20 mei 2017
Today the Platforms Project opened for the public. Before I had some time to visit a venue of Documenta 14, The Athens Conservatoire or Odeion as Greeks call it. In the next reports I will show the works I thought worth while, in the end I shall try to eveluate Documenta as a whole.
At the entrance – David Lamelas: Time as Activity – a three channel live feed from resp. the German parliament, the Acropolis and the Greek Parliament.
Susan Hiller made a beautiful work, a sound-booth with recordings of vanished or endangered languages
Of course, in a conservatory, music can not be omitted. The Contemporary Music Research Centre, founded by Iannis Xenakis, Giannis Papaioannou and Stephanos Vassiliadis conducted research and engaged in educational projects as well as festivals and collaborations.
For instance Mycenae Polypoton, a site specific performance set in the ruins of Mycenae in 1978. It involved musicians, singers, sheperds and lit sheep as well as other recitals of movement and light.
On the occasion of Documenta 14 an old synthisizer was restored, the EMS Synthi 100, a rare analogue synthesizer built in London in 1971. Four compositions have been written for it to be played during Documenta 14.
Akinbode Akinbiyi: Passageways, Involuntary and the Sound of Crowded Spaces – 2015-2017
Pélagie Gbaguidi: The Missing Link, Decolonisation Education by mrs. Smiling Stone – 2017
Pélagie Gbaguidi: The Missing Link, Decolonisation Education by mrs. Smiling Stone – 2017
Guilermo Galindo: Score for Boca de la noche – 2016 (from the series “Border Canto’s”)
Guilermo Galindo: Score for Border Planetarium – 2016 (from the series “Border Canto’s”)
Kettly Noël: Strange Fruit
André du Colombier: Untitled
Peter Friedl: Report – 2016
Ganesh Haloi: Untitled – 2016
Ganesh Haloi: Untitled – 2016
Hiwa K: Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue) – 2017 A video of a man escaping his country with a stick on his head with mirrors attached to it. He sees his surroundings and himself in the mirrors while we see him walking to his destiny. A voice-over relates his feelings in all this.
Hiwa K: Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue)-2017
After the Conservatory I walked to the venue where Platforms project was beïng held,. On the way I stopped at some of the places where small presentations in Documenta could be seen. The Nikos Hadjikyriakos- Ghika Museum, one of the four locations of the Benaki Museum is a beautiful house in the centre of the city. It shows biographies of well known writers, actors, poets, composers and painters and sculptors. The building used to be the house of Ghika, one of the famous Greek modernist painters, the two top floors show his living quarters and his studio. In between all this Documenta had placed work of forgotten painters. The paintings were not very interesting, apparently they were chosen because of their subjects: immigrants and other non Greek persons.
Beautiful sketches of renovation of The Niche, the 8th gymnasium school chapel of Athens
And this is the chapel, a nice modernist buiding
A picture of Greek poet Seferis together with Ezra Pound
This is the official document which was given to Giorgos Seferis when he won the Nobel Prize for litterature
36 Black and white pictures by Nikos Hadjikyriakos- Ghikawere added by Documenta
They show Greek living in the thirties
but you can recognise the painter in the structures and the compositions
The Numismatic Museum showed one work: that of Dan Peterman, who also shows at the EMST
It’s a bar of metal, the form suggests gold, from under the sea maybe?
Back in Platforms an impression of what is beïng shown by different artists initiatives:
Oversight EX-MÊKH booth
EX-MÊKH: Maarten Schepers
Maarten Schepers close up with his night-pictures of stars
Ellen Rodenberg: detail
Kees Koomen: oversight
KRAATZ is an interesting collaboration from Berlin with A-Trans’ Isolde Nagel, painter Marian Wijnvoord, musician Yorgos Dimitriadis, Stéphan Gueneau, Louise Crawford and philosopher Forbes Morlock. This installation was to change every day, though I found it interesting as it was
A-Trans showed photographs by Ekkehard Keintzel and pantings by Marian Wijnvoord
The combination of which worked out well
Moving landscapes by Marian Wijnvoord
Rosa Lux collaborated with other galleries again, this is Tiny Domingos at Beaston Projects
With slightly surrealistic pictures too
And this is Linda Weiss at Paper from UK
She had a beautiful presentation by the way, for instance with these Trump Tower grids!
National TV was present at the opening, interviewing Dutch globally based artist Willem-Jan Smit
The cellar was the real underground with nice work at ID:I
At Future Scenarios pictures were taken of the public
I don’t have the name of this collective, but it was a lively lot
At 24 hours project a daily change would take place also, I liked this as it was though!
With great graphic art up in the corner
and a protagonist on the side
Unnoticed Art presents an unnoticed exhibition, but it also executes performances of these artists regularly!
Unnoticed Art makes one curious for its intentions
but it appears to be a very intimate exhibition, featuring the works of EX-MÊKH-members
This is the wall in the cellar where the Lo and Behold shows their project, EX-MÊKH is presented in a nice context
After the opening of Platforms drinks in a local bar. On the way there we passed the Panathinaikos stadium, covered with grafitti!
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