ACTION FIELD KODRA 2006
Annual Visual Arts Festival
[festival] [exhibitions] [publication] [residency]
About Action Field Kodra
Action Field Kodra is an annual visual arts festival that takes place in a former military camp in the area of Kalamaria in Thessaloniki. Between 2004-2008 Christos Savvidis undertook the festival's Artistic Direction and ArtBOX was in charge of the General Coordination. During those years, the festival underwent major transformation and became one of the most important and vibrant visual arts events of international acclaim in Greece, having as main focus the communication between the local and the international arts scene. more

Introduction


Action Field Kodra comes of age
This is the first year that Action Field Kodra has succeeded its original goal to such a large extent, i.e. most works being specifically created for the spaces of the former military camp. This requires greater funding for the production of the works and more time and energy on the part of the artists, curators, organizers and technicians. We utilized the experience of past events and consciously drifted towards what the atmosphere of Action Field Kodra dictates.

The RoomsToLet Action steadily remains the main axis of Action Field Kodra. Young artists up to the age of 30 respond to the call to “enlist” in the former military camp. The committee –which has been renewed this year, comprising young independent curators selected the artists that will “occupy” the rooms of the former administrative building of the camp. For the second time, Effie Ηalivopoulou curates the exhibition, in close cooperation with the artists.

The ProTaseis Action –unlike RoomsToLet– focuses on the issue of site specificity. Curators Elpida Karaba, Sotirios Bahtsetzis and Anne-Laure Oberson recommend 18 artists who will present works that, to a great extent, were made specifically for the exhibition or that have been adapted to the exhibition space.

Tal Ben Zvi, curator and artist from Israel, returns to Action Field Kodra and curates the Transit Action. Artist Khen Shish, whom she chose, presents her works in the small space at the entrance of Kodra, directly opposite the NATO camp entrance, next to the barbwire fence. Works are carried in the artist’s luggage. At this age of exhibitions/super-productions, artistic creativity finds a welcome home at the former military camp.

Last year, Artemis Potamianou threatened she would strike again. The title of the project in progress she is curating is A4. This year, more artists are presented and the project extends beyond Action Field Kodra.

In recent years, Maria Kenanidou has been the heart and soul of Action Field Kodra. Everyone has seen her rushing to take care of everything and everyone with her motherly devotion, transcending her responsibilities, for the proper organisation of Kodra. This year, we meet another side of Maria: that of the curator of Local Heroes Action. She is equally authentic, honest and passionate in this role, too. The artists she selected are all working in Thessaloniki.

Four artists –Arianne Assensi, Irene Linardaki, Delphine Monrozies and Vincent Parisot– from France have been camping at Kodra since August 14th. They have been living at Kodra, preparing their project, which was specially designed for the festival. The central theme of Theirland is water and the objects and activities that surround it. The action raises questions related to time (waiting, signal, event) and the state of fluidity.

Before Action Field Kodra 2005 was over, Panos Vardakas and I discussed an idea I had been pondering on for a long time. I needed a photographer to artistically document the process of setting up the festival. I saw the work he had done for the Five Days of Artistic Video of the Athens Fine Arts and I was convinced he was the ideal photographer for this Project. Panos left us a few months later. I felt that this did not need to deter an exhibition of works by Panos Vardakas at Action Field Kodra. Panos will be with us once again through his photographs, selected by Rena Papaspyrou along with Christina Petrinou, who wrote the text for the Urban Landscapes exhibition.

The Thessaloniki Museum of Photography takes part in Action Field Kodra for the first time, presenting a series of works under the title "in the Shadow of Time" by Anthimos Kalpatzidis. this is a series of works that document abandoned spaces, that is in absolute accordance to the spirit and atmosphere of the former military camp, sporadically invaded by artists, promoting the relationship between time and space.

The audience at Action Field Kodra is quite large, greatly exceeding the average number of visitors to artistic events organized in the broader Thessaloniki region. Out of respect for these “fans” of Action Field Kodra, we will implement a special tour programme catering for the entire family. This programme was designed by and will be implemented in cooperation with Christina Amanatiadou, Evangelia Dimou and Christina Bateka, students at the Inter-departmental Postgraduate Museology Programme of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. A car belonging to the Municipality with a speaker on board – as we used to see in the old days – will invite people to a special experience for the entire family. The 3 students will be waiting for them at the entrance of the military camp to give them the grand tour. The same students will implement an idea by Efie Halyvopoulou for coordinated communication between artists and curators working at Kodra. In the heat of the exhibition preparation, presentations, lectures and discussions will be held in order to facilitate meeting one another and exchange ideas. The joint title of both Actions is Condensates.

Beyond the Walls, at the new cultural venue named “Remezzo”, located on the waterfront of Kalamaria, Mary Christea presents her works at an exhibition entitled “Blind Traces II”, curated by Efi Strousa. Although the exhibition is not located within the Camp, it is “associated” with the other exhibitions of the festival's programme.

In her text on the Forum Artists-in-Residency programme, Efi Strousa provides all the information on the context within which the programme was designed and implemented in cooperation with the Forum European Cultural Exchanges. I will refer to a technical issue that comprises tangible proof of the programme’s success, i.e. ensuring the participation of the Artist-in-Residency programme in “Culture 2000” European Programme for the following three years, through cooperation with the Forum European Cultural Exchanges and Apollonia, Artistic Exchanges. This year marks the beginning of our cooperation with the Hellenic-American Union, which will fund part of the programme and which, in November 2006, will be hosting at its exhibition venues in Athens the works created by the artists during their stay in Kalamaria. The funding of the Artist-in-Residency programme by the Ministry of Finance through Thessaloniki Photography Museum is of special significance.

Christos Savvidis
Artistic Director 

Former Military Camp Kodra
1 - 17 September 2006
Thessaloniki, Greece

Production:
Cultural Organization
of the Municipality of Kalamaria (COMK)

Organisation:
Maria Kenanidou (COMK)

Artistic Director:
Christos Savvidis (ArtBOX)

Coordination:
Lydia Chatziiakovou (ArtBOX)

Assistant:
Dimitra Voulgaropoulou (ArtBOX)

Catalogue Editor & Coordinator:
Lydia Chatziiakovou (ArtBOX)

Collaborating Institutions:
Remezzo Art Space
Thessaloniki Museum of Photography
Forum European Cultural Exchanges (Thessaloniki, Greece)
Apollonia (Strasbourg, France)
Hellenic American Union (Athens, Greece)


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RoomsToLet
[exhibition] [young artists]

The exhibition of young Greek artists -up to 30 years old- after an open invitation, remains the axis of Action Field Kodra 2006. A committee of experts selected the works that are to be presented.

DIIKITIRIO – CONSTRUCTIVE IDEAS WORKSHOP*
The Diikitirio (Headquarters) Building, which annually hosts the core Action of Action Field Kodra, the RoomstoLet exhibition, is a strange site. Despite its dynamic morphology (huge in dimensions and monumental from an architectural point of view), it exhudes a certain playfulness. One senses that the building - literally trampled by feet - preserves the breath of humans who crossed its halls and wandered through its mysterious corridors. This is indeed a workshop that shapes contemporary collective visual thinking. This role was organically created six years ago when a visual art team initiated the debate as to how such a space could be managed. 

Eleftheria Roussou and Vassilis Vassilakakis, who activated the venue and established the team, remember: “It was six of us, all artists, the two of us with Koutroubis, Koroneos, Panoussakis, Tolios and Eleni Christophoridou, in the theory panel. We used a small wing of the building. It was the first time we had ever considered what might possibly be exhibited in this space and in what manner. We gave the exhibition the title “Alternative Visual Art Proposals” and were impressed by the responsiveness of the public. The following year some of us continued in Action Field Kodra and presented new projects”.  

These artists planted the first seeds of the initial idea, whereupon the building would be transformed depending on the visual work it hosted. On the other hand, it challenged artists to think in dynamic and perhaps new – for them – manners. This polarity led to the emergence of familiar and steady relations between certain artists and this venue; these artists keep returning like old tenants, for a second or third time, bringing a new proposal each time. While their range of techniques is varied, i.e. painting, engraving, sculpture, photography, video, performances, in their majority one can see the tendency to construct elements that will lead to installations. Many of these installations maintain an intensely experimental character and comprise the starting point of a personal artistic course. It is therefore interesting to see how the artists develop through their work, when they have the opportunity to operate in an extended temporal framework. They return to the familiar habitat consciously aspiring to a new visual experience which incorporates the experience of the previous year. All elements, whether appealing to emotions or to the intellect have meanwhile matured - since  despite differences in the functioning of contemporary artists vis-à-vis their surrounding systems and their work management -  one thing remains stable and steady: their internal “workshop”.   

This personal workshop which is built with successive experiences is the realm where artists select their tools and find the materials required to create new projects, to get informed, to organize, to select – whether intuitively or consciously. Let us, however, examine the aspects of such a contemporary personal workshop?

Contemporary artistic gesture, just like numerous social structures, seems to be borrowing properties from the prevailing Internet culture, which safeguards a constantly changing environment. Manuel Castells notes: “All material transformations in history are characterized by transformations of space and time, and it is through these that the structures of society change…Space can only exist vis-à-vis time and time only vis-à-vis space…” In the modern world, the concept of time has acquired a new dimension thanks to Cyberspace. This is how Castells continues: “Space (on the Internet) is the organization of simultaneity…in this space of flows “function” and “meaning” are disjointed…The big change in time today is being caused by the systematic effort to annihilate it. Time is reduced to instants...We have entered an era of timelessness in a culture of no history, no past, no future and a permanent present”. 

Young artists, finding themselves in a world that seems to be deprived of cultural borders, bear the characteristic features of wired individuals. They have access to all sorts of information and can exploit any type of material. All sorts of combinations, various kinds of means or information, from any archive on the planet, may be used as an ingredient for the composition of a new work. Young artists find themselves everywhere and seek information on every part of the globe: very often this is a way of interlinking their work with life itself. While previous generations of artists were redefined but maintained historical collective experience as their starting point, young artists today have a different starting point. They manoeuvre in a world of innovation while substituting collective experience with a personal one derived from their wired individuality.  

Don Ihde, a pioneer in the field of the philosophy of technology, claims that this network-identified individualism enhances users’ awareness of otherness. While in the recent past of the relatively small scene of Greek visual creation many artistic products were rejected due to a different or non-recognisable artistic temperament, these past years mark an openness and a conciliatory attitude towards the sense of otherness. This attitude, almost absolutely aligned with art produced at metropolitan centres (a necessary evil for all small countries that cannot globally promote their own visual production), gives artists the privilege of using their cultural particularity, i.e. their expression of variation, within the context of a localized nativeness.

Castells claims that experience may be acquired only in specific places; this then leads to action, i.e. the creation of visual work. The space of flows of the Internet creates relations that are mainly based on exchange and not at all on sharing. Therefore, the main features of shaping young contemporary Greek artists include the prevailing relational framework of behaviour patterns, the cultural background, as well as the type of education artists receive at the Schools of Fine Art (both in Greece and abroad). In other words, the conditions which shape Greek visual artists also shape their consistency, i.e. the form and orientation of their work. Technology has been perceived as functioning like a new environment, within which the work of art is created. 

Given the new state of affairs, which demands an increasing use of technology, the position of an artist is inevitably shifted in relation to the production of artistic work. Technology intervenes and attributes artistic works the features of an independent organism, which exists despite the artist. The artist is called upon to become a modern magician and shape systems and combinations, often using pre-existing material. The artist’s relation to his/her material (e.g. the painter’s with the canvas) differs from that of the artist with technological tools. In the former case, there is a flow of energy between the producer of the work of art that is ultimately presented before the viewer’s eyes; in the latter, with the intervention of technology distance is placed between the two and the artist’s function seems to be mainly intellectual.

Consequently at personal workshops, there emerge differentiated and occasionally obscure processes which are often time-consuming, alternative, strange, which may become sources of pleasure or anxiety. At personal workshops it is more than likely that non-planned works might be produced.

Fifty such workshops – invaluable creativity tanks – are hosted this year at Diikitirio. At the time this text is being written, fifty young artists have already entered the process of defining their visual relation with the space and the viewers of their work. Who are the viewers?

BLINKING AT THE WORKS
In the few years of its operation, Action Field Kodra has managed to shape an increasingly larger and more visually mature audience. This is not at all easy, especially in a peripheral municipality, but it is a great gain for the whole of the Fine Arts Corps of the country. The operation of the Cultural Organisation of the Municipality of Kalamaria is in this case more than just institutional. Wisely, those in charge of the Organisation allow various forms of intervention to the space and create the right conditions for providing integrated visual experiences. Furthermore they shape a collective consciousness in regards to Fine Art production.

For reasons related more to the history of the production of the visual project and less with the reality of contemporary works, there is a prevailing view that one “sees” fine art exhibitions. The glance of every type of viewer – from an ordinary art lover to a specialized expert – seems to be merely the kick off when approaching a work of art.

What is strange is that at this time of the spectacle everything may be visualized, even concepts that are not inherently “visual”. In a world where the limits between virtual reality and real virtuality have been abolished, all combinations of visualization are possible: this is conveyed through works of art. In other words, viewing a work does not necessarily mean comprehending it. Viewing may be deceptive. Still, viewing is cultivated and reformed; the observer of a work completes the artist’s experience through reflection. This is the function that takes place at Diikitirio. Artists and viewers together, steadily and methodically, shape the surroundings that are open and communicative through non-standardised – fortunately, so far – functions. Viewers, being aware that at Action Field Kodra work and research are taking place, simply come and go, asking questions, thus contributing to the contemporary collective fine arts culture.

Within the context of exchanging views on the works, this year the pilot programme of “Condensing” was added. This is a two-day programme of planned debates which will take place at Action Field Kodra with the participation of curators and artists. This programme aims at encouraging the dialogue among the artists of RoomstoLet and at bringing them into contact with the artists of the other venues, i.e. ProPosals and Residencies. “Condensing” is organized by post-graduate students of the Dept of Museology of Aristotle University, under the supervision of Ms. M. Skaltsa.

Special thanks for participating in the evaluation of the artworks are due to the members of the committee: Marina Athanassiadou, Elpida Karaba, Dorothea Konteletzidou, Anne-Laure Oberson, Sanya Pappa, Sotiris Bahtsetzis.

Effie Halivopoulou
Artist, Curator of RoomsToLet
Athens, July 2006

Former Military Camp Kodra
Thessaloniki, Greece
1 - 17 September 2006

Curated by:
Efie Halyvopoulou

Selection Committee:
Sotirios Bahtsetzis, Elpida Karaba, Dorothea Konteletzidou, Anne Laure Oberson, Sania Papa

Artists:
Kalianthi Angelioglou, Adrianos Angelopoulos, Stathis Alexopoulos, Dimitris Andreadis, Nikos Aslanidis, Eleni Athanasopoulou, Niki Bisylla, Efthimia Christopoulou, Elena Christou, Ioannis Doulopoulos, Loukia Dragatsi, Ioanna Fragouli, Penny Geka, Giorgos Giannopoulos, Ioanna Gkouma, Filippos Gountzos, Giorgos Grekas, Maria-Brigita Karantzi, Jenny Kodonidou, Fotini Kolokotroni, Vana Kostayola, Elena Koukoli, Alexia Kyriazopoulou, Alexia Zoidou, Angelos Detsis, Giorgos Nikopoulos, Panagiotis Papadopoulos, Lia Papadopoulou, Giorgos Papalexandrou, Konstantinos Patsis, Vogler (Kostas Peppas), Lea Petrou, Torsten Rackoll, Antoine Reynaud, Nana Sachini, Nikos Sepetzoglou, John Stamenitis, Angeliki Svoronou, Georgia Tourmouzi, Yiorgos Tsalamanis





<<* This text emerged from references to Manuel Castells, (The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business and Society, 2001 and New Media Culture in Europe, 1999), to Nicholas Mirtzoeff (Visual Culture Reader, 1998), to Don Ihde (Philosophy of Technology: An Introduction, 1993), to John Dewey (Art as Experience, 1939)

Translated by Tzeni Kantartzi-Lousta; edited by Lydia Chatziiakovou.

Protaseis
[group exhibition]

The concept of “place” as a philosophical concept in contradiction to the concept of “space” as an abstract and mathematically analysed concept, describes, probably in the best possible way, the transition to modernity. In “Art and Space” (1969) Heidegger, driven by a phenomenological analysis of space, reverses these terms and projects the specific “place” before the general “space”. Thus artworks are perceived as ”places” open up to “space”. We infer the meaning of the concept of “space” only by references to specific and experienced (as Merleau-Ponty would say) places. Therefore, when Heidegger, the philosopher who tried to understand the concept of “being” in relation to that of “time” (subjectivity and chronicity) writes that “space has now split into places”, defines this exact constitutional transition to the subjectisation of space, a category that until the beginning of the 20th century seemed to be absolute. Subjectivity is now defined in relation to a “topological” approach of existence, while it is suggested that different places produce different subjectivities. A number of scholars (Foucault, Deleuze & Guattari, Derrida, Irigaray, Augé) propose with their work the categorization not only of these places of modernity, but of the subjectization processes these entail as well.

In parallel, it is made evident that in theory of art the artistic production of the new avant-garde focuses on the thematic diosmosis of real/physical and social place in an artwork. (O’Doherty). The concept of “site” is, according to Kwon, a significant category of artworks, a – disputable – genre. From the semeiological analysis of Certeau, who adopting Saussure’s model, interprets space as an ordered and ordering system realized in “spatial practices” to the phenomenological criticism of Merleau-Ponty in which the existence of a living body in space is itself the convention of the world’s perception, the anthropological approach of Augé according to which the place of supermodernity becomes a non-place, and the readings of Deutsche, who introduces the concepts of the political, democracy and public sphere in the discussion of urban aesthetics and discourse  on “spatial culture”, a number of artists and scholars  since the late 1960’s started to define artwork in relation both to the specific place and to the position of the observer in space. Works specified by each exhibition site and the connotations of this site (site specific) are considered legitimate artistic expressions. In all these works the concept of place has at the same time the meaning of situation; a situation which is created during the interaction of three parameters: place, work and viewing. Some times these works become means of discussion, develop “fields” of action-reenactment, antagonism and involvement, transform into a place of rethinking and possibly activate a public sphere in which the ones involved are invited to take a stand. (Since the word “site” summarizes all the aforementioned concepts, the use of the word “θέση” is an attempt to dialectically overcome the untranslatability of the term.)

The purpose of the exhibition SITE is, in a way, to re-examine the parameters of site-specific works through a modern perspective. Several artists were invited to create works “defined by the place and its context”, contemplate and ponder on the concepts of public/private space, personal/social space, professional/entertainment space, and work on the issue of the social, political and psychological parameters of the specific site. Therefore, new works and projects were produced (for the first time within the context of the specific exhibition), since it is obvious that in the particular exhibition each work is conceptually and morphologically connected to the place of its production and viewing    

Sotirios Bahtsetzis, Elpida Karaba, Anne-Laure Oberson 
Curators 

Former Military Camp Kodra
Thessaloniki, Greece
1 - 17 September 2006

Curated by:
Sotirios Bahtsetzis, Elpida Karaba, Anne-Laure Oberson

Artists:
Nikos Arvanitis, Urania Fasoulidou, Kostas Ioannidis, Dimitris Ioannou, Apostolos Karastergiou, Makis Kyriakopoulos, Maria Konti, Georgia Kotretsos, Miltos Michailidis, Pavlos Nikolakopoulos, Haris Pallas, Antonis Pittas, Kostis Stafylakis, Vassiliea Stylianidou, Anna Tsouloufi-Lagiou, Nayia Yiakoumaki, Mary Zygouri

Local Heroes
[exhibition]

In connection with LOCAL, everything related to the local, parochial, outdated miserable juxtapositions of periphery-centre, metropolis-province is far beyond my comprehensive –I believe- title, which in this way gives me the opportunity to deal with something far more significant...
Now, with regard to HEROES, this is to do with 4 artists who are looking for and at the same time proposing transitory crossroads through their works, tending to resist a “Weberian” world, and it can only verify irrational vital forces against possessiveness, instrumentalism and insatiable self-expansion,  against routine and monotonous predictability.
A critique that includes a novel essence of art can indeed reveal such a horizon and set in public view the relativity of prevalent artistic options enabling us to sustain threatened values, such as freedom and uniqueness, by offering platform works for unforeseen comparisons of concepts, sentiments, shared places for the exchange of images and opinions, redefinition of approaches and correlations, and can further facilitate citizens to become familiarized, integrate influences, re-evaluate their standpoint, rephrase questions and points of view, free of  conventions, prejudice, pre-constructed ideological stereotypes and forms…
Apart from the fact that the military barrack -a place laden with century-long amassed memories and feelings- is their starting point, the common aspect of these works is the hermeneutical flexibility, as regards doubt and polysemy to which they give rise, either directly or indirectly, as they offer the viewer the freedom to trace them and read them, given the fact that they are not at all inflexible or restrictive in terms of the thought and feeling channels they create. Their reading is multiple and adjustable to the personal experiences and facts of each individual, while it also offers an additional key to the riddle of one’s personal story.
In retrospection of my last year’s catalogue “Something’s going on, finally!”, again I actually believe that the combination of  an unexpectedly large array of artists, art historians and theoreticians, art critics, curators, cultural managers, regular periodical exhibitions and also unanticipated, mushroom-like, skin-deeper or sometimes ambitious, ephemeral efforts lacking infrastructure, still acquires a history of its own and leaves, as a trace, a substantial archive and a specially significant study material, while the maturity its space endeavours to gain manifests itself.
As far as other questions on how insightful the issue of Greek art is, are concerned: how different the fields of life are in which it plays a role, its influence on inter-culturalism and post-modern cultural politics, whether it ensures its position and artistic work in the global scene, beyond the borders of comprehension and tolerance of its own local society and constitutional organization, whether it continues its exploratory, social, communicational efforts of enhancement of new resources of information, redefinition, interpretation and processing of socio-cultural tradition, memory and history, all these questions probably still constitute a major concern for art heroes and will continue to tantalize them for years to come…
My main consideration this year about the specific project has been the shift of attention and emphasis from the “observed” to the “observer”, so that the communicational dialogue will be more effectively initiated and the focus on the prerequisites for its optimum organization will contribute to excluding inflexible separating lines and will also assist in the adoption of a more flexible, in fact more suitable for human situations, feedback.
Heinz von Foerster, who applied in cybernetics the principles of constructivism, the roots of which are found in Kant’s philosophy, where it is made evident that the subject lacks immediate access to external reality, but can still organize experience and consequently develop knowledge by use of fundamental internal gnosis, believed that “the world, the way we perceive it, is our own fabrication” and therefore urged that “we always act in such a way as to increase the number of our options”.
The forefather of constructivism and architect of cybernetics, describes it in the following way: “Each description (of the universe) includes and involves the describer (the observer). Today we need a description of the describer or, in other words, we need a theory of the observer, which implies that s/he should not only take him-/herself into account, but also the fact that s/he is putting together this particular theory”.
“Feedback in governmental systems can just as well take the form of a process of reflexivity, or, better yet, self-observation and self-control. Such is the case of homoeostasis, a dynamic process of internal self-control, which allows the system to maintain its essential characteristics within limits acceptable by its structure, when the system encounters unexpected disorders. Thus, homoeostatic mechanisms establish equilibrium to various interactions and consequences in order to ensure a steady condition of behaviour". Our attention focuses now not only on homoeostasis and morphostasis, but also on morphogenesis, the creation of new aesthetic sensory structures.
Therefore, all four artists voluntarily or involuntarily, more or less consciously, were driven by such an approach, participated in this exhibition and spurred their imagination in this first attempt of mine as the curator of the particular project, an attempt which is open to all kinds of questioning…

Maria Kenanidou
Curator, Art Historian
Translation: Eleftheria Tsitsa

Former Military Camp Kodra
Thessaloniki, Greece
1 - 17 September 2006

Curated by:
Maria Kenanidou

Artists:
Fotini Kariotaki, Christos Keramaris, Thanasis Pallas. Babis Venetopoulos

Transit
[exhibition]

In this exhibition, Khen Shish places the personal biographical dimension against images of torn eyes. On the walls of the room and on the television screens, eyes whose pupils have been torn out burst forth. This tearing is a manifestation of a unique, personal handwriting typified by obsession and intensity.

Shish uses reproduction photographs and black-and-white photographs of herself, she leaves them as they are but chooses to pierce out the pupils while penetrating the cardboard and paper background, thus exposing the temporary nature of the concept of self-portrait. Thus, the subject that gazes back, critical and hegemonic, which is usually present in exhibition spaces, is torn out by Shish, neutralized, perforated, leaving it hollow and empty.

In some of the works, Shish installs the reproductions on a flickering television monitor placed on the gallery floor, letting the dots flashing on screen bathe and illuminate the pupils with a bluish light.

Khen Shish's works address the inanimate, as well as that which has passed and silence as options of resistance to the language spaces of the Arabic, French, English and Hebrew previously heard in her works. On one of the monitors she places a dark-skinned face partly painted in gold, and a light-skinned face on which a kind of airplane is seen. Shish seeks a biographical possibility across an axis of East and West, with the uniform blue gaze, marking the modern globalization of the television screen, silently accompanying this unification. In addition to the absence of sound, the screen is connected to the video with no cassette inside. There is no reception, only a flickering line going up and down across the blue monitor. Images of portraits with torn-out eyes are temporarily stuck on screens that are lit but not connected, echoing each other's silence.

In some of the sketches, Shish introduces the "black" face most quintessentially charged with otherness, blackness, and Orientalism. A black stain appears on the page, a threatening black face of sorts whose eyes are torn out.

In previous exhibitions, alongside the black face Shish presented dozens of sketches of piercing black eyes, which responded to the dialectics created between black and white. The eyes, with their collective power, directed a black gaze towards the Israeli society, as a social political resistance strategy. In this exhibition, the logic behind the torn-out pupils is that of raising the repressed – the Otherness that is marked in the work remains beneath the surface, and is represented through the tearing out, the penetration and the temporariness of a chaotic visual system that renounces the origin and relies on reproductions that are actually cultural quotations.

Shish relinquishes a standard appearance here. Not for a moment does she create a unification and continuity between the portrait and the gaze, between the reproductions and the sketches themselves. In a sense, it appears that Shish's erupting, excessive linear drawing is at the same time both adoptive and defiant. The sole line repeated on each page indeed operates within the glorification of the line as part of the tradition of modern drawing, but the hollow-black-blue gazes take the viewer far from the modernist world into an individual, at once cultural and political, violent sphere.

Tal Ben Zvi
Artist, curator

Former Military Camp Kodra
Thessaloniki, Greece
1 - 17 September 2006

Curated by:
Tal Ben Zvi

Artist:
Khen Shish

Theirland, a not Unnatural Enterprise 
[project] [in-situ]

Four artists from France -Arianne Assensi, Irini Linardaki, Delphine Monrozies, Vincent Parisot– camp at Kodra from the 14th of August. Their common project focuses on water, as well as the objects and the actions that surround it.

This project was created especially for Action Field Kodra 06. Our wish is to create a series of works related to the conditions of the specific site and present it to the public of Thessaloniki and Kalamaria.
We have constructed a project theoretically, based on an idea, different words and images constituting the goal towards which we will work during a given time, in situ, in a space we call Ourland (Theirland for those on the other side). The central idea is the waterline and all objects and actions surrounding it, our questions are those of time (waiting, signal, event) and of fluidity.
Having experienced the complementarity that runs through our research, we are embarking on this adventure once again, with new conditions, propitious for our work. This artists group makes sense because of the interrelated paths we are following while working. Delphine Monrozies, Vincent Parisot and Eirini Linardaki film together and construct the main installations. Alain Bobineaud is in charge of the technical progress in the worksite, while Ariane Assensi re-defines this space by turning it into an installation, a platform through which the projects are launched, and that becomes itself part of the show.

The Artists

Former Military Camp Kodra
Thessaloniki, Greece
1 - 17 September 2006

Artists:
Ariane Assensi, Delphine Monrozies, Eirini Linardaki, Vincent Parisot

A4 Project II
[project-in-progress]

Project-in-progress curated by Artemis Potamianou, launched in Action Field Kodra 2005 with an original work by Joseph Kosuth, especially created for this project.

The A4 Project was launched in August 2005 within the framework of Action Field Kodra 2005 - 5th visual arts festival, having as its starting point and basis the work by Joseph Kosuth, father of conceptual art. The project openly invites artists to create an artwork within the strict frame of an A4. 
A distinctive element which characterizes this project is the given presentation of all participating artworks. Thus, the project promotes freedom of expression without discrimination and critical judgments. The project functions as a game of visual creation with specific participation rules. These rules are not in place for the designation of a winner by a curator or expert, since the final judge is the public. These common rules result in the substantial projection of the artistic message by transforming a common material into art.
The use of one of the most common, everyday and easily accessible objects of modern civilization, an A4 page, together with the presentation of all the artworks in the exhibition, infuses a democratic character to the project. A4 is the living proof that art can be created and presented to the public without the necessity of huge financial resources and complicated procedures.
The aim of A4 is the continuous transfer and presentation of the A4 artwork in a series of exhibitions in Greece and abroad, as well as the invitation of more artists to participate in the project. Ten of the A4 artworks that already participate in the project are indicatively presented in Action Field Kodra 2006 - 6th visual arts festival. 

Artemis Potamianou
Artist, Curator 

Former Military Camp Kodra
Thessaloniki, Greece
1 - 17 September 2006

Curated by:
Artemis Potamianou

Acrtist:
Giannis Melanitis, Alexandros Georgiou, Christoph Raitmayr, Marko Blazo

Urban Landscapes - Panos Vardakas
[exhibition]

Before Action Field Kodra 2005 was over, Panos Vardakas and I discussed an idea I had been pondering on for a long time. I needed a photographer to artistically document the process of installing the festival. I saw the work he had done for the Five Days of Artistic Video of the Athens Fine Arts School and I was convinced he was the ideal photographer for this Project. Panos left us a few months later. I felt that this did not need to deter an exhibition of works by Panos Vardakas at Action Field Kodra. Panos will be with us once again through his photographs, selected by Rena Papaspyrou along with Christina Petrinou, who has written the text for the Urban Landscapes exhibition.

Former Military Camp Kodra
Thessaloniki, Greece
1 - 17 September 2006

Curated by:
Rena Papaspyrou
Text by:
Christina Petrinou
Acrtist:
Panos Vardakas

In The Shadow of Time - Anthimos Kalpatzidis
[solo exhibition]

The Thessaloniki Museum of Photography takes part in Action Field Kodra for the first time, presenting a series of works under the title "in the Shadow of Time" by Anthimos Kalpatzidis. this is a series of works that document abandoned spaces, that is in absolute accordance to the spirit and atmosphere of the former military camp, sporadically invated by artists, promoting the relationship between time and space.

Former Military Camp Kodra
Thessaloniki, Greece
1 - 17 September 2006

Curated by:
Vangelis Ioakeimidis

Acrtist:
Anthimos Kalpatzidis

Blind Traces - Mary Christea
[solo exhibition]

If there is one special thing that attracts my attention in the art of Maria Christea, it is how she can go to the core of the matter without resorting to rhetoric hype or playful stylistic tricks. On the contrary, her work unfolds like a flow of light in the dark, like the waves of a vast sea lapping against the barren land of thought where the meaning of art cannot grow roots. I am talking about the theoretical approach to art which currently tends to explore the visual language as inextricably linked to the imagery and the tastes of the time. 
Yet Maria Christea produces an art which could be nothing but a product of the times, of the transcendence of the limits of certain aesthetic rules, of a yearning for understanding reality. The artist moves outside the various current movements but within the present which incessantly explores an extended perception of the world – a trend as new as it is old, as obsolete as it is current and limitlessly interesting. What renews it is the different use of visual language, echoing the different stimuli that appeal to each individual soul and intellect. “Words and things live their own life”, wrote Takis Sinopoulos, “and seek their clearer expression in defiance of legitimacy”. A similar approach seems to be imprinted on Christea’s work of recent years. Using the image of the body and nature as a tool, she unfolds a narrative which is about the constant interaction between the inside and the outside.
With Blind Traces, whose current form is the result of a long work and preparation over the last three years, the artist takes up the thread from her last project, the Perpetual Journey of 2003. In that series, whose works also involved the use of multiple media, she focused on a narration of the concept of the ‘home’ or the ‘house’. The relationship between body and soul traced in the space a cyclical trajectory which evolved into a perpetual present, where the experiences from the past and the present combined to form an ongoing action in a space that changed under the switch between light and shade and created passages between the images and their shadows.
Today, the narrative continues along the same principle which holds that art does not break new ground but retrieves and reveals what lies hidden. If today Man and Nature remain for art and science the objects of an increasingly extensive research which leads us onto a quest for a uniform theory about Nature and the creation of the Universe, Christea seems to follow the paths of mystery towards a deeper understanding of the unity of art and life. To her, art is simply a medium for envisioning what lies hidden both in the matter of things and in the core of the soul.
In her current work, which is like a sequel to her earlier Perpetual Journey, the space resonates with an older thought articulated by one of the most luminous thinkers and visionaries, the young Arthur Rimbaud who saw that “the poet becomes a visionary through a long, immense and rational derangement of all the senses”. Could this method of deviating be too daring for our time?
Still, Maria Christea boldly attempts it. The Blind Traces represent a series of deviations in the way the body as we perceive it in its tangible form is viewed. Adopting again multiple media –photography, video, light box– she sets up an environment which reveals the endless interaction among the image of things, nature and life. The photographic depiction of a nude female body face-to-face with its twin appears as half the truth once it goes under the scrutiny of an imaginary scanner. On the screen, the static photo of the two realistically rendered nude bodies starts to be denuded to the utmost and reveal the reality underneath, which is no other than the breath, the rhythm of real life within time. The flesh of the body expands, becomes transparent, and we can see live fragments of experiences and momentous images floating within its molecules.
The body is now the ‘house’ which hosts as a single space the action from a multitude of extraneous events, traced upon its skin and its innards. People and things and the entire nature seem to use the live body as their shelter. Isn’t this, perhaps, the image which always comes before the eyes of the thinker, the creator, the scientist who repeats the words of Titus Lucretius Carus – “Lastly, before our very eyes is seen / Thing to bound thing: air hedges hill from hill, / And mountain walls hedge air; land ends the sea, / And sea in turn all lands; but for the All / Truly is nothing which outside may bound”? *
The Blind Traces narrate how nothing is revealed unless at some point it has found refuge in the self. The limits of nothing are known, and no language can convincingly relate them before their traces have been sought on the internal and external scars which are engraved on the matter of the real, on the vastness of the soul. It is through this vast expanse of reality that Maria Christea makes her way, focusing on the essence of life and art.

Efi Strousa
Art critic, curator

Remetzo Exhibition Space
Thessaloniki, Greece
1 - 17 September 2006

Curated by:
Efi Strousa

Acrtist:
Mary Christea








<<* Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things, Book 2, 80, vv. 130-135, translated by William Ellery Leonard; www.classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.1.i.html

FORUM Artist-inResidency (F.A.R.) 2006
[residency programme]

F.A.R. was initiated in 2005 in collaboration with Forum European Cultural Exchanges and run every year until 2008. This is one of the few serious attempts to establish a permanent residency program in Greece. F.A.R. collaborated with established Greek and international curators and with interesting emerging artists from Greece and abroad. In 2006, F.A.R. was presented by the Periphery of Alsace (France) as a model for cultural development. 
For more information follow the link on the right. 

Action Field Kodra Catalogue #3
[publications] [catalogue]

Design
Katerina Stafylidou
Coordination - Supervision:
Lydia Chatziiakovou
Editing:
Lydia Chatziiakovou
Eleftheria Tsitsa
Translations:
Jenny Kantartzi-Lousta

Colour, Greek & English, 24x7 cm, 234 pages