Mediterranean Bodies Edition 1 launches in Athens, February 5th - February 14th 2016

The interactive exhibition Mediterranean BODIES seeks to foster connections and exchanges between young artists in  the Mediterranean countries Greece, Cyprus and France.

After a first stage of online meetings between young artists from all backgrounds, a process of collaboration started in creative duos or groups, inspired by the Mediterranean and the body using digital technology as creative instruments. 

In a second stage, the artistic collaborations will be developed further and lead to exhibitions in France. 

A launch event and exhibition in Athens shows works of the participating artists from the different countries in various venues and in the public space of Athens in the form of urban interventions, digital walks, street games, video- and sound installations, in a continuous dialogue with a series of performances.  

Launch event: Qrator, February 5th 2016

Exhibition and performances: Qrator, Metamatic:taf, Tranzistor, Poems 'n Crimes Art Bar, Booze Cooperativa, Romantzo. 

Closing event: Romantzo, 11th February 

Exhibition Contributors 

Drops of Breath Concept: Sophie Bulbulyan - Apostolia Papadamaki

Curator: Geert Vermeire

Assisted by Alexandros Platis and Katerina Kataki

Exhibition Comittee : Trifon Koutsourelis, Stefanos Souvatzoglou, Sophie Bulbulyan

Graphic Designer : Areion Stefanidis

Featured Artists and Works 

 

1) Antonis Antoniou (Cyprus) + Giannis Giannoutos (Greece)

PIETA -Intervation in the public space / Installation - Video projection - Performace

The installation arises from the concept of "Lifeless and souled". We create a structure which stimulates to a body. The work refers to Michelangelo's "Pieta"(1498–1499). Reducing it to its formal parameters, we create an abstract installation removing it from its iconographic context. Alluding to the lifeless body of Christ in "Pieta", the performer will be lying at the bottom of the installation, inside the sack. Diverging though from its point of reference, his action will consist of slow -gradually increasing- movements. The goal is to turn the amorphous mass of the installation into a sort of live organism, in continuous flux and transformation. The action will be filmed and edited. The video will be projected on a big wall of a building in the center of Athens.

Τechnical and material requirements: -high resolution projector -ropes -white fabric -one clean wall of a building in the center of Athens.

The wall can be like the wall in the image below

Giannis Giannoutsos Architect – Visual artist Giannis Giannoutsos was born in Agrinio, Greece in 1986. He studied Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens, 2005 – 2011. In 2012, upon successfully passing the qualifying examinations, he was admitted to the Athens School of Fine Arts in order to study painting. Since 2015, he maintains his own architectural office and workshop. He lives and works in Athens as an Architect and a Visual artist.

Antonis Antoniou Visual and Performance artist Antonis Antoniou was born in 1983 in Limassol, Cyprus, now lives and works in Athens. In 2008, hewas admitted to the Athens School of Fine Arts where he was mainly under the guidance of teachersMr. Spiliopoulos Marios (director of the Third Painting Workshop), Mr. Chandris Pantelis and Ms.Chatsisavva Erato. In 2012, he attended the Erasmus exchange program in UDB University inBarcelona, Spain. In 2013, he participated in the seminar of Performance of the Third PaintingWorkshop and the Third Sculpture Workshop supervised by Mrs. Bouriti Emilia. Also, He alsofollowed the sculpture, printmaking, photography and multimedia workshops. He graduated in sculpture, printmaking, photography and multimedia workshops. He graduated in 2014.

 

2) Vasileios Filippou (Cyprus), Maria Methymaki & Mariza Parasyri (Greece)

Project Title: Κυματογραφή – Wavescript (video-interactive platform (laptop)-photographs)

Description of the project (100 words):

We consider the body of Mediterranean as a way of cultural diffusion.

The natural flow in the Mediterranean basin sets constantly the request of proximity, in the way that each integrated language tool, as traveling across the Mediterranean, infuses the need of a mutual system of symbols, a mean of connection.

Starting with the alphabet, as the more mature cultural achievement, we seek the common root which creates new relations.

We invent a new language tool, a modern script method.

Through narration, sound representation and artistic impression, we build a new code that emphasizes the common aesthetic conformation of the Mediterranean urban space and demonstrates new ways of intimacy and interaction.

Description of the project (summary):

We invent a new language tool, a modern script method.. Through narration, sound representation and artistic impression, we build a new code that emphasizes the common aesthetic conformation of the Mediterranean urban space and demonstrates new ways of intimacy and interaction.

Format:

~ Audio-visual projection

~ Interactive platform (controlled with laptop)

~ Photos-pictures (A4) in the space

Bio of the team:

We are a newly formed team with three members:

Vasileios Filippou is a Cypriot composer based in the Netherlands. His personal website is: http://vassilisph.wix.com/filippou-v Maria Methymaki is an Architect and a Sculptor. For more information: www.mariamethimaki.com Mariza Parasyri is a Civil Engineer and a Writer. She lives in Athens.

 

3) Ioanna Neofytou, Elena Sokratous, Eirini Tiniakou (Greece)

Title of the project : “N|on Progress” (video, 10 minutes)

Short description of the project :

Πώς θα μπορούσε να διακωμωδηθεί η δυσκολία συνεργασίας και συνδημιουργίας; Το έργο “N|on Progress” είναι μια προσπάθεια των τριών καλλιτεχνων ν’ανιχνεύσουν τα όρια και τις δυσκολίες της συνεργασίας, την αδυναμία οργάνωσης - διοργάνωσης - συνοργάνωσης και πώς θα μπορουσε αυτό να εκφραστει δημιουργικά μέσα από μια παρουσίαση “επιχειρηματικού χαρακτήρα”.

Bio:

H Iωάννα Nεοφύτου, εικαστικός, η Έλενα Σωκράτους, σκηνοθέτης και η Ειρήνη Τηνιακού, εικαστικός, έχουν γνωριστεί μέσα απο το πρόγραμμα Mediterranean Bodies και συνεργάζονται για πρώτη φορά για την υλοποίηση του έργου “N|on Progress”.

4) Alexandra Pambouka (Greece), Nadia Hatzimitraga (Cyprus)

Title: Bodies of Nature | Flows of the Physical Year: 2016 Medium: branches, wax, twine, recycled paper, 3d digital (video)

Nadia and Alexandra have both undertaken artistic practice at the national park of Prespa in northwestern Greece. Their joint work references this shared experience of the in situ effect of natural elements: large bodies of water moving across the landscape, mountain morphologies, vegetation patterns, etc. Their artwork is a combination of methods, spanning ancient techniques, traditional drawing and 3d digital design, former into a new “body”.

Short Bios

Alexandra Pambouka was born in Nicosia in 1993. She has been studying at the Fine Art School of Florina (Greece) since 2011. She has been an active member of the Visual March to Prespes since 2012. She has participated in several exhibitions and workshops. She is trying to discover the deeper human connections with nature through creativity.

Nadia Hatzimitraga is a Greek visual artist and an architecture researcher, educated in the States and the Netherlands. She has worked on numerous projects relating to the natural environment and has specialized in advanced digital design. She has participated in international exhibitions relating to design, digital art, art & science.

 

5) Zoi Arvaniti, Zoe Manta, Myrto Tsilimpounidi (Greece)

Title: Containers As Social Landscapes, series of 13 prints on iron (90 x 45 cm) + small installation

Summary (100 words)

This is a story about metal boxes and how they changed our world. Containers are the unknown heroes behind the spread of global trade. They made transportation costs minimum, distances smaller and global economies bigger. Containers are mostly used by big shipping companies, opening up new trade routes, geometries of power and consumption patterns. In our project we chose to focus on the overlooked by-products of the era of containerization, namely human trafficking, precarious labour and marginalization of certain strands of the population. This work is a testament of the new aesthetics of crisis in the city and a tribute to fortress Europe.

Summary (50 words)

Containers as Social Landscapes explores the complex dynamics of this era of crisis and austerity in relation to the most vulnerable and dispossessed bodies in the city. We are seeking to move beyond our initial exploration and offer this unusual protagonist – metal boxes – as a starting point for the creative process.

Short bio of the team (50 words)

Zoi Arvaniti is a visual artist, Zoe Manta a cinematographer and Myrto Tsilimpounidi a photographer and social researcher. As a team they unpack the complex relationship of urban space, human subjectivities and the new aesthetics of crisis in Athens, Greece in a project entitled Containers as Social Landscapes.

 

6) Iro Dimitriou & Caterina Antonopoulou

Title: Resonant Paths Format: Public space intervention / sound walk - urban intervention

Summary (~100 words):

'Resonant Paths' consists of a public space intervention in the form of a journey. This journey is augmented by interconnected digital and physical narrative fragments. The digital layer of the walk contains a set of recorded stories forming an audiowalk, while the physical layer contains an open physical installation awaiting the visitors intervention. Both layers narrate memories of people who lived or passed through the city, leaving traces of their ephemeral presence. Every visitor, by exploring and recomposing the narrative fragments creates a new journey, a unique narrative.

Short summary (~50 words):

'Resonant Paths' consists of a public space intervention in the form of a journey. This journey is augmented by interconnected digital and physical narrative fragments, revealing the ephemeral traces of people who lived or passed through the city. Every visitor creates a new journey by exploring and recomposing the narrative fragments.

Bios:

Iro Dimitriou was born in Athens in 1989. As a child, she spent most of her time drawing and painting, as well as dancing. After school, she studied Architecture at the Technical University of Crete. Her main interests concentrate on research on architecture, visual arts and art history and theory.

Caterina Antonopoulou (peqpez.net) is an engineer and a new media artist. Her artistic practice combines interactive installations and performances, real-time audiovisual generation, algorithmic video and public space interventions. She has been working in the intersection of technology with art and education and has been instructor of multiple workshops and lectures.

 

7) Aliki Arnaouti (Greece) in collaboration with Cheik Kante ( France)

Project Title The Beauty@the beast. / digital street game

A chess game in the street of Athens, where the bodies live and move interacting with the cityscape. The presented work is part of a bigger project, which will include cityscapes from different Mediterranean towns.

Circulating in and above the city, exploring its secrets and moving from one square of the chessboard to another as the game is evolved. The hole story is hidden in the QR codes, which covers the white squares, and it is revealed every time that the viewer scan the code with his/her smartphones.

Medium

Installation with integrated QR codes on a chess board and a user manual.

Bio:

Aliki Arnaouti was born in Athens. She has a BA in Theatre Studies (National University of Athens, Greece) and a Master of Arts in Scenography (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, U.K.). She works as a scenographer and costume designer in theatre and as visual artist (mixed and new media).

 

8) Panagiota Koroniou & Sofia Preka (Greece)

TWO PAINTINGS 1m x 1,20m

the titles:

"Aylan Kurdi -Human Cargo", painting-mixed technique

"Mediterranean without its people is just stains on a sailcloth", painting on sailcloth

About Aylan Kurdi: painting i did some months before ,on september 2015 ,when i heard for an ufair death of a little boy in Turkey - Before in summer of 2015 i met in Pedion of Arews (Athens) where the first refugges where staying ,i met a Syrian mother whith her baby , she brought her child on a boat crossing the borders from Turkey to Mittilini . It was really an Honor to meet a Mother and Woman so brave in these conditions and so unfair to see people in 2015-16 to fight for their lives under these conditions . So when i heard about this child it was power so sad that i couldnt escape this unfair dying ...and unfortunately people ,children are dying every day in Medditeranean sea ... thats a little i can say the painting i did ...

Panagiota Koroniou, Greece. Institutive, resourceful visual artist possessing a significant background in visual education and visual art studies. Has participated in various cultural activities of the Greek creative industry, through visual and performing arts. Trained in teaching fine arts to children and adults.

 

9) Sofia Grigoriadou & Elli Vassalou (Greece)

ARTISTIC BLOG - Small space with laptop and headphones

Object biographies: relocation, reuse, transformation

An artistic research focused on the flow, reuse and transformations of objects that end up to the Mediterranean coasts. Our case study is currently Lesvos, an island directly linked to heavy migration flows. Life vests, boats, piles of clothing are some of the materials that travel together with people. Once these objects reach the island, they get transformed into items of unexpected use. Using various sources such as social and mass media, personal and collective archives and in situ observations, we archive such cases in a blog entitled “Object biographies: relocation, reuse, transformation”. Our research is open to contributions that either consider Lesvos or other shores of the Mediterranean.

Web address: https://objectbios.wordpress.com/ (not active before the 5th!!!)

summary

An artistic research focused on the flow, reuse and transformations of objects that end up to Lesvos, an island directly linked to heavy migration flows. Life vests, boats, piles of clothing are some of the materials that travel together with people. “Object biographies: relocation, reuse, transformation” is a blog-archive of our research that is open to contributions.

Sofia Grigoriadou [MFA (Athens School of Fine Arts); BA (Athens School of Fine Arts); B of Philosophy, Pedagogy and Psychology (University of Athens)] and Elli Vassalou [Master of Architecture (Patras University) and Activated space (Royal Fine Arts School, Gent)] collaborate since 2014 on art and research projects related to archives, space and memory.

 

10) Vasso Farmaki & Medea Kastanou

Performance / Title: Coffee tales sweet with double dose of coffee, extra boiled and three bubbles on top

Ιστορίες του καφέ βαρύ γλυκό, παραβρασμένο - χωρίς καϊμάκι και 3 φουσκάλες

Description of the work:

Space, culture, mood and character are some of the factors that motivate a person to move and act on specific ways. For the purposes of this play, we assume that people usually follow this motivation in order to create a comfortable zone. Though our mind constantly tries to take us out of this zone, our actions are usually chained to it. "Coffee tales" is a live performance, including a video projection, that "plays" with the flow and aims to put people out of their comfortable zone, provoking them to either accept that "flow" or go against it. (99 words)

Summary of the description

Space, culture, mood and character motivate a person to move and act on specific ways. The most common reaction is to follow this motivation. So, on the edge of the cliff would you dare to dance? "Coffee tales" is a live performance that "plays" with the flow and provokes people to go with it or against it.

Bios:

Medea Kastanou graduated "Rallou Manou" and Laban. She works as a dance teacher (ages 3-7 and dancing with parents) and participates at dancing projects that take place in Athens.

Vasiliki Farmaki is an Architect. She experiments with music as well as visual and media Art, combined with Installations and Performing Arts. She constantly participates in various seminars, workshops, festivals, competitions, conferences, exhibitions and art-focused cultural groups.

 

11) Calculus (Daphne Monastirioti, Niki Analyti, Phaidonas Gialis) & Olia Mourouzidou, Maria - Candia Chardalia (Greece)

Performance - Obsession No.5

We are a group of five people performing on individuals acts. Our work is based on subjective crisis, under the circumstances that have created a certain reality. We are using obsession as a mean of expressing the internality and highlight the personal struggle with the problematic reality. Our goal is to present some actions beyond the everyday and usual actions, so for us to explore our limits and to the audience to experience something hat might give the opportunity to have a thought or feeling that force them beyond some borders. We believe that is important to give ourselves the right and time to wonder about ourselves, to wonder what actually border is as a first level and then what it means around us.

Our team is newly formed and consists of three members (Daphne Monastirioti, Niki Analyti, Phaidonas Gialis) with a broad search and creation. We are working on common ideas by different means everyone in a context process and experimentation which results in a common result. These instruments consist of using concrete materials and digital media such as the designing worlds through 3D programming environments, optical digital media, interactive installations and electroacoustic devices in conjunction with processing audio and video material in real-time. As artists our research and creation framework moves between the human body and in digital and analogue media.

Phaidonas Gialis is a visual artist based on athens,his main interests are performance,paintinting and new media.He has participated in numerous group exhibitions in greece and abroad.

Analyti Niki is an audiovisual artist, mostly concerned in creating poetical new media works.She seeks interrelationships between subject and beyond subject through the act of performing . She lives and works in Athens, where she is studying art in Athens School of Fine Arts.

Monastirioti Dafnie is a visual artist. Her work depict another reality and it's impact on the new generation. She explores the reflect the industrial revolution has and how her evolution can be achieved through degradation. Lives and works in Athens.

Olia Mourouzidou is a professional contemporary dancer. She graduated from Rallou Manou Professional Dance School of Athens (2007). She is currently teaching contemporary dance and power movement at PK Dance School at Theater PK of Athens. She is also a member of the Pavlos Kourtidis Dance Theatre Company since 2009

Maria- Candia Chardalia (GR) is a new media journalist and contemporary dancer, specialized in aerial & acrobatics. She is inspired by the subtle way different forms & genre of art exist, interact and affect everyday's life. She is intrigued by the urban paradox of unsustainable cities and is experimenting with boundaries of things, already defined by others. She lives and breathes in Athens, mapping through words and dance, whatever finds interesting.

 

12) Christos Martinis (Greece) & Maurice Agbenoo (France)

_BALANCE_ project - performance

The “Anti-Narrative” platform is a text the writers create, develop and edit in front of their reader’s eyes, a text that is imprinted to the reader from the very first to the last moment. The reader acquires the ability to intervene and modify the text, even come in conflict with the writers. As a result, the “Anti-Narrative” project is a text created by a community.

During the perfomance ''Balance'' the literary text it is combined with dance perfomance. Based on the''balance'' idea, in cooperation with the French danseur and circus performer Maurice Agbennoo, each reader will be inspired in order to create live literature texts.

Description:

_BALANCE_

''A literary technological/interactive installation (Anti-Narrative team) combined with the video dance perfomance of the danseur Maurice Agbenoo.

Anti Narrative Team (Christos Martinis, Panos Papapanayiotou, Yiannis Adamis, Ioanna Ntoula, Konstantinos Papaprilis-Panatsas) and Maurice Agbenoo''

Short Bio

Christos Martinis was born in 1985 in Athens. He studied Law and has an MA in Diplomatic History and an MA in Creative Writing. He participated with an individual work at the ‘’Inspire’’ exhibition for young artists in the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and in the Museum of Contemporary Art Alex Mylona. He has created the literature perfomances ''Anti-Narrative'' and ''Brvin Project''. He is a member of the Poetic Centre of Takis Sinpoulos and a member of the AntiNarrative literature team. His poetry work includes publications in poetry magazines.

Maurice Agbenoo is a French dancer (Académie Internationale de la Danse ) and circus artist specializing in Chinese pole and Cyr Wheel, using contemporary hiphop techniques.

 

13) Nektarios Rodosthenous (Cyprus) - Soufiane Aboumalih (France)

A/float [ing] (2015-6). This work explores the notion of drowning in technology, which is one of the pressing issues faced by the artists today. As a universally humanistic concept it allows the user to cultivate memory by making associations over time and has personal extensions in a technological Era that we are living in (loss of touch, distancing ourselves from nature, etc.). As a musico-kinetic piece, the artists work in tandem to interrogate conventions of movement and visual representations, to custom-control any somatic parameter as part of their process [es] of sculpting-in-sound.

• Soufiane Aboumalih: dance

• Nektarios Rodosthenous: music (fixed media), live percussion, video

Final result to be shown in France ; in Athens, the projection of videos of Soufiane will be broadcasted with a sound track of Nektarios

 

14) Time Cube Project (France) & Katerina Androulaki (Greece)

Video projection - interactive digital installation - game

work in progress / A common space of the participating countries, the Mediterranean, will be the source of inspiration and also provide us with the raw materials for creating this project, through light, water, soil. Our group attempts to createan interactive installation that combines the virtual with the real through the game. Thus, our canvas is a natural material, the soil, on the surface of which is displayed a video projection, which is the digital creation and thereby, the digital “light”. The video, presenting and exploring forms of the human body through its expose to the environment and natural materials, is an effort to explore the reconceptualization of public life in the 21st century societies, as well as the instinctive need of socialization and belonging and how it has developed from the outset of human civilization to our times. The visitor is invited to interface with the natural material and the projection and interact with them through physical contact, causing changes in the audio and video projection.

Final result to be shown in France

Bios:

Katerina Androulaki, fine artist, graduate student of Athens School of Fine Arts, with current residency in Irakleio, Crete

Nefeli Georgakopoulou, architect / designer, Architecture engineer (University of Thessaly), MA Art and Virtual Reality (Athens School of Fine Arts, Paris 8), with current residency in Paris

Dionysis Zamplaras, photographer / multimedia designer, Photography and Audiovisual Studies (TEI of Athens), MA Art and Virtual Reality (Athens School of Fine Arts, Paris 8), with current residency in Paris.

 

15) Ioanna Neofytou (Cyprus), Eirini Tiniakou (Greece) & Elena Socratous (Cyprus)

N | on Progress

The projection “N|on Progress”, is a first step of a collaboration between the visual artists Ioanna Neofytou, Eirini Tiniakou and the director Elena Socratous. As a primitive point of their collaboration, they decided to present the difficulties and the limits of a collaborative artistic project through a PowerPoint presentation. The “N|on Progress” is an attempt to express the rather corporative face of the art in nowadays, that seems to focus more in publicity, finance than the need of expression and creativity.

 

Human Cargo", painting-mixed technique (Panagiota Koroniou)"

About 

 

16) Panagiota Koroniou & Sofia Preka (Greece)

"Aylan Kurdi -Aylan Kurdi: painting i did some months before ,on september 2015 ,when i heard for an ufair death of a little boy in Turkey - Before in summer of 2015 i met in Pedion of Arews (Athens) where the first refugges where staying ,i met a Syrian mother whith her baby , she brought her child on a boat crossing the borders from Turkey to Mittilini . It was really an Honor to meet a Mother and Woman so brave in these conditions and so unfair to see people in 2015-16 to fight for their lives under these conditions . So when i heard about this child it was power so sad that i couldnt escape this unfair dying ...and unfortunately people ,children are dying every day in Mediteranean sea ... thats a little i can say the painting i did ...

Mediterranean without its people is just stains on a sailcloth", painting on sailcloth

(Sophia Preka)

We have decided with  my fellow artist, Panagiota Koroniou, to create each one her own artwork that we will combine afterwards in an attempt to create an artistic conversation between them. The main subject of the exhibition may be the mediterrenean bodies, but I do not want to reveal in a clear way their existence. My method of work is to chart the area on a sail cloth wich represents the reletionship between the man and the sea by using coffee stains that is related to our daily habit of drinking coffee and is an aspect of our social interchanges and then I finish it with bees wax that is related to the historicity and ancientness of the Meditrranean. My goal is to underline the fact that Mediterranean is not just a beautiful place on a map, but it is its people, native or passing by, who fight for their survival. Mediterranean without its people is just stains on a canvas.

Biographies:

Sofia Preka was born and raised in Athens. In 2010 she was accepted in School of Fine Arts and Sciences of Art of the University of Ioannina, from which she graduated in 2015. She has practiced her internship at the Photographic Archives Department of Benaki Museum and she has participated at the Inspire Festival 2014 next to visual artist Nikos Navridis and KAOS project with French collective Pixel13 and four greek artists.Her approach towards the arts is through experimental ways of expression and she believes that art should not rise above contemporary problems or be tamed in order to assure its self-preservation. Her artistic imprint is formed by personal experiences that are transformed into an artistic alphabet with a distinct symbolic character. The themes that have been the main core of her interest are related to the notion of time. Like the impermanence, the frailty and the vulnerability of every living thing that inevitably leads to decay. The decomposition that can be transformed and regenerated into something new through redefinition. Memory, that includes the knowledge of the past, the consciousness of the present and the claim of the future and its loss, the emptiness that is characterized by latency or endless repetition with no chance of improvement. 

Panagiota Koroniou, Greece. Institutive, resourceful visual artist possessing a significant background in visual education and visual art studies. Has participated in various cultural activities of the Greek creative industry, through visual and performing arts. Trained in teaching fine arts to children and adults.