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The Forum Artists-in-Residence Programme (F.A.R), inaugurated in 2005, resulted from the co-operation between two cultural organizations, Action Field Kodra, which has undertaken the implementation of the programme, and Forum European Cultural Exchanges, that has undertaken the planning and curating. more
Borderlines
If we consider the concept of opposites as a term of poetics and an attraction pole for artistic and intellectual creativity, the contrasts and conflicts that shape the landscape of contemporary political and social reality, as well as the inner conflicts experienced within an individual’s psyche, may be viewed as Borderlines. The daily experience of conflicting situations shapes one’s life attitude, which, however, is never expressed in a uniform manner. For an artist, contrasts comprise a multitude of varied challenges, perceived either as stimuli to review one’s relation with the real world or as a spur for an introspection into one’s psychical domain or even as reflections of one’s “convention” with modern reality. Furthermore, Borderlines are viewed as the limits set by contemporary artistic behavior and the institutional structures of art. Beyond Borderlines, what?
The long-standing and broad debate along this basic question was enriched by 20th century art with innovative theoretical and linguistic proposals. At the dawn of the 21st century, this reflection comes acutely to the fore against the actual political and social context of the so-called “globalized” society. What one may observe is that contemporary art deals with the image of a complex social reality by penetrating in a daring spirit into the multiple dimensions of the concept of otherness, thus, in essence, revealing the lack of any uniform mode of correlating with history, life and cultural codes. Based on such reflection tendencies of our times, the first residency program brought to Kalamaria artists from countries where modern political regimes blatantly encourage the establishment of rival and hostile fields, where segregation is not a mere theoretical concept but a daily experience felt on one’s skin. This is a signifying feature of contemporary reality, which spreads over the globe through a vast field of exercising geopolitical strategies. The creative co-existence of these artists in Kalamaria, on the contrary, not only highlighted a different reality, opening up new viewpoints in relation to the intellectual and cultural identity of divided regions, but also revealed and transmitted, beyond Kalamaria, the high level of contemporary artistic production cultivated by special sensitivities, which are distinctly characterized by exceptional freedom of thought and a critical vision. This year, the assignment of the program to an international curator gives further theoretical support to the artistic encounters in Kalamaria. Greek artists are to be included, but the ratio will always favour a higher quota of artists from abroad. The aim is to have the widest possible extension of the field of vision and dialogue. The cultural organization of the Municipality of Kalamaria and F.A.R. would like, therefore, to thank art critic and curator Pier Luigi Tazzi for his willingness to undertake the second residential programme in Kalamaria. His co-operation significantly reinforces the aims of the programme and enhances the challenge of dialogue for guest artists through the personal poetic view of one of the most important thinkers and operators in the realm of contemporary art. Efi Strousa Art Critic, Curator President, AICA Hellas AYOR: NO MAN’S LAND
Boundary lines, but “ the banks have broken, the gates have been torn away, the fences are torn, and the chicken have flown the coop.” (PLT)
An abandoned military camp at the margins of a town in continuous expansion. Part of it is now, has been in the last six years, the site of a vast art event, Action Field Kodra. Undisciplined artists in the place of disciplined soldiers. <stephenantonakos martedì 8 agosto 2006 17.37.04 pierluigitazzi Dear Pier Luigi Yes, boundary lines. It is funny, but then isn't the whole world "funny" . . . . It would be nice of all the military camps were "abandoned" but that is too much to hope for. Stephen Then, inside the camp, an abandoned field, marked by evident borders, a fence, broken here and there, bushes and trees, an unkept meadow entirely covered by tall grass, mostly dry, and crossed by a winding path ascending to a tiny hill –it reminds me the last Vincent Van Gogh’s landscape painting, the well known cornfield with the flight of crows over it, or the end of the world according to the catholic nuns, at whose school I started my education after the end of the Second World War. Personal and collective memories are mingled here, or from now on: the personal memories of each single artist and individual; the collective memories of the different societies each of us and everyone is part of, or feels s/he belongs to, or is just compelled to feel so. If this has been the status of things at its very beginning, the five artists in residence here this summer –the Greek Panayiotis Famelis and Haris Pallas, the Egyptian Wael Shawky, the Turkish Merve Berkman and the Albanian Armando Lulaj, and myself as curator (the curator as a dog), have transformed this area of the camp, never used in the former editions of Action Field Kodra, into a no man’s land. No man’s land as a territory between borders, where no law exists –art is no law (nomos), it may have laws, but it is no law in itself. Thus an area of unconditional freedom, an AYOR zone, a grown-up children’s playground, where everyone and no one might come to terms with his/her own conscience or awareness. Art here takes the form of spread appearances on the dark field in the night, in our night and in the Nacht und Nebel of the time in which we are living: lights in the darkness, (mis)guiding to some spots where intensity mingles with personal and collective stories, histories and beliefs, where the sensuality of the matters and the constructed visions are tinged by the intentions/tensions passions (pathos) of every single individual-as-an-artist or artist-as-an-individual or -as -a-dog, according to Dylan Thomas. Going up and inside (AYOR): The Metaxapotion by Armando Lulaj –such an old story, the long forgotten Forties; the war at that time was mainly an evil mixture of mud and brandy; what has been congealed tends to meld; “una faccia una razza” in black and white or in (techni)colour. The film by Wael Shawky, Al Aqsa Park – Al Aqsa, the mosque of Omar in Jerusalem, with its shining golden dome turning around and up, a vessel coming from outer space, a space above any earthly contingency; and a line of astonished witnesses in front of this wonder, like people queuing before an alien carrousel in the most magnificent amusement park. The pictures by Merve Berkman: Sinan 1, the light of the Bosphoros flowing inside the room and modeling things and bodies like in a sensuous, loving caress. The paintings of Panayiotis Famelis, charged with thick matter, carried (bravely?) outside (AYOR) on the open field, at the risk of disappearing into the equally thick texture of the tall and dry grass. Where is painting (pictura) going? What’s the point? In the distance, at the top of the tiny hill that closes the horizon and at the same time opens it up once one has climbed up there (AYOR): the sea, other pockets of darkness, the lights of other temporary art settlements, the incumbent pressure of the city as a menace to the survival of the last remains of a terrain vague. The circle of light by Lulaj: EXIT THE GHOST ENTER THE GHOST EXIT THE GHOST and so on in a circle. Is it the ghost like in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s Manifesto? Or is it one of the ghosts that haunt Salonica City of Ghosts according to the historian Mark Mazower? Last work, last light, last object: the ghost. Coming down and back, looking at the massive shape of the barrack: The paradoxical enclosure of space realized by Haris Pallas, Pointless, challenges the usual habits to perceive space with an effect of displacement. What’s in fact the nature of the space that the red and white ribbon, usually made of plastic and here forged in iron encompasses? Another picture, Elvan, by Berkman is pasted on a corner of the huge barrack wall. It narrates of intimacy in a maze of shadows that plays with the darkness all around. The show is over. The audience get up to leave their seats. Time to collect their coats and go home. They turn around. No more coats and no more home. (Raoul Vaneigem/Christopher Wool.) But Sinan 2 by Berkman is there to show again his defiant posture to everyone and to no one. They were three, their dog the fourth and (some) say: Five, their dog the sixth, guessing at random; and (some) say: Seven, and their dog the eighth. Say (O Muhammad): My Lord is Best Aware of their number. None knoweth them save a few. Sura of The Cave, 22, Revealed at Makkah, Pickthall translation. Pier Luigi Tazzi Curator Kodra, August 2006 Wael ShawkyMerve BerkmanPanos FamelisHaris PallasArmando Lulaj |
Artist-in-Residency program: |
AYOR: No man’s land
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Hellenic American Union
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