Remap3 seven

ReMap3

An international contemporary art programme

Kerameikos-Metaxourgeio, Athens, Greece

12 September – 30 October 2011

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REBECCA CAMHI GALLERY  / GROUP SHOW: 4 YOUNG GREEK ARTISTS

''FAR AWAY'', MANTALINA PSOMA / ALEXIA KARAVELA, ANDREAS RAGNAR KASAPIS, / CHRYSANTHI KOUMIANAKI, VASILIS PASPALIS

Duration of the show : 12 September – 30 September

Group show of four young Greek artists. The concept of conscious and unconscious memory is a field of research, observation and creation of the works for all the artists.

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Alexia Karavela depicts images of strangers, based on photographs found randomly, using markers and tipp-ex. The usage of draft material is inverse to the importance of the valuable memories of an atmosphere of post war Greece that ended up in trash.

Andreas Regnar Kasapis is known for the illustrations, paintings and murals on walls he created on the streets of downtown Athens. His latest work is based on the composition of painting and photography and is mostly about memory and trauma. The works result from a procedure of quoting and cancelling different images, that are combined in order to create a large collage.

Chrysanthi Koumianaki is interested in public and private spaces in the metropolitan centres where she temporarily lives and works. Specifically she is mostly interested in parks, which create changes at the personal time and space. The works shown here are based on images from parks depicting elements that exist in them, such as the landscape, memorials, pavillions and leisure time activities.

Vasilis Paspalis’ work resists linear conventional narrative by offering several simultaneous narratives, fragments of stories which when combined appear incoherent. What emerges in most of his images is an endless struggle of power, a constant change of roles between superiority and submission, without ever knowing who is able to abuse and who is willing to be abused. What matters is the fragile product of the confrontation of characters. The image captures a moment just before or immediately after an event that is unclear itself.

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AMT PROJECT / COLLECTOR

“Often shall you meet in Paris some Pons, some Elie Magus, dressed badly enough, with his face turned from the rising sun … apparently heeding nothing, conscious of nothing, paying no attention to shop-windows nor to fair passers-by, walking at random, so to speak, with nothing in his pockets, and to all appearance an equally empty head. Do you ask to what Parisian tribe this manner of man belongs? He is a collector, a millionaire, one of the most impassioned souls upon earth.”

This is how Balzac describes his protagonist in his novel Le Cousin Pons.

Every collection is the result of an effort to create a certain kind of system, a system that I would perhaps best describe as unique, because it is very much affected by subjectivity of the self and the choices made by the collector – an individual.

Walter Benjamin calls this system “a historical system”:

“While trying to endeavor a certain kind of completeness, collecting strives to overcome plain irrationality of the existence of an object by classifying it into a new historical system – a collection – created for this sole purpose.”

Benjamin does not dismiss the subjective origin by calling the system “historical”, rather he acknowledges the subjectivity of the individual, who is able to build up a collection and is thus able to create history.

The basic characteristic of a collection is the formation of a theme for its own time. Meaning that a collection, by itself, creates its own time as well as a new, previously mentioned, subjective structure of history. History by default is defined as a structure of events and their consequences – a retrospective.

A collector begins to create his collection, whose formation starts to have a meaning only once it has been repetitively enacted. Repetition or the need to reiterate is a psychological moment. I would like to compare the characteristic of this moment to Søren Kierkegaard’s meaning of repetition. With repetition one develops a certain kind of certainty, thus the feeling of insecurity, fear and anxiety caused by the unknown subsides to a certain extent. Repetition can also lead torecalling moments, reminiscing, an attempt to stop the time.

The initiation and the categorization of a collection happens over time, retrospectively. The classification of “the initiation or the beginning” is given later, after the fact. The theorist Mieke Bal identifies the beginning of collecting as an initial blindness – an absence of seeing – which is essential for the sake of the process. She sets this theory on the example of her friend:

“Collecting reaches its purpose when the outcome of a shopping spree becomes a meaningful series. That is the moment when a confident narrator begins to ‘narrate’ her or his story, setting semiotics for the story of identity, history and circumstance.”

If we identify ourselves with this theory of story narration, we should also ask for the motivation or the incentive that drives the collector to “continue his recounting”. The answer to this can be Pearce’s definition, in which she appears to summarize the abovementioned need to collect, and the necessity to project one’s own story, one’s own personal history.

“The potential spirituality of objects is one of its most intense characteristic, although it can be vague and perhaps inapprehensible. Objects float in our imagination, constantly embodying ourselves and expressing our life stories.”

Pearce suggests that the desire to collect is an indispensable need, an urgency that is our own. She then names sixteen different possibilities for motivation, out of which only one is universal and particular to each and every one of us, regardless of our cultural background or economic status. It is the desire for immortality. This longing for eternal life is something I consider to be the most essential enticement, and an impetus that leads us to create. To create a collection but also to create generally.

--Petra Feriancová

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QW3RTY TEAM (KATERINA NIKOU + ANTONIA PILARINOS + RINETTA KOSKINIDOU) / SELF AS A STAGE BY UNDER CONTSRUCTION GROUP

"You can say anything for anyone. Always something fits”

I. Bergman, “Scenes from a Marriage”

The team, consisting of six visual artists, negotiates the notion of Ego, in order to express its positions in terms of personal data presentation. Separate aspects, concerning the self image, become the main “corpus”, and are being presented by narrations. Some of the stories are confessing the existential anxiety as in the case of Dimitris Foutris, Maro Fasouli and Alexandros Laios; οr even actual facts that have stigmatized life as the armed house robbery, according to Panos Famelis story telling; they may also take the form of one person’s false identity belief, like Nikos Kanarelis who investigates the issue of self identification through the social mechanism of the star system using the persona of an actor of a Turkish soap opera called “One Thousand And One Nights”. Finally, Spyros Nakas provides us with his daily morning routine as a member of the global network community of interactive gaming. The team’s intention is to locate a social aspect through autonomous beliefs that co-exist generating an in situ community, revealing the notion of Ego to its public extent.

The project consists of six different and independent readings, digitally reproduced. Each one of them refers to a personal statement on the meaning of the self. The concept is to use an empty space with one entrance. Six pairs of speakers surrounding the exhibition space, one pair for each narration separately will create a sound collage for the visitor. As the visitor proceeds towards each pair of speakers, will be able to listen to each narration individually.

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