#3: Athens – Platforms Project 2017

May 21, 2017

This sunday was to be the longest day of the Fair: from 12.00 untill 23.00 h. Unfortunately it was also a day that some religious nameday was celebrated and that  important sportsevents took place. It was very quiet at the fair and it felt desencouraging to have so little people coming by, but everybody made the best of it. I visited some booths that I didn’t see yet as you can see here:

On the way to the Platforms we run into a Documenta project: Rasheed Araeen: Food for Thought: Thought for change – 2017 In this location refugees can have free meals every day. There’s a kitchen in the middle and  there are terraces all around.

The design is very efficiënt: recognisable from afar

Arriving at the Platforms the KRAATZ-artists appear to have liven up to their promise: the booth changes, here with added posters by Stéphan Guénau

Marian Wijnvoord and Isolde Nagel are stil in doubt about one wall

But this A-Trans wall is well done

Alexander Peev at Dadada Academy

Klitsa Antoniou: But at the End the Light was Shed on us and it got us to the shore – 2016.  A horrible video with a girl that tells about loving her father and how she likes to help him put shrapnel in bombs and how they flee to the west where she gets to know other children of her age

En Flo: Project Xouthou Street – a door from a house in the centre of Athens you can go through

after which you can write down what it brings about in you. Left under is my comment.

Extra Muros from Nantes was good again: they had subtle ceramic works by Cat Fenwick

It’s all about equilibrium

Guillaume Krick showed a very non-commercial installation with an old French flag

And Romain Rambaud was his usual elegant self with these sculptures

That I rather like

Diensgebäude is also present with work from Andreas Martí

and Chloe Cheuk

Elisabeth Wheeler

This work at Harrington Mills Studios was nice

I like the materiality of it

A sneak peak at the new unnoticed art exhibit featuring a small work by yours truly

Haïtian art at Kallio Kunsthalle, cut from car tires

Petri Saariko, the curator did well himself too

In the mean while our publicity was great: Ellen Rodenberg’s picture of her Malieveld piece was in a large national newspaper in an article about Platforms project

And I was interviewed by George Oreopoulos for Beton7 Art Radio (my favourite radiostation)

Our Dutch Globalist Willem Jan Smit made a round through the neighbourhood, created a sculpture

And projected it’s shadow on the wall by means of the dust he took off it

And of course some materials he used

One more view at Lo and Behold in the cellar

With work by Linda Weiss

Ed’s Video from Canada had surprisingly analogue art with him this time

End we ended up nearby in a restaurant during a blazing thunderstorm

Nico Parlevliet from Unnoticed Art joined us from Holland and everybody sang for me after midnight because of my birthday!

Platforms Project 2017

#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