Pour, stir, dissolve, serve or march, 2018
wood, plastic kitchen gloves, plaster, towels, markers

Pour, stir, dissolve, serve or march design is based on the structure of advertising boards and transforms them into items of clothing–costumes that are reminiscent of both a cooking apron and a picket sign. After visiting the Olympic Village Women’s Association, curious about what brought these women together, I started thinking whether their meetings include characteristics of political self-organization, and whether a sewing class could put someone on the path of a protest. The resulting sculptural works suggest, through the wooden shapes, the firmness both of domestic work and political action and humorously indicate, through swollen gloves, the human labor.

A MANUAL TO OBSERVE THE STARS ON A CERAMIC PLATE – DINNERS IN THREE ACTS
22nd & 23rd of January, 8:30 PM 
Museum of Cycladic Art 

This is a collaboration between the independent artist run space 3 137 and the Museum of Cycladic Art.
First act: Paky Vlassopoulou
*Dress code: total black*

Stemming from ceramic art of ancient civilizations, I created objects that could redefine the classical format of a formal dinner. Running along the full length of the table, there was a consistent grey surface onto which a three-legged rack was placed, one for each guest. The soup, first plate, was served in bowls placed on top of the racks. The second plate, fried baby shrimps, arrived, before even realising that no cutlery was provided until then. Finally, the main course lands directly on the grey surface together with the anticipated forks and knifes.

The dessert was granite served in a ceramic semi-feeding bottle, semi-bong device. Design meets primitivism whilst objects become ceremonial rather than just utilitarian. Through a series of unexpected episodes the dinner evolves into a collective performance that invites us to negotiate our primal instincts. Serving utensils, materials, dishes, and dining companions are put in a new sequence, known but unprecedented.

images (c) 2018 by Ilias Seferlis-Frantzis

Smoking and waiting. Waiting and smoking.(The Stranger I)
perfomance in public space
Monday 25.09.2017 – Thursday 28.09.2017
from 4.30 p.m until sunset
at BRDG, Antwerp
Special thanks to Mathias Mu

Taking as a starting point the public space, as a place where, each second, unexpected/ absurd and random encounters take place, this work aims to explore the daily use of public space and questions the vicinity between the people sharing the same public urban landscape.
What does it mean for someone to stand still at the same spot for a long time in a city like Antwerp, seemingly for no reason, under the current (turbulent) political climate and aggressive immigration policies?
For four days, at the junction between Oostenstraat and Mercatostraat, a performer stands still, waits and smokes.
At the request of the residents and on the last day of the performance the police approached the performer to investigate his intentions. At the same time a woman that resides in the neighborhood was surprised to hear that the performer was part of a visual arts project. Until then, she thought the performer was homeless, who for reasons of dignity did not ask for help.

images (c) Mark Rietveld

Hello Mrs Ramsay (Things Don’t Change That Fast), 2017
performance
30 min.
@The Living Room XL, AIR Antwerpen, curated by Alan Quireyns
Special thanks to Frederiek Weda and Kim Snauwaert

Stemming from the distance between the person who is serving and the person who is being served, this work touches upon the woman’s role as a caretaker and questions social work regardless gender.

Two performers, a professional performer and the exhibition coordinator, are taking on the role of the hosts and serve the audience wine and sea snails. However, the utensils are deformed. The ceramic carafe used to serve the wine is 80cm long and the platter’s handle is almost one meter long. Attached to their shoes they have bricks and they wear neck ruffs highlighting the role of the servant. The title of the work is referencing the protagonist of Virginia’s Woolf “To the Lighthouse”, Mrs Ramsay, a role model for wife, woman and hostess.

 

(c) 2017 by Alena Schmick

If Future a Dead Loss, 2017
Werft 5 – Raum für Kunst, Cologne, Germany
installation, performance

Performance
2 hours approx.
Opening night. The waitresses stop serving drinks at a certain point of the night for no apparent reason. The visitors of the exhibition get involved in a particular frustrated transaction because of not being informed in advance.

Flip books
10 cm x 5 cm
Available for public to take away.
David Bowie, Muhammad Ali, Mark Fisher

«What happens if the young are no longer capable of producing surprises?»*
Conceived as a sculptural gesture, If Future a Dead Loss plays with the notion of a tribute to personal and collective expectations of western cultural production.

The central piece of this exhibition is 33,478 (2014-18), a sculpture comprised of a large wooden table that showcases books spines. The surface of the table alternates from glass blocks to wooden finish. I started by tearing pages of books, mostly encyclopedias, history books and dictionaries, only to keep the book spines, in order to question the manual labor behind the intellectual one. The work is using scenography, something between a staged funeral and a fashion defile, in order to unveil the void I face in contemporary cultural production.
At the opening night, 3 performers were taking orders and serving the audience but gradually failing purposefully to deliver. My ultimate goal was to infuse a feeling of temporary frustration in order to highlight the sentiment of reward over anticipation. Most of the audience left earlier due to bad service.
Lastly, the exhibition included 3 take away flipbooks with David Bowie, Muhammad Ali και Mark Fisher, who all died in the same year. The flipbooks bring the characters into motion through quick hand movements that bring back the gesture of manual labour.

*Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, John Hunt Publishing, 2009

Flip Book with David Bowie’s «Heroes» album cover, released in 1977

Cause love is such an old fashioned word (Δουρειος Ίππος), 2016
@Enterprise Projects
Installation, fanzines
A text commenting on the installation written by the artist Kosmas Nikolaou was displayed close to the benches. Πεζοτράγουδα για την Καλλιόπη (ή διαφορετικά το πένθος ταιριάζει στη Ηλέκτρα)

The relocation of  Kalabsha temple in Egypt  and its relation to story of the Trojan horse inspires the exhibition. The show is dealing with the idea of the monument, the ruins, the landmark, the performance of destruction and the ever shifting of the above definitions.
The exhibition space becomes a pseudo-historical space, a pseudo-memorial site where the audience is invited to consume. This work was constructed from materials that were either accidentally found at the exhibition area (studio of other artist) or moved from my studio mainly as repurposed elements of earlier works. The white acrylic paint along with a fanzine and a wall text by artist Kosmas Nikolaou, written especially for the exhibition, were the only new elements of the show.
The word “Welcome” written on the “Horse” indicates the intermediate moment that occurs in every encounter.

δελτίο τύπου / press release

photos: Stathis Mamalakis

Be quiet, 2016
Installation
Wood venner, plastic bags, marbles, prints, screwdriver, staryfoam, wheels, plastic bottles
NEVAN CONTEMPO, Prague/ Czech Republic
curated by Edith Jeřábková

Taking as a starting point two images, one from my studio and one from my home, depicting moments of inaction,the exhibition “Be Quiet” functions as a spatial experience with references to (collective) movement and personal routes. The gallery space was filled with a large floor sculpture, a collage of wooden veneer limiting the space, referencing aerial photography. Nailed on the walls, there were plastic sachets with marble chips in them.
I brought the marble from Athens myself in an act of mimicking the way valuable items are being transported. In the second room, the two images were installed together with a sculpture made of Styrofoam and plastic bottles filled with water. The synthesis, balanced on wheels, created an alternative elevated view of the landscape.

«I imagine a performer whispering “be quiet” in the ears of visitors, I imagine a male figure screaming at his desk, a psychotherapist with his client, a group of people in danger, a mother and child, and an artist in an empty room. All of these incarnations are stereotypical, since they live in us like archetypes from the past, though their irruption creates an uncertain tension. Fear of the historical means enslavement in the present. Controlled repetition has the ability to affect other recognition receptors. This exhibition should be both a particular and a universal starting point for individual considerations.»
part of the curatorial text by Edith Jeřábková, read the full text/CZ_EN

images by Peter Fabo

Aquaggaswack, 2015
steel, wood, rope, camping lights

The sculpture design is based on musical instrument shapes and the title is borrowed from one specific percussion instrument made in 1996. Having some specific musical instruments in mind, I worked on each sculpture thinking
of a physical element (air, light, fire) together with additional references to the circus, basic geometric shapes or summer idleness. My desire was to create a space between a playground and a sculpture park.

This project was produced in the framework of the exhibition “Fireworks Out of season-Riviera“, curated by Galini Notti,and took place at the open-air cinema Riviera in Exarcheia neighborhood of Athens on a winter weekend.

photos by Mariza Nikolaou

Is it all white?, 2014
@Athens School of Fine Arts, “Nikos Kessanlis” Exhibition Hall

Is it All White?  was an exercise, an attempt to understand if the production of knowledge through handiwork could act as a medium to construct a resilient structure.
How manual labour is formulating history, where is the human body in relation to this history and what are the alternative ways of construction that could highlight the multiplicity of its narratives?
Through sculptural gestures, a table turns into a vitrine and vice versa. Small white clay figures are placed on wall shelves, so high that the viewer cannot touch them; the object of the image is reproduced in a way that a solid form is reduced to a composition of fragments.

All photos by Mariza Nikolaou

Θέλω να κάνω σαματά/ σαν τον κακό Γενάρη/να ρίξω χιόνια και νερά/ άλλος να μην σε πάρει./ Twinkle, twinkle little star./ how I wonder what you are./Up above the world so high/ like a diamond in the sky, 2014
Clay, wood, wire, twine, book pages, fabric, tape

@A Thousand Doors, curated by Iwona Blazwick, organised by NEON Foundation and Whitechapel Gallery, Gennadius Library/The American School of Classical Studies, Athens

photos by Natalia Tsoukala