sabato 17 novembre 2012

Spazi Docili @ Synthetic Zero, Bronx Art Space, New York

 
Spazi Docili [Docile Spaces]
Synthetic Zero

a cura di Mitsu Hadeishi e Jo Q. Nelson
Bronx Art Space, NY
305 E. 140th St., #1A, Bronx NY 10454
17 novembre, ore 19-22

Spazi Docili partecipa alla mostra Synthetic Zero con un video che racconta la costruzione della statua di Sant'Orsola e la processione in San Lorenzo.


Il convento si Sant’Orsola, fondato nel 1309, si trova nel pieno centro di Firenze, a meno di 500 m dal Duomo e a 200 m dalla chiesa di S.Lorenzo con le sue celebri tombe medicee realizzate da Michelangelo. Negli ultimi due secoli ha svolto le funzioni di scuola di equitazione, Manifattura Tabacchi, ricovero per sfrattati, Opera Universitaria. Nel 1985 nasce l’idea di realizzarvi una caserma della Guardia di Finanza. I lavori di ristrutturazione vengono interrotti nel 1990.

Da questo momento il complesso diviene inaccessibile, viene recintato da una gabbia di ponteggi e lamiere e diventa ‘ostaggio’ della burocrazia a causa delle difficoltà nello sbloccare un bene demaniale. Nel frattempo la zona si degrada con problemi di sporcizia, delinquenza e spaccio.

Il 21 ottobre 2009 Spazi Docili realizza con l'aiuto del quartiere e dell'Associazione ‘Insieme per San Lorenzo’ la statua di Sant'Orsola, che viene poi portata in processione per le vie di Firenze. Il clamore per questa azione riporta all’attenzione dei media e della città la vicenda del complesso.

Da allora la statua è divenuta proprietà collettiva degli abitanti del quartiere, che con orgoglio la espongono a rotazione nei locali e nei negozi dell’area.



Spazi Docili [Docile Spaces]
Synthetic Zero

curated by Mitsu Hadeishi and Jo Q. Nelson
Bronx Art Space, NY
305 E. 140th St., #1A, Bronx NY 10454
November 17th, 7-10 pm

Spazi Docili [Docile Spaces] takes part to the Synthetic Zero event with a video about the construction of the Sant'Orsola (St. Ursula) statue and the procession through San Lorenzo quarter.


The Sant’Orsola Monastery, founded in 1309, is in the very centre of Florence, less than 500 meters far from the Cathedral and 200 meters far from the church of San Lorenzo, which hosts the famous Michelangelo's Medici tombs. In the last two centuries it has been a riding school, a Tobacco Factory, a shelter for evicted people, a part of the Florentine University. In 1985 a project to use the convent for the Guardia di Finanza (Financial Police) barracks is approved. Renovations are interrupted in 1990.

From this moment the complex becomes inaccessible, enclosed by a cage of scaffolding and metal plates and is taken 'hostage' by the bureaucracy due to difficulties in releasing a property of the State. Meanwhile the area degrades with litter problems, delinquency and drug dealing.

On October 21st, 2009 Spazi Docili [Docile Spaces], helped by the people of the quarter and by the association ‘Insieme per San Lorenzo’ (Together for San Lorenzo), creates the statue of St. Ursula, which is then carried in procession through the streets of Florence. The sensation for this action calls again the media and city attention to the story of the complex.

Since then the statue has become a collective property of the people of the district, which proudly displays it in rotation in several venues and shops of the area.


 

performance
Steve Rossi - "Reciprocal Ladder" - sculptural performance - Beacon, NY  
Zeesy Powers - "I Will Tell You Exactly What I Think of You" - performance - Toronto, Ontario

experimental video
Nino Strohecker - "Adults Only" - Stockholm, Sweden  
Michael Betancourt - "Star Fish" - Savannah, GA  
Ellie Irons - "Phytoplastic" - Brooklyn NY  
Hope Esser - "And Both Shall Row" - Chicago, IL 
José Simões - "Pim Pam" - Porto, Portugal  
Stefan Riebel - "Untitled 25" - Berlin, Germany  
Davina Lee - "Bright" - Saint Lucia  
Hui Husan Hsu -"Reading" - Edinburgh, UK 
Peter Bo Rappmund - "Three/3: In the Ocean, On Land" - Laguna Beach, CA  
Chiara Passa - "Tales From Space" - Rome, Italy  
Spazi Docili - "Procession through San Lorenzo Market" - Florence, Italy  
Yoav Ruda - "In the Dark Room" - Tel Aviv, Israel  
Charles Chadwick - "1000 Years Alive" - South San Francisco, CA

installations
Chad Stayrook and Julia Oldham - "Anomaly Meter" - installation - New York, NY 
Heather Warren-Crow - "HashtagConfession" - audio installation - Milwaukee, WI  
Grace Kim - "Everness" - video installation - New York, NY / Berlin, Germany  
Lucho Soldevilla - "Manchinery" - video installation - Lima, Peru  
Josef Bares - "Crossing Yangpu Bridge" - video installation - Prague, Czech Republic  
Stefan Riebel - video installation and "Untitled 25" video - Berlin, Germany

still work
Nino Strohecker - photography - Stockholm, Sweden 
Alyssa Casey - sculpture - Brooklyn, NY 
Anna Lise Jensen - photography - Brooklyn, NY  
Laura F. Gibellini - mapping images - New York, NY  
Robert Gould - mixed media - Brooklyn, NY  
Annette Rusin - sculpture - Brooklyn, NY  
Lauren Puchowski - sculpture - Jersey City, NJ  
Steve Rossi - "Sidewalk Alchemy" and "Reciprocal Ladder" - prints and sculpture - Beacon, NY

 Spazi Docili - Processione attraverso il mercato San Lorenzo con la statua di Sant'Orsola (2009, foto Chiara Carlomagno)
Spazi Docili [Docile Spaces] - Procession through the San Lorenzo market with the Sant'orsola statue (
2009, photo by Chiara Carlomagno)

domenica 11 novembre 2012

Intervento di Spazi Docili in Santa Croce / Spazi Docili [Docile Spaces]'s intervention in Santa Croce

Piazzale Santa Croce, uno degli spazi più straordinari di Firenze, è stato concesso in questi giorni (3-11 novembre 2012) alla rassegna 'Florens' per ospitare una gigantesca installazione, definita dal suo autore, l'artista Mimmo Paladino, come site-specific.

Santa Croce square, one of the most exceptional spaces in Florence, has been granted in these days (November 3rd-11th, 2012) to the 'Florens' Festival to host a gigantic installation, defined by its author, the artist Mimmo Paladino, as site-specific.


L'installazione, una enorme croce costituita da blocchi di marmo ed elementi in metallo tipici della poetica di Paladino, è stata commentata massicciamente su vari media locali e nazionali come un grande successo a causa della partecipazione popolare.

The installation, a huge cross made ​​of marble blocks and metal elements - typical for Paladino - has been extensively commented on various local and national media as a great success due to the participation of the people.


Perplessi per questa insistenza dei media, abbiamo deciso di studiare il lavoro da vicino. E l'analisi dell'opera ci ha stimolato a portare nel mondo reale quello che è stato il nostro primo commento, a caldo, nel mondo virtuale, sulla pagina Facebook di Spazi Docili:

"Il sistema dell'arte italiano è un castello assediato difeso da una manciata di soldati che cerca strenuamente di impedire l'apertura di un qualsiasi varco. E non appena un varco, nonostante tutto, si apre, colui che è riuscito a penetrare nel sacro recinto corre immediatamente in soccorso degli assediati, incominciando a sua volta a buttare pietre e olio ardente su coloro che gli erano compagni fino ad un attimo prima. E così castello e corte rimangono sempre al loro posto, intangibili, imbelli e leggermente annoiati..."

Vedi online: facebook.com/SpaziDocili/posts/161781310635

Ne è risultato un intervento che è allo stesso tempo segno fisico, riflessione critica, immagine, manipolazione di media diversi, racconto, fotografia, discussione e confronto pubblico, statement politico...insomma un gran groviglio di segni.

Puzzled by the insistence of the media, we decided to study the artwork closely. The analysis of the work encouraged us to bring into the real world our very first comment, made in the virtual world of Facebook, on the Spazi Docili [Docile Spaces] page:

"The Italian art system is a besieged castle defended by a handful of soldiers who tries strenuously to prevent the opening of any breach. As soon as a breach, in spite of everything, is opened, the one who is able to penetrate the sacred precint immediately runs to besieged people's aid, beginning to throw stones and hot oil on those who were his companions until a moment before. So the castle and the court keep always their place, intangible, unwarlike and slightly bored ..."

Read it online:
facebook.com/SpaziDocili/posts/16181310635

The result was an intervention which is at the same time a material sign, a critical reflection, an image, a manipulation of different media, a story, a photographic work, a discussion and a public debate, a political statement ... in short, a great tangle of signs.


Ci è venuto naturale sfruttare la retorica della partecipazione dietro cui si è voluta nascondere questa operazione. Al pubblico infatti non è stato impedito il rapporto fisico con l'opera ("L'accesso all'opera è libero, ma si invita a procedervi con cautela. Gli organizzatori declinano ogni responsabilità per i danni che possano derivare dal suddetto accesso" - non è chiaro cosa si intenda con 'accesso' e non è chiaro se si parli di 'danni' all'opera o ai suoi fruitori), che ben presto si è riempita di segni, spesso limitantisi a copiare la forma degli elementi in metallo, come auspicato dall'autore. Molte persone hanno fatto di tutto pur di portarsi a casa un souvenir, giungendo a spicconare i blocchi di marmo.

It was natural for us to exploit the rhetoric of participation shielding this whole operation. A physical access to the artwork was in fact not forbidden to the public ("The access to the work of art is free, but we strongly invite to proceed with extreme caution. The organisers decline any responsibility for any damages caused by above mentioned access" - it is not clear what is meant by 'access' and it is not clear whether they are talking about 'damages' to the artwork or to its users). The installation soon became full of signs, often simple copies of the shapes of the metallic elements, as asked by the author. Many people did anything to take home a souvenir, even breaking the marble blocks.


La nostra semplice azione di commento ha provocato interesse e sconcerto in quanto voce discordante. Molti hanno colto il carattere non estemporaneo o banale da scarabocchio nonché il valore di riflessione e di critica del nostro testo. Ne sono nate diverse discussioni con varie persone e un gran numero di fotografie della nostra 'aggiunta'. Come conseguenza stanno comparendo in questi giorni sul web foto del nostro testo con riflessioni collegate. Il gioco di specchi è riuscito.

Our simple commenting action caused interest and bewilderment as a dissenting voice. Many people noted the value of reflection and criticism of our text, not perceived as improvised or banal. Several discussions with various people and a large number of photographs arose from our 'contribution'. As a result in these days on the web are appearing photos of our text with personal reflections. The game of mirrors was successful.


Riguardo l'installazione in sé, non possiamo fare a meno di notare come essa sia un vero e proprio dispositivo estetico. Qualunque tipo di feedback, infatti, dall'accettazione totale al rifiuto totale, fino ad arrivare al tentativo di distruzione fisica dell'opera, è stato fatto rientrare nel dispositivo retorico spacciato dai media come 'partecipazione'.

Regarding the installation itself, we can't avoid to notice that it is a veritable aesthetic dispositif. Any kind of feedback, in fact, from total acceptance to total rejection, up to the attempt to physically destroy the artwork, turns out to be useful for the rhetorical dispositif passed off by the media as 'participation'.


Impensabile infatti che un cambiamento così enorme del paesaggio del quartiere/della città non generasse reazioni nella cittadinanza. Anche portare la sagra della porchetta o aprire un parco giochi per bambini avrebbe causato grande risposta popolare. Basta questo a definirla 'partecipazione'? Basta la mera presenza del pubblico, a prescindere dalla reazione, a definire come 'partecipativa' un'installazione del genere? Basta il fatto che si disegnino manine dove ci sono mani scolpite e stelline dove ci sono stelle in metallo per dichiarare l'opera un successo?

It's impossible to think that a so huge alteration of the district / city landscape would have not been able to cause reactions. A pork chop festival or a children's playground would have caused a great popular response as well. Is this enough to define it 'participation'? Is the mere presence of the public, regardless of the kind of reaction, enough to define as 'participatory' an installation like this? Is people drawing little hands near some carved hands and little stars near a metal star enough to declare this work a success?


E' come se alla finta partecipazione di eventi come i '100 luoghi' (quest'anno finiti assai male) il Potere sentisse la necessità di dare immagine visibile, tangibile, adoperando i linguaggi estetici e generando un intervento del genere.
Non si può fare a meno di notare come la medializzazione della politica degli ultimi decenni abbia ormai tramutato in orpello anche quelle pratiche socio-politiche novecentesche (come la 'partecipazione' propriamente attuata) che non meriterebbero di essere buttate nella pattumiera storica dell'occidente post-caduta del muro di Berlino.

It's as if the Power felt the urge to give a visible, tangible image to the fake participation of events such as the '100 places' (this year this event ended quite badly) using aesthetic languages ​​and generating an intervention like this.
One can not help but notice how the mediatisation of politics in recent decades has turned into a tinsel also these socio-political practices of the twentieth century (such as the properly implemented
'participation') which would not deserve to be thrown into the historic dustbin of the West post-fall-of-the-Berlin-Wall.


Questo tipo di interventi monumentali finisce invece per nascondere/rivelare dei modelli di potere molto chiari. E qui il messaggio per la gente è: potete fare quello che vi pare, tanto non cambia nulla. I cittadini possono solo osservare i dispositivi di potere, e magari bearsi dell'impressione di prendervi parte. Le decisioni si prendono altrove. Un modello 'contemplativo' di democrazia (nella città del David).

This kind of monumental interventions hides / reveals instead some very clear models of power. Here the message for the people is: you can do whatever you want, but nothing changes. Citizens can only observe the dispositifs of power, and maybe bask in the impression of participating. Decisions are taken elsewhere. A 'contemplative' model of democracy (in the city of the David).


Si è molto insistito nel dibattito sui media sulla presunta assenza di costi per il Comune di questo intervento monumentale.
Quand'anche fosse (anche se pare proprio di no) questo argomento risulta essere anch'esso un dispositivo retorico. Quanto vale, infatti, per l'artista e per il sistema che lo sostiene (galleristi, collezionisti, curatori, etc) un intervento così appariscente in uno spazio così prestigioso che non viene MAI concesso a nessuno? Quanti soldi genererà (non certo per la città) un'opera realizzata 'a costo zero'?

It was very emphasized in the public debate the alleged absence of costs for the City of this monumental intervention.
Even if it is true (although it seems not) this topic is also a rhetorical dispositif. How much is worth, in fact, for the artist and for the system that supports him (gallerists, collectors, curators, etc) a so conspicuous
intervention in a so prestigious space which is usually NEVER granted to anyone? How much money will generate (not for the city) a 'no-cost' artwork?


All'inizio di questo circolo vizio-virtuoso c'è ovviamente il sapere, la competenza, la comprensione: l'insegnamento della storia dell'arte sembra essere così trascurato in questo paese proprio per poter rendere più facilmente 'docili' quanti più spazi possibile.
L'Italia, infatti, è capace di generare costantemente un fruttuosissimo surplus (economico e culturale, perciò politico e di potere) tra la gestione del patrimonio storico, artistico e naturalistico (mantenuto della collettività) e il suo sfruttamento (di nuovo: economico e culturale, perciò politico e di potere), che va troppo spesso a vantaggio di troppo pochi.
E da qui nasce la necessità di esplorare i punti di contatto tra politica, arte pubblica, sistema dell'arte e linguaggi estetici. Necessità su cui si fonda un progetto come Spazi Docili.

At the beginning of this vicious-virtuous circle there is of course knowledge, competence, understanding: the teaching of art history seems to be so neglected in Italy just to make it easier to turn into 'docile' as many spaces as possible.
Italy is capable of
constantly generating a very profitable (economic and cultural and therefore regarding politics and power) surplus between the management of the historical, artistic and naturalistic heritage (maintained by the society) and its (again: economic and cultural and therefore regarding politics and power) exploitation, which is too often to the benefit of too few.
Here arises the need to explore the interactions between politics, public art, the art system and the aesthetic languages. A need a project like Spazi Docili [Docile Spaces] is founded on.

giovedì 1 novembre 2012

Spazi Docili @ INDIPENDENTS 3 - ArtVerona 2012


ArtVerona 2012
INDEPENDENTS
Verona, 18-22 ottobre

Padiglione 6
Quartiere fieristico di Verona
Ingresso: da viale del Lavoro

Spazi Docili è stato invitato a partecipare alla Fiera d’Arte ArtVerona nella sezione INDEPENDENTS, curata da Cristiano Seganfreddo per Fuoribiennale.
In questa occasione mostreremo una installazione dedicata al corpo mistico di un nuovo ‘re taumaturgo’ italiano. Porteremo in giro la Sua immagine, la onoreremo con opportuni rituali e sacrifici, ne discuteremo il potere salvifico (abbiamo già raccolto diverse testimonianze in proposito: in provincia di Livorno una bimba sembrerebbe essersi salvata dai marosi invocando semplicemente il Suo nome).

Spazi Docili [Docile Spaces] has been invited to the ArtVerona art fair, in the INDIPENDENTS 3 section, curated by Cristiano Seganfreddo for Fuoribiennale. 
In this occasion we will show an installation dedicated to the mystical body of the new Italian king-wizard. We will bring around His image, we will honor it with appropriate rituals and sacrifices, we will discuss His healing power (we already talked with many witnesses: in the Livorno province someone tells that a child has been saved from the waves by simply invoking His name).   



 


Preview: giovedì 18 ottobre dalle 14.00 (solo su invito)
Apertura al pubblico:
giovedì 18 ottobre dalle 15.30 alle 20.30;
venerdì 19 – domenica 21 dalle 10.30 alle 19.30;
lunedì 22 dalle 10.30 alle 15.00.

L'articolo di Stephanie Bailey per Art Papers sull'evento Hosted in Athens / Stephanie Bailey on Art Papers about 'Hosted in Athens' exhibition


HOSTED IN ATHENS:
A Social (re)Generation


Text / Stephanie Bailey


The central idea of revolution is that humanity has a genuine future before it, and that this future is not simply to be thought, but to be made.
—Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society1

It has been almost five years since market forces crashed over Greek society like a recession tsunami, followed by quarterly waves of media bombardment and austerity aftershocks. Hosted in Athens [various venues in Athens, Greece; May 22–29, 2012], organized by Daily Lazy Projects—artists Dionisis Christo-filogiannis, Stelios Karamanolis, Eva Mitala, Tula Plumi, and Yorgos Stamkopoulos—was one of the many defiant acts that have been taking place in the country throughout this long, relentless recession. Hosted was a bona fide indie production formed on a simple premise: invite collectives to Athens, find spaces to host them, and see what happens. "Collectives on Collectivity!" was the open call. Collectives from Berlin, Bratislava, Florence, London, Paris, Vienna, and Vlorë responded,2 and eight spaces were found: The Association of Graduates of Athens School of Fine Art (Epaskt), The Association of Greek Archaeologists, Theatro Embros, OpenShowStudio, SKOUZE3, SOUZY TROS, 3 137, and Six Dogs.

Gruppe Uno Wienn, performance view of ABSTRAKTION/REKREATION, 2012
(courtesy of the artists and Hosted in Athens)

A homegrown experiment in global relations, this invitation-as-curatorial invoked Homeric filoxenia—hospitality as duty. Greece is a cultural meeting place where travelers have passed through for millennia, like Vitruvius, Byron, Picasso, Hepworth, and Henry Miller, who marveled at Greek generosity in the 1930s. It is a hospitality embedded in the questions Who are you? and Where do you come from?, good questions in this global clusterfuck some call The Crisis. In this gathering of people, objects, and spaces—a twenty-first century pop-up salon and alternative artist residency program in one—artists either sent work from abroad or came to the city to install. The result was a curatorial assemblage that presented a meta-view of Now from a European vantage point—a moment where society spoke of "its own crisis in a language that scarcely requires any interpretation."3

Niemandsland, exhibition view of Air and Nothing, 2012
(courtesy of the artists and Hosted in Athens)

Imagine waking up in Hosted's messiest group curatorial effort at The Association of Greek Archaeologists, a grand neoclassical building next door to the Kerameikos archaeological site and museum. A collaborative project by Trace, the installation Islets of Langerhans, 2012, was a sickening, candy-flavored (faintly cheese-scented), post-apocalyptic banquet consisting of "fruit-sculptures lying on Asian hotel buffets, a note left on a fridge in Loutraki in 1993, a science fiction excerpt, kollyva (Greek sweets eaten at funerals), and fanouropites (pies prepared as offerings and blessed at church),"4 arranged on white-clothed tables and tiered serving trays with an accompanying recipe book. Nearby, Juliette Blightman and Margarita Bofiliou's Total Eclipse (Of the Heart), 2008, a video of dark images including forests and empty rooms, was serenaded by a bittersweet sound track including "I Need a Miracle," "Trapped," and "Little Lies." Being in the space felt like being trapped with a hangover inside the venue of an epoch-defining, credit-funded coming-of-age party that ended at the emergency room. (Not unlike the story of Iceland's own credit crunch resulting in a nation-as-corporation collapse.)5

Spazi Docili, Sant'Orsola Monastary, unfinished 
carpark in the medieval courtyard, 2004 
(photo: Serena Fanara)

In the far corner, Artan Shabani's ROUTINE, 2012, represented collective BEST-OFF with a video of a man and woman eating breakfast at a kitchen table while a TV in the background plays porn. Perhaps the video is a statement on news as titillating political drama; media porn that consigns people to a flattened, two-dimensional reality separating one from the foreign other. In proclaiming the crisis to be "purely economic" and totally Greece's fault, a real and urgent social crisis is reduced to violent, binary judgments: good/bad, us/them, here/there, and so forth. The reductions serve only to alienate a population experiencing the enactment of such binaries in practice, for example the decisive June 17 elections posited as a yes/no vote to stay in the eurozone.
XYZ/Bratislava's performance and video at SOUZY TROS, Operácia Ulice, 2012, acts as the perfect metaphor for the experience of being here, now. In the video, a mock operation is carried out on a body seen through the window of a seedy, empty video and DVD store in a rundown neighborhood not unlike where this space is located. Aside from being representative of any "body" directly affected by the crisis, that body could be Greece, too, a dissected political territory with the surgeons as symbols of those who enforce political and economic systems that discipline a social body—politicians who seem to have lost their way. And perhaps David Foster Wallace might have called the gathering crowd—the mute spectators—"post/ post-post modern heroes" bound by bureaucratic and corporate complacency.6

Versaweiss and XYZ/Bratislava, installation view of  
The Problem of a Wrong Choice and Operácia Ulice, 2012, 
projections (courtesy of the artists and Hosted in Athens)

In Athens, it is glaringly clear that this crisis is local and global and, as suggested in Niemandsland's installation Air and Nothing at OpenShowStudio, environmental, geographical, and material, too. A group exhibition investigating notions of "pseudoscience and contingency" with visual references to industrialism, (post)-Fordism, and the mechanism, the installation showed the crisis to be one also driven by the acquisition of land, energy, and natural resources.7 These ideas expanded into architectural spaces at SKOUZE3, where Florence-based collective Spazi Docili presented Spazi Docili [Docile Spaces]: Sant'Orsola stories, 2012, exploring territory and culture through the biopolitical lens of Michel Foucault and the former Sant'Orsola Monastery in Florence, described as "a medieval building" that has been "closed for decades" and "completely destroyed in the last few years in an attempt to adapt its architectural structure to some kind of unidentified modern function."8

Under Construction and Emmanouil Koutsourelis
performance view of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming)
2012 (courtesy of the artists and Hosted in Athens)

As a spatial practice, Hosted shares Spazi Docili's goal "to increase the economic and political utility of spaces,"9 using art and its objects to engage with and activate people so often rendered like artist Eva Marathaki's red lips singing an incomprehensible, operatic song silenced by a hand in her video work Closed Circuit, 2006, also at SKOUZE3, the space she co-runs with fellow artist Leontios Toumpouris. That silencing of a voice could represent the silencing of a culture, too—what Spazi Docili observes in docile bodies and docile spaces stripped of historical identity. In the case of Sant'Orsola Monastery, where arches were squared, frescos covered with plaster, and the stone structure strengthened with steel and cement, the building has become an assemblage of specific histories and universal ideals—Christianity mixed with modern function and post-modern aesthetics.
As David Graeber recently noted, "The deeper the roots you have, the more challenging things you can do with them,"10 and the point is: We all have roots. For Spazi Docili, the degeneration observed surrounding the Sant'Orsola (which fits the description of the degenerated parts of the historic center in Athens) drove them to build a statue of Saint Ursula with the local community and parade it around the monastery and into San Lorenzo Market. Using "inspiration from the popular religious traditions that are still alive in the Mediterranean part of Italy,"11 the intention was to "turn a religious-aesthetic form into a civic-political form"12: a reaction to the effects of modernization and marketization on society. For Hosted, their reaction was the use of existing social systems to create a platform for communicative, artistic exchange. A temporary, pop-up event grown out of contemporary contexts, discourses, and practices that are as particular as they are universal. A physical, social structure with a function not unlike the statue of a patron saint.

Daily Lazy Projects, exhibition view of  
Image of a Floating World, 2012
(courtesy of the artists and Hosted in Athens)

Just as Spazi Docili circulated the statue through Florence, so POST artists Maria Lianou, Panagiotis Samsarelos, Sofia Touboura, and Pavlos Tsakonas interrogated communication and dissemination of visual practices to wider, albeit localized, audiences via postcards documenting their urban/environmental intervention distributed at all Hosted spaces (and online, too). Similarly, Hosted's organizational framework tested the potentials of circulating aural and visual cultural agents and objects within global networks as a mode of social and cultural praxis: an exploration of ideas surrounding art and community in a more expansive virtual and physical sense. In this light, how Hosted will evolve as a ready-made format (a Hosted in Vienna is apparently in the works) will be interesting. Form, meaning, purpose, and design might change with different contexts and different audiences, as was the case with Mud Office (Charlie Jeffery and Dan Robinson), who did not come to Athens to install We Have No Physical Limits at Epaskt but collaborated with Daily Lazy Projects online: "a collaboration within acollaboration," as Hosted organizer Tula Plumi explained.13
On the experience, Robinson noted that despite feeling distant to the installation of their work in Athens, "I suppose this collageing a nd adaptability of our material to be viewed and processed in different ways, making different connections and crossovers each time, is as much deliberate as accidental."14 Being modified in translation is inevitable. But in opening artworks and practices to more global interpretations, fresh connections and modes of collaborative participation might develop. By mediating an international flow of goods and people through a framework for a global art event predicated on artistic/cultural exchange, Hosted flirts with the possibilities of what twentieth-century philosopher and political theorist Cornelius Castoriadis describes as "a cybernation" of the global economy in the service of the collective self-management of human beings functioning along the lines of a simpler and more rational system, "whether private or 'planned.'"15

Daily Lazy Projects, exhibition view of 
Image of a Floating World, 2012
(courtesy of the artists and Hosted in Athens)

This interaction with a form of networked culture that uses both online and offline modes of communication could well be a move toward a social complexity that allows contradiction and multiplicity, as described in Mud Office's We Have No Physical Limits, 2010, a two-channel video installation that riffs on children's arts-and-crafts TV programs, TV chefs, and instructional video on one screen and men in nature on the other.16 The artists explore "agents working in unison creating a team from structure" and "disequilibrium [that] comes when members of the intellectual pack come together to form one larger power structure."17 They propose thinking about working together loosely albeit collaboratively across borders and territories while negotiating the peculiarities thrown up by such encounters between specific, localized needs against a more global framework.
As the social, political, and economic forces of world history rage overhead, initiatives like Hosted in Athens are finding ways to engage, and their lessons and experiences will be valuable to many as the world forges ahead into a future that is unfolding rapidly. Since 2008, political actions in Greece and particularly in Athens have focused on the production, reclamation, and occupation of public space, a practice rooted in the occupation of Athens's parliament square as part of the "Los Indignados" movement that started in May 2011, modeled on Tahrir Square and preceding Occupy New York by almost half a year. Now, the stakes are higher and the Greek art scene is reflecting this, too. The movements are not just about occupying public space anymore. They are about building systems to restore the social sphere: a local and global history happening here, now, and everywhere.



NOTES
1. Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Cambridge: MIT, 1987), 70.
2. Full participant list: BEST-OFF, Blightman Bofiliou, Daily Lazy Projects, Expograph, Frontviews, GRUPPE UNO WIEN, Les Editions HORROR VACUI, Lykakis Karamanolis, MUD OFFICE, Nauru Project, Niemandsland, P O S T, SKOUZE3, Spazi Docili, Trace, Under Construction, Versaweiss, XYZ, 3 137.
3. Castoriadis, 81.
4. Trace, hostedinathens.tumblr.com/trace, accessed June 10, 2012.
5. Tracy McVeigh, "The party's over for Iceland, the island that tried to buy the world," Guardian, October 4, 2008.
6. David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest: A Novel (London: Little, Brown, 2011), 142.
7. Compare to Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire, when the old "storyteller" talks of a No Man's Land (Niemandsland) in post-WWII Germany.
8. Christian Costa, e-mail message to author, June 9, 2012.
9. Ibid.
10. "Another World: Michelle Kuo talks with David Graeber," Artforum, Summer 2012.
11. Spazi Docili, hostedinathens.tumblr.com/spazidocili.
12. Ibid.
13. Tula Plumi in conversation with the author, June 3, 2012.
14. Dan Robinson, e-mail message to author, June 20, 2012.
15. Castoriadis, 84.
16. The work is viewable at the Mud Office website: www.mudoffice.eu.
17. Dan Robinson, e-mail message to author, June 21, 2012.



Stephanie Bailey is a writer, artist, and educator who divides her time between the UK, where she is pursuing an MA in Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths College in London, and Greece, where she teaches in the Foundation Diploma in Art and Design at Doukas Education in Athens. Her writings have appeared in ART PAPERS, Aesthetica, Artforum online, Frieze, Naked Punch, LEAP and Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art.

Website: www.artpapers.org