FORUM #7 
European Cultural Exchanges 2006

[conferences] [exhibitions] [publications] [networking] [ongoing 2000-2010]

About FORUM European Cultural Exchanges 

Ongoing platform for the development and promotion of European cultural exchanges –with emphasis on Southeastern Europe– aiming towards the support and diffusion of contemporary artistic creation. Founded in 2000 in Thessaloniki by Apollonia european art exchanges (Strasbourg) and ArtBOX, and coordinated by ArtBOX, Forum includes annual events, conferences, meetings, exhibitions and networking activities, as well as the Forum Artists-in-Residence program (F.A.R., 2005-2008).

2000 - 2010
Organized by:
ArtBOX, Thessaloniki, Greece
Apollonia, Strasbourg, France
Founding Directors:
Dimitris Konstantinidis (Apollonia)
Christos Savvidis (ArtBOX)
Coordination: ArtBOX
Advisory Committee:
Efie Strousa, Denys Zacharopoulos, Nikos Xydakis

Forum 2006
[conferences] [exhibitions] [projects] [focus Latvia]

Picture
Kaspars Podnieks, photo from the series Milk, 2003
Forum was initially set up as a tool of support for modern artistic creation within the framework of a dynamic European collaboration. It functioned not only as a watchtower of new, pioneering methods and artistic expressions –particularly for artists coming from all sorts of  marginal situations– but also as an experimental workshop for materializing artistic and cultural  collaborations. Working closely with local institutions, Forum presented many artists from different European regions and aspects of art that the Greek public is not generally familiar with. At the same time, Forum's interconnection with a significant international network helped Greek artists present their work abroad. This way, Forum laid down the groundwork for a more effective promulgation of Greek creativity.

Independent and autonomous, Forum collaborated as well with different state and European institutions such as the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and all programs pertaining to Culture 2000. Still, Forum remains a non-governmental organization whereby with transparent and democratic procedures picks out and makes up its activities within the structure of a scientific committee. Following all artistic progress closely, Forum is adjusted to the circumstances that come along aiming steadily at the mobility and meetings with artists. Forum sees to the perspective of establishing a multicultural European space based on the particularity of every artist involved.

Thus Forum, starting this year, is presented in Athens as well. The purpose is to expand its collaborations even with other Greek cities, beyond Thessaloniki, bringing closer together our own artistic activities with the rest of Europe.   

Forum 2006's subject, Borderlines - Meetings with Remarkable Situations, focuses on various remarkable activities, cultural initiatives, artistic and intellectual personalities, who through different experiences and places of spiritual origin, live and act today in the arts. Their choices of activity tend to showcase the quality of the other side of the occasional wall that divides the world community into comprehensions of major or minor importance, dogma or policies whether these have to do with life, knowledge, man as an object of exploitation or subject of manipulation, or with the transformation of the institutional system of artistic creation.

* We owe the subtitle to Denys Zacharopoulos, who was inspired by Peter Brook's 1979 film Meetings with Remarkable Men. The film tells the story of Gurdjieff, who during his travels in Central Asia, discovers through different art forms, music and dancing, but also through near death experiences, new paths of enlightenment, of inner development and new levels of human spiritual being.

Hellenic American Union
Athens, Greece
Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art
Thessaloniki, Greece
2006

Organization:
Forum European Cultural Exchanges, Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Hellenic American Union, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art
Coordination: ArtBOX

Partners:
Council of Europe, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Cultural Foundation, French Ministry of Culture

Conferences

Borderlines - Meetings with Remarkable Situations
[conference] [Athens]

The subject of this discussion panel explores and presents a number of artistic initiatives that aim to promote the overcoming of borderlines between perceptions, policies or doctrines of greater of lesser importance; boarders that have to do either with the way that artists express themselves, or with the transmutation of the institutional system of artistic creation. 

Efie Strousa 
Art critic, curator, President of AICA Hellas
Forum Advisory Committee

Discussion panels:
1. Remarkable Situations; theory or practice?

Moderator: Denys Zacharopoulos (Forum Advisory Committee, art historian, curator, Artistic Director of the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art)
Speakers: Theodoros Terzopoulos (director, President of the International Committee of the Theatrical Olympiad), Maria Marangou (art critic, Director of the Center of Contemporary Artistic Creation of Rethymnon)

2. Residencies - the fascination with blind dates

Moderator: Christos Savvidis (ArtBOX, Forum co-founder)
Speakers: Efi Strousa (art critic, President of AICA Hellas), Sania Papa (art theorist, curator), Maria Kenanidou (art historian, Visual Arts Events Officer at the Cultural Organisation of the Municipality of Kalamaria, Thessaloniki, Greece), Tal Ben Zvi (artist, curator, Israel), Asu Aksoy (Projects Coordinator, Santral Istanbul)

3. Alternative proposals for the support & diffusion of marginal art forms

Moderator: Nikos Xydakis (art critic)
Speakers: Dimitri Konstantinidis (art historian, Forum co-founder, Director - Apollonia european art exchanges), Augustine Zenakos (art critic, co-curator of the 1st Athens Biennial), Achilleas Kentonis (artist, Director, Artos Foundation, Cyprus)

Helenic American Union
Athens, Greece
25 February 2006

Organized by:
Forum European Cultural Exchanges
Helenic American Union
Hellenic Ministry of Culture

Coordination: ArtBOX

Speakers:
Asu Aksoy, Tal Ben Zvi, Maria Kenanidou,
Achilleas Kentonis, Dimitris Konstantinidis,
Maria Maragkou, Sania Papa, Efi Strousa, Theodoros Terzopoulos, Augustine Zenakos

Moderators:
Christos Savvidis, Nikos Xydakis
Denys Zacharopoulos

Simultaneous Translation in Greek & English

Meeting Europe - Contemporary Art from Latvia
[focus Latvia] [conference] [Athens]

Discussion panels:
1. Art in Latvia

Speakers: Dimitri Konstantinidis (art historian, Forum co-founder, Director - Apollonia european art exchanges), Elena Demakova (politician and art historian, Latvia)

2. Contemporary Latvian artists

Moderator: Denys Zacharopoulos (art historian, curator, Artistic Director of the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art)
Speakers: Mara Traumane (art critic, curator), Eriks Bozis (artist), Gints Gabrans (artist), Katrina Neiburga (artist), Kaspars Podnieks (artist)

Helenic American Union
Athens, Greece
2 March 2006

Organized by:
Forum European Cultural Exchanges
Hellenic American Union
Hellenic Ministry of Culture

Coordination:
ArtBOX

Speakers:
Eriks Bozis, Elena Demakova,
Gints Gabrans, Dimitris Konstantinidis,
Katrina Neiburga, Kaspars Podnieks,
Mara Traumane

Moderator:
Denys Zacharopoulos

Simultaneous Translation in Greek & English

Meeting Europe - Contemporary Art From Latvia
[focus Latvia] [conference] [Thessaloniki] 

Discussion Panels:
1. Art in Latvia

Moderator: Denys Zacharopoulos
Speakers: Inese Baranovska (art historian, curator), Maria Tsantsanoglou (Curator, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki), Vangelis Ioakeimidis (Director, Thessaloniki Museum of Photography), Pamela Browne (art historian and critic), Dimitris Konstantinidis (art historian, Forum co-founder, Director - Apollonia, european art exchanges)

2. Contemporary Latvian Artists

Moderator: Efie Strousa (Forum Advisory Committee, art critic, curator, President - AICA Hellas)
Speakers: Mara Traumane (art critic, curator), Haris Savvopoulos (art critic), Eriks Bozis (artist), Gints Gabrans (artist), Katrina Neiburga (artist), Kaspars Podnieks (artist)

Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art
Thessaloniki, Greece
10 April 2006

Organized by:
Forum European Cultural Exchanges
Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art
Hellenic Ministry of Culture

Coordination: ArtBOX

Speakers:
Inese Baranovska, Eriks Bozis,
Pamela Browne, Gints Gabrans,
Vangelis Ioakeimidis, Dimitris Konstantinidis, Katrina Neiburga, Kaspars Podnieks,
Haris Savvopoulos, Mara Traumane,
Maria Tsantsanoglou

Moderators:
Efi Strousa, Denys Zacharopoulos

Simultaneous Translation in Greek & English

Exhibitions

Focus Latvia

Squeezed into the Baltic region, Latvia has participated actively in the history of Europe, even in those extremely difficult times that were due to its annexation by the Soviet Empire. Its artists have been able to travel and to establish strong links with their European counterparts, and information regarding the international artistic scene has never ceased to flow into the country. Evidence of this contact is provided by the formation in Riga of the Group of Paris, as well as by the presence and visible influence of movements such as German Neo-Expressionism or the Italian trans-avant-garde. Over the entire last decade, we have had the impression that time rushes by more quickly in that country, as if the current generations of artists wished to make up for lost time and to lay claim to their own identity and to their place in the world. These elements are, in effect, clearly visible in a large number of the exhibited works: the domination by the Soviet Empire, the recent gaining of independence, the entrance in 2004 into the European Community… With humor, irony and precision, Latvian artists do not hesitate to call into question several “bedrock assumptions” of their society, or sometimes to take up a position through figurative means with regard to questions involving politics, the media, ecology… 

Thus the presentation of Latvia is divided into two sections:
Part 1: introducing Latvian culture with the Art of the Poster. 1920-1990 and the photographic works (from 1984 to the present) of Andrejs Grant
Part 2: presenting the young generation of Latvian artists with the exhibition Suspense and video art program Blinks.

  • Suspense. The rituals gone wrong
  • [focus Latvia] group exhibition] [Athens, Thessaloniki]

The exhibition is trying to reveal the common themes in the works of four contemporary artists who share similar cultural backgrounds and life within the neo-liberal society. The tension of the show is built up by its guiding theme: the unsteady balance of the daily routine on the fragile edge of emotional and mental overload. The artworks by Katrīna Neiburga, Gintas Gabrāns, Kaspars Podnieks, Ēriks Božis give the twofold mapping of the contemporary state of Latvian self-reflection: on the one hand indicating contemporary dominance of capitalism and information society, with its universal protestant logic of the production/consumption and efficient impersonal organisation of labour and leisure; on the other re-reading the conservative cultural symbols that are adding identity to the current society – linking it with historic prototype: the first national state in the pre-war period. Artworks are based on the careful revisionism of the eclectic contemporary culture. "Suspense" is leaving us to sense art as a response to everyday, and to evaluate contemporary eclectics of the powers of tradition, technology and the new rational social project.  The issues evoked are suspended between nature, progress, routine and freedom of imagination.

The projects featured in this show are results of especially autonomous creative quests by recognised Latvian artists. The exhibition also maps a slight division between two artists’ "generations"; Gints Gabrans and Eriks Bozis, whose practice began during the mid-nineties, display conceptual object-based works, where expressiveness is reached by the flash of the idea, ironic hint, precise metaphor; artists who stepped in the scene around the turn of the millennium –Katrina Neiburga and Kaspars Podnieks– use digital imagery and performance action to convey a narrative or evoke a poetic situation. 

Helenic American Union
Athens, Greece
2-16 March 2006
Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art
Thessaloniki, Greece
12 April-28 May 2006

Produced by:
Apollonia, France

Organized by:
Forum European Cultural Exchanges
Hellenic American Union
Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art
Hellenic Ministry of Culture

Coordination:
ArtBOX

Curated by:
Mara Traumane, Dimitris Konstantinidis

Artists:
Eriks Bozis, Gints Gabrans, Katrina Neiburga, Kaspars Podnieks

Blinks: Projected Visions - Latvia
[focus Latvia] [video art exhibition] [Athens, Thessaloniki]

The current selection of video works by Latvian artists reflects some of the recent creative practices, quests and developments in the area of art and moving image in Latvia. The selection includes works created between 2001 and 2005, and comprises thirteen films by nine artists. The selection is organised in three parts that provide loose, thematic and interpretative guidance through the works.

Part I includes artists’ interpretations of the course of history, concepts of statehood and attributes of national and local belonging –it could be generally regarded as a reaction to the “operational” historic surroundings. Part II reveals personal and intimate approach, narrativity, stories and moods enveloping individual existence. It oscillates between essays, observations and anthropological investigations. Part III includes works fusing different genres and experimenting with the image and the textual or sonic properties of video. Interchanging the fields of writing and sound, these pieces reveal the abstract language of image, sound and word that appeals to the process of perception, duration and sensory effects. This part is indicative of the collaborations of artists from different fields in a shared search for the new media of expression.

Helenic American Union
Athens, Greece
2-14 March 2006
Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art
Thessaloniki, Greece
12 April-28 May 2006

Produced by: Apollonia, France

Organized by:
Forum European Cultural Exchanges
Hellenic American Union
Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art
Hellenic Ministry of Culture

Coordination:
ArtBOX

Curated by:
Mara Traumane
Artists:
Arnis Balcus, Kristine Briede, Ieva Jerohina, Peteris Kimelis, Daiga Kruze, Elina Lihaceva, Katrina Neiburga, Reinis Petersons, Martins Ratniks, Kriss Salmanis

Latvia: Changing and Unchanging Reallity 
Andrejs Grants
[focus Latvia] photography exhibition] [Thessaloniki]

Andrejs Grants (1955) arrived on the art scene in the early 1980s marking a new and promising page in Latvian photography. More than other activities of the rebellious youth of the time his photographs testified to the very existence of the alternative thought: "Photography is this marvellous opportunity, this paradox that can be captured and played on – the eternity of the moment. You picture a moment, and if it’s the right moment, then it’ll be a reflection of eternity as well."

Andrejs Grants has always een arranging his works into collections. For instance, “Colleagues, Friends, Acquaintances”, “Around Latvia” and “Latvia. Changing and Unchanging Reality”. There’s no denying that it’s the reality of Latvia during a particular period of time: from 1984 to the present. The time has passed by, never to return, bringing cardinal changes to everything – the political system and social rules. But the main aspect doesn’t change – the human desire to move, rejoice, contemplate, obtain and enjoy, in other words – live. Andrejs Grants has lifted unusual moments of pleasure from that which he dubs the ‘theatre of life’, which is going on in front of our eyes each moment, if we watch carefully. He makes us witnesses to the beautiful possibilities of unwitting relationships, and this really brings him pleasure. "I have always been fascinated by Bruegel and his unique view of the world, his unique attitude to what is happening in the picture. I think documentary photography can be presented in a similar way, so that it has its own truth inside it. I was interested in that documentary beginning, that theatre being played out at a particular moment, when you devote slightly more time, sitting down in a country village to see what’s going on around you. It’s evocative. Why do I like to wander around Latvia and take pictures there? Perhaps because my childhood passed in a rural setting. It’s more natural, more free. All the same games that happen to others in town, happen with my subjects in the countryside. Or in small towns. In these reports, people are characters playing certain roles and take a position in some more or less definite relationships."

Since 1979 Andrejs Grants is a freelance photographer and teaches photography to young people at the House of Youth Creative Activities in Riga, helping the new generation understand the significance and possibilities of photography. 

Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art
Thessaloniki, Greece
12 April-28 May 2006

Produced by:
Apollonia, France

Organized by:
Forum European Cultural Exchanges
Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art
Hellenic Ministry of Culture

Coordination:
ArtBOX

Curated by:
Inese Baranovska

Supported by:
Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Republic of Latvia
Latvian Embassy Ireland
State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia

The Art of Poster in Latvia. 1920 - 1990
[focus Latvia] [posters exhibition] [Thessaloniki]

This exhibition offers viewers the possibility to discover Latvia, its past and culture, from a historical perspective. The poster, a manifestation of “democratic” art par excellence, was born in the social turmoil of the twentieth century. The poster has always been intimately connected, more than any other art form, to political and economic reality. It has consistently been a space of creation and expression for artists, thereby constituting a mirror of its particular era.

The purpose of this exhibition is to allow a discovery of the culture, traditions and history of Latvia by using the reflection of the world which has always been offered by the poster. The presentation consists of 120 original printed posters which have been drawn from the collections of the Latvian National Library (LNL) and the Museum of the Union of Latvian Artists (ULA).

Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art
Thessaloniki, Greece
12 April-28 May 2006

Produced by:
Apollonia, France

Organized by:
Forum European Cultural Exchanges
Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art
Hellenic Ministry of Culture

Coordination:
ArtBOX

Curated by:
Inese Baranovska

Forum Artists-in-Residence program - F.A.R.
[residency programme] [exhibition] 

F.A.R. was one of the few serious attempts to establish a permanent residency program in Greece. It was initiated in 2005 by Forum European Cultural Exchanges in collaboration with Action Field Kodra - annual visual arts festival and run every year until 2008. 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 links on the right. 

F.A.R. Parallel Activities

Borderlines - AYOR
[F.A.R.] [conference] [Athens]  

Being on the borders is usually neither comfortable nor permanent, and that’s because borders are regarded as a zone of transition –you are not there to stay, you are neither in nor out. However, the main reason that causes anxiety is actually the fact that borders are places of control, that is, points of judgement whereby inclusion or exclusion is decided. You are judged whether you are good enough to be considered as a member of your society and thus have the right to cross its borders, or whether you are good enough to be accepted by another society, according to its own rules – or even both. In today’s globalised world, visible and less visible borders are there to judge who is in and who is out of the various fortresses.

Louisa Avgita
Art historian and critic, curator

Discussion Panel 1

Ziauddin Sardar (writer, broadcaster and cultural critic): “Borders: A Transmodern Perspective”
Pier Luigi Tazzi (critic, columnist, teacher and curator): “From Boundary Lines to No Man’s Land”

Discussion Panel 2

Louisa Avgita (art historian and critic, curator): Introduction
Beral Madra (art critic and curator, Director of BM Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul, President of AICA Turkey): “Different Perspectives in Borderlines – States & Concepts”
Katherine Carl (Curator of Contemporary Exhibitions at The Drawing Center, New York) & Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss (architect): "Lost Highway Expedition"
Angela Melitopoulos (visual artist): "Timescapes / B-Zone – Corridor X"
Memos Filippidis (architect): "Porous Borders - The Green line of Nicosia"

Discussion Panel 3

Sophie Hope (curator): "Β+Β: Reunion"
Heath Bunting (visual artist): "BorderXing Guide"
Theofilos Traboulis (publications editor): "Art vs spare time"

Αfter the short presentations of the projects, the artists and curators have the opportunity to present their work individually, in a specially arranged area at the Hellenic American Union’s atrium.  

Helenic American Union
Athens, Greece
25 November 2006

Organized by:
Forum European Cultural Exchanges
Hellenic American Union
Hellenic Ministry of Culture

Coordination:
Louisa Avgita & ArtBOX

Speakers:
Louisa Avgita, Heith Bunting, Katherine Carl, Memos Filippidis, Sophie Hope,
Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, Beral Madra,
Angela Melitopoulos, Ziauddin Sardar,
Pier Luigi Tazzi, Theofilos Tramboulis

Simultaneous Translation in Greek & English

AYOR: No man’s land
Exhibition of the works produced during F.A.R. 2006 in Athens
[F.A.R.] [exhibition] [Athens]

This exhibition is an ultimate manifestation, a kind of distant effect, of the artistic residence in the former military camp Kodra, realised last summer, and curated by the writer. Five artists, coming from the eastern Mediterranean area, took part in the residence, as well as six students from the Fine Arts School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, who participated as assistants.

The residence’s subject was the same as the previous year: Borderlines. The public outcome of the residence was two complementary exhibitions, under the common title AYOR: NO MAN’S LAND, that seemed to me a continuance, an extension of the original theme, conveying a sense of common experience, not only limited in our living together during the residence, but also implying a declaration, beyond any form of judgment, on our position in the general system of culture of our time –not only from the artists’ part, or mine as a curator, but also from the students’ part, who participated in the venture as active agents. 

Pier Luizi Tazzi
Curator

Hellenic American Union
Athens, Greece
6-25 November 2006

Organized by:
Forum European Cultural Exchanges
Hellenic American Union

Coordination:
ArtBOX.gr
Apollonia European art exchanges

Curated by:
Pier Luigi Tazzi

Artists:
Merve Berkman, Panos Famelis, Armando Lulaj, Haris Pallas, Wael Shawky