IntroductionIn December 2004, the conference organised by Forum European Cultural Exchanges (more) focused on the issue of residencies, an internationally widespread practice that at that point had not been implemented in Greece - yet. As a result of that discussion, Forum decided to initiate the first annual residency programme in Greece, in collaboration with Action Field Kodra visual arts festival (more).
F.A.R. took place annually from 2005 to 2008. The first floor of the old Dormitories (Koitones) building of the abandoned military camp was transformed into a 176 m² studio, where the invited curators and artists worked, discussed and were introduced to the local arts scene. Throughout, we collaborated with established Greek and international curators and emerging artists from Greece and abroad. All works were created in situ and presented to the public during Action Field Kodra. The artists were assisted by a team of fine arts students from the Fine Arts School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, while the communication with the local community was always one of F.A.R.'s focus. In 2006, F.A.R. was presented to the Periphery of Alsace (France) as a model for cultural development, and F.A.R. 2005 was a member of the European Network of Cultural Centres. BORDERLINESThe historical and theoretical identity of the Forum Artists-in-Residence Programme (F.A.R.)
The establishment of the Forum Artists-in-Residence Programme in a small provincial European town, Kalamaria, in the suburbs of Thessaloniki, is in an immaterial way associated with the history of the specific area, which has been a reception area for large numbers of refugees since the early 20th century. More specifically, the place where these events are hosted today, used to be the famous army camp Kodra, where a large number of populations, victims of the dividing lines drawn by the politics of separating peoples, were hosted. On the contrary, today, in the 21st century, this place opens to artists as a field of action, creativity and dialogue, which evolve along the axis of a modern spiritual quest to transcend the perception that the world is a field where rival forces clash. At Kodra, the young artists are hosted in a place with an absolutely free horizon in regard to expressing and intellectually exploring their ideological and spiritual orientation. Artists from various parts of the Mediterranean, the Balkans and Southeastern Europe, as well as from the East and West, are invited to present their personal viewpoints. F.A.R. focuses their attention on the support and enhancement of the multiple points where history touches upon modern life. While acknowledging the cultural particularities of each place and individual, contemporary artists draw tendencies for substantial dialogue of various hues that compose the contemporary cultural map of the world. A wealth of various angles of perceiving the world ensues through the artists’ liberated action, in a game of violating the conditions and limits of established cultural regimes. The future starts beyond all kinds of borders. This thread of thought suggested the title Borderlines as the general theme of these artistic encounters in the old military camp 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 contrast 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 starting points to enter deeper aspects of individual mentality or even as reflections of one’s “convention” with modern reality. Furthermore, Borderlines are viewed within the context created by the codes of contemporary artistic behavior and the institutional framework of art. Beyond Borderlines, what? This long-standing and wide debate along such basic reflection axes was enriched by 20th century artists, with innovative theoretical and linguistic proposals. In the beginning of the 20th century, the actual political and social context of the so-called “globalized” society, made this reflection even more acute. What one may observe is that contemporary art approaches the image of a complex social reality by penetrating in a daring spirit the multiple dimensions of the concept of otherness, thus, in essence, revealing the lack of any uniform correlating with history, life and cultural codes. Based on such reflection tendencies of the modern world, the first F.A.R. 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 an influential aspect of contemporary reality, which spreads over the globe through a vast field of exercising geopolitical strategies. The creative co-existence of these artists in Kodra, on the contrary, not only highlighted a different reality, opening a new scope in relation to the intellectual and cultural identity of divided regions, but also revealed and disseminated, beyond Kodra, the high level of contemporary artistic production cultivated with special sensitivity, which is distinctly characterized by exceptional freedom of thought and a critical vision. Efi Strousa Art Critic, Curator President, AICA Greece |
Former Military Camp Kodra
Each year, F.A.R. invited established curators to work with emerging artists. Out of the seven curators that we worked with, four had previously curated Documenta (Roger Buergel, Ruth Noack, Pier Luigi Tazzi and Denys Zacharopoulos); and among the 22 artists that participated in the programme, Christodoulos Panayiotou and Wael Shawky both participated in Documenta 13 (2012), while Ines Doujak had previously participated in Documenta 12.
Forum European Cultural Exchanges
Action Field KODRA |
