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ACTOPOLIS
by Goethe-Institut
[traveling exhibition]


ΑCTOPOLIS - THE ART OF ACTION is a project by Goethe-Institut and Urbane Künste Ruhr.
​It is a call to action and to co-author the city - across disciplines, national boundaries and cultural differences. Artists, urbanists and activists from Athens, Belgrade, Bucharest, Ankara/Mardin, Oberhausen, Sarajevo and Zagreb joined forces in a three-year transnational production lab to focus awareness on current urban issues, initiate new dialogues and transform places into playgrounds of what is possible. 

The projects that took place are presented in a touring exhibition that stops in eleven cities, providing space for project presentations, discussions and local additions.

In Thessaloniki, Actopolis is presented alongside works by artists Efthimis Theou & Elektra Aggelopoulou, Eric Ellingsen, Swaantje Güntzel & Jan Philip Scheibe, Andrea Iten, Practise(in)Cognition and Lynn Peemoeller. The works comment on the way we experience the city as flâneurs, our interaction with the natural resources as city dwellers and the tension between domestic rituals and public engagement. 

The exhibition also includes a series of workshops designed by Greece Communitere, addressed to refugees and locals. The workshops aim at creating a safe space for refugees and at cultivating a sense of community that includes both locals and refugees, through creativity, arts and crafts. 

Finally, on the exhibition opening night, the audience will be guided by dot2dot along the “Path to Modernization”, aka the road leading from the Port to the Old Slaughterhouse building where the exhibition takes place. Looking to the area’s past brings to mind images of industrial production, labour movement and urban modernization, while at the same hints towards the possibilities of “modernization” in Thessaloniki, today.
Photos: George Kogias
Photos: Lydia Chatziiakovou

PROGRAM

Participation in the dot2dot walk and in the Greece Communitere workshops is free.
Booking is required, since availability is limited. 

​
The path to modernization - The city and its western seafront, with dot2dot
Friday 24 November, 18:00-19:30. 
More info and booking: 
​[email protected], 2311.24.23.82 & 6946.00.25.53
​(name, phone number & email)
Maximum number of participants: 25 persons
Facebook: @dot2dot.thess

Workshops by Greece Communitere
"Open the Ideas Box”, 27/11, 11:00-13:00 & 17:00-19:00 
Addressed to schools, teachers and children - 7 years old and over. No. of participants: 20.
Discover Ideas Box - a mobile multimedia toolkit, developed by Libraries without Boarders, in collaboration with Philippe Starck and UNHCR.  
3D Printing for kids, 28/11, 11:00-13:00
Addressed to schools and children - 7 years old and over. No. of participants: 20.
Discover 3D printing.
3D Printing, 29/11, 17:00-20:00
Addressed to teenagers - 16 years old and over - and adults. No. of participants: 10.
Discover 3D printing, basic features, object design and production.
CNC Cutting, 29/11-5/12, 16:00-20:30 
Addressed to adults. No. of participants: 8.
Introduction to CNC cutting, basic features, object design and production.
Made of Glass and Paper, 29/11, 18:00-20:00
Addressed to teenagers - 16 years old and over - and adults. No. of participants: 20.
Decoupage. Crafts with used materials (upcycling - glass vases, wooden boxes, tins etc.)
LED Embrodiery, 30/11, 17:00-20:00
Addressed to teenagers - 16 years old and over - and adults. No. of participants: 10.Learn how to include LEDs into an embroidered picture or into a garment. 
Create Infinity, 30/11, 17:00-20:00
Addressed to teenagers - 16 years old and over - and adults. No. of participants: 10.Create your infinity scarf.
Sewing & Cutting, 5/12, 17:00-20:00
Addressed to teenagers - 16 years old and over - and adults. No. of participants: 8.
Make your own apron.
Furniture Building Ι, ΙΙ, ΙΙΙ, 4-5-6/12, 17:00-20:00
Addressed to adults. No. of participants: 6.
Basic caprentry skills, furniture design, manufacture of own projects. 

More info and bookings: [email protected] and via message to @GreeceCommunitere on Facebook. ​

More about Actopolis

Traditional democratic institutions are in a state of crisis, while civic urban society has swung into action, at the latest since Occupy, Gezi Park and Syntagma Square. Calls for the good life beyond the politics of austerity, for a multi-layered public life that is worthy of the name, for communities which do not define themselves via isolation are becoming louder and more insistent. In this situation ACTOPOLIS. The Art of Action is establishing a transnational test field for urban alternatives. 

Many urban societies are currently in a state of uncertainty. The Goethe-Institut on an international level and Urbane Künste Ruhr on a regional level answer to the condition of fragmentation by establishing decentralised networks. ACTOPOLIS brings together artists, urbanists and activists from South-Eastern metropolises and the Ruhr region in a joint production laboratory, because questions relating to the future of urban life can no longer be dealt with on a merely local level. ACTOPOLIS is a call to action and to co-author the city – across disciplines, national boundaries and cultural differences. 

The leading idea behind ACTOPOLIS, and the specific objective of the project, is not a single huge event, but rather the passing on of experience and the joint development of artistic, urban and activist tools. Under the artistic direction of Angelika Fitz and Katja Aßmann and together with co-curators from seven cities, the ACTOPOLIS Laboratory aims to hone our view of current urban questions as well as testing strategies for action. Intervention and critical reflection are both characteristics of ACTOPOLIS. The unusual feature is that the individual project ideas are being exchanged even at the development stage (2015), before they are implemented in local interventions in Athens, Belgrade, Bucharest, Ankara/Mardin, Oberhausen, Sarajevo and Zagreb (2016). During the third year (2017) the local events will be assembled and examined in a trans-regional touring exhibition, a conference and a publication. The transnational work processes and the routes towards local implementation can be followed and commented on in the blog on the website.

Actopolis Exhibition in Athens
​
The ACTOPOLIS projects were developed jointly during 2015 in a transnational and interdisciplinary working process (Lab), before they were implemented throughout 2016 in Athens, Belgrade, Bucharest, Ankara/Mardin, Oberhausen, Sarajevo and Zagreb. Their common ground was established early on by these eight ACTOPOLIS precepts:

  • ACTOPOLIS is a transnational laboratory for art as urban practice.
  • ACTOPOLIS projects and their topics are developed out of the urgency of the social, urban and political context in each city.
  • ACTOPOLIS fosters alliances between artists, activists, urbanists and local communities.
  • ACTOPOLIS projects set things moving: they permit us to see what is possible in impossible situations.
  • ACTOPOLIS projects lend distance: they establish a critical space for the reflection of present-day civil society and its challenges.
  • ACTOPOLIS projects make things visible: they also lend a stage to those city-dwellers, things and issues that are without a voice.
  • ACTOPOLIS projects produce public spheres.
  • ACTOPOLIS actors are not lonely heroes but are curious team players. They seek exchange with protagonists from other cities in South East Europe and Germany.

First stop of the Actopolis touring exhibition was Oberhausen. In March 2017 a two-day symposium marked the beginning of another step in a continuous process of dialogue, exchange, discussion and learning. The exhibition presents project examples from Ankara/Mardin, Athens, Bucharest, Belgrade, Oberhausen, Sarajevo and Zagreb. Materials from the more than 45 individual projects show a rich repertoire of options for action to shape and change the cities in which we live in. Actopolis calls for action and inspiration. The exhibition (design NODE, Berlin - Oslo and SSW architects, Berlin) is an action space. 

The material presented on 50 panels is supplemented by media stations that show film and video productions of the project. The "public space" of the exhibition - action areas between the semicircular rooms - offers the possibility for local supplements, framework events and workshops. 
​
Actopolis Exhibition in Oberhausen​​
Old Slaughterhouse of Thessaloniki
November 24th - December 6th, 2017
​

ACTOPOLIS THESSALONIKI

​Organised by 

Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki

Coordination 

Aris Kalogiros
(Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki)


​Curator 
Lydia Chatziiakovou

Artists / Projects
Efthimis Theou / Elektra Aggelopoulou, Eric Ellingsen, Swaantje Güntzel / Jan Philip Scheibe, Greece Communitere, Andrea Iten, PractiseinCognition,
Lynn Peemoeller, dot2dot

Production assistants
Giannis Fourkiotis, Maria Lazaridou

Graphic design adaptation
Viktor Goudaras

Installation / Equipment
Diapason

In collaboration with
Municipality of Thessaloniki
Greece Communitere
INFO

Opening 

24 November, 19:00

Opening hours
Weekdays: 17:00-21:00
Weekends: 10:00-18:00

Address
Old Slaughterhouse 
35, 26th October street

Access
Bus 31, 40 (Bus stop "Palia Sfageia"
ACTOPOLIS CREDITS

​Concept: Angelika Fitz
Artistic directors: Katja Aßmann,
Angelika Fitz, Martin Fritz

Curator Ankara/Mardin: Pelin Tan 
Curators Athens:
Elpida Karaba/Glykeria Stathopoulou 
Curator Belgrade:
Boba Mirjana Stojadinović 
Curators Bucharest:
Stefan Gheniciulescu/Raluca Voinea 
Curator Oberhausen: Geheimagentur 
Curator Sarajevo: Danijela Dugandžić 
Curator Zagreb: Ana Dana Beroš
Curator Thessaloniki: Lydia Chatziiakovou

Project director:
Juliane Stegner (Goethe-Institut Athens) 
Project coordination:
Natalia Sartori (Goethe-Institut Athens) 
Project management Urbane Künste Ruhr: Carola Kemme, Daniel Klemm,
​Christina Danick 

Co-Production: Goethe-Institut Ankara (Thomas Lier, Raimund Wördemann); Goethe-Institut Belgrade (Matthias Müller-Wieferig, Frank Baumann); Goethe-Institut Bucharest (Beate Köhler, Evelin Hust); Goethe-Institut Bosnia and Herzegovina (Charlotte Hermelink); Goethe-Institut Croatia (Katrin Ostwald-Richter, Matthias Müller-Wieferig), Theater Oberhausen (Peter Carp) 

Web Project Management:
Internet Department, Goethe-Institut Headquarters Munich, Germany
Graphic Design & Web Design:
NODE Berlin Oslo, Berlin, Germany (Based on the Europoly web concept and design by Laura Oldenbourg and Micz Flor, Berlin, Germany) 
Web Navigation Concept & Web Implementation: eskima and allesweisz, Cologne, Germany 
Editor Web and Social Media:
Tristan Biere, Berlin, Germany
Translations into English: 
Jane Michael 
Translations into German:
Dr. Achim Wurm 

Graphic Design (Actopolis Exhibition): NODE Berlin Oslo 
Exhibition Architecture (Actopolis Exhibition): Stadelmann Schmutz Wössner Architekten, Berlin 
Translation and Editing (Exhibition Texts): Tradukas GbR 
Technical Planning (Actopolis Exhibition): Kultur Ruhr GmbH / Urbane Künste Ruhr
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