Archives par étiquette : Eleni Kamma

Eleni Kamma, Valérie Sonnier, Jeroen Van Bergen, note pour trois expositions

1.

Le titre de cette nouvelle exposition de Valérie Sonnier, « Faire le photographe, II » – et par la même occasion de cette nouvelle série de dessins – fait à la fois appel au jeu et à la répétition de celui-ci. Au jeu, car faire le photographe, c’est un peu comme jouer au docteur. A la répétition du jeu, car le titre de cette exposition induit qu’il y eut un premier épisode. N’est-ce pas là d’ailleurs l’essence du jeu ? « Nous savons que pour l’enfant, la répétition est l’âme du jeu, écrivait Walter Benjamin (1) ; que rien ne fait davantage son bonheur que cet « encore une fois ». Le jeu, dès lors ne serait pas uniquement un « faire comme-ci », c’est aussi « un faire sans cesse ». Se référant à la notion freudienne de « l’au-delà du principe du plaisir », Benjamin précise : « L’obscure pulsion de répétition est à l’œuvre ici dans le jeu, à peine moins puissante, à peine moins rusée que l’instinct sexuel en amour. L’adulte soulage son cœur de ses frayeurs, jouit doublement d’un bonheur en le racontant. Et l’enfant se crée toute l’affaire à nouveau, recommence depuis le début encore une fois ».

Ces propos de Walter Benjamin résonnent singulièrement lorsqu’on considère les dessins de Valérie Sonnier. « Faire le photographe » est un ensemble de dessins tracés sur des pages de cahiers d’écolier, lignés ou quadrillés, un étrange et inquiétant ballet érotique entre une poupée, un squelette – marionnette à fils, un petit camion rouge et un pistolet à eau. A l’occasion de leur monstration, il n’était pas encore question d’un deuxième chapitre. Oui mais voilà, recommencer, c’est là, pour Valérie Sonnier, comme une nécessité. Elle a repris ces dessins. Et cette fois, au « faire comme si et même encore une fois » s’ajoute une notion d’échelle : celle de « faire en grand ». La monumentalité de ces dessins, la démesure dès lors de cette poupée d’antan et de cette marionnette mimant l’amour et la mort, accentuent encore la puissance de cette collision entre aube et crépuscule, au fil d’un sombre lien tissé entre la sexualité et la mort.

Professeur de dessin et de morphologie aux Beaux-arts de Paris depuis 2003, Valérie Sonnier jette des passerelles d’un médium à l’autre. Dessins, peintures, photographies et films Super 8 tissent des liens entre souvenirs intimes et mémoire collective de l’enfance. En Belgique, on a récemment vu ses œuvres à la Centrale for Contemporary Art à Bruxelles. Elle exposera en solo à Istanbul, dans le cadre de la foire Art International Istanbul, à la fin du mois de septembre.

2.
Mesure et démesure, maquettes en leurs boîtes d’origine à l’échelle du jeu d’enfant, répétition d’une expérience primitive, celle de la cella originelle, du plus petit espace habitable : Jeroen Van Bergen renoue lui aussi avec l’expérience du jeu, déclinant sans cesse un même principe constructeur. Sa « composition de tours en carrefour 003 » est sans doute son œuvre la plus monumentale et l’une des plus lilliputienne de toute sa production. Depuis une bonne dizaine d’années, Jeroen Van Bergen construit à toutes échelles des architectures dont le module de base est à la taille standard des toilettes au Pays Bas. Non sans humour, il applique cette standardisation de l’unité la plus petite habitable à toutes sortes de programmes. Que nous disent donc de l’architecture ces compositions de masse dès le moment où il assigne à son module habitable toutes notions exponentielles ? C’est bien sûr, en ce cas précis, de l’Empire State building à la Burj Khalifa, en passant par les tours Petronas ou la Willis Tower, le fantasme du gratte-ciel qui chatouille l’artiste. A l’échelle 1/100, son œuvre culmine à plus de 400 mètres de haut, en réalité à plus de quatre mètres, tandis que son module n’aura jamais été aussi lilliputien, nous renvoyant dès lors à un monde, si vaste et si complexe soit-il, où nous n’échappons pas à notre identité minuscule. Bart Verschaffel (2) faisait récemment remarquer qu’il n’y avait point (encore) de monuments aux morts dans les programmatiques architecturales Jeroen Van Bergen, mais que ce plus petit module habitable pourrait bien également servir de mausolée personnel. Les caisses de stockage de ces quatre tours, caisses de rangement de ce jeu de construction, installées dans l’espace en contrepoint de la maquette, comme son équivalent dynamique, pourraient bien être aussi de monumentaux catafalques d’un mythe des origines.

Basé à Maastricht, Jeroen Van Bergen sera l’hôte de la Province du Limbourg hollandais dès octobre. Il y présentera un ensemble de maquettes revisitant la Karl-Marx Allee berlinoise. Une plongée dans l’idéologie. Il expose également actuellement à Amsterdam, à la Cityscapes Gallery.

3.
Avec Eleni Kamma, sur un tout autre registre, il sera également question de monument, et même de monument aux morts, tout comme de jeu et de marionnettes. En résidence à Istanbul, Eleni Kamma s’est intéressée à la destruction du Monument commémoratif d’Ayastefanos, un monument ossuaire érigé à la gloire du soldat russe vainqueur de l’empire Ottoman, détruit, dans un climat nationaliste porté à son comble, dès les premiers jours du premier conflit mondial en 1914. Plus précisément, elle s’est proposée d’évoquer le film qui a été réalisé à cette occasion, film aujourd’hui disparu, fondateur du cinéma national turc. Ainsi, a-t-elle commandité un remake de celui-ci, confiant cette mission à un hayalî, un marionnettiste du Karagöz, ce traditionnel théâtre d’ombres dont le nom provient de celui de l’un de ses deux principaux personnages, Karagöz et Hacivat, théâtre d’ombres qui toujours exprime ce que ses spectateurs eux-mêmes n’osent dire de leur préoccupations morales, sociales et politiques. Les images du Karagöz sont projetées sur un écran de mousseline blanche que l’on nomme ayna, ce qui veut dire miroir. Dans l’esprit de ce dispositif miroitique, Eleni Kamma a conçu son installation vidéo comme une double projection. Ce jeu de miroir dépasse de loin le rappel d’un épisode historique. Entre réel et imaginaire, les jeux d’ombres et de lumière qu’elles révèlent entre film perdu, sources archivistiques, traditions populaires, satire sociale, contradictions et histoire politique activent la mémoire. Les images d’un théâtre d’ombre nous projettent dans le réel, celui, aujourd’hui d’une banlieue d’Istanbul, celui du monde aussi ; car on ne peut que penser aux actuelles contestations, au danger de l’actuelle montée en puissance des nationalismes, aux tentations d’expansions territoriales, à la situations des minorités, au choc des cultures ou aux conflits religieux.

De nationalité grecque, Eleni Kamma vit et travaille à Maastricht et Bruxelles. Elle participe actuellement à une exposition collective à Chypre dont elle est originaire et sera en résidence à Liège, cet automne, au RAVI, où elle projette de poursuivre les recherches entamées à Istanbul. En octobre, elle exposera quelques œuvres connexes au travail actuel à la Kunstraum de Düsseldorf.

(1), Walter Benjamin, Enfance, Eloge de la poupée et autres essais, réédition 2011
(2), Bart Verschaffel, the box: the beginning of architecture according to Jeroen van Bergen, Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht, 2011

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Olivier Foulon, Eleni Kamma, Aglaia Konrad, Villa Romana, Das Künstlerhaus in Florenz, à Bonn

Olivier Foulon, Eleni Kamma et Aglaia Konrad, tous trois anciens résidents de la Villa Romana à Florence participent à :

Villa Romana 1905–2013. Das Künstlerhaus in Florenz
22.11.2013 – 9.3.2014
Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 4, 53113 Bonn

Villa Romana

Founded by the German painter Max Klinger in 1905, the Villa Romana awards Fellowships, which include a stipend and a residency in Florence, to four outstanding German-based artists every year. The exhibition reflects the history of this site of artistic production and international exchange with reference to Villa Romana Fellows from the early years of the institution to today, and with works that specifically engage with the city of Florence.

Participating artists: Shannon Bool, Mariechen Danz, Heide Hinrichs, Daniel Maier-Reimer, Nine Budde, Sophie Reinhold, Yorgos Sapountzis, Eleni Kamma, Aglaia Konrad, Henrik Olesen, Thomas Kilpper, Rebecca Ann Tess, Martin Pfeifle, Anna Heidenhain, Anna Moeller, Eske Schlüters, Olivier Foulon, Kalin Lindena, Benjmain Yavuzsoy, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Asli Sungu, Dani Gal, Michail Pirgelis, Silke Markefka, Ines Schaber / Stefan Pente, Maya Schweitzer, Mario Rizzi, Edi Hila, Amelie von Wulffen, Max Neumann, Inge Höher, Superstudio, Ketty La Rocca, Georg Baselitz, Horst Antes, Karl Georg Pfahler, Anna Oppermann, André Thomkins, Artur Stoll, Norbert Tadeusz, Gotthard Graubner, Hans Purrmann, Rudolf Riester, Richard Pietzsch, Kurt Tuch, Max Klinger, Arnold Boecklin, Karl Stauffer-Bern
An exhibition of the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in cooperation with the Villa Romana e.V.

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Eleni Kamma, Emilio Lopez Menchero, So close yet so far, MUAS, Maastricht

MUAS_Program

The theme of this first MUAS is So close, yet so far. Or, in other words, things that are familiar to us seem to come from another world. The galleries are presenting artists who are close to us, and yet seem far away. They are taking the Maas-Rhine region as the starting point – an exciting region that offers a diversity of artistic milieus and debates.

Opening evening
All locations will open on Friday 8 November at 5 p.m.
After-openings party
Starting at 9 p.m., there will be a joint after-openings party in the foyer of the Theater aan het Vrijthof.
Guests will be treated to a performance by pianistcomposer Frank Bevet.
Opening hours
There are three days on which all locations will be open at the same time: during the openings weekend on Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 November and during the finissage on Saturday 7 December 2013. There are specific opening hours for each location on the other days (see the heart of the brochure).

Download the brochure : MUAS_Program

claquettes

Emilio Lopez Menchero, Claquettes 2011, vidéo, son, couleurs, 8’47.

« Claquettes » est une performance qui a eu lieu le 4 juin de 22h30’ à 22h 37’, dans le cadre du festival international de performances MOMENTUM dans les bâtiments de l’ancienne brasserie Bellevue à Bruxelles.
Souvent lorsqu’on me demande « que sais-tu faire de tes dix doigts ? »,explique Emilio Lopez Menchero, je réponds en claquant des doigts le plus rapidement possible, rare chose que j’arrive à faire parfois avec une certaine virtuosité… Assis, torse nu sur un tabouret, je suis auditivement isolé du public. Je porte un casque audio très isolant acoustiquement, relié à un ipod situé dans ma poche. Un projecteur de lumière ne se concentre que sur mon torse. A Momentum, le hasard porta le choix sur la chanson « Carmela » de Camarón de la Isla, mais cela peut-être une tout autre. Je réagis spontanément au rythme de la musique en claquant mes doigts et en tapant le sol avec mes bottes à talon (prestation que je fais avec le plus de dextérité possible). Le public n’entend évidemment rien de ce que j’écoute, et moi-même je n’entends ni les réactions du public, ni même le son que je produis.(Emilio Lopez Menchero)
Claquette a également été reproduite à Bern en 2011 pour le « Festival für Aktionskunst in Bern » ainsi qu’à Madrid au Mataderos Theatre durant “AccionMAD 2012”

glowfish

Eleni Kamma, GLO(W)FISH®, 2010, 3 min, 29 sec. High Definition video, color, sound, English spoken.

GLO(W)FISH® draws its inspiration from a series of 2004 Internet news about the first genetically modified house pets and the legal and ethical implications that occur from their commercial distribution. The first genetically altered house pets are ornamental fish that have been genetically modified in order to glow in the dark. Their trademark is Glofish®. The video elaborates on the complex set of relations between science, value and ornament (ornamental fish).
In GLO(W)FISH®, the relation between image and language is not linear. On the contrary, the production of meaning occurs through the gaps and ruptures between visual and textual narration. GLO(W)FISH® visual material consists of a series of shots taken in the backstages and the workspaces of a theater, one of the most emblematic places for the production of spectacle.
In the form of a recorded dialogue, four different voices exchange different parts of information concerning the topic of Glowfish; questions and answers concerning the plus and minus of the release of modified fish into the market, alternate with statements by glowfish researchers and scientists and parts of information concerning the phenomenon of glowing as examined by scientist Robert Boyle back in 1663.

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Eleni Kamma, the Mediterranean Experience, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki

The Mediterranean Experience:
The Mediterranean as a spatial paradigm for the circulation of ideas and meaning.
An introduction.
Curator: Denys Zacharopoulos
Exhibition presented by the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in the context of the main program of the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art.

The exhibition will be open on Tuesday 17 September 2013.
Duration: 18 September – 31 December 2013 The Mediterranean Experience: The Mediterranean as a spatial paradigm for the circulation of ideas and meaning. An introduction. Curator: Denys Zacharopoulos Exhibition presented by the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in the context of the main program of the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art. The exhibition will be open on Tuesday 17 September 2013. Duration: 18 September – 31 December 2013 The Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art presents, in the context of this year’s fourth edition of the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, the exhibition « The Mediterranean experience: The Mediterranean as a spatial paradigm for the circulation of ideas and meaning. An introduction », curated by Denys Zacharopoulos. The exhibition will open to the public on 17 September 2013 and will be visitable on the 18th of September, when the official inauguration of the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art will take place. As the artistic director of Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Denys Zacharopoulos notes: « The subject of ‘the Mediterranean’ has been extensively researched by the greatest historians of the twentieth century. In our exhibition « The Mediterranean experience: The Mediterranean as a spatial paradigm for the circulation of ideas and meaning, » we did not intend to follow a Braudelian approach or ponder on the composition of the cultural environment of a region that lies, in every conceivable way, at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa. Our approach and research are different; they are based on an intuition, which does not aspire to any kind of composition or even analysis, but simply represents an initial, tentative, critical and systematic taxonomy of our material. Our ambitions are rather modest. We have consciously limited ourselves to the collection of evidence, facts and works, purposely avoiding generalizations, ideological constructs and the pervasive folkloric depictions of the Mediterranean. Our definition of the Mediterranean experience is about people and things that are not directly related to the Mediterranean as a geographical and historical notion. The history of forms which focuses on quotidian practices and social representations, impressions, experiences and mentalities, now represents an important chapter of historical research, which deals with everyday life. Only rarely, however, are artistic practices and individual artworks studied in connection to the mentalities of everyday life. Even more rarely does art history recognize that artists, from Gustave Courbet onwards, emanate from or participate in everyday life and that their work is inspired by and addressed to their surrounding reality. Had it done so, it would have allowed one to realize that the experiences and practices of everyday life permute, or occasionally overturn, the standards and norms of intellectual, specialized artistic practice. »

The exhibition features works from the following artists: Marina Abramovi?, Art and Language, Isabelle Arthuis, Nikos Alexiou, Dimitris Alithinos, Alexis Akrithakis, Stephen Antonakos, Mona Breede, Alighiero Boetti, Miros?aw Baika, Marie Jos? Burki, Daniel Buren, Lothar Baumgarten, Marcel Broodthaers, Herbert Brandl, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Pier Paolo Calzolari, G?rard Collin-Thiébaut, Vlassis Caniaris, Lizzie Calligas, Ernst Caramelle, Lawrence Carroll, Cherif et Silvie Defraoui, Jimmie Durham, Diohandi, Danil, Diego Esposito, Donald Evans, Lionel Estève, Angus Fairhurst, Michel François, Agnès Fornells, Gaylen Gerber, Apostolos Georgiou, Rodney Graham, Giannis Gaitis, Giorgos Gyparakis, George Hadjimichalis, Giorgos Harvalias, Panos Haralambous, Lisa Haver, Jenny Holzer, Ann Veronica Janssens, Alain Jacquet, Mike Kelley, Ed Kienholz, Dionisis Kavallieratos, Joseph Kosuth, Tadashi Kawamata, Peter Kogler, Eleni Kamma, Aris Konstantinidis, Martin Kippenberger, Dimitris Kozaris, Nikos Kessanlis, William Klein, Niki Kanagini, Nikos Kouroussis, Richard Long, Jim Lutes, Robert Longo, Anna Lascari, Stathis Logothetis, George Lappas, Yorgos Lazongas, Matt Mullican, Juan Munoz, Come Mosta-Heirt, Reinhard Mucha, Cildo Meireles, Miltos Manetas, Eliseo Mattiacci, Erwan Mah?o, Max Neuhaus, NSK, Xavier Noiret-Thom?, Stratos Dontsis, Rivane Neuenschwander, Nikos Navridis, Gabriel Orozco, Meret Oppenheim, Dennis Oppenheim, Pino Pascali, Manfred Pernice, Emmanuel P?reire, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Maria Papadimitriou, Ilias Papailiakis, Leda Papaconstantinou, Rena Papaspyrou, Ulf Rollof, Jean-Pierre Raynaud, Patrick Raynaud, Chryssa Romanou, Thomas Struth, Thomas Schutte, Kostas Sahpazis, Remo Salvadori, Joe Scanlan, Adrian Schiess, Mariella Simoni, Georgia Sagri, Yorgos Sapountzis, Vasilis Skylakos, Kyrillos Sarris, readymades belong to everyone®, Filippos Tsitsopoulos, Petros Touloudis, Dimitris Tsoumplekas, Thanasis Totsikas, Takis, Theodoros, Henk Visch, Vassilis Vassilakakis, Franz West, Lawrence Wiener, Daniel Walravens, Constantin Xenakis, Georgios Xenos, Gilberto Zorio.

A special edition will published to accompany the exhibition. The exhibition team: Curator: Denys Zacharopoulos, Artistic Director, MMCA

Eleni Kamma

Eleni Kamma
Systèmes de construction II , 2008
Two stop-motion animation films projected simultaneously next to each other, 3:40 min

Systèmes de construction II is a proposition on how to look into a book. I produced a 50 page notebook by manually copying, page after page, the reproduction of a 15th century Turkish decorative tile. Going through the notebook from left to right, the form of the tile slowly shifts to Mondrian’s Boogie Woogie. From right to left, Boogie Woogie’s reproduction slowly shifts back to the Turkish tile. Confronted with the finished form of this notebook, in order to lower the inherent elements of this type of narrative object (the book with a beginning and an end, hierarchies),I decided to produce a stop-motion film consisting of two parts, projecting simultaneously next to each other two different versions of the same action: turning the pages of the notebook. Although this animation emphasizes the transformative nature of the notebook, the coexistence of the two asymmetrically mirrored parts disrupts and confuses the rhythm of the turning pages. The coexistence of the two equal-in-size projections produces a third space that superimposes itself on them, giving the final rhythm to the piece.(Eleni Kamma)

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Arco Madrid 2013, les images

Aglaia Konrad
CarraraCut, 2013
Pigment digital print on fibaprint mate 280gr and aluminium
(3) x 200 x 100 cm

Lopez Menchero Emilio
Teresa
2012
huile sur toile
130 x 115 cm

Lopez Menchero Emilio
Plastic Bag
2012
huile sur toile
100 x 80 cm

Eleni Kamma
From Bank to Bank on a Gradual Slope, 4 éléments, mixed media, variable dim, 2012.

Eleni Kamma
Karagöz
Mixed media on paper, 21 x 29,7 cm, 2012

Eleni Kamma
From Bank to Bank on a Gradual Slope, 4 elements, mixed media, variable dim, 2012

Eleni Kamma
Georgofili, 2012, 25 minutes, HD video, color, stereo sound, 16:9, Italian spoken, English Subtitles.

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Eleni Kamma, More Than One And Less Than Many, à propos de Georgofili

book_kamma

A l’occasion de son exposition au NAK, Eleni Kamma a édité une publication reprenant les 3 livrets des films « Georgofili », « P like Politics, P like Parrot » et « Malin & Tor, two architects in dialogue », trois films qui font partie de la série « Travelogues ». L’ouvrage est accompagné d’un entretien entre l’artiste et l’écrivaine Ines Chabes.

Image-2video

Extrait concernant « Georgofili »

I: Can you describe the creative processes behind your three Travelogues pieces… from arriving with your suitcase at a residency, not knowing the place, often not knowing the language, and maybe not even having an idea of what to do there…?

E: All of the Travelogues are the result of long processes. In Georgofili, I was initially very interested in the question of landscape and agriculture, and I was searching for historical dialogues that related to this question. I had worked with the dialogue format before. In my first dialogue-related work, I was interested in the alternation between a dialogue as a theatrical event and the spontaneous comments of the performers related to the dialogue that followed each rehearsal. In Florence, I wanted to dig deeper into the format.

I: Did you use the historical dialogues as research material or as dialogues themselves?

E: The latter. I think there is a lot of interesting existing material around. It is enough for me to edit and recontextualize it. Together with Angelika Stepken, the director of the Villa Romana, I visited the Gabinetto Vieusseux, an old, literary Florentine Gabinetto. We spoke with Maurizio Bossi there and I told him what I was looking for. He explained me how the Tuscan landscape was inextricably linked to aesthetic as well as social and political questions, and he came up with some dialogues. They were compiled in the Tuscan Agrarian Journal dialogues, written by members of the Academia of Georgofili and published by the Gabinetto Vieusseux. The Academia of Georgofili was founded in Florence in 1757 in order to promote the use of science in agriculture. The three dialogues Maurizio Bossi offered were published in 1827 and 1835. It was the period of enlightened despotism. The owner of the land felt that he had the responsibility to educate the peasants. Thus the dialogues are stories with a moral conclusion. The peasant women were taught not to go into debt, and the peasants to economize time. The texts also introduce the function of a bank and the virtue of saving one’s money.

I: Do you know how the dialogues were used?

E: No, I do not. Maybe they were a script for a play, performed from one village to another, or maybe the landlord read them to the peasants. Today, formats of vocal social organization where many people participate are not very popular in Florence. But the old genre of the contrasto, a “conflicting coexistence” of two performers, is still popular. Tuscan contrastos take the form of a verbal duel between two poets. I wanted to work in a way that would be looking from a distance at Florence’s spectacular past. In my study of the city, I became interested in a type of theatrical performance or spectacle, with music and often dance, which was performed between the acts of a play to celebrate special occasions in Italian courts. The intermedio—intermezzo in the Italian Renaissance—was one of the important predecessors to the opera, and I could detect remnants of the intermezzo’s extravagant structure in contemporary Florence: its pluralism and complexity, and its transition from life into art. The intermezzo has been a very influential and inspiring guide in my attempts to join different elements as the contrasto and the educational dialogues. I wanted to use them for a new work on contemporary Florence without limiting them to their historical purposes. I thought about actors rehearsing them, and discussing contemporary Italy between the rehearsals. I was also hoping that the “poets of the street” Emilio Meliano and Realdo Tonti would like to join the conversation and to compose a new text regarding their own perspective.

I: How did they do?

E: They wanted to do it as a professional performance, which means I had to hire them. We did the recording in a farm in Tuscany with a small audience. I introduced the topic, and explained what I was interested in and they decided how they would work: they took opposing positions. One defended the past and the other the present. I didn’t know what the outcome would be. It was totally up to them. It was a complicated and difficult process. They improvise. They have to respond to each other in rhyme: the eighth verse of the first poet has to rhyme with the first verse of the second poet. It’s an oral tradition.

I: So you didn’t give them any material?

E: I gave them my area of interest and the historical dialogues. I was interested in contemporary Tuscany, the landscape, how it had changed, what was there before and what is there now. I was also interested in the economy of the place and the acoustics of the space.

I: What is your role in this whole process as an “outsider”? Do you start a discussion that brings things to the surface? I feel it is quite courageous to go to Florence and start a discussion on landscape.

E: Why do you think so?

I: Because it is such a cliché.

E: I really like working with clichés. The cliché presents a possibility for understanding what people are sharing. One can start from there.

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Arco 2013 preview, Eleni Kamma. Highlight

Arco 2013 Madrid invite les galeries participantes à mettre le travail d’un artiste particulier en évidence. Eleni Kamma montrera un ensemble d’oeuvres, installation, films et dessins, dont une bonne part du travail réalisé lors d’une résidence à la Villa Romana à Firenze, travail récemment montré au Neue Kunstverein de Aachen en Allemagne.

Eleni Kamma, Georgofili

Georgofili, 2012, 25 minutes, HD video, color, stereo sound, 16:9, Italian spoken, English Subtitles, NL

Eleni Kamma’s practice is informed by the inherent gaps and contradictions within existing cultural narratives and structures. By revisiting systems of classification and strategies of description and taxonomy, she examines the relation of the cliché, the banal and the stereotype, to the formation of history and the production of meaning. Her recent body of work examines how can words and images co-exist and create meaning by disrupting it; make sense by seemingly letting meaning collapse.

The starting point for this exhibition, whose title is taken from the sonnet of Averardo Genovesi from 1838, is the film “Georgofili”*, a 27 minutes HD film produced in 2012, for the purposes of which Kamma conducted research during her residency at the Villa Romana, as an international visiting artist in 2010 and 2011. Throughout “Georgofili”, an assemblage of different in time voices of Italy takes place. The old genre of Tuscan “Contrasto” verbal duels, in which the performers-poets Emilio Meliano and Realdo Tonti use their arguing skills to debate the politics and morality of contemporary Italy, meets historical educational dialogues from the age of enlightened despotism, performed and commented by the young Italian actors Lavinia Parisi and Marco Rustioni.

The exhibition “From Bank to Bank on a Gradual Slope” stages the premiere of the film among a selection of found objects placed on shelving structures developed specifically for the rooms of the Villa Romana in collaboration with the Belgian architect Breg Horemans. Windows and doors of the main exhibition rooms are projected along their own axis, until the point where they interfere. These crossing points shape the outline of the flexible and adjustable shelving structures.

The exhibition is accompanied by a printed edition of the Georgofili script, designed by Salome Schmuki. “From Bank to Bank on a Gradual Slope” openly invites the viewer to a spatial exploration between lived experience and a simultaneous reflection of contemporary Florence.

The Accademia dei Georgofili (Academy of Georofili) was established in Florence in 1753. The academy has been an historic institution for over 250 years, and is best known for promoting amongst scholars and landowners, the studying of agronomy, forestry, economy, geography, and agriculture. The Accademia dei Georgofili was founded with the declared aim of “making continuous and well regulated experiments and observations to bring to perfection the ever so pleasant and useful art of Tuscan cultivation”. Since then, the name Georgofili has been synonymous of the development of the science and technology associated with agriculture, the study and protection of the environment and the landscape, urban development and socio-economic progress. The term Georgofili comes from the Greek, and literally means “earth-lovers”

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From Bank to Bank on a Gradual Slope, 4 éléments, mixed media, variable dim, 2012

From Bank to Bank on a Gradual Slope, 4 éléments, mixed media, variable dim, 2012

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Malin and Tor (Two Architects in Conversation), 2011
33:16 minutes, HD video, color, stereo sound, 16:9, English spoken, NL

In March 2011, a discussion was conducted between Malin Zimm and Tor Lindstrand, during Architecture Museet Stockholm (25.1 – 13.3 2011). The physical space where the discussion took place was filmed ten days later, during the preparation works for the staging of the next exhibition.
Malin and Tor : Two architects in conversation follows in two episodes the discursive exchanges between the two aforementioned architects. The fist part of their conversation articulates around an analysis of the crisis of the speculative element in contemporary architecture, paired with a reflexion on the “spectacular” fashion, as a current operational mode, mirrored by the very alteration of the meaning of their etymological radical. Background for this video is the mobile, evolving and precisely anti-spectacular setting of a room of the Arkitektuurmuseet, filmed while an exhibition is being mounted. As such, through the very explorative and rotating use of the camera, the decor functions as a sort of fragile organic filter, acting as a meaningful metaphoric counterpoint to a reflexion of the spectacular role / dimension of architecture in the social fabric.
In the second part of the video, the two architects resume their conversation by tackling i.a. the phenomenon of the success and flowering of singing choirs apprehended as a sort of social architecture, which may sometimes be seen as “absorbing the lack of talents”, whilst revealing the need of a sense of community and offering the possibility for a mediated discursive social expression.

P Like Politics, P Like Parrots, 2011
17:42 minutes, HD video, color, stereo, English and Swedish spoken, NL

A specific rehearsal of the amateur choir of the Parish of Bräcke
The composition of the text proposed by Kamma and rehearsed by the singers, originates in the rhythm and structure of the famous hands game “Paper-Rock-Scissors” progressively subverting it through the inclusion of political P- words, all (not so) randomly chosen from a 2003 speech by George W. Bush and introducing the concepts of public, common sphere vs. private one, power vs. people etc. The casually repetitive, alternating character of the seemingly endless game offers an indirect metaphor on the arbitrary functioning of our political systems, apprehended as a carousel-like vortex.

Le travail d’Eleni Kamma se caractérise par l’association d’éléments qui appartiennent à la culture au sens large – parfois certains d’entre eux relèvent d’une culture particulière – qui entraînent donc avec eux un certain nombre de présupposés. Ils peuvent aussi bien relever du texte, de l’image ou du monde des objets domestiques. En les extrayant de leur contexte, Kamma leur attribue une puissance poétique; en les associant, elle ouvre à la fabrication d’histoires. En cela, son travail est proche du montage cinématographique au sens où Dziga Vertov ou Jean-Luc Godard ont pu le pratiquer : la création d’interstices dans lesquels se niche l’essentiel. Ils déconstruisent les idées reçues et défont la passivité du visiteur/spectateur.
Dans la première vidéo, ‘Malin and Tor : Two architects in conversation’, deux architectes d’abord discutent de la crise de l’architecture contemporaine en regrettant sa propension au spectaculaire, ensuite leur échange glisse sur le succès que rencontre, dans la société suédoise, la pratique chorale. Ils y voient un espace d’expression individuelle et collective exemplaire de nouvelles relations sociales. Tandis que leur dialogue se déroule, la caméra explore lentement l’espace d’une salle d’exposition en plein montage sans se préoccuper de ce qu’elle filme – des silhouettes s’activent, un mur occupe tout le cadre, une fenêtre jette une lueur au loin, etc. La disjonction de l’image et du son paraît flagrante tant leur conversation feutrée s’éloigne des bribes de construction que l’on aperçoit, mais nous ignorons quel en sera le résultat. La seconde vidéo ‘P like Politics’, comme une réponse à l’évocation des chorales par le couple d’architectes, nous plonge dans la répétition de l’une d’entre elles. A l’image, la même exploration lente de l’espace laisse apparaître un lieu plus ‘habité’ – du mobilier de bois blond, des tapis, du parquet – ; d’un léger brouhaha, un chant ou plutôt la scansion rythmée d’un texte émerge. « Paper Rock Scissors » – mots récurrents du récitatif – donnent le ton. Les mots qui se suivent commencent par P (president, power, progress, policy, etc.) et viennent tous d’un discours de G.W.Buch de 2003. Là encore la disjonction est présente entre l’attente que les architectes projetaient sur la chorale et les mots que ces derniers enchaînent. Entre les deux, des perroquets peints sur des partitions reflètent plus qu’ils n’illustrent un conte persan que l’on peut écouter. S’ils servent de trait d’union entre les deux vidéos, ils sont aussi la métaphore et le questionnement de la notion de liberté au coeur des questions soulevées par l’installation : celle d’un vivre ensemble dans notre espace/temps (Colette Dubois, dans HART).

P Like Politics, P Like Parrots, 2011, 17 prints 21 x 29,7 cm

Eleni Kamma, 2010
Enlever et Entretenir / the drawings
Ink markers on tracing paper, 21 x 29.5 cm.

KaragozMA4_

Eleni Kamma, 2012
Karagöz
technique mixte sur papier, 21 x 29,7 cm

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Eleni Kamma, Aglaia Konrad, Emilio Lopez Menchero, ARCO 2013 Madrid

ARCO general negro info bilingue

La galerie participe à Arco 2013

– Eleni Kamma
– Aglaia Konrad
– Emilio Lopez Menchero

Professionals: Wednesday 13, from noon to 9 pm & Thursday 14, from noon to 8 pm.
General public: Friday 15, Saturday 16 & Sunday 17, from noon to 8 pm.

Halls 8 & 10 at Feria de Madrid

Plus d’informations 

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Eleni Kamma, “P like Politics, P like Parrots”, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art

Curated by: Denys Zacharopoulos and Alexios Papazacharias
Duration: 2  February- 24 March 2013
Opening night: Friday, 1 February 2013, 20:00

Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art presents Eleni Kamma’s exhibition “P like Politics, P like Parrots”, curated by Denys Zacharopoulos and Alexios Papazacharias and produced by Eleni Kamma in collaboration with the Museum Alex Mylona – MMCA.  The opening reception will take place on Tuesday 12th of June, at 20.30. The installation presented has been specifically developed for the Museum MMCA in collaboration with Belgian architect Breg Horemans and is accompanied by a special edition-200 copies only-catalogue designed by Salome Schmuki.

“What is unlikely to happen never goes alone. With this happy closing phrase, a real golden key for a sonnet, breakfast came to an end.”

Jose Saramago, Seeing

Eleni Kamma’s solo exhibition, P like Politics, P like Parrots, is the first part of a trilogy investigating possible and manifested contemporary European notions of common place created at the crossroads of music and architectural practices. Kamma examines the notion of spectacle in spaces of production such as the Lijnbaankwartier, the back stages of Architecture Museum in Stockholm, or public spaces like the piazalle Michelangelo in Florence. Through folding and unfolding gestures in emblematic places and spaces, a series of paradoxical hypotheses and strange identification experiments develop in her latest videos, drawings, and objects. Each result of these experiments verifies a hypothesis, which enables the creation of relations that reveal hidden common ground between different models and systems in Kamma’s work.

The exhibition develops, extends, engages and connects the two videos the artist created in Sweden in 2011, with the architectural space of MMCA. Inspired by the social phenomenon of choirs in Scandinavian countries, the videos P like Politics, P like Parrots and Malin and Τor: two architects in conversation mark the starting points of a single installation, where the whole and its parts coexist in order to create an interlude. Kamma undermines identification mechanisms and concept- generating procedures, gradually revealing the manipulation and speculation of experience, opinion, aesthetics, knowledge and history.

In Greece, museums are usually defined as places of preservation and exhibition of Greek antiquities and Greek tradition. Kamma’s work strongly comments on the role of the museum as a dynamic social structure with an active social role, turning the museum into a place of social coexistence, where the creation of meaning and history is not due to a single man or authority. At a turning moment of big economic and social uncertainty in Greece, Kamma’s solo exhibition at Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki and Museum Alex Mylona-MMCA Athens, where the exhibition took place in 2012 is an open invitation to the citizens of both cities. Self-mirroring, self-reflective processes introduce the public to different social forms and practices, proving that ideas and interpretations emerge from the actions and choices taken by an open and wide society.

Eleni Kamma

Curriculum Vitae

Eleni Kamma was born in 1973 in Athens. She studied painting at Athens School of Fine Art (1995-2000) and at Chelsea College of Art & Design, London (MA Fine Art 2001-2002). Between 2008 and 2010 she was a Post-Graduate Fine Art Researcher at the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht, on a scholarship from the Dutch state. She lives and works in Maastricht and Brussels, where she participated in the 2010 WIELS Artist-In-Residency Program.

In 2007, Eleni Kamma was a nominee for the 5th Deste Award and was awarded the Premio Stima Lissone Award. Solo exhibitions include:From Bank to Bank on a gradual slope ,Villa Romana,Florence (2012), Enlever et Entretenir IΙ, WIELS, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Brussels (2011), Enlever et Entretenir I, HEDAH,Maastricht (2010), Forgotten Ties, Nadja Villene, Lieges, (2009), Once past the years of green emotion, Lorainι Alimantiri/gazonrouge, Athens (2007). Her work has been included in numerous group shows, such as: On Dilettantism, ACC Weimar (2012), Found in Translation,Chapter L, Casino Luxembourg, (2011), Botanies of Desire, SALT Beyoglu, Istanbul (2011), Animacall-The Animation project, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, (2011), Weaving In and Out, No Longer Empty/Tapestry, New York (2010), Visual Dialoges, Onassis Cultural Centre (2010), Expanded Ecologies, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (2009), Chanting Baldessari, Museum Bonnefanten, Maastricht, Holland (2008), 1st International Moscow Young Biennial, Moscow, Russia (2008), L’Art en Europe, Domain Pommery, Rheims, France (2008), In Present Tense. Young Greek Artists. National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (2007), Lissone 2007 Award, Lissone, Museum of Contemporary Art, Milan (2007), 10th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2007), Other Spaces, 1st Thessaloniki Contemporary Art Biennial: “Heterotopias”, Thessaloniki (2007), 5th DESTE Prize, DESTE Foundation, Athens (2007).
In 2011 Kamma was a resident artist at the IASPIS Residency Program of Stockholm, at Villa Romana, Florence and at Duende, Rotterdam. In 2012 she was awarded the prize PREIS FÜR JUNGE KUNST by Neuer Kunstverein of Aachen, Germany.

Eleni Kamma

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Eleni Kamma, Aglaia Konrad, Screening Brussels, Temporary Gallery Koln

Screening Room: Brussels » presents a selection of current international artist films that have been compiled in cooperation with Brussels based art institutions, galleries, art producers and artists: Auguste Orts, dépendance, gerlach en koop, Aglaia Konrad, Tulips & Roses, VidalCuglietta and Wiels. Following « Screening Room: Cologne » and « Screening Room: Dublin », Brussels is the third city the ongoing film series is focussing on the art scene of a specific city. Named after the eponymous TV format « Screening Room » that has been developed and moderated by the American Documentary filmmaker Robert Gardner and aired by the Boston TV broadcast company WCVB between 1973 and 1980, it explicitely gives the voice to the new generation of filmmakers and artists of the avantgarde and experimental film.

MO, 10.12.2012
FATAL ECLIPSES

Patricia Esquivias: Natures at Hand, 2011, 3:48 min
Lisa Tan: Sunsets, 2012, 22:30 min
Peter Wächtler: Tim and Racky, 2011, 59:38 min
Chris Kraus: Sadness at Leaving, 1992, 18:57 min

DI, 11.12.2012
THE SOUNDS OF ELEMENTS

Wim Catrysse: MSR, 2012, 40 min
Aglaia Konrad: Concrete & Samples III, Carrara, 2010, 19 min
Theo Cowley: Untitled, 2012, 5 min
Eleni Kamma: The Tuner’s Monologue, 2012, 13:09 min
Shelly Nadashy: Medium, 2012, 9:24 min
Rosalind Nashashibi: Open Day, 2001, 11:45 min

MI, 12.12.2012
PUT ON STAGES

Simona Denicolai & Ivo Provoost: A dream called Macba, moca, moma, etc., 2010, 9:19 min
Markus Selg: Storrada, 2011, 23:21 min
Francisca Lambrecht: Ideaaahhhl, 2008, 44:26 min
Grace Schwindt: Tenant, 2012, 78:06 min

Ort / Location:
Temporary Gallery
Mauritiuswall 35
50676 Köln
Germany
www.temporarygallery.org

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