What we saw during the second week of AGORA

The Economics Conference "Now What?" with surprising statements by internationally renowned economists, like Paolo Manasse, Professor Frances Ruane, Heiner Flassbeck, Deirdre McCloskey, Nicholas Economides, Loukas Tsoukalis and Elias Papaioannou, the high attendance of teams that intervene in the City at the premier of AGORA – KYKLOS, the performance The storyteller, the knife and the "machine" by Yota Ioannidou that re–enacted the 1862 uprising against King Otto of Greece in the Kapnikarea district of Athens, the touching discussion of Sally Potter with Leda Papaconstantinou at the Machine Room of AGORA, the ongoing Value workshop at the Machine Room and the roundtable discussion The New Parthenon (beta) transformed AGORA for a second week into a Machine that produces reflections, that works with ideas and opinions as fuel, that does not predetermine the result but highlights the functions and manifestations of its collective use.

The 4th Athens Biennale is based on participation, a parameter equally important to everything that has already been planned, is being planned and presented.

The program of the third week of AGORA:

AGORA continues to create a meeting space at Sofokleous street for coexistence, reflection and polyphony with discussions, performances, music and of course, food by Nomadic Kitchen with recipes from all over the world, especially on Sunday, October 20th.

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

Jenny Marketou

Uncommon Commons Re (Projected)
Workshop

Uncommon Common (Re) Projected is a two days forum conceptualized by Jenny Marketou, interdisciplinary artist based in New York City for the 4th Biennial of Athens, AGORA. Using the process of inquiry and research "Uncommon Common (Re) Projected" invites autonomous groups, self–organized collectives and individuals from Athens to come together at the AGORA on October 15–16, 2013 to join via skype self–organized groups and individuals in New York, Palestine and New Delhi.
The goal of the two days forum is the creation of a common time/space to explore the interfaces of art, activism, and social research as well as creating in common a platform of sharing, thought, inquiry and discussion, so we can further develop together mental, conceptions which can inspire and translate into practices of communing which involves discussions which have a starting point the current economic transformations such as labor, social debt, dept resistance, morality, education and neo-liberalism.
The two days discussions are facilitated and moderated by Jenny Marketou, (artist) and Elpida Karaba (curator, writer, art critic
With Nicholas Mirzoeff (Professor Media Culture and Communication, NYU, writer, founder and deputy director of International Association of Visual Culture), Yates McKee (NYC Activist, Art Historian), Pamela Brown (NYC Activist, Scholar), Amin Husain (Artist, Lawyer) in Palestine, Nitasha Dhillon (photographer) in New Delhi, Strike Debt based in New York City.
And George Papanagiotou, Ilias Paraskevopoulos, Katerina Tselou members of the curatorial team of AB4 as well as collectives, autonomous groups such as Radiobubble, Tutorpool, Iliosporoi, Errands, Politeia 2.0, Global Voices, Media Liberation Front/Feminism and cultural thinkers and artists Gigi Argyropoulou (stage director and theorist), Dimitris Kosmidis (cultural producer, historian), Kostis Stafylakis (artist, curator and theorist), Kostis Velonis (artist) based in Athens.
As a basis for each discussion will focus on casual, informal sharing of methods and outcomes, texts readings, discussions on practices, printed material such as Tidal and The Militant Research Handbook, followed by group sharing work and ending with general questions from all participants.
The discussions will be live–streamed and broadcast and Viewers in Athens will have also the chance to pose their questions in English and Greek via skype, Twitter and Facebook.

Tuesday, 15/10 , 18:00 – 21:00, Sofokleous 8–10
Wednesday , 16/10, 18:00 – 21:00, Sofokleous 8–10

Blitz theatre group

The future lasts forever. 10 years after
Presentation/Performance

Blitz theatre group was formed in October 2004 by three young actors: Aggeliki Papoulia, Giorgos Valais and Christos Passalis. Working in the field and with the means of post-dramatic theatre, they were soon recognized as a collective that introduced new tendencies and aesthetics to the Greek scene. Lehman's references of post-dramatic theatre as "presence rather than enactment", "procedure rather than result", "more ethics less aesthetics" and "aesthetics vs. anaesthetics" could be used to describe blitz's work. They have co-operated with institutions such as the National Theatre of Greece, the Athens Festival, Schaubuhne (Berlin) and are now touring all over Europe.
In this 'Kafeneio', they open a dialogue on their artistic quest and present a 30 min excerpt from their production "GALAXY".

Thursday, 17/10, 13:30–15:00, Sofokleous 8–10
Friday , 18/10, 18:00–19:30, Sofokleous 8–10
Saturday , 19/10, 18:00–19:30, Sofokleous 8–10

GALAXY
Performance

Galaxy is a four-hour parade of people, things, notions, objects, movements, expressions and words that are lost. The performance lasts four hours. There is no intermission. Time of the audience arrival and leaving is kept open. Blitz theatre group will present GALAXY in AGORA on Saturday, October 19, from 19:30 to 22:00.

Saturday , 19/10, 19:30–22:00, Sofokleous 8–10

Value

Workshop

How is "value" created and how does it acquire meaning? Are the different aspects of value (economical, 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? This 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. The 2013 Athens Biennale's visitors are invited to participate in the weekly meetings, the discussions and the artworks of the curating team, as well as of the invited artists and theorists. The workshop's program can be found at http://valueab4.wordpress.com/. Coordination: Elpida Rikou (social anthropology/visual arts)

Value | Economy | Philosophy
discssion

Participants: S. Tegos (Lecturer of Philosophy, University of Crete), Ν. Theoharakis (Associate Professor of Political Economy and History of Economic Thinking).

Votive Offering
art project by Io Chaviara

Io Chaviara (visual artist) describes her art project Votive Offering as below: "Spreads, hedge funds, CDS, toxic bonds, deficit, debt restructuring, PSI, primary surplus. Financial terms and processes are indicate as responsible for national salvation, economy is sanctified, human value is economized. Irrationalisms are presented as precipitations of logic and the obvious. What can our stance be towards these inductions and reassessments?"

Saturday , 19/10, 17:00-21:00, Sofokleous 8–10 (machine room)

ROMVOS

Commodification Without Commodification
Performace

A Romvos was formed in Athens in late 2012 as an effort to establish a collective platform for the promotion of contemporary creative production in experimental and exploratory music. For the 4th Athens Biennale, Romvos is organizing a series of actions that revolve around sound and its potential to act as a tool for the decoding of social, economic and cultural frameworks, conditions and relations. The aim, on the one hand, is to achieve a mapping of the city–as–loudspeaker by making an inventory of soundmarks of its commercial activity: sounds that are unique to every space and hence readily recognizable. On the other hand, through sound and its ability to create ruptures in space and time, to define localities and to underline the extent to which each space is erratic and dynamic, Romvos attempts to disclose a new labor market developing in parallel with official commercial activity, and its transformation through the activation of spaces, and through a reinvention of their uses.

In the framework of the actions that will take place during Agora, Romvos presents a performance at the "Korean Market" of Iera Odos. Every Sunday the Greek Scavengers Union is selling its products at a made–up bazaar, described by themselves as a process of "direct recycling". Romvos and its guests will search for vinyl records at the scavengers' stalls and play them through the sound system that is going to be set up at the bazaar.

This action will be organized with the support of the Scavengers Union. The union was established in 1992, when a group of people who were making a living out of their findings decided to organize and claim a regular location for the bazaar. Scavengers are people on a daily struggle for a day's pay. They wander through the city collecting valuable treasures...

Sunday, 20/10, 12:00–15:00, Corean Market, 94 Iera Odos st

generation 2.0 festival

All day events

generation 2.0 is an organization of young people, immigrants and of Greek origin, an organization that represents the new generation of Greek Citizens, meaning people with different backgrounds who were born and/or raised in Greece. The objective of generation 2.0 is to claim the right to equal citizenship for all the children that were born and/or raised in Greece.
In AGORA generation 2.0 organizes a day of polymorphic actions, discussions, workshops, as well as food and music by music groups of second generation children, with the participation of teams, artists, academics, professionals and human rights activists.

Sunday 20/10, 12:00-22:00, 8-10 Sofokleous st.

12:00-13:00 generation 2.0 and ithageneia campaing presentation
13:30-14:30 Human Rights Education, workshop by generation 2.0 and school up
15:00-15:30 Experiential game on Human Rights, workshop by generation 2.0 and school up (machine room)
14:30-16:00 Live music
16:00-17:45 Round table* "The right to citizenship: the 2nd generation problematic"
20:30-22:00 Live music

* Participating in the round table:
Tina Palivos (anthropologist), Nikos Odubitan (Generation 2.0), Andreas Takis (academic), Christos Iliadis (Hellenic League for Human Rights), Grigoris Tsioukas (The Greek Ombudsman), Αndriana Mardaki (lawyer, member of ΕΝΑR).

AGORA – ΚΥΚLΟΣ

Talks

In order to fulfill the essential purpose of the AGORA, the main hall of the exhibition, the ground floor of the Athens Stock Exchange, where the stock transactions used to take place, will remain free of exhibits for the most part so that it can host varying events: workshops, projections, discourses, performances, speeches, fora, concerts etc. A series of loosely structured pluralistic approaches on crucial discourses concerning city life, human rights, cooperation, ecology, politics, the web and narratives that will take place every Sunday afternoon. Each participant will have 10' – 15' in order to propose substantial answers to the question Now what?

On Sunday, the 20th of October, KYKLOS' participants will address the issue of Human Rights

Participants: Doctors of the world, Amnesty International, Color Youth, Shedia Magazine, Human Library, generation 2.0, school up, Transparency International, Streets of Life.

Sunday, 20/10, 18:00-20:00 Sofokleous 8–10

The program of the 2nd week of AGORA is as follows:

TUESDAY 15/10

WEDNSDAY 16/10

THURSDAY 17/10

FRIDAY 11/10

SATURDAY 12/10

SUNDAY 13/10

4th ATHENS BIENNALE 2013 AGORA

OPENING HOURS

ADMISSION