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!

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?

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.

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.

Athens diary

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

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”