and furnished studio space and 24-hour access to all communal facilities. Residents at ISCP are encouraged to take advantage of the in-house community of artists and curators, offering invaluable international connections, professional conversations and critique.
A residency at ISCP is typically three to six months, although artists and curators can apply for up to one year. While in the program, all residents are invited to participate in a number of activities in and outside of ISCP including the four core program activities: Visiting Critics, Field Trips, Salons and Open Studios.
During the forthcoming three-month residency, a research based new body of work will be produced and exhibited at ISCP.
ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE AT L’APPARTEMENT22, RABAT, MAR
(December 15th, 2013 – January 15th, 2014)
Georgia Kotretsos is the artist-in-residence at L’appartment22, Rabat, from 15 December 2013 to 15 January 2014. It is Kotretsos’ first time in Morocco but she has followed the program of the space and the path of its founder, Abdellah Karroum , since 2007. At the end of her residency, L’appartement 22 will host an exhibition of work produced during her stay in Morocco (15 January – 28 February 2014). In Rabat, Kotretsos will conduct research on the city’s independent art spaces and museums, while looking for emblematic images and artworks, in relation to their surroundings, and their audience. For the artist, this approach stimulates her art practice and leads to new works and inquiries.
In her work, Kotretsos studies liberating and anarchic approaches to art viewing. She has created an interdisciplinary body of work in an effort to support her belief that art reception is subjective and that audience members are accountable for their art knowledge. Her practice is research based and whether it manifests as an artwork, an interview, or an audio recording, it always encourages speculative approaches to how art knowledge is produced.
For L’appartment22, the artist is working on a photography-based project entitled KARFI (Greek : Kαρφί). In Greek, KARFI literally means nail but the word is also layered with metaphorical and playful connotations that draw attention to elements of our surroundings that otherwise would have escaped us. When personified, it is about the one who tells on others.
During Kotretsos’ residency at L’appartement 22, two Moroccan artists, Touda Bouanani and Fatima Mazmouz, will contribute to the realization of WWT’s project in Rabat. During the final week of the residency, Kotretsos and Papadopoulou will join Bouanani for the collective’s first initiative. Spring Cleaning is a public performance first conceptualized for Syntagma Square (Constitution Square) in Athens. The version presented in Morocco will be adapted to Rabat’s city center. Once again, the performance is an editorial gesture that wishes to erase, to wipe off, to cleanse instead of adding to the public sphere. It is an effort to re-introduce space and surface, a hope to excavate the recent past by only removing its outermost layer : the veil of dirt. This veil is nothing but the traces civilians leave behind. Dirt is a poignant reminder of the passing of time and the Spring Cleaning performance will attempt to unveil the dermis of the most politically charged site in the heart of Rabat, right on Mohamed V Avenue from 9 to 11 January 2014.
WOMEN WITH TALENTS, ATHENS, GRC
(Fall 2013)
Georgia Kotretsos recently founded the collective WOMEN WITH TALENTS (WWT) along with Athens based visual artist, Natasha Papadopoulou . Female artists may join WWT or collaborate with or propose projects to the founding members at any point.
ARCHIVE PUBLIC PART II
(December 7th, 2013)
Symposium Platform of 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, co-ordinated and curated by Elpida Karaba and Panos Kouros, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, GRC
A lecture performance will be presented in response to Archive Public and it will be presented at the Symposium Platform.
The first Archive Public took place at the city of Patras under the auspices of the University of Patras, Department of Architecture, funded by K. Karatheodoris Research Program. Severn projects created projects that responded in various ways to Archive Public.
SAVE
Opening: Wednesday, 16th October, 2013 at 20:00
Duration: 16 .10 – 15.11.2013
Curated by: George Tserionis
(To make safe; to procure the safety of; to preserve from injury, destruction, or evil of any kind; to rescue from impending danger; as, to save a house …)
“SAVE” participants will submit a critical commentary on the relationship between contemporary cultural and the political conditions in our country. A country with cracks in the perspective of modernity which prompted once the romantic request for a total experience of Utopia beyond the limiting distance overcoming space and time. “Is this the end or the beginning of the nightmare?” Each answer remains pending until viewers search for possible participation in the universe of the image and they find their own “Native Land” through this journey.
On the occasion of the above considerations, the exhibition deals with the conditions of protection, rescue, and healing from potential risks in a morally changing world.
“SAVE” is curated by George Tserionis and is held in collaboration with ENTROPIA Theater. The exhibition constitutes part of its new international production «P.I.G.S», which has been conceived and directed by Marilli Mastrantoni.
Participating artists: Andreas Voussouras, Georgia Kotretsos, Lina Gaki, Nikos Palaiologos, Efi Fouriki, Giannis Sinioroglou, Giorgos Tserionis, Lea Petrou, Babis Karalis, Giannis Christakos, Dionisis Christofilogiannis, Maria Tsagkari, George Gyzis, Panos Famelis, Kostantinos Stamatiou, Natasha Poulantza, Villy Manolakou, Kostantinos Ladianos
RESIDENCY AT LA KUNSTHALLE MULHOUSE, FRA
(MARCH – MAY 2013)
Before Our Eyes (Part 1)*
SOUS NOS YEUX DIALOGUE AND SOUND ENTITLED BELIEVE HALF OF WHAT YOU SEE AND NONE OF WHAT YOU HEAR IS A RADIO PROGRAMME CREATED GEORGIA KOTRETSOS AND CURATED BY ABDELLAH KARROUM
Believe Half of What You See And None of What You Hear will provide a daily newscast ; dialogues ; present-time Griot historicizations as well as occasional heuristic sound pieces . This radio program is an invitation to consider our auditory perception of the art world and our proximal or distal milieu.
For the 2013 La Kunsthalle and UNIVERSITY RESIDENCY, The University of Haute Alsace welcomed artist Georgia Kotretsos. She worked in partnership with Radio Campus and develop a space for dialogue and a prolongation of the exhibition with R22 radio.
The UNIVERSITY RESIDENCY is reserved for artists whose methods include research and collaboration. Every year La Kunsthalle and the University of Haute Alsace Cultural Action Service invite an artist to spend two months benefiting from the material and intellectual resources available to both institutions.
R22 radio : www.radioapartment22.com
A proposition by Abdellah Karroum, curator at La Kunsthalle Mulhouse for the 2013 season.
Sous nos yeux (“Before our eyes”) is a project made up of several parts, including encounters, exhibitions and publications. This project has been conceived as a laboratory exploring the forms an exhibition can take when its objective is to link the production of each work as a proposition, a response to the world. The everyday and the immediate interact with the distant and the historical. Work is displaced from its production site, like a gesture, to its exhibition venue, in an image of this gesture or its repetition. Dialogue is constructed through this translation from object to subject, work to artist, to allow for an encounter with the public and thus with history.
This first part will take place in various physical locations, filled with artworks, with La Kunsthalle as its headquarters. R22 radio is associated with the project as the setting for dialogue, led by artist/writer Georgia Kotretsos, in collaboration with Mulhouse university radio (Radio Campus).