PERFORMANCE ART PLATFORM
THESSALONIKI
9-17 April 2016
Platformance is mainly an educational project. It will take place in Thessaloniki and will last 10 days. During these 10 days 4 well known established artists( Manuel Vason, Maria Sideri, VestAndPage) will train and teach their performative technique to 30 Greek Fine Art students coming from the three different art departments of the Greek University of Athens, Thessaloniki and Florina. After a week of training the young artists/students will perform based on the technique they were taught by the 4 artists/instructors (15-17/04). Platformance will be launched at the State Museum of Contemporary Art with a performance by the pioneer performance artist Boris Nieslony (13/04). The day after at the same space Francesco Kiais will give a lecture on performance (14/04). Platformance is a project part of ΣτART program, inspired and coordinated by Alexandros Plomaritis in collaboration with the State Museum of Contemporary and the Municipality of Thessaloniki.
ΣτART is a program of the Robert Bosch Stiftung conducted in cooperation with the Goethe- Institut Thessaloniki and the Bundesvereinigung Soziokultureller Zentren e.V (German Network of Community Art Centres).
THE PROGRAM
Wednesday, April 13
Boris Nieslony, MA: Version
State Museum of Contemporary Museum (Moni Lazariston, 21 Kolokotroni st.), 20:00
Platformance opens with the performance MA: Version by the artist Boris Nieslony. The artist dedicates its performance people that have died, to people who were murdered by other people, from the death penalty of crimes against the state, from traumas that resulted from the state, from genocides, from ethnic cleansing, from world wars, because they refuse migration, because they migrate, from civil wars, from massacres and massive murders…
Thursday, April 14
Francesco Kiàis, WE ARE THE NATIVES – exercises of citizenship
State Museum of Contemporary Museum (Moni Lazariston, 21 Kolokotroni st.), 18:00
Lecture
WE ARE THE NATIVES – exercises of citizenship
What is the relationship between Plato's myth of the cavern and today's slavery in perception of life, truth, reality? How is this connected to the lost of social, political, and cultural reference points, that provokes a dramatic epochal change? How is art taking place in this chaotic “new order”? What is exactly avant-guard today?
Beyond easy and scholastic definitions of what art can be, we venture into a historical excursus, looking for points of reference and orientation to better face the present.
Friday, April 15
Performance by the students of the Manuel Vason’s Picture Act workshop
Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (Pier Α, Port), 19:00
We live a cultural situation marked by the saturation of images; we all collectively participate on the hyper representation of the body. The overload of images creates more alienation and confusion and as a result we manifest the need for more; more image production, more accumulation and more congested archives. In search of an invisible knowledge we end up repeating the same image and covering social media with imitation and re-enactments. The performance will present the result of the Picture Act workshop by Manuel Vason that explores the relationship with the ‘performative image’. Through the process of connecting and not separating from human condition, the participants will confront the image and curry its weight.
Saturday, April 16
Performance by the students of Maria Sideri’s workshop
LABattoir (35, 26 Octovriou), 20:00
The performance will present the result of Maria Sideri’s workshop inspired from the book of the anthropologist David Napier entitled “Foreign Bodies”. The workshop will look of how to create images, movement and sound informed from the foreign as it manifests through the cultural and historical blend of the city of Thessaloniki. With methods of juxtaposition and superimposition of seemingly unrelated places, objects, places and stories the participants will explore how the foreign can inform identity.
Sunday, April 17
Performance by the students of the Vest and Page’s IN SITU workshop
LABattoir (35, 26 Octovriou), 20:00
Through a procession methodology towards site-responsive performative pieces, participants will be provided in practical exercises with the means to exercise a contextual, process-led and situation-responsive performance art practice. This workshop is conceived to develop body-based performance work, which psycho-geographically responds to natural surroundings, social contexts, historical sites or architecture. In Situ questions the individual and the collective within social or environmental spheres, and works with relations and awareness.
