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ATHENS EVENT HIGHLIGHTS
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DOCUMENTA 14 (31-08-2017 8:00 pm) On October 6th, 2014, a symposium titled "documenta 14, Kassel: Learning from Athens" was held at Kunsthochschule (Academy of Fine Arts) in Kassel, Germany, at the invitation of the academy. Organized by the team of documenta 14, and led by Artistic Director Adam Szymczyk, the symposium presented key members of the next documenta organization, as well as discussed essential ideas and thematic concerns of the exhibition project as a whole, scheduled to take place in 2017.
The city of Kassel has been the host of documenta since its inception in 1955. Likewise, over the past thirteen editions, documenta has served as host to many artists and cultural practitioners from around the globe. But, ultimately, this position of host-with all the privileges involved-appears to be no longer tenable and begs to be questioned, if only temporarily. To this end, Szymczyk introduced documenta 14's planned twofold structure: In 2017, documenta 14 will establish a second site-Athens-bringing Kassel and the Greek capital onto equal footing as the two locations of the exhibition. Thus documenta's undisputed position as host will be abandoned for another role, that of guest, in Athens.
Szymczyk noted that the main lines of thinking behind this move are manifold. They have to do with the current social and political situation both in Europe and globally, which motivates artistic action. Further, they indicate the need to embody in documenta 14 the palpable tension between the North and the South as it is reflected, articulated, and interpreted in contemporary cultural production. The challenge involves avoiding the traps of binary logic, while resonating with changing realities. To that end, instead of the singular spectacle, with its clearly designated location and temporal order, typical for great international exhibitions, documenta 14 will comprise two iterations set in dynamic balance in space and time.
The distance between Kassel and Athens will fundamentally alter the visitors' experience of documenta 14. A feeling of loss and longing brought about by geographic and mental displacement created by two distant iterations of the exhibition might change the visitors' perception of the show, working against the idea of rootedness and countering the widespread, normative assumption that such an exhibition must sustain the unity of action, place, and time. Challenging this state of things, documenta 14 will attempt to encompass a multitude of voices in, between, and beyond the two cities where it is situated, reaching beyond the European context from the vantage point of the Mediterranean metropolis, where Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia face each other. The diverse and diverging locations and socioeconomic circumstances of Kassel and Athens will come to bear on the very process of creation of the exhibitions, while inspiring and determining its individual works of art. For documenta 14, the participating artists will be invited to think and produce within the dynamic between these two cities.
The working schedule envisages documenta 14 to open in Athens in April 2017; it will then be inaugurated two months later in Kassel, on June 10. This will ensure that there will be a month of overlap, with two parts of the exhibition running in parallel. Moreover, though each iteration of the exhibition will be developed as an autonomous project, they will inform each other's content while not repeating the form, with several distinctive venues in Athens, as in Kassel. Documenta 14 intends to learn from the city of Athens and its citizens, instead of parachuting a prepackaged event from Kassel into one or several picturesque venues. Rather than being merely a sum of two destinations, documenta 14 will unfold in a three-year-long process of learning and producing knowledge, while also engaging in the process of instituting spaces for public life in both locations. In this process, both cities' communities will become involved, contributing to the project. Already, over the course of 2013 and 2014, several instructive meetings have taken place in Athens with a number of the city's cultural producers who represented the diversity and contradictions of the Greek context today, beginning an ongoing discussion of collaboration with certain institutions there. In parallel, similar discussions have been led in Kassel.
Greece in 2014 is not an isolated case; it is emblematic of the fast-changing global situation, and it embodies the economic, political, social, and cultural dilemmas that Europe must face today-much as Kassel in 1955 embodied the need to deal with the trauma of destruction brought about by the Nazi regime and simultaneously served as a strategic location at the onset of the Cold War. If Athens exemplifies the current issues that extend beyond the proverbial notion of the "Greek Crisis," these problems-which are as much European and global as they are Greek-remain unresolved. Yet they present us with an opportunity to open up a space of imagination, thinking, and action, instead of following the disempowering neoliberal setup that offers itself as (non)action implied in the (non)choice of austerity. While the specific timing and choice of locale of Kassel in 1955 were precisely the factors that allowed documenta to develop into a now half-century-old venture, those sociopolitical parameters that made documenta urgent are no longer in play. This sense of urgency, then, must be found elsewhere.
Szymczyk and his team concluded by noting that documenta 14-in its temporary displacement and doubling of perspectives-would enable those artistic strategies that reach toward the reality of a contemporary world, one understood as a place for a multitude made up of individuals, and not as a territory defined by hegemonic relationships that make it a place of suffering and misery for many. It is this world that will be addressed in the exhibition, the world larger than Germany or Greece.
Author: http://www-en.elculture.gr.
7th ATHENS OPEN AIR FILM FESTIVAL (01-09-2017 9:00 pm) The Athens Open Air Film Festival takes place for the 7th consecutive year with more than 20 hand-picked projections in the capital’s most prominent neighborhoods, converting Athens into a luminous film oasis.
From June to September, special places in Athens such as archaeological sites, parks, squares, a few of the most beautiful Museums in town, are turned into “open air cinemas” with free entrance for the audience.
The program of this year’s festival presents for the first time in Greece a cinematic tribute to gothic horror with screenings of digitally restored copies of some of the genre’s masterpieces. British Gothic cinema, synonymous with horror and phantasmagoria, was inspired by the Gothic fiction genre which flourished in the 19th century through the pages of classic novels such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, as well as through the dark tales of Edgar Allan Poe and Sheridan Le Fanu. All the films shown will be digitally restored copies, allowing audiences to enjoy them in their original cinematic glory.
The program will also be enriched by critically acclaimed dramas and award-winning films made throughout the world, including timeless cult movies, Greek films and little-known “diamonds” of the seventh art, accompanied by live music.
This year, many screening will take place in some of the most prominent museums of the city; at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Kallirrois Str. ("The Wretches Are Still Singing”, 22/7"), the Byzantine and Christian Museum ("The year of living dangerously” by Peter Wuer, 28/6), the Numismatic Museum ("El Sur" by Victor Erithe 26/6), the French Archaeological School in Didotou str. ("L’homme de Rio" by Philip de Broska, 18/7) and the National Archaeological Museum ("A Passage to India" by David Lin, 23/8).
The screenings of the 7th Athens Open Air Film Festival are supported by the British Council and co-organized with the City of Athens Youth and Sport Organization (OPANDA).
This tribute to British Gothic cinema, hosted at a variety of atmospheric outdoor venues around the Greek capital, promises to give you the shivers and make your blood curdle ... even on a warm summer evening!
For more info: www.cinemag.gr/aoaff
Place: Various venues and locations in Athens. Start. T.: Pls. consult the detailed program at the festival’s website. Free Admission.
DIVINE DIALOGUES EXHIBIT (03-09-2017 8:00 pm) The Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens (MCA) announces the exhibition “Divine Dialogues: Cy Twombly and Greek Antiquity”, from May 25th to September 3rd. The exhibition showcases ancient artefacts side by side with works by contemporary American artist Cy Twombly and is made possible thanks to the kind support of the Cy Twombly foundation.
For the first time, 30 works by Cy Twombly inspired by Greek mythology and his close ties with Greece will be presented alongside 12 ancient artworks, revealing a unique and original dialogue between ancient Greek and contemporary art. The exhibition includes representative drawings and sculptures by the contemporary artist, such as Venus (1975), Pan (1975), Nike (1981), Apollo (1975), Dionysus (1975), Orpheus (1979), Aristaeus mourning the loss of his bees (1973) and Aphrodite Anadyomene (1979). These works will “converse” with a series of ancient artworks such as the Torso of Aphrodite Anadyomene from the Archaeological Museum of Paphos, the Relief with representation of Orpheus, Eurydice and Hermes from the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, the Statue of Dionysus from the Archaeological Museum of Eleusis, the Statuette of Apollo and the Figurine of winged Nike from the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
Cy Twombly‘s fascination with Greece is well known. Even though he first visited the country during the summer of 1960, Greek mythology takes an important place in his oeuvre already since the late 1950s. But it was only in the 1970s that he explored the Greek history and mythology in depth, culminating with his masterpiece, the cycle Fifty Days at Iliam (Philadelphia Museum of Art). He painted this work over the summers of 1977 and 1978 in his studio in Bassano in Teverina, north of Rome.
Twombly’s response to that decade’s disdain for painting was to transform it into writing, as in the famous large drawings Venus and Apollo, 1975 or the later, monumental Orpheus drawings, 1979. In his artworks -both in drawings and sculptures- he frequently alluded to the Olympian gods, from the major figures of Aphrodite, Apollo and Dionysus, to Nike, Pan, or Aristaeus.
A special place at the very core of the exhibition holds an unexpected visitor: the famous François Vase, also known as the Kleitias and Ergotimos Krater, a milestone in the development of ancient Greek pottery and vase painting, which travels for the first time outside Italy, from the Archaeological Museum of Florence. It has been said that the François Vase is so unique that, even if all other ancient Greek vases were lost, it alone could illustrate Greek mythology and the code of Archaic Greek art.
The exhibition is curated by Professor Nikolaos Stampolidis, Director of the Museum of Cycladic Art and Jonas Storsve, Curator at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and of the major Cy Twombly retrospective exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou.
Hours of Operation: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday: 10:00 – 17:00, Thursday: 10:00 – 20:00, Sunday: 11:00 – 17:00, Tuesday: closed.
Venue: Museum of Cycladic Art (Stathatos Mansion), Vassilisis Sofias Avenue & Irodotou Street 1.
DESTE PRIZE: AN ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION (17-09-2017 6:00 pm) An exhibition marking the 18th anniversary of the biennial DESTE Prize, first established in 1999 to showcase Greece's emerging new artists, was inaugurated at the Museum of Cycladic Art on Wednesday.
Entitled "DESTE Prize: An Anniversary Exhibition, 1999-2015" it displays works by all nine recipients of the prize so far, which are shown together for the first time.
This collaboration between the DESTE Foundation and the Museum of Cycladic Art forms part of the latter's “Young Views” program that aims to engage a younger audience, bring the public up-to-date with developments in contemporary cultural production, and provide a dynamic platform for the exchange of ideas on contemporary artistic creation.
"The DESTE Prizes and their operation all these years have given us the opportunity to become acquainted with alternating and continued generations of Greek artists, who in recent years have given us answers on how we can deal with the difficulties of the much-discussed crisis that plagues our country. And all of this through a process of dialogue with the international scene, which is at the core of the prize," said Giorgos Tzirtzilakis, a professor at Thessaly University architecture department and artistic advisor of the DESTE Foundation, during a press conference held in the Cycladic Art Museum on Wednesday.
Earlier, the head of the DESTE Foundation Dakis Ioannou had addressed the press conference and thanked the Museum of Cycladic Art for its cooperation, as well as the 60-odd artists that entered the DESTE Prize competitions over the years and the judges on the selection committees.
"The DESTE prizes, since 1999, showcase all that is most modern in what domestic artistic creation has to offer, supporting young Greek and Cypriot artists," said Sandra Marinopoulou, president of the N. P. Goulandris Foundation - Museum of Cycladic Art.
The artists participating in the exhibition are: Loukia Alavanou, Anastasia Douka, Eirene Efstathiou,
Christodoulos Panayiotou, Maria Papadimitriou, Angelo Plessas, Georgia Sagri, Kostas Sahpazis, and Panayota Tzamourani.
The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue (Greek/English) that honors everyone who has contributed to the prize over the past eighteen years. Established in 1999, the DESTE Prize is awarded once every 2 years to a Greek or Cypriot artist living in Greece or abroad.
The exhibition will run from April 6th until September 17th and the entrance fee is 3.5 Euros.
For information on museum opening hours and other information visit the website www.cycladic.gr.
EXHIBITION: "THE GARDEN SEES" (17-09-2017 11:55 pm) This summer, the Athens Concert Hall presents the unique exhibition entitled “The Garden sees “ in his beautiful Garden and the so-called Service Yard from July 6th to September 17th, 2017.
The exhibition’s title is taken from the Three Poems under a Flag of Convenience by Odysseas Elytis and includes installations, sculptures, text-sculptures, video projections, luminous and sound works in approximately 85 different spots of the Megaron Garden.
The Artists who will participate, are the following:
Zbyněk Baladrán, Matthew Barney, Natalie Yiaxi, Jorge Galindo & Santiago Sierra, Douglas Gordon, Katerina Zacharopoulou, Amar Kanwar, William Kentridge, Phanos Kyriacou, Andreas Lolis, Jenny Marketou, Kostas Bassanos, Shirin Neshat, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Eleni Panouklia, Nikos Papadopoulos, Rena Papaspyrou, Rania Bellou, Pipilotti Rist, Danae Stratou, Maria Tsagkari, Maria Tzanakou, Nari Ward, Maaria Wirkkala
The exhibition "The Garden sees", without the theological or metaphysical connotations that could be read in the borrowed title, seeks the connection -the conversation- of the Garden with the social space and the City, the transcendence of the boundaries of its physical reality and its opening to imagination. The Garden, as a seeing subject, emerges from its closed physical self-sufficiency, it recalls collective memories and experiences from the public space, listens to human stories, creates new poetic relationships and fictional openings. It becomes a place of images. Each of them, through its innumerable perspectives, invites us to surpass the boundary, to experience the promenade or the contemplative moments in the Garden as continuous passages from reality to fiction.
The works in the exhibition, such as installations, sculptures, texts-sculptures, video projections, luminous and sound works, will be shown during the day, especially after sunset, until late at night. On the lawn and on trees, between foliage, on free screens on the ground or directly on the pavements, as well as in the utilitarian spaces of the Service Yard, the works converse in a light, playful and poetic manner with the natural environment. Emotions, associations, memories, desires meet and intersect revealing an interior garden of self-awareness and encounter.
The exhibition is curated by Anna Kafetsi and is open daily from noon to midnight, with free admission.
Hours of Operation: Daily from 12:00 - 24:00.
Free admission.
For more info: http://www.megaron.gr.
Venues: Athens Concert Hall’s gardens.
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