Some post-1st visit thoughts

Abject

Refugees, homeless people and concrete skeletons, victims of the crises as abjects; linked to taboos, no-zones

Crisis

Whose crisis is it? What does it mean to be in the state of crisis? Crisis of capitalism, crisis of democracy, personal crisis?

Daily encounters

Cats, cigarettes, construction sites, concrete skeletons, emptiness (possibility or failure, whose?), things in progress or under construction, people gathered around the fireplace in the dark, pieces of clothing in garbage bins, homelessness

To exoticize

When walking around the immigrant neighbourhood we – four English speaking girls - were the exotic ones, the ones not belonging here, those who are better to be kept at arm´s length.  People we encountered while walking the small alley kept a distance, took some side steps, avoided us. They expressed fear, not anger or curiosity. We were prepared to be the ones accused of exoticism. What and who is exotic and to whom? “Why are you here?”“What do you do here? Crisis tourism, the fear of exotisicism, object/subject

Graffiti

I found myself hesitating to call them graffiti. Texts or writings felt better. Why?  In Athens, it was about something else. To take over the public space? To shout in public? A claim for social change? If, who has a moral right to do so and where? Vandalism or political activism?

Hope

One thing repeated in the street writings was hope. Hope for what? Better future? What does it include? Could I collect dreams and only dreams? To forget the dystopian features? Collective dreaming? What are you dreaming of?

Justice

Shift from law to justice; value, principle, cultural, social?

Politics+art

Is there art without politics? Is art always mingling with politics?

Structural elements or dimensions

vertical/horizontal, top down/bottom-up, private/public structures, “heart structure”, the core of the city, insider/outsider, introvert/extrovert, people as structures, social borders

Truth

What is my truth, your truth? Our guests, politicians, media – all have their own truth. Whose truth is the prevailing truth? In the end, what is the difference between opinion and truth? What are the counter narratives?

Short Video Shot in Athens

Universal language

Konstantinos Mihos´ contact improvisation class offered moments of anonymous intimacy beyond verbal communication. My body, your body, two strangers.

Touch by touch shy gestures take shape of full body contact. Smile, laugh and sweat guide us through the process. Shame is gone. Liberation is here. After two hours I don´t know your name but I know your body. No words are needed.   

The physical discourse is initiated by random objects. Choose the spot, place the object, escort the other one. What is safe? What is not? Are you avoiding certain parts of the body? Which parts are you comfortable with? Find your personal taboos. It is possible to locate three kinds of no-zones: sexual, safety related and those addressing dirt. An analogy? From micro to macro, from individual to society?

Last night in Athens

It was an emotional last night in Athens with some drinks, laughing, hugs, goodbyes, appreciation for each other, reflections on the past week in Athens and planning for the future of the project. Now we wait at the airport, ready to board our flights back to Helsinki.

how to find yourself amongst others?

where to fight for yourself and where to let go, where to listen, support, follow someone else's needs, when to ask for comfort for yourself? how to find oneself? when to ask for something if i'm not sure about my needs?

and how to find yourself bodily in all of that?

Kostantinos Mihos made it all easy yesterday. Simple assignments, basic movement imagination led us to honest, clear being amongst others.

thanks for being yourself with me.

Considering: the aesthetics of politics - a discussion on how we communicate within the field of politics and how it affects opinion making and action.

So what is the poetics of politics?

Greece. Athens a great opportunity has been created for us students from KuVa we are in Athens in a course with an intercultural collaborative program that has been created between KuVa and Nikos Doulos and his associates/contacts in Athens.

I am writing this consideration on politics and the importance and nature of opinion making and validity within the field of art and politics, due to a meeting we had with the political art group “Depression era”.

We were meeting at a café in  the area of Psvri behind the Omonia square. This area  is the arabic -chinese immigrant neighborhood, with it’s own ethnic markets and interesting object-shops. This area is yet-not-gentrified- and the cafe we went to, stuck out as a camel in a Wolfpack. 

The group we were set out to meet, is an artistic political group by the name “Depression Era”. They meet every week and discuss the crisis and it’s outcome and translate this into mainly photographic artworks and practices.

Already when trying to define the nature or purpose of the group I will go short of words sligth lost in translation when trying to discuss what is art/political production/purpose.

The discussion became for me a slight blur of quotes and statements, so many words Juxtapositioning between semiotics and meaning. 

English is a poor language for describing, or trying to explain something that lies close to our nature or heart. 

We met with three people from the group, and the first issue of discussion was:  

Can you be part of a community (like “The Depression Era”) if you are also part of a political party (a prominent photographer had left the group due to another members joining SYRIZA). 

For the people from “The Depression Era” these two activities are not compatible, whereas from the students (read. Our) point of view these two things should not be excluding each other - ( or as a fact If you cannot be a part of a political party, or in other way show your political point of view can you then make political art?) 

For Depression era it was maybe more the question of:  “Can we create an alternative political voice within a group, if people in some form are tied to a political program that has already been defined?” The conversation became heated and circulated around the subjects of history and the position of photography in Greece (which is beyond of our field of knowledge). 

The community structure in KuVa, and maybe more in general amongst the student body of the art school, and dare I say students in general in Finland, has a very different mindset or preconditions. The several groups or unions which are a big part of society, is run based on the specific theme in question rather than the individual character of the members. 

  

The role of politics in our society and whether politics is part of everyday life and culture is what should be also taken in consideration.It can be described as the sphere between discussing politics as the political practice versus actively practicing opinions through everyday actions. Politics is for me not as much the matter of discussing it, but the things we do.  

(From my grandparents I was taught that being political, is when you pick up your  trash, when you recycle, when you do an active initiative to change or maintain your society. Politics is not the piece of paper you put into a voting box, it is the way you talk to your neighbour, it is the way you make everybody your neighbor. Value is not the piece of paper called money. It is the value and the care with which you provide the service or the commodity in subject of exchange.) 

From the different meetings we have had these two days, this is what I felt was the fundamental difference. On thursday we heard and saw the activists from Greenpark, who through activism, cultural squatting and artistic engagement change the lives of the communities within their geopolitical sphere. They produce result and change, with volunteer activistic work outside of their personal careers or practices. Artist activism is something of an utopian art form but nevertheless existing.

When the collectives focus more on the individuals of the group or a profile / identity which is being defined through it’s members and their personal beliefs, I think the group loses its purpose or active force. 

In the evening after this interesting and slightly confusing meeting, I was thinking about “what is political art and how does it sound or look (smell or feel)?” What is the aesthetics of politics and how does this affect us? 

We went to see the Turkey of the talk : a political performance commenting on the hot potato of politics at the moment (høhø): Donald Trump. The performance was a comment on Trump. Two artist were at each end of the space producing interesting soundscapes while a old 35 mm camera was projecting on the wall. On the wall was A0 poster with the faces of famous politicians and cultural figures such as Kim Kardashian(?) and Milo Yiannopoulos. During the performance a woman read quotes from the book “ Make America great again”, while tearing out the pages .An example:  “let me tell you something, when I want to learn something, I make sure that I learn it” , this ridiculous or rather abstract nature of Trumps statement, has lead the group to create also funny and absurd anagrams of “Make America great again” - ex: “ I am a Karate American egg”, which was also the name of the performance.  The woman tore out the pages of the Trump book and wrapped gold painted stones in the pages and gave them to the audience. Then two of the performers  started to cut out the eyes of the portraits of the political leaders and hung the eyes on the walls, or on the faces (which look absurd and amusing.) the audience were hence given a mask of the political figures from the wall, and were lead to a room with chairs and here they were seated for a photoshoot. 

The performances was a travel in this absurd world of medias and contexts. 

Behind one of the sound performers, a movie made by Eva Braun was screened in weird a mezcla of Trump cutouts. The performance aroused also controversy within our group. Is this political art, or is it populist sensational use of a popular topic to create coherence within a abstract mix of expression forms? 

What is the importance of the political statement if the content is not serious ? 

Is this art that makes the aesthetics of politics affect us on a subdominant level, by connotations and cultural triggers, we cannot as Scandinavians detect?

Time will tell maybe, after processing of memory.

I Wanna Dance With Somebody

Generally when I wanna dance I do it in a club or somewhere with my friends, never dancing with strangers. Before Kostantinos Mihos´ contact improvisation class I was little nervous: Do I have to touch strangers? Do others notice that I can´t move gracefully? The class was actually very interesting and mind-broadening experience. Through various exercises I started gradually breaking the barriers in me. After two hours it felt natural touching and reacting to someone else’s body.

Enjoy a dance with Whitney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH3giaIzONA

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

Aperitif thoughts

In the very center tags, texts, Hope for nothing, Error 404: Hope not found, Papers for everyone very first second, Welcome refugees united we stand, Police state = Fascist regime

Cats, dogs, ruins on the spotlight, empty spaces, quick changes in atmosphere, every day life, South with S

Mixture of people, structural elements, feelings, smells 

Night, groups of people, tense atmosphere or just a reflection based on the pre-reader?

Daytime, sunny, bohemian, creative, megaphones, functional fountains

Notions: twixt: shortened version of betwixt, which means in between, neither the one not the other; Disguised: looks something, is something different, utopia, politics and political, roundtable, outcome orientated, involvement, together, individualisation, educational tool, propaganda, commodity

Actions: experimenting stereotypes, making contemporary art meaningful and establishing it, thinking about the next step, not further, to raise questions, to manifest contradictories, to escape

Questions: Artistic research/scientific research – different moral codes? How does the legal form of the intervention affect the funding; interdisciplinary attitude, not just art/ science but art/non-art, does art exist without other fields? Why should people be interested in art? How to make them interested in art? Is it possible to create an art scene by mixing up art theory students with art students? What does responsibility refer to? Taking a lead? Supervising? Legal responsibility? Relation between space and what happens around it? What art can do? When idealism becomes an obligation? Do you have to be outsider to be objective? Can you kill history?

Structural elements or dimensions: vertical/horizontal, top down/bottom-up, private/public structures, “heart structure”, core, insider/outsider, structures in response to landscape, “if you are not out, you are locked in”

Would you like to join a political party?

Greek flag

Facade

The students told us that there was active political activity in the universities. The art academy was the most easygoing, most of the students squabbling about leftists approaches and interpreting Marx.

In others universities youth organisations of different political parties recruit students, sometimes even offering them easy passes in certain classes where the parrent party controls the professor. 

How do we practice for the political discourse in comparison?

It must be quite an empowering feeling to have a social group as strong as a youth organisation supporting you, especially when in the age of young adults. I guess it would require an extensive stability of personal affairs to be able to differentiate the political issues of society vs the issues of your own. 

Parthenon

There is peculiar zone when political dialogue is both an educational form and a manifestation of power at the same time. Is it forgiving enough for educational forms to have such a definite impact on you later life?

Types of Greek Column