undersea dialogue

Hi all!
I took this footage during our last trip to Athens and edited the video immediately after. I haven't really watched it or thought about it since and no one else has seen it. I had meant to send the link prior to the recent weekend-long meeting but my awareness of the date had slipped away from me so I didn't realise the meeting was over until Eeva mentioned it to me.

ox
-justin

Visual Diary

A small and unedited overview of the photos I took in Athens the last time. I was walking around the city while trying to define a specific subjects to photograph in order to have a more focused approach. 

After few days I became aware how many small businesses that have closed their doors during the recession. Their windows are covered with dust so thick that at times it is difficult to see in while piles of unopened envelopes lay next to the front door. I thought of photographic these businesses while aiming to capture the inside as well as the reflections of the outside on the windows. I guess my attention was turned in that direction because among other subjects we have discussed different economic models during the course. Some say that Greece is an example of the neo-liberal crises. Other say that it cannot be because Greece has never been a neo-liberal society. According to Orestis both the EU and Greece are not making any decisions currently. Instead they are  waiting for the economic situation to get better. I am reminded of a graffiti I saw in the city. "Don't keep me waiting forever, Baby". 

While doing the project I had much fun. Thanks you dear for a lovely company on these walks. I am not sure about how the images turned out though, but I think there are few that can be shown to the public if framed properly. In the purposes of keeping with the subject matter I developed some of the images in Athens. Now I'm thinking that if I ever were to exhibit them, I would also want to print the photos in Greece. Documenta 14 showed one photo work where all of the images had been delivered to Athens through post. The stamps as well as the address of the receive were right on the image. It I print my photos in Athens, can I steal this idea and mail them to Helsinki?  

Clouds of all different sizes – Running from Marathon to Athens 42 km 195 m or so

Painting by Luc-Olivier Merson: Pheidippides announcing the victory at the Battle of Marathon in Athens

The thoughts that occur to me while I’m running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky.

Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007)

Jo and I talked about running one morning when we ran on the Acropolis hill. We met many early-bird-cats. And we decided to run from Marathon to Athens, which is roughly 42 kilometres 195 metres.

When we talked about running, we noticed we shared pretty similar attitude towards running. For us running means kind of a way of living, the way how a body moves in a city and in different environments. One can run to school or to work, one can run along the long corridors between offices, one can run up and down the stairs. Running is the most natural and easy way to get oriented to the new places. In bigger cities running is also fast way to move from one place to another and understand the structure of the city. One can run for clearing the mind or calming the rotating thoughts. On can run for getting rid of too much energy. Or just for fun, of course. The core thing is that running doesn’t need any specific gears, equipment nor outfit. Just feet and the attitude. 

I had been thinking of running the “real” marathon – the legendary route from Marathon to Athens, which has given the name to the 42, 195km race run – just for curiosity. The legend tells that a Greek messenger called Pheidippides was told to run from Marathon to Athens in order to announce about victory at the Battle of Marathon, in which the Greek beat Persians in 490 BC. The poor runner collapsed and died after the run with the last whisper on his lips: “We have won!”

Actually the idea for running the route came to my mind from Haruki Murakami’s famous book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007), which is probably the only book I’ve read about running. I’ve read it several times and I love it. It’s not a novel, it’s not a documentation, not a diary. It is a book about learning and living. The book tells, obviously, running, but it tells also about addiction, passion, pain and pleasure, writing, getting older and still running. The text runs with the reader. Sometimes the sentence is short and stepping, sometimes it rolls free. In my opinion Murakami mystifies running a bit, but maybe running is worth it. For Murakami running seems to mean elevating oneself both metaphorically and practically. I think running as more natural and practical thing. For me running doesn’t mean raising my own level, but it is really basic thing in life: “To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm” as Murakami writes.

We talked with Jo about Murakami’s book, we called our way of running as ‘free running’ or ‘free run’. Maybe I proposed that term, but I need to correct it now. ‘Free running’ is actually not a correct term, as revised. ‘Free running’ means an action close to parkour. Nevertheless, parkour emphasizes efficiency, where as free running is about freedom of movement with acrobatic moves and action, kind of form of urban acrobatics (In turn, the term free run is capitalized by Nike sports firm, which is annoying.) 

Our running is just speeding up walking, moving forward. We simply wanted to run from Marathon to Athens without any specific things, wearing the shoes we wore (well, both had kind of everyday sneakers), wearing casual clothes and carrying the things we would need in back bags. Move from Marathon to Athens by running. 

                                                          ***

The bus to from Athens Marathon departed at 8.15 o’clock on Monday morning 22nd May. After some missteps, we finally found the right bus at 8.14. At that time, we had already run a pretty stressful sweaty warming up tour before the bus to Marathon even left.

The trip lasted much longer than we supposed. It was warm in the bus and I drank already half of my water. We discussed about Fernando Pessoa’s book Anarchists banker and the difficulties to define left and right. It’s interesting that Pessoa’s book was first translated in Finnish 1992, which in Finland was the deepest year of the 1990’s depression and the year of a massive unemployment. The new translation came out 2014, which was on the threshold of the crisis of euro and European economy. 

In Marathon. Finally, after more than one and half hour, the bus driver left us at a cross roads in Marathon. There was nothing else on the cross road, but a memorial with a statue of Nike and a logo of European Union. No kiosk, café, bar, shop just the bus stop and the statue. 

Ouch, we had hoped to have found a toilet, but no, so we started our ‘free’marathon by peeing behind the Nike statue. We also noticed that we had some drastic lacks among our equipment. No sun lotion (thanks Ruben for the first aid), nothing to eat, no toilet paper, not even caps to wear on our heads. The two bottles of water we had bought from the bus station in Athens were already half empty. Before ten it was already warm, hot and sunny. The temperature was 28 Celsius degrees. My long trousers were a wrong choice with no doubt. I made a miniskirt out of my extra shirt. And my trousers I tied for a turban. We were ready to go.

Then we ran. I really like GPS and all kinds of down loadable maps, but I’m really bad in using them. After running approximately a kilometre on a really narrow hay path, we thought: “no no no, this cannot be the right way”. Fortunately we met bunch of nice young people who told us to go back, to run to completely opposite direction.  

Then we ran again. It was warm and nice. We discussed about families, all kind of families, and we discussed about love. Many loves, different kinds of loves. I tried to quote feminist and theorist bell hooks, whose book I had recently read, but I didn’t know if I managed well. I had been impressed by her remark that loving is not for the faint-hearted. Loving, day after day, requires the courage to face the disappointment of how everyday love and the various miscellaneous things in the world around us are far removed from the ideal of love. It requires even more courage to extend love to the societal structures that need repairing.

Now in this text I can add couple of sentences about her thoughts, which we talked about. In her book All about Love. New Visions (2000), bell hooks reflects on the possibilities of love in our society. Hooks writes that is much easier to understand love and learn how to love if, instead of using the noun “love”, we would primarily – and always – see love as a verb. Instead of “love”, we would say ”loving”. She quotes a definition by the psychiatrist M. Scott Peck in his life-skills book The Road Less Travelled (1978), in which Peck defines love as "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth". Hooks quotes Peck: "Love is as love does. Love is an act of will – namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love." 

While talking we had run uphill without being absolutely sure about the way – enough though – according to my navigation. The landscape was beautiful, green hills, shadows of the "clouds of all different sizes" wandered on the surfaces of the hills, fresh air, almost no cars. We ran up hills, sky seemed to come closer all the time, until the road ended to a fence guarded by soldiers. They told us to turn back because it was a military area, no trespassing and “it is the dead end for you, ladies”. I said we were supposed to go to Athens and if they could kindly tell us where to go. “Just turn around, go back for four kilometres and you’ll find the cross roads to the high way to Athens.” We waved our hands to the soldiers.

Then we ran again. Downhill. Sour sweet four kilometres downhill.

When we found a cross roads where we had turned to the wrong direction, we noticed that yes, actually there were a red path and a sign in every kilometre counting down the running kilometres to Athens. The sign announced it's 41 kilometres to Athens.

Well, if someone someday will run from Marathon to Athens, FYI, there is a marked red path with signs. Don’t trust your GPS, google maps, or any other sorcery, just follow the red path and take the most boring, most noisy straight road from the Marathon cross road directly to Acropolis in Athens.

So we ran again. This time the way was right, but not even close as beautiful as our first lost eight kilometres. We ran on very narrow shred on the street shoulder. Most of the time the route was difficult. Not in a sense that we wouldn’t have known where to run, but the pavement was uneven and bumpy. It was actually pretty much rail running, since the path was mostly grassy. We jumped over the stones, pavements, over the pile of rubbish, ran in front and behind the pee-smelly bus stops, jumped over the animal corpses hit by cars. All the time the traffic was heavy and noisy. We ran kilometre after kilometre in industrial areas, with international supermarkets and enterprises. 

It was very very warm. It was hot. Sun was burning my shoulders and face. We ran out of water and we had to buy more. At some point muscles wanted to rest and I felt that my feet started to swell in my shoes. I guess it can be called pain. But light and bearable and self-made pain. “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, ‘Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The ‘hurt’ part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself.” Murakami

We stopped only if we needed to buy more water. At the same time we bought sun cream, coke, potato ships and chocolate. Otherwise we ran. 

We stopped talking about after 20 kilometres. We just ran silently one after the other. “I'm often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I'm running? I don't have a clue.” Murakami

Jo was amazing. This was her first marathon. In heat, with no rules, no timing, no service, no supporters waving by the street. Just running.

After 42 kilometres we stopped running. It was done for that day. 

We stood still in hot, heavy air with fumes smell. The noise of traffic was around us. We wanted to sit down for a while but the only possible place was a garden markets entrance. There we sat on a fake grass mat in heat discussing about the practical details how to find our way to the hotel. Both sweaty and sun burned.

Observations on documenta 14 III

Some of the locals in Athens thought that the advertisement for the documenta 14 was for new sneakers. What do you think?  Why documenta 14 uses at least two different kind of graphic styles in their marketing strategy? Why there are no intentions to define, what documenta is? A film festival? A fashion week? A concert? Based on this would you know what is happening in town?

Observations on documenta 14 II

We booked a walk / guided tour to EMST which was a tremendous help for understanding the works displayed at the museum but also for the whole concept of documenta 14. In the exhibition spaces there are no additional information given about the concept, display, context or theoretical narratives. We gained this extra information through bought service that is not accessible to everybody. This raises an interesting question on to whom the exhibition is made for? 

Observations on documenta 14 I

During our first trip to Athens we heard so much about the up and coming documenta* 14 that it raised our interest. Local artists and other cultural professionals were often highly critical towards the exhibition and as a result we Ingrid and Eeva wanted to learn more about it on our second trip to Athens. 

Eeva and Ruben on the balcony of EMST

Until today the whole documenta 14 raises more questions than it gives answers to: Why to bring documenta 14 to Athens? Why this edition is called Learning from Athens? What kind of narratives documenta 14 wants to tell? What impacts it has on Athens (in Europe) and/or in the cultural field, everyday life?

One explanation for the question “why Athens?” is given in the article by iLiana Fokianaki: The director of dokumenta 14, curator Adam Szymczyk, explained to have taken the inspiration for an ‘Athenian learning experience’ from the fourth Athens Biennial of 2013, entitled Agora. But in Szymczyk’s public lectures throughout his two-year presence in Athens, it remained vague what exactly had inspired him. The only thing he declared was that documenta would be ‘guest’ rather than host in Athens. Athens: a city with the symbolic value of being a place and space where European ideals emerge, whilst simultaneously a paradigm of any city operating in crisis. 

The entrance to EMST

We searched thought the catalogues, press releases and webpages for answers without any real answers.There is a lot of information about the venue places (for example discription about the EMST, an old brewery building or the Athens Conservatoire, an unfinished cultural center from the 1960's), about the curators and some light details about the artists. We are certain that Adam Szymczyk, the Artistic Director of documenta 14 and the team of documenta had reasons for all of this but it is definitely not easily found in any of the material given to the audience or the press for that matter. Even if this is deliberate we are left guessing. This guessing game results in different interpretations that might not be so useful for the exhibition.

[* Documenta – first time organised in 1955 – is a contemporary art exhibition organised in every five years in Kassel, Germany. The documenta 14 and the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in Athens started conversations in early 2014 that the exhibition would be realised in both cities. The idea for this came initially for Adam Szymczyk, who also came up with the official title Learning from Athens for both exhibitions.]

Work in progress

PUZZLE

Some thoughts on institutional critique.

*This image is only related to the text in that it was created at the same time.

Regardless of the good intentions or effective nature of an institution (whether they are an art festival/exhibition/biennial, school, corporation, nation-state, non-profit, et cetera), they should always be scrutinized and looked at with a critical eye. One should try to analyze reasons for every choice and decision made in an attempt to understand the strategy of that institution. Of course institutions are made up of individuals who may have very altruistic ideas but even the intentions of such persons can be corrupted by mechanisms which exert their pressure upon the institution, breaking down those intentions. Every institution is of course subject to a myriad of external forces however one which can cause it to swing back towards positive means is institutional critique. As I see it, the relationship between institution and individual participant or consumer is a game whereby the institution's public representation, funding, workers, context and fundamental ideology are its pieces which it can move as deems most appropriate and where the consumer/participant only has its critique and level of participation to counter the institution's moves.

Institutions inherently need consumers/participants but they also seek to use or exploit them as fuel for their machine. Skepticism of institutions therefor attempts to balance this relationship. Finding, highlighting, and exploiting flaws between what the institution says and its actions as well as their reasons for doing so is a responsibility of the participant/consumer in order to keep that institution working FOR its audience rather than for the forces which press upon the institution from the opposite direction.

Learning by Walking

After a long day of walking, Dr. Martins feel heavy on your feet. The sun has sinked from the highest point of the sky. As you walk a narrow street bright daylight and dark shadows alter between one another creating heavy contrasts that your eyes have trouble adjusting to. You pass several businesses, that have closed their doors. With your hands around the face, you peak in from the windows. Coffee beans, cezve, sugar dispensers and cutlery on a countertop of a restaurant that is filled with empty tables. Next door you see a hairdresser's chair that is designed for washing hair. Windows covered with graffiti and interior deteriorating, these spaces have been out of business for years now. It looks as if an emergency has swept over the city, leaving only a ghost down behind. 

The impressions quickly change as you continue the journey. You take a path  that follows the edge of a park with branches of blossoming trees bending to the sidewalk. Your gaze wanders in from the window of a basement apartment. A lazy cat is liking themselves on the windowsill, while a young woman is slouching on a bed and smoking a cigarette. 

Among buildings that are mostly from 1980’s /1990's, there are some that based on the influenced of  Bauhaus appear to be from the 1930’s. Their marble entrances and New York style front desks, give away that these used to be for the rich. Once an area for the high society, these buildings are now habited by families mostly with immigrant backgrounds. Because their apartments are small and crowded the outdoor air has its appeal. The streets are filled with playing children, while men sit in cafes and sip their expressos. A maple tree gives a pleasant shadow. Even though it looks out of place here because of the dry climate, it is able to grow thanks to the river that used to be here before it was filled on the requests of the citizens.

While relying on intuition as your guide, and not using a map, the overall picture of the city is fragmental. While there lacks a feeling that I know where each part of its body lies, these walks have produced knowledge of the city on a horizontal level. As I recognising bits and pieces, I am able to find threads that finally lead me back to the hotel.

Below are the following things you should know.

By now you've made a fortune and are thinking of buying an apartment or land in Greece which you've fallen in love with. Your fiance or wife is thrilled with the idea and even King Cobra and Arnold have made friends. What now? Looking for something to buy is much the same as looking to rent; however there are many more pitfalls and quite serious ones if you're not careful. 

By law, Anyone of any nationality can by property in Greece providing it's not on any insensitive areas, as the Greek govt. refers to them. For EU citizens this does not apply but for the rest of the world these areas are: eastern Aegean, Dodecanese islands, northern Greece, Crete, Rhodes, and Dorian's home in Athens. Of course these restrictions are old and take it all with a grain of sea salt. 

Notice that these areas are bordering Greece's mortal enemies: the Albanians, communists, and Tito's malevolent empire. No one has taken these laws off the books mainly because the govt. can't afford to hire anyone to find them. One has to slither through dusty, yellow old books in some forgotten cellar of some ministry. Now here's a job for our old friend King Cobra.

Ourhouse is a very very very fine house

With paperwork so grand  

And taxmen on our landÖÖ..

http://www.athensguide.com/dorian/buying-property.htm

looking for the body

i stand in the rain,

i cry under a ruined concrete construction,

i shake in anxiety, 

i hold my belly in menstruation pain,

i kiss a stranger,

i drink too much,

i squat in a puddle on a rooftop,
i hug wonderful people,

i don't feel my weight,

i let go in a rhythm

Questions (but no answers)

How do I position myself? 

What are my motifs?

How should I cope with the confusion?

Who exploits?

What are the power structures I build on?

Why do I feel like an alien?

What do my body gestures tell?

How should I cope with the frustration?

What is solidarity?

How should I cope with the insomnia?

What narratives should I follow?

These are the questions I have been dealing with during our second trip to Athens. It's good to be back, it's confusing to be back. 

Hills of Athens

I like to take long walks and today I took one to see the Acropolis. It costed 20€ to get in so I decided I would rather walk around the area. After a while, I ended up on the Hill of Muses. There were no people and it was very peaceful. While walking among old trees, colorful butterflies and beautiful views, my soul was at ease.

On the top of this sacred hill there is the Philopappos Monument built around 114-116 A.D which can be seen from all over the city, just like the Acropolis. I later learned that back then it was described as a monument built for a Syrian man.

Rooftop culture

Paris Legakis did it. Vasiliki and Claire from Yellow Brick did it. In February Maria and Skafte did it. They took us to the rooftop. Why? And why does it feel so damn good every time?

Spiral staircase, unstable ladder.

+ EFFORT / SECRET / EXCLUSIVITY / ADVENTURE / EXCITEMENT

Secret cubes surrounded by white walls or no walls or railings at all.

+ SAFETY / DANGER

Seeing up, down and to the infinity.

+ POWER POSITION / HOPE / SUBLIME / PERSPECTIVE / EMPOWERMENT

Hiding or exposing: podiums or nests.  

+ PUBLIC / PRIVATE / US / THE OTHERS / COMMUNITY / UNIVERSE

Silent, timeless. All the time in the world. Free time, free mind.  

+ FOCUS / MOMENT

=

Open air, open atmosphere. Easy talk, easy breathe, easy feel.

Take me high!

Pork lunch.

Rasheed Araeen, Shamiyaana–
Food for Thought: Thought for Change
Athens, 16-21.05. Kotzia Square, 1–2:30 pm and 3–4:30 pm

Under colorful canopies inspired by the shamiana (a traditional Pakistani wedding tent), Araeen Rasheed invites people to sit together and enjoy a meal based on recipes from around the Mediterranean, which have been cooked in collaboration with Organization Earth....The description of the project is inclusive and according to invigilators, everyone is able to participate (so long as they are not being hateful). Actually I should say that anyone is able to participate, so long as you are one of the first 100 to get tickets. The tickets are free but already that sets up an invisible barrier to the project; if someone cannot speak English or Greek then it is likely that they will assume that the tickets cost something or may just be inhibited based on the language barrier. Personally, I was sitting at a table with three Syrian refugees who did not speak English or Greek but only Arabic. Also at the table was one Kurdish man from the Ararat mountains in Turkey, one Greek man, and one Polish girl. The other tables seemed to mostly have middle class families as well as some older couples (mostly non-Greek, tourists, if I had to guess). We sat together under the custom, professionally made, expensive structure of the "tents" which were loosely encircled by security attendants. Water was brought to our table, then bread, followed by the main dish and after everyone had finished there was a sweet, cinnamon bread for dessert. The main dish was yellow rice, roasted pork, salad and tzatziki which was reasonably good. The food itself presented another barrier to the project, excluding half of our table from sharing the same meal as the pork could not be eaten by the three Syrians because of their religion and the one vegetarian, instead they were given everything else but no substitute for the pork. Thous I am personally not a vegetarian I had (wrongly) assumed that the food would be vegetarian for ease and inclusivity. The meal was nice enough with some small talk between the strangers in as much as we could communicate. I tried to ask everyone how they knew about the project that we all were participating in; The Greek man was friends with another man who was working there, the Syrians knew nothing of Documenta14 but instead thought it was a government subsidized program, Two of us knew about the Documenta14 program and unfortunately I did not find out how the Kurdish man knew about it but also seemed aware of Documenta as well as being well traveled so I suppose he was visiting some of the other events/exhibitions.  Overall it was a nice experience which provided the opportunity to sit with strangers for a meal but, like other Documenta14 programming, it seems to me that the outcome of this project was more focused on the appearance of making a political act rather than actually achieving results or achieving the best results possible.

The project itself presented a slew of positive and negative attributes: locked bathrooms, a perimeter of security guards, menu choices, language issues and a ticket kiosk all present invisible barriers to accessing the work for potential participants. The staff presenting the work were helpful and friendly, as far as I could tell. The actual structure that contained the work was way over built and that money could have been distributed in a more effective fashion. If coming alone or with one other person, it was so that you would sit and eat with a bunch of strangers, possibly from different backgrounds which was initially awkward, sometimes confusing, but overall nice while being at the same time too simple, trite and wasteful. 

Rasheed Araeen's Shamiyaana project was supported by the British Council

Worshop at the Athens School of Fine Arts

 You sit in an audience, legs crossed on a pillow, and look at the stage. Tall and lean woman with black curly hair is sitting with legs spread and elbows leaning on knees. On a chair next to her strongly built young man is casually leaning back. Gazing into the void both of them pretend to be oblivious to the looks of the audience. Poses change. The woman unbuttons her green shirt, and changes is against a yellow tee that her partner is wearing. Without making any physical contact slight flirtation between them can be detected. He is giving her a look, she turns away, his reacts by pretending not to care. She then makes initiative to reconnect . After the first session an audience members replaces one of them. Then there is a flow of people that step onto the stage and other that leave it, while the game continues. Clothes get changed, poses taken, looks given. Everyone on the stage looks art-school trendy, you feel like reaching for a camera. 

After a small break the task changes. Now people on the stage alter between scenes that depict pornography, violence and family photo. Every pose is directed towards the audience, scenes flow from one defined moment to the next. The ones that depict pornography and violence sometimes get intertwined. Partners do not always interpret each others motives. Family photos on the other had look like commercial fashion photographs. I feel like the only thing that is missing are lights and a photographer that captures it all. Otherwise, the setting is reminiscent to a performance of poses on a photo shoot. 

While initially it is easy to get mesmerised by the aesthetics of the setup, as the workshop evolves, the motives become questionable. Does it dismantle the beauty ideals and gender roles set up by media culture or does it play into them by reinforcing? What does the art contacts bring to the equation? Aestheticising violence, that has some sexual indications even becomes difficult to witness. 

Beauty VS Content

I don't think that beauty and content are mutually exclusive but does one need to balance the two; as one attempts to make something more aesthetically pleasing does it distract from the content? As one focuses more on one, do they have to focus less on the other? Does beauty become a facade to obscure substance? Does aesthetic value relate to how engaging something is? I don't want to create a post entirely of questions but I am finding the situation of super-produced art (as in examples seen during Documenta14) feeling like a theatrical production where image is the only goal and anything behind that feels like a lie. Beauty becomes misdirection, drawing one's attention away from meaning. I feel like this relates to the larger problem in the contemporary art world, now more than ever but certainly a growing problem in the past 2 or 3 decades, where celebrity and appearance is more valuable than what actually is, because that is what the market dictates.

The big picture

Altogether, the recent studies have shown that humans and aesthetics have histories that are deeply intertwined, and depend on each other for their own health and well-being as well as that of their environments. Although the researchers focused exclusively on human-aesthetic interactions, they expect that similar trends of codependency and symbiosis are universal among and between other groups, such as Archaea, fungi, plants, and animals.

Due to these symbiotic relationships, the academics here propose that the very definitions of an organism, an environment and a population have become blurred and should be reviewed. It may be, for instance, that humans are better viewed as host-sense ecosystems than as individuals.

In addition, the academics predict that the recent findings on human-aesthetics interactions will likely require artists to significantly alter their view of the fundamental nature of the entire cultural sphere. 

In the end, the academics hope that the results will promote more cross-disciplinary collaboration among artists, scientists and engineers from different fields to explore the new sensual frontier. They argue that these discoveries should revolutionize the way that art is taught from the high school level on up, by focusing more on the relationships between aesthetics, their human partners, and all other life forms.

https://phys.org/news/2013-02-bacterial-world-impacting-previously-thought.html

The Migrant, post colonialism and Europe in relation to Documenta 14 pt. 1

Art and politics, statements of the mentioned never mentioned

Documenta. When speaking of Athens. Now merely an excuse. Athens, Greece since TROIKA changed the discourse of Europe.

The school of fine arts Athens.

At the school of Fine arts in Athens; ASFA, has it’s origins in the Royal School of Arts established in 1836, in 1992 it was relocated to the former textile factory of the Sikiarides family in. When scouting the surface, you do not notice this hyped ”crisis” here,  but as a very present problem, scouting the surface is never enough and very often misleading.  Entering the open studios of the student’s and talking with people, gives a very different view. The students seem very aware and therefore very aware of politics, economics and the post-colonialist status of Europe. people are discussing politics in a a natural merge with their art as these clandestine dynamic spaces with wildgrowing graffiti, plants and art. They seem to have their very own opinion on both the debth-crisis and the relationship to Germany, (and German Documenta). ASFA is a Documenta venue, the first  space to engage in collaboration with Documenta, and since the fall of 2016, Arnisa Zeqo of aneducation (the public education program of Documenta 14) has led Elective Affinities, a seminar inviting students from various departments to engage with documenta 14 artists. Documenta displays an exhibition in the main exhibition space of the school, the Nikos Kessanlis hall, but the school in it self and the engaged students is as or if not more intriguing and present in its importance to the discussion of politics and arts.

When talking to the students at the ASFA I heard various oppinions but mainly a disengaged attitude constituting the superficial occupational program from the Documenta progam.  This is a shame I think as kept in mind that Documenta state that they have worked 4 years of the progress of establishing relationsships in Athens, how come you don’t see any events or workshops arranged but local students or professors? That is for the workshops, the next matter of subject is the main documenta exhibition at the ASFA:

Documenta is, to put it promptly, a political art event, by staging itself in Athens it has all ready claimed its agenda, commenting on a Europe of determisnitic crucial financial politics and the battle of etics in relation to migration and custom barriers.

Regarding the wholeness of the exhibition and the quality of many of the installation, I will not elaborate here, because one piece, the centre-piece of the exhibition is so strong that it justifies Bouchra Khalili “the tempest society“. This movie is the strongest piece of art, I have seen, -commenting on the state of Europe and it’s ethics and lack of same, implemented as a consequence of protectionist financial politics, in perspective to immigrants coming to Greece -their personal stories, becoming the new Epos of a Europe.

We heard later in the evening an amazing talk from the programme of Documenta:  “Black Athens” with Indian professor Ranabir Samaddar and comments from Rwandian philosopher Isaïe Nzymana titled:”

Debt and Migration in the Postcolony. An Enquiry into Greece’s Crisis”.

( I will return to the talk in pt2.) 

Ranabir Samaddar was, with wit and a sharp metaphorism and economical knowledge, giving an analysis regarding capitalsms' reduction of labour to a fluctatious commodity that has no permanent rights. 

-->To return to the video, explanation would fill various pages or not do justice to the elaborate research, proximity and inevitable points of the piece. It was concerning Europe and refugees, and the state of the migrant within EU. The nature of borders in Europe where the nationalist state and borders are at the commands of neo-liberalist politics. I cannot do justice with my own words to describe this piece so I  show stills from the movie, and encourage everyone to see this piece of art. It will make us all more human.