1.

Plants and objects. Writings on the walls. 

Ceilings, floors. 

It can be hard to describe meetings with people using photographs, in a city like Athens, in the middle of a myth, when he drops laughter in plants grown through pavements. And that smile, black hair. The struggle the glory, irony, bitter, real, alive, 

And a faint taste of blood in the mouth, like when you lick a zink coated metal found in the cheese pie.

Sweat and moist.

People meet  every day and become part of a narrative common or intertwined like veins in a pumping muscle.

A muscle of collective memory - 

Art as a muscular memory   

Art allow the magicz

// the spherical real

which is curios and strange.  When people laugh, sing, eat and wonder, for example,

When they occupy theaters 

When they transform old 50’ties clubs 

Into performance biennales 

When we work bar jobs /call centers 

In order to pay for the gaffe tape

Needed for rigging the cable for the soundsystem

At a free space volunteer based festival.

and invite refugees into the home.

hi. how are you doing there, on the other side?
i'm sitting here in a fancy cafe, drinking coke after a long night with friends. sun and delicate wind embrace my body. warm voices and laughs of our group comfort my inner quivering.
it's so easy. no fight for survival at the moment. i'm privileged in here. being really uncomfortable about it.

i came here to think what collaboration could be for me, to meet  examples of togetherness.

i'm looking for contact.
in our group, with artists and theoreticians that we meet, people on the streets, in the shops, cafes, restaurants, with people working in our cozy hotel, city animals, plants, soil, buildings, trash, objects.
also with you.

what are the possibilities of contact? what are the ways it could be built and finally, how to work together? taking the path of mutual thought, idea or including the difference? how to proceed with the work itself? are there some patterns in those everyday contacts that we could use to build the collaboration? maybe it already began during our walks, with enjoyment of the sun and delicate wind on our faces, all shades of green around, the beauty and the roughness, discomfort of being privileged, being exotic in immigrant districts, adjusting to them, having fun moments together, being tired, needy, just being together.

i wait for you.

"To be an artist is a political choice"

How to be political?

What is the relationship between the artist and the audience in the case of political art?

Is all art political?

Who is the audience and why?

Can you be political without a defined audience? 

Is creating your own institution creating your own reality?

Who's reality do you represent?

How dirty is the the dirty money?

Athens diary

How to avoid cock fights?

He was asked to tell about one of the internal struggles the group had to deal with.

He told that one of the group members decided to join a political party, which made other members leave.

They saw it as an issue that the individual now associated with the party and their values, and they did not want their organization to be subjected to that association. 

This seemed counterintuative, as their reason for the groups forming was bringing together the photographers and other artists, which were in need of sharing their knowledge and closing the distance between the individual artists. One of the members also described the group as a small reflection of society.

By these accounts the group had a shifting and fluid role, with the members influencing the group into different directions.

For me it became very difficult to understand how you can form a group on the incentive of bringing people together, but eventually excluding some because of their political opinion. In my mind the image of the group formed more towards a supportive structure, not necessarily investigating the situation of others, but rather bringing together people with common interests, generating a quite homogeneous group where individuals would comfort each others in their similar struggles.

I think we have quite many of these kind of groups, or groups taking this shape temporarily, in our academy. With multiple seminars becoming supportive, rather than critical sessions, courses, which rather than challenge, just encourage the working method of the students.

I think it is very important not to call these group reflections of society. 

They are distorted and polished.

And often forget to teach us how to talk about subjects appropriately to the environment.

🐓🐔🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐔🐓🍌

Athens Connexions

Yesterday I posted this picture of an Athens meat market, on Facebook.

One Canadian friend told me that he was in this market two days prior and then when he was leaving Athens, on a flight to Berlin, he saw my doppelganger.

Another friend, an American sound artist living in Estonia, sent a link to a sound file he recorded in the same market during 2013.

You can listen to the sound file here:
https://archive.org/details/aporee_20410_23732

Found on the streets of Athens

 

Crisis of genre