Program

Esperia Palace > 1st floor > KINO

WHAT'S THE DAMAGE is a proposition and a provocation; a call against dominant power structures answering back to ongoing crises under white patriarchy, relaying and augmenting feelings and gestures of chronic unease, protest, and dissent. Spoken word and digital fluidities give Phillipson’s summons and riposte vital form through representations of livid, female bleeding, rising up against leadership circle-jerks, over-groomed toupees, environmental catastrophes, weeping vortexes, scorched orangutans, animal-fat banknotes, and advancing super-moons, pizzas, and drones.

Video, 7'
Courtesy of the artist

Esperia Palace > 1ος όροφος > KINO

Narcissister works at the intersection of performance, dance, art, and activism. In her performances, she wears a mask that brings to mind a fashion mannequin. Combining her experience in dance and commercial art, and granted with the anonymity of the mask, her performances point to gender, sexuality, race, media representation, and entertainment culture. Her feature film Narcissister Organ Player (2017) blends documentary, animation, and performance to explore how the loss of the artist’s mother and her family history led to the creation of the masked persona. In evocative, humorous, and thought-provoking ways, Narcissister brings to the surface stereotypes, gender roles, and expectations of female sexuality.

Film, 91′
Directed by Narcissister
Edited by Taryn Gould
Produced by Narcissister and Taryn Gould
Courtesy of the artist
*With Greek subtitles

Watch the trailer here.

Esperia Palace > 1st floor > KINO

Basim Magdy’s film on view at the Kino device of AB6 takes its title from a popular expression referring to the problem of infinite regress. The saying, which is believed to have originated in Hindu mythology, assumes that the Earth is supported by the back of a turtle, who rests on the back of a larger turtle, who in turn rests on an even larger turtle, and so on. Accompanied by a voiceover by the artist, which imitates the scientific authoritative voice of classic documentaries and educational television programs, the film discusses the structure of scientific thought, discoveries that have informed our knowledge of the universe, and questions about its limitless expansion into the unknown. Magdy’s film is a celebration of curiosity in a time when knowledge and scientific findings are under attack by so-called alternative facts sprouting in the "post-truth" era.

Super 8 film and DV on DVD, 10'09''
Courtesy of Gypsum Gallery, Cairo; hunt kastner, Prague; Art Sümer, Istanbul
*With Greek subtitles

Esperia Palace > 1st floor > ΚΙΝΟ

Roee Rosen’s works seek to develop mimetic strategies left unexplored—or even discarded—by the Western art canon. At AB6’s KINO, Rosen presents Explaining the Law to Kwame (2018). A lecturer analyzes the legal case of the arrest of a young Palestinian. The deft analysis of law and legislation alternates with an erotic delirium. The lecture deviates into sexual spasms and an erotic lust permeates members of the audience. Starting from fragmented references to present politics, Rosen discovers a non-dialectical method to investigate the fabled intersection between the embodiment of law and desire.

Video, 23′
Courtesy of the artist
*With English subtitles

Esperia Palace > 1st floor > KINO

Red Maria–an aged man, ex-terrorist, who dresses like a woman–lives as a prostitute and performer, dancing in the streets for the passersby who give him money. There, he meets a young boy–alcohol addicted–who lives as a street urchin. Red Maria saves the boy and teaches him the “job” and how to survive. Together they live a magical personal revolution. In order to survive they invade cafes, giving talks for a new, political God and for the end of the ideology. But a number of murders will change “Red Maria” and the boy from ideologists, into serial killers.

Film, 95'
Written and directed by Costas Zapas
Main cast: Red Maria; Andonis Papadopoulos, Boy; Christos Vernikos
Production company: Minus Pictures
Producer: Gregory Athanasiou
*Only in Greek

Watch the trailer here.

Esperia Palace > Ground floor > GiGi

Workshop by Spaces of Reflection team

The Spaces of Reflection project aims to spark discourse on art mediation. It explores audience perception and possibilities for public participation in large-scale contemporary art exhibitions.

In 2017, a Berlin based group of fine arts, visual communication and art history students –with diverse professional backgrounds i.e. in curating and art education– came together with Athens based artists and anthropologists in order to examine the documenta 14 and questions evoked by the exhibition.

Altogether they developed different experimental approaches and mediation tools based on their own professional experience, which they tested in a one week "laboratory" at the 10th Berlin Biennale. This open laboratory focused on an experimental, open and unbiased character of art mediation, as well as on different approaches to explore the textual and sensorial aspects of the shown artworks.

What could be the possible formats–digital as well as analog–for a democratic and poly-perspective art mediation?

This time, the Spaces of Reflection project will set up a room for reflection and discussion on the 6th Athens Biennale ANTI.

Participants: Magdalena Beger van Buiten, Vivien Emmanouilidou, Sofia Grigoriadou, Simon Johnson, Alexia Manzano, Mattin, Dana Papachristou, Georgios Samantas, Ioannis Sarris, Silke Wittig.

TTT building > 4th floor > room 403

Shadow theater has a long tradition in Greece and the East. Karagioz, the folk hero, personifies the Ordinary Guy Archetype, a bit naive, a bit of a rascal, poor and beaten-up, trying to survive against the odds by utilizing folk wisdom and tons of luck. In Aggelopoulos's shadow theater, a mash-up of politicians, media figures, superheroes, cinema characters and villains-from Donald Trump and Slavoj Zizek to Rocky and Marina Abramovic-competes in an imaginary arena. Place your bets on the winner. 

TTT building > 4th floor > room 403

Shadow theater has a long tradition in Greece and the East. Karagioz, the folk hero, personifies the Ordinary Guy Archetype, a bit naive, a bit of a rascal, poor and beaten-up, trying to survive against the odds by utilizing folk wisdom and tons of luck. In Aggelopoulos's shadow theater, a mash-up of politicians, media figures, superheroes, cinema characters and villains-from Donald Trump and Slavoj Zizek to Rocky and Marina Abramovic-competes in an imaginary arena. Place your bets on the winner. 

Esperia Palace > 1st floor > KINO

Ilias Papailiakis has been working in a Don Quixotic quest to compete with the historic masters of painting. The romantic vanity is every now and then penetrated by fragments of a personal narrative that mocks formalism and oozes out of the primed canvas into "real" life. 

On the occasion of One2one being presented at AB6, Ilias Papailiakis will present twenty four of his works dating from 2013 to 2018. During his presentation, he will talk about his topics of interest within these five years, as well as the principles that formed his visual language until this day.