Margarita Kataga: In your current exhibition at 'the apartment' gallery in Athens, your new paintings seem to correspond to traditional genres of art. Yet, although they mimic the conventions of high art, they resemble standardized and designed images found in daily life. How would you describe your approach to the visual world?

Daniel Sturgis: The paintings that I paint: I always think of them as being abstract paintings. And I suppose it is like looking at the actual language of abstraction within the 20th century. It was really one of the 'painting solutions', which had to compete with photography and other genres. Abstraction is so very tied up with ideas of modernism, purity, balance and harmony. One needs to think of where that language is going.

MK: Are you attacking modernism in a way?

DS: No, I don't think you are necessarily attacking something because you are making a reference to it or when things your work show an indebtedness to that tradition. You can't think of late paintings without them referring to history; to painting's history! Therefore I am commenting on it but I don't suppose I am attacking it in a very violent way. More like showing a knowledge of it. The paintings are often very enjoyable

MK: For all their abstract flatness and frontality, can they not be read quasi-figuratively?

DS: A little bit. It is part of human nature to try and decipher an image, to try and spot things one recognizes. Yet, the more you look at them the more illogical they look, the more you notice irregularities. However, they have a deep harmony in them. I like the idea that the viewer can look at the painting and in his mind will try to rearrange the elements, try to make it perfect. I never want the paintings to refer too clearly to something - like 'that is like a 50's cartoon', or 'that looks like an Asian carpet' or 'a landscape'.
And as far as colour is concerned, at the end of the Renaissance -in the Mannerist period-, artists began to put into their work ideas of deep harmony and discordance at the same time. The colours I choose have this sort of feeling of discordance; they feel right, they feel beautiful, but they don't sort of 'sit' there as natural colours. I want my paintings to be about ideas of beauty without necessarily being beautiful. It is more a sort of raising of issues, raising questions, rather than answering them. And I like the way they are made. The finish is associated with a type of beauty; but it is a kind of an association, it is not direct.

MK: Talking about beauty, one recalls the trend in the beauty of the image and the notion of optimism. What would you say about this post-Pop nostalgia explored by the British school (Julian Opie, Gary Hume) and by today's pre-dominant LA Californian trend?

DS: I like it when a painting's little history has to do with ideas of beauty, realizing beauty and how perceptions of beauty change during different ages, and with how that idea relates to contemporary culture. I think that there are a number of other painters that are interested in such ideas like Gary Hume and artists in LA like Monique Prieto. Now is an interesting time to be making paintings, going back to the fundamentals of what it is to be painting. And that has been flourishing in both the UK and the States.

MK: So what do you foresee for the future of painting?

There is a certain optimism about making painting now, and a freedom, for which I think an exposure to work in different cultures has helped. And I don't mean necessarily geographical cultures but I also think that of the whole digital culture, the whole way that the digital image has come to embrace everybody.

MK: Mentioning geography, what does a solo show in major promising, upcoming gallery in Greece, signify for you?

DS: It feels great. I am very pleased with the actual show. I think that 'the apartment' has very clear ideas of where it wants to go and the artists it wants to work with and the kind of space it is creating. I think this is very positive. And it seems to be embracing the promotion of a sort of a cultural dialogue. There is a thematic unity that you can probably peak out between the exhibitions, which I think, is very interesting. And as far as the other galleries I have seen in Athens, there seem to be some other places equally committed to showing new work. And the new museum of contemporary art is also making you feel that you are in a city that is exploring issues of art making.

The show of Daniel Sturgis at 'the apartment' gallery will run until the 22 of February.
The artist will also be showing recent work in upcoming projects in London, Sao Paolo, Brazil, and various venues worldwide.

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Barry McGee & Margaret Kilgallen

from 23/11/01 to 28/2/02, Deste Foundation, Athens

Barry McGee belongs to the new generation of emerging Californian artists. His work references a variety of sources, from Mexican murals and street art to the graffiti artists of the '70s and '80s and the San Francisco beatnik poets. McGee has devised a playful, colourful and at the same time poetic language which is direct and immediately recognisable. His work draws from street culture and at the same time expresses the artist's sympathy for those marginalised by contemporary society. As he himself says "I try to capture the multitude of stimuli and the overload of the senses that one might feel walking down the street of any one of our fine American cities". And explains: "the motion and gesture in both graffiti and drawing are major elements in my work… I like the experience of tangible, specific reality - of a real space in real time. I also like the traces left by human presence in a space at some specific time, and the way they are recorded in memory".
Although some themes are often repeated and parts of his huge mural installations are painted in a graffiti-like casual fashion, McGee's works are in no way naïve nor are they executed with the speed characteristic of this genre. On the contrary, the finish of his works is refined, detailed and consistent. Barry McGee participated in the 2001 Venice Biennial with a work entitled Street Market, a large reproduction of an open-air market created in collaboration with artists Stephen Powers and Todd James. McGee has also exhibited at the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).
Margaret Kilgallen, who passed away just five months ago aged 34, was a leading figure in the community of street artists, surfers, skateboarders and musicians in San Francisco. Her work draws from graphic design for advertising and store signs, wall paintings and street art, underground comics and beatnik poetry. Often she used collages of words and images to produce a rhythmic visual narrative. In her works one can discern the artist's contemporary spirit but also her nostalgia for a world where experiences were unmediated rather than consumed second-hand through television and computers. Margaret Kilgallen's work was included in the exhibition East Meets West at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art. She also exhibited at the Drawing Centre in New York and the UCLA Hammer Museum in California. Margaret Kilgallen also created a number of installations for public spaces in the USA and Brazil.
Barry McGee and Margaret Kilgallen were a couple and many of their works were created jointly. Holdfast is part of the Dakis Joannou Collection. Its installation at the Deste Foundation's Centre for Contemporary Art is a site specific and it was carried out by McGee himself.

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microMuseum

The transformation of the white cube ideal

The idea of a mobile museum is not a new one, but Manthos Santorinaios and his collaborators have been involved with this issue since the making of "Fournos" in the 80s, a centre for the experimentation of media in Athens.

Many artists were included in the first edition of Micromuseum within the Medi@terra , all of whom share a common interest in the most popular technological media in art. The question is not whether there is a place here for the technophobe souls. Since the foundation of "Fournos" the cultural activities wander deeply in the sea of techno-fetishised tools of perception.
The difference is that now the Micromuseum is turned into a resonated body of collective creativity with its own individuality. This construction is not so far from Manthos Sanbtorinaeos' personal project, "elicomaison", a mobile home that invites us to produce and gather information form all over the world.
At the Micromuseum we are invited to understand a techno-based world of ephemeral works with a distinctive simplicity in their presentation. But what kind of complexity is involved in a rectangular box? The box is designed within the logic of the "enjeux", which covers the needs of a certain inhabitation.

In terms of practicality, the construction is not yet a "perfect tool", but it remains under continuous development, becoming thus more flexible and user-friendly. A multi-desiring machine for the "intensities" of the spirit.
In other words, the Micromuseum was not built in order to convince us about the constructive principle of a kiosk, but rather to sustain a protective and expanding cell that is so much needed in these aggressive times.

If definitions and functionalities are resolved within structures then the size of such archetype architectural forms as a white cube is still an issue. In short, what makes a museum micro? If the definition of the museum is a given what size will it be? Size in Gigabytes or in Square metres? Size in relation to physical occupation of space or capacity of storage?

Size is by default defined by comparison. In terms of the physical size and space and in comparison to the giant size of traditionally conceived museums this is a micro museum. The kiosk and its temporary "annexes"- Artworks placed in short distance from it are exactly what the architects suggest: a "condensed architectural structure" of a microcosmos contained in its monumental sublime version. The Micromuseum is a mobile and open source of information layered according to the flow of recorded and stored information gathered in situ. This is an experiment of a chameleon-like monument in its sublime size. GigaBytes of gathered information or rather "an exhibitional and informational Arc of Noah" as the architects suggest in the catalogue of this edition of medi@terra.

the editors

Vision / space / negotiation

by Manthos Santorineos

Vision (visual information), space (movement), and negotiation (the possibility to conclude an agreement), are three of the main characteristics which form the paradigm of western civilization.
The relation among these three procedures, since the beginning of their existence and until the era of the industrial revolution, has not changed.
Vision accumulates information from visual elements, especially created for this purpose, illusive images, or signals that form a detail of a world or a world in diminution. Religious representations (statues, icons, stained-glass windows), even advertisements work in the same way, that is, giving the possibility to the motionless spectator to process data through his rambling vision, to draw conclusions, to be guided or to make decisions.
Space related to perception introduces scale and movement. A large temple, tribunals or a Museum, evoke the sense of smallness, of safety, pride or repulsion, while one is forced to move himself across great distances in order to get new information.
Negotiation and particularly its terms are almost always formed by and related to the environment. It is of great importance where someone goes, if there is a controlled entrance, if he must pay to enter, if he becomes easily accepted, how long he has to wait, what does his "chair" look like before his interlocutor.

In the era of early globalization procedures change forming a new model.
Visual information is not restrictive, it can include almost anything, as long as the observer knows how to look for it. Hence, the information does not restrict nor form beliefs or ideologies, on the contrary its forming depends on the observer.
Space loses its scale. The internet space of an insignificant but capable web design artist, is perhaps "larger" than that of a Museum, according to the web scale.
Finally, negotiation, mostly for reasons of practical necessity and speed, takes place on the Internet, which is a neutral environment.

The three topics of "vision, space and negotiation" tend to form more and more models that begin from the "Memory Theater" or the ark, as a kind of "knowledge monolith" which Kubrick prophetically described in Space Odyssey.

However, all these descriptions of the past lack of one significant element, that of continuous accumulation of experiences and of data processing.

MicroMuseum suggests, in an experimental phase, this new structure of vision / space / negotiation and continuous communication and development, based on the environment, the change of scale, the possibility of immediate neutral negotiation, re-action or creation. It is an "anti-space" in progress that has no limits of mass, nor of range of effect, without at the same time becoming aggressive or imposing. It is a space - instrument, a microMuseum - micro-scope, a moving satellite, that enters a terrestrial course to observe closely the human acts.

The Medi@terra group treats microMuseum as an experiment inside a natural environment.

microMuseum
The idea, its elaboration and potential for evolution

MEDI@TERRA in its 01 edition continues its course in the opposite direction from the globalisation that appropriates and transmutes materials for local private needs; this course leads away from the system and towards humanity, away from the large, impressive and protective toward the little, charming and flexible, away from a system of art to the need for art, away from monetary value to the material itself.
This reminds us of
- the games and tools of the Africans that are made from the tincans of the multinationals,
- the national musical instrument of Trinidad (steel drums) made from petroleum barrels,
- the sound of the Balkan clarino in contrast to the clarinet of the Western classical orchestra,
- death rituals and events in contrast to efforts to achieve artificial immortality,
- chaotic artistic cd roms in contrast with pre-digested advertising,
- a journey from south to north,
- the Greek kiosk, an entire world in four square metres.

Medi@terra 2001 used the logic of the Greek kiosk to create the microMuseum

The kiosk is the smallest department store in the world. It sells and restocks every day… all the daily and periodical press, and sometimes even the international. All brands of cigarettes, tobacco and generally everything for the smoker. Emergency needs of all kinds… aspirin, adhesive bandages, facial tissues, condoms. A wide range of chocolate, chewing gum, biscuits. Batteries of all sizes and types. Ice cream, cold water, soft drinks, sandwiches.
There's just enough room in it for one person, usually the owner. His place is right in the middle of all these products. He has direct access to them all, serves his customers, and in his spare time watches a tiny television set or listens to a radio.
Every Greek visits a kiosk at least once a day, mainly to buy newspapers and magazines. Before the discovery of the mobile phone, the kiosk - with two or sometimes three telephones - was the main form of communication for people travelling around the city.

But what has the model of a museum got to do with the Festival and in particular with its sensitive theme (de-globalization, re-globalization)? A careful study of the dates museums were established led to the conclusion that the creation of new forms of museums is linked with social changes or other decisive events. Many of the museums in Europe are associated with the World's Fair and new technological achievements. The first museum was created, the Victoria and Albert, at the World's Fair in England in 1851; at the corresponding fair in 1937, the first technological museum "Palace of Discovery" was set up. In addition to colonialism, the spread of Western civilisation to other continents produced ethnographic museums; reforms in the industrial revolution created folklore museums that preserve the old customs and methods being lost.

It is not accidental that, in the era of early globalisation, new museums are being established that tend to become multinational. Isn't it true that art is heading toward absolute disengagement from matter and from the conditions or reasons for production, and becoming integrated into a global financial system similar to the Monetary Fund?

Medi@terra is putting forward its own proposal in the microMuseum, a space that combines the real and the virtual, that does not project an image which it then calls upon you to admire or accept, but along the way will gather experiences and images from the people and places it encounters and then disseminate them.

Based on modern technology, the µMuseum has the ability to contain a large number of immaterial works and for a large number of artists and scientists to take part, through the Internet in collaboration with the other participants, in creating an environment with a broad global spectrum of rich ideas …about globalisation.

The microMuseum could just as easily not have any nationality or permanent land. It could move around according to international events.

In times of great and unforeseeable developments, such as the present, trivial elements of the culture up to the present time can take on another dimension presenting an alternative proposal in the dialogue about the future.
With this thought, the "proposal" of the little kiosk in the era of e-life takes on greater weight than that of the supermarket and chain stores.
With precisely the same reasoning, the proposal of the microMuseum could have greater interest than proposals for the new-type large, old proposals for Museums in the past decade.

First edition of the microMuseum

The first edition of the microMuseum is a pre-fabricated system transported in pieces by truck. All the technology is in the walls. It is set up in a protected indoor space. It develops around the main structure, over a minimum of 100 m2. and a maximum of 400 m2.
The only thing required is the provision of power and phone lines (Internet mainly for reasons of speed and compatibility among states, otherwise it could operate using a satellite link).
The internal network can host works in the form of cd roms, Internet, sound (music), video art, interactive micro-installations, micro-painting, micro-sculpture, and e-books.

The individual aims for the first edition of the microMuseum as regards its structure are that:
It can be set up and taken down by non-specialists.
It is adaptable to the space in which it is set up.
It operates autonomously with its own power and telephone lines.
It serves a large number of visitors.
It is mainly functional rather than decorative (to be covered by the works it presents, as kiosks are, and not by its own aesthetic).
It can be operated by one person.
It utilises the latest technological developments (a) systems for projection, communication and storage, b) light, easy- to-use materials of great durability.
It develops systems for storing the experiences of its wanderings.
It has a mirror on the Internet.

The next stages of the microMuseum are:

- To acquire a permanent collection
- To develop technology that emphases interaction with the visitor through smart systems, to have energy independence, to create data banks about art and a system for extracting knowledge and developing communication.
- To create a structure that will ensure the possibility of its installation in an open, unprotected space under all weather conditions.

The Museum, according to the encyclopedia, is an:
Institution that collects, studies, exhibits and conserves objects for cultural and educational purposes.
But is also, according to the time of Ancient Greece, a temple and an altar of the Muses / school for arts and letters / philosophic school/ library.

Manthos Santorineos
Artistic Director of Fournos & Medi@terra Festival

The Museum as a microcosm
by Daphne Dragona

Every museum anywhere in the world, on the basis of its collection, can be seen as a microcosm of objects presented to the public as testimony to the past, usually within a specific cultural framework. In this way, museums also represent viewpoints and beliefs about the order in the world, about the present and the past and the position of the individual in it. All museums contain this symbolism and constitute microcosms that their visitors are called upon to become familiar with, by visiting the museum premises1.

The late Renaissance "cabinets of curiosities" (wunderkammer in German) which constituted an early form of the museum, constituted the first representative reconstruction of the world. In them, significant figures of the times would, gather a collection of rare, foreign and beautiful objects in order to depict the universe, through a purely personal often arbitrary, classification. The large set of heterogeneous objects that made up these early collections was a microcosm that reflected the macrocosm which, based on the Renaissance "art of memory", one could understand and call to mind 2 .This was a small universe whose aim was to stimulate interest and possibly admiration.

The fundamental functions of a museum, i.e. research, the recording and cataloguing of objects, were virtually, non-existent in these 18th-century collections. They were developed progressively with the establishment of the first museums in the 19th century and became systematised as museums became institutions for research, documentation and presentation, open to the public. The objects were placed in glass cases, accompanied by labels that identified the objects and explained their presence. The items in a museum collection, particularly in art galleries, were "isolated" in large spaces and acquired an almost sacred and fetishist nature 3. The view that the classification of exhibits and their correlation and placement in space, can lend themselves to a representative reconstruction of some part of the world around us, remains a fundamental principle. It is also possible that if the theory that links and supports the set of objects were to be lost, the raison d'etre of a place like a museum would also be weakened. But this reality at the same time gave rise to all the questions and disputes that exist around what is presented in these particular places, with what criteria, for what reason and to what end. In most cases, it is not a manifestation of the present or past that is constructed but rather a subjective theory is presented for which the necessary background is created.

Many artists in the later half of the 20th century, inspired by the museum as an organisation, a system of things and a demarcation, created their own microcosms, spaces in which they gave form to an autonomous work of art. These works are frequently symbolic in nature and are reminiscent of the cabinets of curiosities. They were based on collections of small objects and were created in accordance with the personal convictions of the artist. Marcel Duchamp created a series of suitcases containing miniatures of his works. Daniel Spoerri set up the Musée Sentimental, a fetish museum containing personal objects that had belonged to artists in the past. Claes Oldenburg established the Mouse Museum, a museum with miniatures and copies of objects. Herbert Distel and the Fluxus movement created works in which, like drawers in a cupboard, they placed miniatures of works by different artists. Through these works, the artists wanted to bring back to the visitors memories and beliefs, something similar to what was sought by the creators-owners of the cabinets of curiosities. There is however no doubt that the works mentioned above likewise constitute a kind of criticism of the way museums operate and are set up, in terms of what they present as rare, genuine and of special value, and in their remoteness from anything real and internal4. It is worth noting that these micro-environments, or micro-Museums were created by artists in the last half of the 20th century, an age when the logic of a work as objet d'art, as a work that is presented on museum premises to provoke our admiration, has already begun to be disputed.

The microMuseum is a microcosm of works that use the new media and new technologies (CD ROM, video art, net art, interactive objects) and can be presented in a microMuseum that is technologically autonomous and self-sufficient. It may perhaps remind us of the logic inherent in both the Renaissance cabinets and the 20th- century works mentioned above. In an era when museums of modern art have increased in both number and size, the discussion around the logic and operation of such museums is changing constantly. The presentation, preservation and conservation of these new works overturns the established facts. The microMuseum can, thus, gather a set of contemporary works and present them wherever it is located. Taking into account the possibilities offered by new technology and the very nature of the works, the space in the microMuseum relies on the active participation of its visitors. It operates like a cell or like a micronucleus, that conveys the messages, images and viewpoints of 21st-century creators, to the regions in which it stops. Nothing is behind glass any more, and no work can be perceived if the visitor does not want to approach it by himself, independently.

So perhaps the microMuseum, based on the new technology and the new conditions that are now being shaped, can revive some fundamental principles that are characteristic of museums, but without getting too far away from the primary and basic idea that inspired their creation, that of a microcosm that arouses interest and possibly admiration. The description given by Francis Bacon in 1594 of the Renaissance "cabinets of curiosities" looks even more familiar ; these cabinets, he said, contained "whatsoever the hand of man by exquisite art or engine has made rare in stuff, form or motion" 5.

Daphne Dragona
Coordinator for Fournos & Medi@terra Festival

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1. Carol Duncan, Civilizing rituals inside public art museums, 1995, pg.7-14
2. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the shaping of knowledge, 1992, pg.78- 86
3. Douglas Crimp, On the Museum's Ruins, 1997, pg. 202-204
4. Kynaston McShine, The museum as muse: Artists reflect, 1999
5. Francis Bacon, Gesta Grayorum, 1594

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Conversation?
Recent acquisitions of the Van Abbemuseum

18/1-10/3/2002- School of Fine Arts 'The Factory'Athens

From 18th January to 10th March 2002, the Van Abbemuseum shows work from its collection in Athens. The exhibition is being organised in collaboration with AVRA (Association of the Friends of Contemporary Art, Athens), who took the initiative for this event. It will be dedicated to the recently deceased artist Juan Muñoz.
Despite its lively local art scene, Athens is one of the few European capitals still to lack a museum of contemporary art. Aspirations in this direction do exist, and they are gaining new momentum in the run-up to the 2004 Olympic Games, which are to be held in Athens. It was against this background that AVRA decided to ask the Van Abbemuseum to organise a show, which would represent the Eindhoven outlook on collecting strategy and museum policy. The exhibition can make a positive contribution to the ongoing discussion in Athens and stimulate development of a local model for these aspects.
The Van Abbemuseum opted for a representative synthesis of its acquisition strategy during the last ten years. Some 60 works by 28 artists will be on show. Besides sculptures, paintings and drawings, the exhibition will include room-filling installations and audio-visual works.
The artists concerned are Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Miroslaw Balka, Fiona Banner, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Tony Cragg, René Daniëls, Thierry De Cordier, Douglas Gordon, Rodney Graham, Pierre Huyghe, Cristina Iglesias, Mike Kelley, Niek Kemps, Suchan Kinoshita, Harald Klingelhöller, Mark Manders, Allan McCollum, Aernout Mik & Marjoleine Boonstra, Reinhard Mucha, Juan Muñoz, Michael Raedecker, Julião Sarmento, Thomas Schütte, Jan Vercruysse, Didier Vermeiren, Marijke van Warmerdam and Rachel Whiteread.
Three Greek guest artists have moreover been invited to participate in the exhibition with recent work of their own. They are George Hadjimichalis, George Lappas en Nikos Navridis.
A multimedia display, giving an overview of the collecting and exhibition strategy followed by the Van Abbemuseum since its foundation in 1936, forms part of the exhibition. Also, it includes a display of plans for the Van Abbemuseum's new buildings, now under construction and due to open in December 2002.

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HALUK AKAKCE "Still Life"
7/2- 6/4, 2002, Bernier/Eliades, Athens

Haluk Akakçe was born in Ankara, Turkey, in 1970. He studied Fine Arts at the Bilkent University in Ankara, and continued his studies a the Royal College of Arts, London and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He lives and works in New York. Recently, among others he also participated in the following exhibitions: Animations PS1, Moma, Long Island City, NY and Casino 2001, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent.

Akakçe is a child of the digital revolution who works in a broad range of media, effortlessly moving from low-tech drawing and wall painting to, more recently, digitally animated video. His drawings suggest a marriage of Art Nouveau, Celtic patterning and comic book stylization. Akakçe's figures are cyber-visions of techno-organic hybrids. They remind the fluid morphology of the body in Japanese comics, the contorted visions of Hieronymus Bosch and the arabesques of classical Islamic architecture.

His move from wall painting to video was natural for him, since he conceives the wall as a site of projection. In the exhibition titled Still Life in the gallery Bernier/Eliades, in parallel to the digital prints, the homonymous video, a dual -channel projection piece, will be shown. Two different viewpoints record the same visual space. Akakçe himself describes the viewer's experience similar with the effort of seeing and thinking with two sides of the brain simultaneously: "Right and left, feminine and masculine, nature and the capital"are few of the oppositions to which Still Life alludes.

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