What we saw on the 7th Week of AGORA

The seventh week of the 4th Athens Biennale started with the participatory and collective workshop Developing a Visual Voice: Radical Print Workshop, with creativity launching in the main hall of AGORA and turning it into an impromptu printing shop. Cactus Network, Occupied Times, Skart and Falena, along with the workshop participants, created silk-screen posters that are already out on the streets of Athens. On Tuesday, Art Bank conducted an art cash auction during the presentation of its activities at the 4th Athens Biennale. L' Ecran Noir by Zafos Xagoraris transformed AGORA into a projection room and the competition part of the May '68 Cannes festival, which was cancelled, comes to life every day in the 4th Athens Biennale. The Theatre of the Oppressed invited the audience that gathered in CAMP to actively participate in two performances about racism, institutional or not, and everyday violence. Last week had a lot of music in the AGORA auditorium, with T23VAK, a musical event on Wednesday with participants from the field of electronic music occupying the space with sound. The highlight of Saturday was the performance of Center for Research and Dissemination of Music Scheming that introduced for the first time in Greece the game piece Cobra by John Zorn, an unexpected musical show where musicians and 'teleprompter' presented a "creative play" of improvisation, with rules, cards and gestures, whose flow and evolution were determined at any moment by the participants themselves; the result was incredible. On the same day the participants and audience of the VALUE workshop filled the Machine Room of Sofokleous with the debate lasting for hours with close interest για ώρες ενώ νωρίτερα, while earlier, in Ancient Agora this time, Katerina Zaharopoulou conducted her second in situ performance, talking to employees and passersby trying to find answers to a series of questions that are related to the AGORA thematic, especially to "Now what?".

The program of the eighth week of AGORA:

For a detailed program of the seventh week of the 4th Athens Biennale AGORA, please visit our Calendar.

Zafos Xagoraris - "L'Ecran Noir"

series of screenings

This historic project focuses on the historical event of the cancellation of the Cannes festival in 1968 as an act of solidarity to the students and workers of Paris and other cities of France.
Installations including interviews, film footage and other documentation material have been presented at Embros (2011) and Broadway theaters ("Exchange", curated by Sofia Dona, 2012).
Although all films were eventually screened in different venues and audiences and each was received differently, in the context of the 4th Athens Biennale L' Εcran Noir attempts to reconstruct their sequence as conceived for the 1968 Cannes film festival.
The project re-raises questions related to the role of art and artistic practice during a crisis of periods of political action. It aims to bring to the front issues and dilemmas of participating or withdrawing, the relation between art and industry as well as visibility or obscurity, and showcase that they are as urgent as in 1968.
With the collaboration of: Marios Papageorgiou and Leonidas Kakaroglou.

Second Week Program:

Tuesday, 19/11, 17:00-19:00, 8–10 Sofokleous st.
Peppermint Frappe (1967) by Carlos Saura (english subtitles)-(92΄)


Wednesday 20/11, 17:00-19:00, 8–10 Sofokleous st.
Je t'aime, je t'aime (1968) by Alain Resnais (greek subtitles)-(94΄)


Thursday 21/11, 17:00-19:00, 8–10 Sofokleous st.
The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) by Jack Cardiff (greek subtitles)-(91΄)

Saturday 23/11, 14:00-16:00, 8–10 Sofokleous st.
Petulia (1968) by Richard Lester (greek subtitles)-(105΄)

Sunday 24/11, 14:00-16:00, 8–10 Sofokleous st.
Anna Karenina (1967) by Aleksandr Zarkhi (greek subtitles)-(145΄)

Areti Miggou and team of Epirus Polyphonic Singing

Polyphonic Songs from Epirus
Workshop-Music

The pentatonic polyphonic singing from Epirus is a special musical phenomenon of Greek tradition possibly rooted in ancient Greece. Its rigorous but authentic structure attests to the social structure of the region that values team unity and acceptance of different roles. Through lessons at Synergatiko Kafenio (Collaborative Coffeehouse) this sense of community is developed, but mainly the voice, which is the principal medium. Following an experiential cycle, respiration, relaxed physical exercise and vocal exercises are the preparation for the iso, the capture, the throwing, the spinning...

The team of Polyphonic Singing of Synergatiko Kafenio will sing in the main hall of AGORA at 20:30. Prior to that a polyphonic singing workshop will be conducted in the Machine room of AGORA starting at 18:30. After the end of the workshop the effort of the participants will be presented at the beginning of the concert.

Areti Miggou is a musician and for the last two years she has been teaching Epirus Polyphonic Singing at Synergatiko Kafenio at Platonos Academy. Since 1998 she has been playing and teaching percussions and since 2003 she has been teaching musical kinetic. She is member of two music groups, Lyre 'n' Rhapsody (www.lyrenrhapsody.com) and 'Earth & Sea' (www.myspace.com/ghithalassa). She related to Epirus polyphonic singing as a child while listening to the elderly of the village singing, but made a dynamic comeback in recent years, when she started trying to find a way to connect to her roots.

Tuesday 19/11, 18:30-20:30, 8–10 Sofokleous st.

Caravan Poject

Another world is here
presentation

For the last three years a team of artists and researchers has been travelling all around Greece in a motorhome at the most difficult point in its modern history. With documentary, writing, narration and photography as vehicles the team highlights human stories that have the power to awaken, to motivate and create spaces for reflection and metapraxis. In the turbulent times we live in, the broadcasting od personal stories is a revolutionary practice that increases our resistance and twirls again our longing for life, thus bringing us to the core of human existence.

The caravan project is a moving cultural platform, a small ark of human testimonies named 'Another World Is Here', though which human history and its positive effect on the human psyche are celebrated. Through cultural and educational activities in cities, swuares and villages, universities and schools, prisons and vulnerable groups the project communicates the stories it has produced, inaugurating a new kind of creative dialogue and realizing in the difficult period that we are going though our deep need for participation and interaction.

In the auditorium of this year's biennale the action of the caravan project will be presented through photos, texts, documentary material while chatting with the audience for the importance of stories in times of crisis. Part of the caravan project is the collection of narratives. By asking 'tell me a story that you like to tell often' they collect stories of people they meet creating a mosaic of stories. Involving the public in a more interactive relationship with the creators, the caravan will address the same question: 'tell me a story that you like to tell often' and it will record record stories, connecting people who watch with the base of their own untold stories.

The storrytelling that the caravan project brings to life seeks through the healing and unifying power of stories to break exclusions, to bring people together, to contribute creatively in a necessary dialogue to renegotiate the principles that bring us closer to a more substantial form of 'welfare'.
www.anotherworldishere.com

Tuesday, 19/11, 19:00–20:30, 8–10 Sofokleous

OPSIS

Antonis Pittas, Wednesday, 20/11, 17:00-18:00,
Constantinos Hadzinikolaou and Petros Touloudis, 23/11, 17:00-18:00,
Crysanthi Koumianaki, 24/11, 15:00-16:00,
Sam Durant, 24/11, 17:00-18:00,
8-10 Sofokleous st.

The 4th Athens Biennale activates the artworks of the exhibition with the participation of the public. A series of meetings among public, curators and artists will take place in front of particular works aiming to an interpretational approach. An analysis of the relations among works, artistic practices will emerge through dialogue, while their connections to the thematics of this year's Biennale will also be discussed.
Opsis is often conducted in the contextof the Pre-Institutional Critique Workshop that is realized in collaboration with the ASFA Department of Theory and History of Art.
On Wednesday, 20 November the work of Antonis Pittas will be presented. On Saturday, 23 November, the works of Constantinos Hadzinikolaou and Petros Touloudis will be presented.
On Sunday, 24 November, at 13:00 a workshop will take place where the children together with the artist Crysanthi Koumianaki will make their currency and discuss about the exchange of goods. In the same day at 17:00 the work of Sam Durant will be presented.

Marialena Marouda

Walking in the City – a Workshop on the Poetics of Space

The workshop Walking in the City – a Workshop on the Poetics of Space consists of walking through Athens according to specific guidelines and with a stack of post–its in hand as a notebook. More specifically, the walk consists of observing and noting those movements and thoughts that are so familiar while walking in Athens that they usually go unnoticed: like passing by an open window and listening to the sound of TV coming from the inside (on a summer's night), stepping on a paving slab that is broken or unstable or slippery from the rain that makes you lose your balance, the instantaneous transformation of a shop window into a mirror. After the walk, the notebook is disassembled and the post–its are used to create the 'Map of Walking Poetics', a map thatis at once a trace of an ephemeral action and an archive of bodily perceptions.

Thursday, 21/11, 17:00–19:00, 8–10 Sofokleous st.

Erect like a country

symposium

A homage to Dimitris Dimitriadis, author of Dying like a country.

An initiative of Barbara Polla

Organization: Maro Michalakakos, Elli Paxinou, Barbara Polla
With
With the kind help of Denys Zaharopoulos

Taking contemporary art as its backdrop, this symposium raises the question of the connections between erection and world-view. Erection is understood here as the primary manifestation of desire, joy and fertility; as a sacred event; as conquest and pride – extending even to a whole country.

This question inevitably led us to the premonitory text by Dimitris Dimitriadis, Dying like s Country (1978), in which the author depicts a country where women have ceased to conceive children, where soldiers have laid down their arms and deserted, an ingrowing country where even the language is dying. A country plagued by the lack of any kind of stimulation.

The organizers took this iconic text and reversed the paradigm to present an inversion, hence the title Erect like a Country. In the light of this inversion, erection is presented as an antithesis to death. The importance for Europe's future of desire, of attraction to others and of erection as a symbol will be discussed by speakers and participants at the symposium.

Speakers:

Aristide Antonas, architect and writer (GR), Paul Ardenne, professor of history and history of art and architecture (FR), Vincent Cespedes philosopher (FR), Maria Efstathiadi, writer (GR), Yannis Houvardas, theatre director (GR), Rodolphe Imhoof, president of the Foundation for the History of the Swiss abroad (CH), Eliza Nicolopoulou, clinical psychologist-psychoanalyst (GR), Dimitris Paleocrassas, art historian, art consultant (GR), Barbara Polla, gallerist, writer (CH), Denys Zaharopoulos, art historian, director of the Macedonian Museum for Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki (GR) and the organizers.

At the end of the symposium Maria Efstathiadi will introduce Dimitris Dimitriadis and his work.

A recent, unpublished writing of Dimitris Dimitriadis, Lycaon, An Apology for Desire will be read, and Yannis Houvardas will direct a performance based on that text.

The symposium also prefigures two exhibitions on the same theme, to be held in Greece in 2014.

Symposium Program

12:30 Arrival, coffee
13:00 INTRODUCTION
Maro Michalakakos, artist and Elli Paxinou, art historian; Co-organizers

SESSION 1 – Art, Politics and Society

13:30 Barbara Polla, former MP (Switzerland); gallerist, writer

Erection, Concept and Symbol, Vital and Artistic necessity

14:00 Rodolphe Imhoof, former ambassador, president of the Foundation for the History of the Swiss abroad, Chateau de Penthes

Semantics of Erection in Politics

14:30 Eliza Nicolopoulou, psychologist – psychoanalyst

Dynamics of Desire and Creation – A Psychoanalytical Approach

15:00 Dimitris Paleocrassas, art historian, art consultant

The Erection of a Collection as a Symbol of the Future

15:30 Discussion and lunch

SESSION 2 – Philosophy and architecture

17:00 Denys Zacharopoulos, art historian, director of the Macedonian Museum for Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki
The Event against the Object: the Erection or the Materialism of the Incorporeal

17:30 Vincent Cespedes, philosopher

The Sacred Phallus, between Eros and Thanatos

18:00 Discussion

18:30 Paul Ardenne, professor of history and art history, Universite d' Amiens; writer

Architectural Erection

19:00 Aristide Antonas, writer, philosopher, architect

Faced with a Certain Desire for Chora

19:30 Discussion and break

SESSION 3 – Homage to Dimitris Dimitriadis

20:00 Presentation of the work of Dimitris Dimitriadis by Maria Efstathiadi:
'Dimitris Dimitriadis, Homo Erectus'
Conversation with Dimitris Dimitriadis
Reading of an unpublished text by Dimitris Dimitriadis (French translation Michel Volkovitch)
 Lycaon an Apology for Desire.

Climax: Yannis Houvardas, theatre director

Performance based on the text by Dimitris Dimitriadis

21:30 End of symposium, discussion, complementary cocktail for all participants

School UP

workshop

School UP is a global initiative which aims to connect and help build bridges between students, teachers, and individuals around the world to collaborate and actively participate in developing a global consciousness and a more responsible global citizenship in the classroom and in society.

School UP promotes Global Education as a tool to foster a culture of tolerance and understanding as well as the 'living together' spirit.

School Up uses non–formal education in organizing workshops/activities to raise awareness about crucial values to help build a better world for all.

School UP will organize at the 4th Athens Biennale a workshop to address the issue of bullying inside and outside of school. 'UNITED', an award-winning human rights music video will be played, which has inspired children around the world. A brief discussion will be conducted about the story it tells and an activity will also take place inviting the children to share their message.

For children 6-12 years.

Saturday, 23/11, 10:30–11:30, 8–10 Sofokleous st.

Katerina Zaharopoulou

In Agora (x) 4
Performance

Can an interview stand outside the media context? What is an on the road interview, apart from a reportage or opinion poll? How much can an everyday person, a person who lives, works or does not work in this contradictory city, penetrate the context of art and its structures? To what extent can artists dynamically infiltrate society? What exactly do they want to indicate with their images? Can we bring to the Athens Biennale people who do not know about it, people who simply do not know how to approach it? Is the relatively new trend in art for structures borrowed from other activities, like lectures, teaching etc., capable to involve the world inside and outside of it?
The visual artist Katerina Zaharopoulou conducts in situ interview performances at four Athenian markets (street market – Varvakios, ancient agora – Plaka, commercial market – Ermou, agora of the 4th Athens Biennale – Sofokleous) over four consecutive Saturdays (9, 16, 23 and 30 November).
Participants in the performances are people that either work or hang out in these places, giving answers to a series of questions that are related to the AGORA thematic, especially to "Now what?".

Saturday, 23/11, 12:00–14:00, Ermou st.

Schedia magazine

presentation

Schedia is an independent magazine that is sold on the streets of Athens offering the homeless, unemployed, and those living below the threshold of poverty an opportunity to decently earn a living, as well as an additional motive to restore their lives. Of the magazine cover price (3.00 euros), 50% (i.e. 1.50 euro) is directly received by the vendor. As is the case with all street magazines around the world, schedia is sold exclusively by accredited vendors at central points in the city.
The people behind schedia will introduce the AGORA audience to an all but usual editorial project.

Saturday, 23/11, 16:00–18:00, 8-10 Sofokleous st.

VALUE

Locating value, Presentation of the CHOROtAXIA Team
workshop

Producing value in visual arts
Participants in the discussion: Κ. Ioannidis, Ε. Neofytou, Poka-Yio, Ν. Souliotis.
Coordinator: Kostas Christopoulos
 What is an authentic, original, unique work of art? What added value does this property give to an artwork? How can one detect the relations between art market mechanisms on one hand and artistic practices on the other against the commercialization of the work of art? How does contemporary art create its own networks of surplus value and how is this value combined with popularity?

Unforgiving Measurements (happening)
Eva Marathaki (visual artist) – Io Chaviara (graphic and visual artist)

The Chair of the Guard (visual arts project)
Natasa Biza (visual artist)

PATOSSI, MARPISSA, AUGUST 2013 (visual arts project)
Anda Anastasea (visual artist)

Appropriation: Contemporary Art and Tradition (visual arts project)
Nikolaos Stathopoulos (visual artist)

Are the different aspects of value (economic, moral, aesthetic etc.) connected to each other and if so in what ways? Is the present situation experienced as a multilayered "crisis of values"? How does the "market" redefine today the value of life along with the value of things? The VALUE workshop proposes a two months' collaboration of visual artists, social scientists, and theorists from different fields, who will take the anthropological perspective on "exchange" as a point of reference, while attempting to comprehend and comment on the ways value is created and experienced in everyday life. Visitors to the 2013 Athens Biennale are invited to participate in the weekly meetings, in the discussions and production of artistic work by the workshop's curatorial team, as well as by invited artists and theorists. The workshop's program can be found online at valueab4.wordpress.com.

Saturday, 23/11, 17:00–20:00, 8–10 Sofokleous st. (Machine room)

OKK Aktionsgruppe

Auktions Komittee Wedding / Auction Committee Wedding

OKK Aktionsgruppe is a Berlin-based collective working on the border of art and activism. In AGORA they present the performance Auktions Komittee Wedding / Auction Committee Wedding, an 'auction for paid work'. People can join in a competitive underbidding, as AKW auctions offer the chance to the audience to read neoliberal political and economic theory for money. Bidding starts at the minimum wages in 20 (out of 27) European countries that have implemented minimum wages 9 euros (France) to 2.40 euros per hour (Czech Republic).
2 The bidding is open to anyone who wants to participate, earn moeny, and contribute hi/her labor. The Auction puts up for sale excerpts from the work of the neoliberal thinkers of the Chicago School, and the contract involves the time one needs to read these passages in public. The performance is to coincide with the trading hours of the Athens Stock Exchange. This auction works like a mirror of the market and will be accompanied by a product launch campaign. There will also be a presentation by the OKK – working group.
With the participation of Lisa Glauer (Bauhaus Universitat Weimar), Robert Huber (EGFK – Europaische Gesellschaft fur Forschung und Kunst), Pablo Hermann (OKK-Berlin)

Saturday, 23/11, 18:00–19:30, 8–10 Sofokleous st.

Neil Cummings

Art Auction Transaction Tax (AATT)

Neil Cummings is a professor at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London, a member of Critical Practice, of the editorial board of Documents of Contemporary Art and of the campaign for an Art Auction Transaction Tax (AATT). The campaign is inspired by the Art Workers Coalition (AWC) in the 1960s, the activism of Liberate Tate in London, Occupy Economics and Stephen Wright's ideas of user-ship. As he says, the campaign 'aims to micro-tax the auction convened secondary market for contemporary art, and use the revenues raised to support the primary sites of art; education initiatives, not-for-profit organizations, and public institutions that nurture emerging art practices'.
In AGORA, Cummings will introduce the ideas of AATT and launch the campaign by making a presentation of the research.

Saturday, 23/11, 19:30–20:30, 8–10 Sofokleous st.

Nightshift

music

Νightshift are Theo Zioutos and as11. They create live on stage musical soundscapes suing computers and virtual or not instruments. Their music can be characterizes as electronic, it is based on the styles of live electronics of concrete music and is influenced by the aesthetics of ambient and minimalism. Nightshift were formed in Septemver 2004, and since then they have participated in festivals in Greece (Electrograph, Synch, 2:13, Babel), live performances (Mikro Mousiko Theatro, KnotArts), they have released two albums '1904ΕP' (December 2004 – phase records) and 'Nightshift' (January 2005 – antifrost) and they have created the soundtrack for various cultural events.

Theo Zioutos: The avant–garde legend of the city Theo Zioutos studding music and programming. Since 1996 he teaches Music Technology. He works with modern composition (electronic – electro – experimental) and improvisation using synthesizers, computers, as well as natural instruments. He has created or participated in various ensembles (Archery Target, Madder, Epsilon 11, Postblue, Lost Bodies). He has played in concerts and recordings of free improvisation with Greek and international musicians (David Grubbs, Nikos Veliotis, Jerome Noetinger, Christoph Irmer, Martin Kuchen, Antonis Livieratos, Alekos Christidis, Dimitris Kamarotos, Sotiris Debonos, Vasilis Papavasiliou, Blaine Reininger, Kostis Drygianakis, Bohman Brothers, Apostolos Souglakos etc.) He has worked as a music supervisor for theater performances of DiPeThe Volos and he has composed music for 20 theater plays.

as11: Conceptualist as11 molests sound mediums since 2000. His discography includes 6 projects, τα '00:00" (CD) (2000), 5,000NWR (3" CD) (2001) 'New CD out Now!' (3" CD) (2002), 'Monotheism' (CD) (2006) (Antifrost), 'Pneumatik' (CDR) (2007) (Echomusic) and 'Altare' (CDR) (2009) (Absurd), and now he uploads his sounds on soundcloud. At the ELECTROGRAPH 02 festival he participated with the installation 'Monotheism' and in the exhibition suburbia organized by a-station in 2002 with '18′'. as11 has appeared live at the ELECTROGRAPH 01, 03, ELECTROGRAPH JAPAN 04 festivals, online with Great International Audio Streming Orchestra in 2005 and at the 2nd SHOWCASE OF EXPERIMENTAL SOUND of [un]common sounds in Arteleku, San Sebastian, Spain in November 2006.

Saturday, 23/11, 21:00–22:00, 8–10 Sofokleous st.

Gene Ray

Creative Alternatives to the state of bunkruptcy

A panel discussion on three specific 'creative alternatives to the state of bankruptcy' that highlight subjectivation processes and 'timely attitudes'. A discussion of propositions about commoning, permaculture and history 'from below' in collaboration with Iain Boal, London-based social historian of science & technology and activist historian of commoning, as well as catalyst of the Retort collective.
Commoning has a long history in radical theory and has been developed over decades by Midnight Notes, Retort, George Caffentzis, Silvia Federici, Peter Linnebaugh and others. Diverse practices of commoning offer an alternative basis for localized autonomy within globalized networks of exchange.
As a sustainable model for growing food ('edible forests'), permaculture offers an alternative mode of production. As a set of techniques, values and orientations, it also points to the conditions and possibilities for 'cultures of sustainability'.
History, as we know, is written by the victors. The neoliberal econnomic policies are underwritten by the 'end of history' narratives of 'ther is no alternative'. How can artistic practices and productions help to constellate past and present in the re-activating time of Now?
Panel organizer: Gene Ray

Sunday, 24/11, 16:00–17:30, 8–10 Sofokleous st.

AGORA – KYKLOS

Storytelling / Internet
Series of discussions

Kyklos is a series of loosely structured and pluralistic approaches on crucial issues that take place in AGORA Every Sunday afternoon. Invited to Kyklos, the teams and initiatives that actively touch these subjects will have 10-15 minutes in order to share their practical approaches as answers to the question Now what?

On Sunday, 24 November, after the postponement of the previous meeting of Kyklos, the thematics Storytelling and Internet will be discussed back to back.

Sunday , 24/11, 18:00–20:00, 8–10 Sofokleous st.

The program of the eighth week of AGORA is as follows:

TUESDAY 19/11

WEDNESDAY 13/11

THURSDAY 14/11

FRIDAY 15/11

SATURDAY 16/11

SUNDAY 24/11

4th ATHENS BIENNALE 2013 AGORA

OPENING HOURS

ADMISSION