T.A.M.A Maria Papadimitriou's at the Biennal of Sao Paolo and at Manifesta in Frankfurt

Glimpses at http://softknot.gr/glimpses

She writes about T.A.M.A : "T.A.M.A. is located in Avliza, a run-down area in western Athens, 10km from the centre of the capital and very close to the new Olympic village. Itinerant populations such as Gypsies and Vlach Romanians from north of Greece use this area as a pied-a-terre. My discovery of the place was accidental, but my involvement in its life was intenional. I visited the place for the first time in 1998 with my friends, looking for old furniture at good prices, but when I found myself there, it was not the antiques that attracted me but the place itself, haphazard layout, unexpected events, unplanned art works, strange people.
What I saw there is the concept of a makeshift settlement, a kind of mobile post-urban city which serves its inhabitants' temporary housing needs and economic activities. Everything forms part of this small town: landscape, clothes, interiors, unfinished buildings, streets, cars, the sky, the people.
The nomadic way of living and the particularities of the community gave me the idea of setting up a system of communication and exchange among the inhabitants, myself, the art people and the public. I realized that all my friends and associates wanted to participate in this story which I call T.A.M.A. (TAMA in Greek means offering but also an offering to a Saint in return for his or her help). I started to work with 2 architects, Dora Papadimitriou and Hariklia Hari, the architectural plan focuses on the creation of a prefabricated system of infrastructure that would provide social facilities which would promote their mode of living and would be used for community educational and cultural as well as recreation.

We proposed a garbage removing system, public baths, a small church, a classroom, a place for relaxation, a system of booths for selling their commodities, a multi activity workshop, a restaurant, and a compact building full of services like a first aid office, a social advisor's office, telephone booths, meeting places, playrooms and an open cinema where they could spend their free time and find refuge for their problems.

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Adrian Piper since 1965

This exhibition is the first major retrospective of Adrian Piper's important ouvre in Austria: in fact, the largest ever to be shown in Europe. A broad spectrum of her works will be displayed, ranging from paintings and early conceptual works of the sixties and her performances of the seventies to recent works. Amongst those, which are shown for the first time in Europe, are a large number of conceptual pieces as well as a series of audio works, which Adrian Piper created in the sixties.
Adrian Piper's entire body of work can be called unique in many aspects, distinctive and most of all varied. She once described herself as someone, who is "wearing three hats." Following her training in fine arts, she decided to study philosophy, since she did not want to content herself with the amateurish recourse to philosophical concepts and other scientific knowledge, which is common in art. As an academic philosopher she moreover gained independence from economic expectations from her art production, while her artistic work is fueled by Piper's philosophical reflections. There can hardly be another artist, in whose work Immanuel Kant, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gay and Shiva play a part. Piper was also one of the first artists, who in her work engaged with popular culture, and especially with the culture of African-Americans and the cliched preconceptions about it. How art can communicate social and political issues effectively, i. e. without triggering the usual defensive reactions, is one of the core aims Adrian Piper pursues in her work like hardly any other artists. Even as a relatively young artist, Adrian Piper, born in 1948 in Harlem/New York, USA, already had an impressive career as a conceptual artist. Under the influence of Sol LeWitt she left figurative painting behind. Her first subsequent works are installations, where masking tape, plastic film and other synthetic materials were attached to the floor in grids; one of those will be reconstructed at the Generali Foundation. The majority of her early conceptual pieces are works on paper, using text, numbers, drawings, and/or photographs - loose sheets gathered in ring binders - where an examination of the aspects of time and space takes place. It logically followed that Adrian Piper's first solo show took place in an art magazine. In the Hypothesis-Series (1968-70) she began to connect her conceptual investigations with an investigation of her own body in personal, everyday activities.
In reaction to various political events, Adrian Piper started to analyze her social position as an artist, a woman, and an African-American. The medium of conceptual art was no longer suited to her concerns and she aimed above all to introduce her art unobtrusively into non-art contexts. In the seventies Adrian Piper began to conceive as well as realize performances. Amongst the best known works from this time is the performance Catalysis III (1976), in which Piper strolled through the streets of Manhattan displaying the sign "Wet Paint" on her white sweater. Her alter-ego the Mythic Being, a male African-American, who performs various interventions, such as for instance looking for white women (Cruising White Women, 1976, Cambridge, Mass.), has already been shown at Generali Foundation once before.
Since the eighties, Adrian Piper has been known for her interrogations of themes such as racism, xenophobia, and the nature of the self. Her works-photo/text collages, drawings, performances and (video) installations-are conceived as an act of political communication. The artist wants to provoke viewers into reacting directly to their own often deeply rooted impulses and answers regarding these topics. Rather then employing an elitist "art-jargon," she strives to create a situation, which allows the viewers to react directly. Piper refers to this concept as the "indexical present." Amongst those, also very popular works, are the so-called Funk Lessons (1982-84), where Piper invited the participants to collectively listen to and dance to funk music and in doing so to simultaneously reflect upon racist stereotypes of African-Americans. Her latest group of works, the Color Wheel-Series (2000), starts with large tableaux to exercise self-awareness. which is also on show at this years documenta 11 in Kassel. In this series Adrian Piper uses the Pantone-Color Wheel as a matrix to establish skin tones.
A comprehensive publication will appear jointly with the exhibition. This first publication about Adrian Piper in German will unite the two aspects of the artist, author, and philosopher - artistic work and writings about art and art criticism - in equal and comprehensive fashion. The book thus provides an excellent overview of Adrian Piper's work.
Following this presentation at the Generali Foundation. further exhibitions are planned in Europe.
Curator: Sabine Breitwieser
Curatorial Assistance, Exhibition Production: Nadja Wiesener

Images: Courtesy Adrian Piper and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

more at : http://foundation.generali.or.at

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a-station Athens Contemporary Art Center

a-station is a brand new space- less than a year old- in the heart of Athens. We met Polydoros Kariofilis the Director of the Centre and we asked him a few questions about the nature and the activities of the Centre. Suburbia is the second (ongoing) workshop-project carried out by a-station.

art-omma: How did the centre (a-station) start?

Polydoros Kariofilis: A-Station, Athens Contemporary Art Center started as an initiative of individuals with a strong interest in contemporary art issues. We are more into art theory than current art trends.

a-o: In what way do you think that the centre will succeed in a city like Athens with only a handful of galleries and public exhibition spaces of private initiative? Is it the centre's aim to fill the cultural gap- if there is one?

P.K: It’s not about what we will finally achieve but more like what we are after. The private sector has already given some excellent and highly competitive (in the international arena) art venues such as DESTE foundation. Of course the National Museum of Contemporary Art is just beginning to form a cohesive strategy -although it seems a bit blurry at times. We find ourselves in between these institutions and the ones to come. We like to think of ourselves as alternative, although we have to be aware that historically there has never been such a thing in Greece. We would like to provide a forum for young creators to exchange ideas and participate. Unfortunately we currently don’t just provide some free square meters for someone to make his art statement, we are neither a collective nor an artist’s space. We welcome ideas that surpass the individual projects curatorial or solo shows. "Theory against spectacle", that is our motto.
a-o: Is there something that worries you or puzzles you as far as the future of the centre goes? We have experienced other collective activities weakening with time. What is it that makes you believe that the centre will not suffer the consequences of a more generic crisis in the arts like i.e fundraising, sponsorships etc.?

P.K: There are many things that worry me about the future of A-Station. To mention a few: First. Greek artists prefer to work as individuals, we will have to team at all costs, it’s the legacy of the new technologies “united we stand divided we fall”. Second there is no example of an Art Space in Athens that was independent and run successfully for some time. We have to prove this wrong. Funding -as always- is a major problem. The State on the other hand has no scouts out on the streets to pick new projects. After all it’s their job we are all doing. Lobbying takes so much energy that should otherwise be lead to creative tasks. But that’s neither new nor Greek; it’s more or less the same case anywhere.

a-o: Could you tell us a few words about the next project? The Suburbia as you said is about the imense territory of Athens Suburbs. Are you planning to expand your activities outside Athens or the capital would remain the main action field?

P.K: Our next project is called Suburbia and it deals with the vast cityscape of Athenian suburbs. Although the usual notion of a suburb as seen in U.S or U.K., New Zealand, Australia, etc doesn’t apply in Athens, there are many tiny differences between the different towns within the city and provide the core of the project. Athens is currently at the second scale of megacities counting 4 million residents and growing. It’s a vital reason for us to chart and explore the tensions within the city. After all it’s a living organism. We will accompany the exhibition with a series of talks and the publication of a rather ambitious publication in the form of an illustrated book with many contributors. As I said before we are more into theory than spectacle.

a-o: Could you -as an artist- spot forthcoming changes to the art scene in Athens and in Greece in general and what could be the role of the centre?

P.K: You ask me to use my artistic identity. I will not do that. There is a dilemma or a trend -it depends the way you see it- these days: Abandon the modernistic path of art practice for a more renaissance like type of art multitasking. This is a pseudo dilemma. Artists have to specialize on their work (specialization used to be the bread and butter the last decades and still is) but there is hardly any vital space to live and prosper in art. I see a lot of creativity and talent lead into computer games, advertisement and art direction of any kind. Galleries and art magazines strive to survive and that has nothing to do with economic figures. It’s simply an ontological problem. We are used to new services in the new economy such as Content providers etc. Is the art world ready to deal with such cynical components as content creators or providers, retailers, managers etc? Museums need content providers and no matter how cynical that may sound there is simply merchandise or "content" that is getting in and out of their walls. The reason some of us form alliances, art spaces, going out in the public with a way or another, is because we need to be part of this genesis. We don't believe we are part of a new renaissance because if there was such a thing then we would be lacking the depth of knowledge needed to have an overview of our era. But we are children of a modernistic period in the sense that we are naive enough to believe in a linear history of the arts that we have to catch up with and contribute to it.

For more detailed information about the Centre and the Suburbia project visit www.a-station.gr

Athens 5 June 2002

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Home is where the heart is

'For our house is our corner of the world..it is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the world.' Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space.

Lieaving Rom expresses the desire to invent a new language that will overcome rigid opposition; a language that will marry social engagement with aesthetic contemplation. Leaving/living, inside/outside, man/woman, culture/nature, materiality/ immateriality: each suggestion has two opposing terms and one could safely assume that they could not make sense on their own. Such dualistic structure dominates the exhibition of Hilde Aagaard's new work. Not that the work is about opposites per se, but the opposing terms are crucial in the formation of a whole. Take for example the steps she has constructed for the occasion: they split the space into two different levels and invite us to perform the act of going up and down. Inevitably, we must come up first in order to come down. The steps could easily be read as a metaphor for any goal we set, but also as a link to what is inside and outside (of us).

In this dualistic environment where order is often matched with chaos (another couple whose terms are locked in a violent conflict), art can be soothing. In its long history, painting seems to be the best example of how art can be experienced in relation (and not in opposition) to the everyday, thus becoming a way of life. The tension in the paintings where little figures are scattered all over, leaving us unsure of their intentions, is further heightened by the texture of these works: despite the lushness of household paint the artist has used, they are not perfectly crafted, but retain an edgy surface. Painting is of course a privileged entity, which converses with the past but has the aspiration to create something new. It's a world of unashamed daydreaming, where imagination reigns.

This is what 'the house' is for most of us: the first space we claim for dreaming. By extension, for the artist, the gallery is that privileged space that makes dreaming possible, or if you prefer, contributes in creating the conditions for dreaming. The difficulty lies in finding another language to communicate this that bypasses linguistic assumptions and what they entail.

Vassilios Doupas, Athens, May 2002

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Glimpses The World After September 11

http://softknot.gr/glimpses

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Participants:
Beatrijs Albers, Ageliki Aristomenopoulou, Eleni Asvesta, Balletti&Mercandelli,
Kostas Bassanos, Maya Bontzou, Daphne/Papadatos, Ándy Deck, Mossieurs Delmotte,
Dimitris Dokatzis, Seamus Farrel, Maurice Ganis, Michel Jakar, Nicos Kanarelis, George Kanellis, Babis Kandilaptis, Nicolas Kozakis, Jacques Lizene, Liron Lupu, Sifis Lykakis, Miltos Manetas, Ilias Marmaras, Ioanna Myrka, Aliki Panagiotopoulou, Angelo Plessas, Georgia Sagri, Helen S., Ilija Soskic, Alexandros Spyropoulos, Reggy Timmermans, Andrej Tisma, Dimitris Tsardakas, Demeter Vantzou, Kostis Velonis, Panos Vittorakis.

more at http://softknot.gr/glimpses

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from 20 June to 30 October 2002 at Deste Foundation, Athens
Curator: Katerina Gregos

JANINE ANTONI (Bahamas), COSIMA VON BONIN (Germany), MONICA BONVICINI (Italy),TANIA BRUGUERA (Cuba), LEE BUL (S. Korea), PATTY, CHANG (USA), CAMILLA DAHL (Germany), TRACEY EMIN (Great Britain), SYLVIE FLEURY (Switzerland), JITKA HANZLOVA (Czech Republic) HILARY, HARKNESS (USA), ELIZA JACKSON (USA), LIZA LOU (USA), ELAHE MASSUMI (Iran), DESPINA MEIMAROGLOU (Greece), CATHERINE, OPIE (USA), MARIA PAPADIMITRIOU (Greece), KIKI SEROR (USA), LINA THEODOROU (Greece), FATIMAH TUGGAR (Nigeria), LISA YUSKAVAGE (USA)

The Deste Foundation's Centre for Contemporary Art presents Fusion Cuisine, an exhibition featuring the work of both emerging as well as established contemporary women artists from around the world.
Fusion Cuisine aims to create a platform for discussing current developments in women's art practice and to pinpoint the heterogeneity of art being produced by women today. One of the concerns underlying the exhibition is the question of what it means to make art in this post-feminist era that acknowledges the impossibility of a universal and singular female perspective. Post-feminism, contrary to certain people's beliefs, does not connote an end to the feminist debate; rather it accepts the differences between women and within feminism itself. It continues feminism's articulation of a wide range of positions and spheres of questioning without adopting an essentialist stance. Fusion Cuisine attempts to dispel some of the myths and stereotypes surrounding women's art practice, deconstruct feminist cliches, disrupt stereotypical images of womanhood and established notions of what constitutes 'femininity'. It offers a non-dogmatic and non-didactic glimpse into the diverse and polymorphous nature of contemporary art being made by women today without being categorical in trying to define the works in question. Taking an all-encompassing look into women's art practice with a focus on the diversification of current trends, it attests to the fact that, today, there is no category or identifiable kind of 'women's art', just as there is no one single way of being a woman. The exhibition aims to demonstrate that while there may be certain affinities with feminist strategies and practices, the artists in it cannot be grouped into one unifying category under the banner of feminism.

Though the work in the exhibition addresses disparate concerns, there is also an underlying awareness of the female condition. It consists of many styles, individual expressions and adopts multiple positions, viewpoints and lifestyle options. It presents a varied cross section of art being made by different women from different cultures and backgrounds. History, memory, politics, questions of gender and identity, religion and culture are all areas that are explored. There is a distinct interest in exploring the realm of the social but also one's self-image, as well as the desire to communicate real life issues, whether public or private. Many of the artists seem to have assimilated feminism's legacy of amalgamation of the aesthetic self and the social self and support the notion that it is impossible to engage in art without referencing the social structures that it arises out of.
The exhibition includes works in all media such as installation, video, painting, drawing, photography and performance. Patty Chang and Tania Bruguera will present live performances of their work in Athens.
A bilingual (Greek - English), colour catalogue will be published with texts by Jo Anna Isaak, Rosa Martinez, Amanda Michalopoulou, Lynne Tillman, Maria Skamaga and Katerina Gregos.
more at www.deste.gr

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----- Original Message -----
From: The Hellenic Center of Fine Arts
To: editors@art-omma.org
Sent: Monday, June 10, 2002 10:40 AM
Subject: Culture CampII

THE HELLENIC CENTER OF FINE ARTS & KATERINA KAROUSSOS APPROPRIATES THE ACTION OF SAL RANDOLPH,
ORGANIZING AND CURATING IN THE FRAMEWORK OF RANDOLPH'S ''FREE MANIFESTA'', THE PROJECT ''CULTURE CAMP II - JAM''


April 2002 New York,
Katerina Karoussos participate in Free Biennial, in N.Y under Sal Randolph's social architecture project.

Tuesday April 23, New York.
Sal Randolph, a New York artist, has bought participation rights in the European Biennial, Manifesta 4 which will be held in Frankfourt, Germany
this summer. She purchased the invitation and participation rights of invited artist Christoph Buchel, who auctioned off his place on ebay.
Randolph won the ebay auction on March 29 with a high bid of $ 15,099. The auction was Buchel's conceptual art work entitled ''Invite Yourself''.

April 12, 2002 Athens,
An e-mail invitation for Free Manifesta has found Katerina Karoussos and The Hellenic Center of Arts, preparing the big event ''Culture Camp II" which will be held in Athens the last week of June. The project is very similar to Randolph's because it has the form of social architecture.

Culture Camp is a 4 year project seeking to explore the ''Least Common Culture'' (Baudrillard). Thus the set of the ''trophies'' that one must have to
provide his cultural identity.

Athens - Frankfourt, June 27 - July 3 2002,
Culture Camp will be presented through four actions.
1 & 2 ''ARTEROBICS'' - '' TWISTER''
An action painting show - dripping- in a sixty meters canvas will be held at the town hall's square in 28 - 29 of June
3 & 4 " URBAN JAM'' - '' VIRTUAL JAM''
Jam will take place in Athens as well as in Frankfourt - Free Manifesta in Manifesta 4 - .

Athens: 'Art Force Club' Aristophanous 30 Psiri
Opening: Thursday, June 27, 8.30 pm
Four posters will be placed on the walls, portray the town hall's square surrounded by multi-ethnic / religion populace. Thirty srickers will picturized the cult trophies of the 20th century, thus any kind of label and mark (from McDonalds to Greenpeace logos) that provide us with
'' cultural identities''.
The participants will be invited to place every one of them to the right spot of the posters upon his opinion. Additionally they will outline
with a marker the line from the prior spot to the new one.This action will be rendered a '' cultural magna carta''

Frankfourt 'Free Manifesta in Manifesta 4',
Participants that will not going to join in real time, they will have the opportunity to response via communications media,
such as e-mails and mobile phones.

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from the exhibition "Extreme Pop Media" 11-2001/ 2-2002