To remember, sometimes you need different archeological tools

17 oktober 2017

Hiwa K: Pindown – 2017

Performative, and defined by the artist as an “occasion”, Pin-down (2017) stages an intellectual wrestling game between Hiwa K and Bakir Ali, an Iraqi-Kurdish philosopher and writer currently working as a taxi driver in Berlin. Over the past years the artist and the philosopher have had wide-ranging poetic and philosophical conversations, which initially took place in intimate settings. Together they discussed the Kurdish question, ideas of non-belonging and “tracelessness”, “horizontalism” versus “verticalism” and an unfixed understanding of the world.

De Appel

#6: Athens – Documenta 14@Benaki Museum Pireos street

May 24, 2017

Today EX-MÊKH’s fans from Holland arrived at the fair. We took the opportunity in the morning to visit another Documenta site and after the fair Artemis had arranged for everybody in the fair to have drinks and a meal together in Petralona, a busy neighbourhood with lots of bars and restaurants.
So in the morning we went to the Benaki annexe in Pireos street, another beautiful new building that normally houses modern Greek art. Now, Documenta occupies the ground floor with, to my opinion, the best part of Documenta in Athens.

The Benaki Museum Pireos Street Annexe

Hiwa K: One Room Appartment – 2017

Roee Rosen: Live and Die as Eva Braun – 1995-1997

A series of beautiful graphic art, drowned in German culture

The banners in the room show a monologue of Eva Braun and her love for Adolf Hitler

and how they commit suicide together

A great work of art, from collections in Israél

Nilima Sheikh has a number of painted canvases hanging from the ceiling under the title: “Each night put Kashmir in your dreams” – 2003-2014

On the back classical Hindu texts are printed

In the space it looks impressive

Aarin Rungjan: And then there were none, (Tomorrow we will become Thailand) – 2016 In this video a classical singer elegantly sings of horrible things, accompanied by a beautiful istrument of bamboe sticks

In the video and the accompanying paintings the artist juxtaposes two events: the Thammasat university Uprising in 1973 and the Polytechnic university uprising in Athens in 1973 Oral history in the video’s witness the happenings of the time.

Return to Khodurciur, Armenian Diary – 1974 Again Oral history about the happenings in Armenia: the father reads his diary from that time.

Congolese history by Tshimumba Kanda Matulu

It is a room filled with Congolese history, from the beginning until now

El Hadji Sy: la nouvelle Muséologie

André Pierre: Grand Bois

Myriam Cahn: ertasted (e.-arb)(touched – may 16, 1992)

R.H. Quaitman: Parthian Shot

R.H. Quaitman: Parthian Shot

Myriam Cahn

Myriam Kahn

Back on the fair we had a quick look at our work

and Geeta Rooparine came by with presents. She liked my textile texts, I got some beautiful silk threads from her and she showed me what she made of them!

KRAATZ changed their booth again, and this time their collaborators Stéphan Guéneau and Louise Crawford had arrived and immediately they added new work: a textwork

and these pictures (with the & from Isolde Nagel)

The pictures close up

And today again we couldn’t complain about the visitors

I took another round in the cellars, here with the VSVSVS

and the 24 hours project, completely different again!

At night we had a great dinner, because the next day would be the last day of the fair

Constantinos is very sure about something!

The Extra Muros crew rocks!

Shooting back at Artemis

Der Deutsch-Holländischer Tisch

And once more shooting back at Guillaume

Documenta 14

#2: Athens – Documenta 14 @ Athens Conservatoire – Platforms Project 2017

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!

Platforms Project 2017

Documenta 14