3rd Athens Biennale - part IV

3rd Athens Biennale 2011

MONODROME

23 October – 11 December

_Participants_

Bas Jan Ader

David Adler

Archisearch

Aristide Antonas

Badlands Unlimited presenting Phaedrus Pron by Paul Chan

Vassili Balatsos

Kostas Bassanos

Hans Op de Beeck

Filanthi Bogea

Pierre Bonnard

Yannis Bournias

Andrea Bowers

Vlassis Caniaris

Freddie Carabott

Paul Chan

Pantelis Chandris

Nikos Charalambidis

Marcus Coates

Ida-Marie Corell

Cultural Center of Olympic Airways Employees’ (POLKEOA)

Josef Dabernig

Daily Lazy

Mark Dion & Robert Williams

Documentation Team MONODROME

Jimmy Durham

Shannon Ebner

Sean Edwards

Elmgreen & Dragset

Matias Faldbakken

Floater

Robert Florey & Slavko Vorkapic

New Forms of Life

Dimitrios Galanis

Liam Gillick

Jean-Luc Godard & Anne-Marie Miéville

Katerina Gogou

Vangelis Gokas

Jens Haaning

Vasileios Hatzis

Imagine the City

Yota Ioannidou/Teresa Maria Diaz Nerio

Georgina Kakoudaki & 4Frontal

Stelios Karamanolis & Toula Ploumi

Agni Katzouraki

Michalis Katzourakis

KAVECS (Vana Kostayola – Kostis Stafylakis)

Janice Kerbel

KERNEL (Pegy Zali, Petros Moris, Theodoros Giannakis)

Jakob Kolding

Nikos Koundouros

Panayiotis Lambrou

Julien Langendorff

Oliver Laric

"Leaking" Intervention

Esther Lemi

Lucas Lenglet

Norman Leto

Andreas Lolis

Tonis Lykouressis

LuckyPDF

Makis Malafekas

Caroline May

Vassilis Mazomenos

Metahaven

Tracey Moffat

"Neos Aristophanes", Periodical circa 1889-1894

Yannis Oikonomides

Henrik Olesen

Orizontas Gegonoton

Jean Painlevé

Rallou Panagiotou

Maria Papadimitriou

Rena Papaspyrou

Christos Papoulias

Vicky Pericleous

Paris Petridis

Phrixos

Angelo Plessas

Julien Prévieux

The Public School in Athens

Józef Robakowski

Tom Sachs

San Francisco Actor's Workshop / Herbert Blau

Lindsay Seers

Kostas Sfikas

Dionysis Sotovikis

Spyros Staveris

Studio Karamanolis

Fiona Tan

Tank tv

Yannis Theodoropoulos

Theophilos Hatzimichael

Harald Thys & Jos de Gruyter

Jalal Toufic

Under Construction

Yorgos Vakirtzis

Ino Varvariti

Vangelis Vlahos

We Never Closed

Yelp Danceco.

Uygur Yilmaz

Liu Zheng

[ The End]

3rd Athens Biennale - part III

3rd Athens Biennale 2011

MONODROME

23 October – 11 December 2011

_Curators_

Nicolas Bourriaud

Nicolas Bourriaud is a curator, art theorist and critic. In 1999 he founded Palais de Tokyo - Site for Contemporary Creation, in collaboration with the curator Jerome Sans, which he directed until 2006. He has been the Gulbenkian Curator at Tate Britain, London (2007-2010), where he curated the 4th Tate Triennial entitled “Altermodern”.

In addition, he has been a consultant of the Victor Pinchuk Foundation in Kiev (2004-2007) and of Parco d’ Arte Visuale in Turin (2005-2006). As an independent curator, he has collaborated with many international foundations, such as Espace St Nicolas, CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art and CRAC Contemporary Art Centre in France, San Francisco Art Institute and Basilico Gallery in the USA and Kunsthalle Fri-Art in Switzerland.

He has curated numerous exhibitions, such as the 2nd Moscow Biennale (2005, with Rosa Martinez, Daniel Birnbaum, Joseph Backstein, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Lara Boubnova) and the “Aperto” exhibition at the Venice Biennale (1993).

Bourriaud is widely known for his books “Relational Aesthetics” (1998), “PostProduction” (2001) and “The Radicant” (2009).

In particular, the Relational Aesthetics theory that he introduced in the book of the same name, which has been translated in 16 languages, proves to be influential to the critical approach of contemporary art that came into prominence in Europe during the early 90s. Nicolas Bourriaud is Head of Inspection of Artistic Creation for the French Ministry of Culture, Paris.

Xenia Kalpaktsoglou

Xenia Kalpaktsoglou is a curator and member of the XYZ curatorial trio. In 2005, together with Poka-Yio (Polydoros Karyofyllis) and Augustine Zenakos, she founded the Athens Biennale, which she co-directs.

She has curated solo and group exhibitions of Greek and foreign artists and she has recommended several Greek artists to participate in international exhibitions, such as the 1st Prague Biennale (2003), the “Mediterranean Dialogues” (Saint Tropez, 2006 & 2007), the Protonic Moment (Ljubliana, 2007), the Lyon Biennale (2007, as XYZ) and the Istanbul Biennale (2007, as XYZ).

Furthermore, she participates in artist selection committees in Greece and abroad: MAK: Center Artists and Architects in Residence Program (Vienna/Los Angeles, 2008), Photo-academy: Month of Photography Exhibition of the Year Award (Ljubljana, 2008), DESTE Prize Selection Committee (Italy, 2009) etc.

She often collaborates with art magazines in Greece and abroad, she writes artists’ catalogues and she contributes to publications concerning artistic projects, like Old News, Charley etc. In 2008 she was selected by the Frankfurter Kunstverein (together with the art critic and curator Christoforos Marinos) for the Deutsche Börse Curatorial Residency Program.

From 2006 to 2008, she was the director of the DESTE Foundation – Contemporary Art Centre. Since 2008 she has been a member of the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art (IKT).

Poka-Yio

Poka-Yio was born in Athens in 1970. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts (Bachelor’s degree at Painting in 1996 and Master’s degree at Digital Art Forms in 2003).

In 1999, he founded the A-Station, Athens Centre of Contemporary Art, which he directed until 2005. He is a member of the XYZ curatorial trio, co-founder and co-director of the Athens Biennale (2005), together with Xenia Kalpaktsoglou and Augustine Zenakos.

He has curated and participated in several Greek and international exhibitions and has carried out three solo exhibitions. Since 2002 he teaches at the Athens Cultural Group. He has been a journal editor (1998-2004) and a member of ILIOS music group (1992-1996).

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[ to be continued ] 

3rd Athens Biennale - part II

3rd Athens Biennale 2011

MONODROME

23 October – 11 December 2011

Diplareios School

Diplareios School at Plateia Theatrou is a seminal Arts and Crafts School that was inaugurated in 1932. The School hosted over 65.000 students of all technical specialties, who subsequently staffed the Greek Industries and Public Administration and contributed to the growth and modernisation of the National Economy. Departments included Woodcarving, Millinery, Plastics, Geometrical design, Furniture making, Drawing etc.

Located in a ghostly, degraded block in the heart of the city that had fallen into oblivion, the building is opening up to the public for the first time in its history. The 3rd Athens Biennale transforms Diplareios School into an international hub that hosts the largest part of the MONODROME exhibition, as well as a diverse programme of live events, performances, workshops and lectures.

Eleftherias Park: Arts Centre, Eleftherios Venizelos Museum

The 3rd Athens Biennale, in collaboration with the Cultural Organisation of the Municipality of Athens, will also take place in a complex of venues and museums at Eleftherias Park, including the Arts Centre and the Eleftherios Venizelos Museum, focal site of Modern Greek history.

The Eleftherias Park was designed in 1960 by the architect Panayiotis Vokotopoulos and hosts a complex of buildings that were used as headquarters of the 34th Regiment during the Balkan Wars.

 The sculpture of Eleftherios Venizelos was created by Yiannis Pappas. Throughout the dictatorship (1967-1974), the Park was used by the Greek Military Police that tortured dissidents in the current Museum of Anti-dictatorial and Democratic Resistance and was renamed Eleftherias Park (Park of Liberty) after it was acquired by the City of Athens, in 1984.

The Eleftherios Venizelos Museum was inaugurated in 1986. Its main collection is a donation of the Zacharias and Antonios Makatounis, who collected over a number of years personal items of Eleftherios Venizelos such as documents photographs and portraits, as well as items referring to his time.

The structure of the Museum covers a decisive historical period in Greece, sealed by the political figure of Eleftherios Venizelos.

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[ to be continued ]

3rd Athens Biennale - part I

3rd Athens Biennale 2011

MONODROME

23 October – 11 December 2011

The 3rd Athens Biennale 2011 MONODROME is considered to be the final part of a trilogy which started with DESTROY ATHENS 2007 and continued with HEAVEN 2009.

Drawing upon the life and work of Walter Benjamin and inspired by his book by the same title (One way Street, 1928), MONODROME is curated by Nicolas Bourriaud and X and Y (Xenia Kalpaktsoglou and Poka-Yio, co-founders of the Athens Biennale).

 It was a narrative broadcasting from historical venues in the center of Athens and articulating an imaginary dialogue between The Little Prince and Walter Benjamin.

As the intellectual retreats defeated in the face of the escalated distress, the Little Prince keeps questioning this condition with the disarming innocence and the plainspoken boldness of a child.

MONODROME was realized despite the Crisis that affects Greece heavily. Produced in a state of emergency, and through the synergy of all participants and a large group of volunteers, MONODROME assembled the diverse pieces of an exploratory puzzle, addressing the "here and now".

The exhibition attempted to question historical narratives that have functioned as dictums of the Greek sociopolitical and aesthetic identity and resulted in the country’s perennial suspension between a ‘before’ (tradition) and an ‘after’ (modernization). Being usually perceived and promoted as an emblematic city,

Athens today is the epicenter of the Greek upheaval, a place of massive demonstrations and public discussions.

MONODROME addressed and emphasized various structures (national, historical, political, cultural, educational etc.) as well as the notion of the “sociology of institutions”, primarily highlighted by the selection of the exhibition venues.

The buildings that hosted the 3rd Athens Biennale take center stage in MONODROME: Diplareios School at Plateia Theatrou that was a seminal Arts and Crafts School that operated for the largest part of the 20th century.

Located in a ghostly, degraded block in the heart of the city that had fallen into oblivion, the building is opening up to the public for the first time in its history.

The 3rd Athens Biennale transformed Diplareios School into an international hub that hosts the largest part of the MONODROME exhibition, as well as a diverse programme of live events, performances, workshops and lectures creating rather than illustrating a political moment.

Venue B of the exhibition was a complex of venues and museums at Eleftherias Park (Park of Liberty), including the Arts Centre and the Eleftherios Venizelos Museum, focal site of Modern Greek history.

 Artworks was put side by side with historical archives, documents artifacts and ‘ruins’, mapping Greece and the 3rd Athens Biennale as a derelict museum that transmits and resists the predetermined downfall.

At a time when History is unfolding at accelerated pace, art cannot but defy the reproduction of teleological pronouncements and the One-Way-Street is questioning the lust for self-flagellation and catastrophology.

The 3rd Athens Biennale 2011 MONODROME was collective discourse of artists, art groups, curators and theorists, reflecting on the complex relations between the global and the local, in an attempt to explore new modes of cultural action that open up dialogue and debate, comment on cultural production and revisit relations between (art) histories and subjectivities.

It was consisted of three intertwined modes: the MONODROME exhibition and projects, the MONODROME Debate, the MONODROME online Channel.

Furthermore, a series of exhibitions and events organized by cultural institutions, museums and galleries in Athens are included in MONODROME Parallel Events.

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[ to be continued ]