[info | welcome note | statement | bio]

An international group exhibition
about impossible actions
the notion of destruction
and the construction of a new social contract

when and where

opening: Thursday 28.3.13, 20.30
duration: 28/3/2013 – 18/4/2013
opening hours: Mon. – Sat. 12.00 – 21.00, Sun. 12.00 – 19.00
production: Create an Accident
venue: metamatic:taf, 5 Normanou str. 10555 Athens, Monastiraki

artists

Yiannis Christofides: love me Tender
Nathania Rubin: Camel do something
Melissanthi Saliba: Found Ethnographies
Informal Strategies: Void 0
Anna Witt: Acts of Anger

theorists in collaboration

Anna Kontopoulou: stasis
Andreas Vrahimis: On Catastrophe

special guests

Molleindustria [a selection of games]
Eumaster ART – VR _2012_13: This is not a game

curation

Lena Theodoropoulou

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welcome to thesis

Thesis reflects the theme of the platform Create an Accident for 2012-2013, Myth PhD _{(play hence destroy)} through the creation of an international group exhibition.

The main objective behind the idea of ​thesis is to create a framework that without ignoring
its presentation to specific spatial-temporal and socio-political conditions, it develops a
proposal that is not limited to self-referential and one-sided analyses, but throws up issues
that underlie the creation of modern communities. So we went in search process not for
solutions or reactions in a given situation, but in research on the possibility of creating a
new social contract that transcends geographical and cultural constraints. Aware of the
complexity of this project we defined the game as a place of experimentation. Functioning
as both an imaginary field, but also as social simulation, the concept of the game allows
us to put into practice infeasible operations and to experiment with the possibility of their
application in real social conditions.

The artists were selected on the basis of their previous work and participation in exhibitions
with respective concerns. Adopting multifaceted approaches, they meet the theme of
the exhibition, utilizing a variety of media and techniques including visual and sound
installation, painting and video. Through their works they are challenging the boundaries of
the community, they view the radical destruction of myths and narratives that constitute
them as a legitimate choice, they deny the human privilege to logic and question both the
existence of whole individual and collective identities and the certainty with which the
knowledge is constituted and is shared in the community.

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photo: Tania Papoutsi

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statement

Thesis is an exhibition produced within the platform of a game and according to the restrictions and liberties that constitute it. Investigating the action of erasure and recommencement as a possible choice, Thesis poses a problematic on the organisation of the communities, their decision-making processes and the feasibility of their reinvention.

An invented hermeneutic community is called to construct a new social contract. The community defines a breaking point whose transgression would signify the loss of its essence and creates a self-destruction apparatus to be automatically implemented, for when this breaking point has been crossed.

The game of Thesis, as a cultural simulation, reproduces the myths integrated in the social narratives, with these narratives being a fundamental element of the community. The fictional character of this game opens up an infinite set of rules, whose conventions and liberties offer a limitless field for the invention of unknown options.

In the different levels of the game, the problematic is the investigation of the nature of the hermeneutic community that can reach a decision for its own destruction and the definition of the breaking point which, if crossed will set this destruction apparatus in motion.

Having worked on the conditions that could make this hypothesis possible, what’s left to be decided is the form of the destruction apparatus and the exploration of the potentials that will emerge after the end of this process. The notion of destruction is open to many interpretations and meanings. Whether it is social relations, safety zones, symbols, buildings or countries that are being destroyed, there is a social narrative that is formed to assimilate these events, interpret them and manage them in a way that they match the pre-existing social context.

Thesis designs and implements a destruction plan that can’t be part of any social narrative as it destroys the myths that constitute them. The particularity of this plan – and accordingly of Thesis – is that while designed in the sphere of the game, it applies to the whole, destroying not the platform of the game but the actual myths and social narratives that it reproduces.

When all the myths and social narratives have been destroyed, what remains is the game, denuded from the characteristics that turned it into a simulation. As an existing, but deserted platform, the game becomes a real space with yet unknown, infinite prospects, depending on the nature of the destruction that the players have implemented. Whether what remains is an empty space or an aggregation of points without reference, the platform of the game becomes an open field where nothing has been predefined.

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bio

Yiannis Christofides
Yiannis Christofides is a composer, sound artist and researcher. His work focuses on contextual aspects of auditory experience and the specificities which produce them, through the investigation of our embodied entanglement with place. Led by a trans-sensorial, multimodal account of the body, his work integrates different media and creative practices and may take the form of fixed media audio, installation pieces and multimedia works.
http://cargocollective.com/yiannischristofides

Informal Strategies
In the summer of 2011 the collective Informal Strategies was born. Under this name we, Doris Denekamp and Geert van Mil – both visual artists – team up in order to actively learn about and react upon our contemporary environment with its progressive neoliberal ideas and devouring capitalism. Through self-education, following alternating curricula, proceeding not unlike the knight of a chess game, we open up alternative histories and unlikely futures.
http://www.informalstrategies.org/

Nathania Rubin
Nathania Rubin is an artist working primarily in hand-drawn animation and drawing/video installation. Her work investigates the relationship between narrative and the formation of self. She explores the shifting nature of identity and its dependence on context through morphing drawings and their erasure.
http://www.nathaniarubin.com/

Melissanthi Saliba
Melissanthi Saliba is a media artist, designer, and researcher exploring cultural phenomena and practices in urban environments. Her work moves through a spectrum of multiple media forms and disciplines, including graphic design, photography, video and audio installation, design research and strategy, online environments, and data visualization. Drawing from an anthropocentric and anthropometric approach, her work explores the qualitative aspects of the subjective experience in the interactions between humans and the spaces that surround them.
http://melissanthisaliba.com/

Anna Witt
Anna Witt works with performative intervention and video installation, her practice deals with the construction of cultural stereotypes and individuals positioning, within social systems. Her works ambivalently sit between fictional re-enactment and documentary staging and represent the problematic of subject-formation in relation to identity politics, collectivity and citizenships rights.
http://www.annawitt.net/

Anna Kontopoulou
Anna Kontopoulou is an art historian, independent curator and artist based in London. As part of her curatorial-artistic practice she has worked with major galleries and museums in London, with a special interest in aural and visual cultures. She is currently working on her PhD in Kingston University and London Graduate School, investigating contemporary art’s potentional to enunciate social relations, alternative political and cultural forms.

Andreas Vrahimis
Andreas Vrahimis teaches at the University of Cyprus. His research interests include the History of Analytic Philosophy, Continental Philosophy and Metaphilosophy. His forthcoming book, titled Encounters between Analytic and Continental Philosophy (http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=647565) discusses the analytic-continental divide through examing a series of encounters leading representatives of either side.

Molleindustria
Since 2003, Molleindustria have been producing homeopathic remedies to the idiocy of mainstream entertainment in the form of free, short-form, online games. Their products range from satirical business simulations to meditations on labor and alienation, from playable theories to politically incorrect pseudo-games.
http://www.molleindustria.org/

Eumaster ART – VR _2012_13:
This working group has been created in the framework of the Greek-French master “Art, virtual reality and multiuser systems of artistic expression” of Athens School of Fine Arts and the University Paris 8 (1st year of studies, 2012-2013).

Participating students: Nefeli Georgakopoulou, Dionisis Zamplaras, Eleni-Ino Theodorou, Sophia Kourkoulakou, Bisbiki Vicky, Tina Papadopoulou, Demjaha Nora.
Participating teachers Manthos Santorineos, Stavroula Zoi, Nefeli Dimitriadi, Taxiarchis Diamantopoulos in collaboration with Dimitri Trakas.

description: The Greek-French Master Program with title “Art, virtual reality and multiuser systems of artistic expression” creates a hybrid artwork offering the joy of destruction as it appears in computer games, without even the need to know the rules. Using words as raw material, an edifice is built with the primary purpose to be destroyed or reconstructed?
http://www.eumaster.asfa.gr/

Lena Theodoropoulou
Lena Theodoropoulou is an art theorist and curator. She completed her BA at Panteion University, at the department of Media, Culture and Communication and her MA in Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths University, London. She has collaborated with various galleries and cultural institutions in London. She is currently based in Athens, where she collaborates on a permanent basis with the platform Create an Accident.
lena@createanaccident.com

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