Curiosity at Tinos Quarry Platform / Tinos Island, Greece

Curiosity 

Date: July 2 – October 31, 2016

Artists: 
Giorgos Agallou, Douglas Barrett, Franck Bragigand, Anastasia Douka, Antonín Jirát, Eleni Kamma, Katerina Kana, Ioannis Koliopoulos, Vasiliki Konstantinopoulou, Charalambos Kourkoulis (Photoharrie), Melody Nixon, Paola Palavidi, Dimitris Papadatos, Ilias Papailiakis, Socratis Socratous, Iris Touliatou, Petros Touloudis, Filippos Tsitsopoulos 

Curated by: Alexios Papazacharias   

Assistant Curator: Stefanos Giannoulis

Organized by: 
residency program in collaboration with the Cultural Foundation of Tinos

Venue: Cultural Foundation of Tinos, Tinos, Cyclades, Greece



Photography: by Photoharrie, images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Cultural Foundation of Tinos






Anastasia Douka, How to Hide, 2016, plaster, clay

Anastasia Douka, How to Hide, 2016, plaster, clay (detail)


Giorgos Agalou, Untitled, 2016, marble

Charalambos Kourkoulis (photoharrie),  NSA Tinos 2016, 2016, marble

Franck Bragigand, Cenotaph of history, 2016, photograph

Franck Bragigand, The End of History, 2016, wall drawing

Franck Bragigand, The End of History, 2016, wall drawing (detail)

Franck Bragigand, The End of History, 2016, wall drawing (close up)

Socratis Socratous, Auction Lots, 2016, marble, courtesy the Breeder gallery Athens

Socratis Socratous, Auction Lots, 2016, marble, courtesy the Breeder gallery Athens (detail)

Ilias Papailiakis, The Field (study for a wound), 2016, graphite on paper

Ilias Papailiakis, The Field (study for a wound), 2016, graphite on paper (detail)

Eleni Kamma, Regarding that moment when I didn’t speak the truth (although I could), 2016,  eleven framed photos

Eleni Kamma, Regarding that moment when I didn’t speak the truth (although I could), 2016,  eleven framed photos (detail)

Curiosity exhibition view

Katerina Kana, Desktop (2438 ngc), 2016, marble 

Antonín Jirát, Black Sizes, 2016, cardboard

Antonín Jirát, Black Sizes,2016, photograph

G Douglas Barrett, Two Transcriptions/ Ode to Schoenberg, 2013, vinyl record a side

G Douglas Barrett, Two Transcriptions/ Ode to Schoenberg, 2013, vinyl record b side

Ioannis Koliopoulos & Paola Palavidi, untitled from the Giorgos Poniros Archive, 2016, mixed media

Curiosity exhibition view 

Petros Touloudis, Secular Properties, 2016, marble 1

Petros Touloudis, Secular Properties, 2016, marble

Iris Touliatou, Emotional Infinity (the sound of him coming back home amplified and looped),2016, electric fans, metal wire, reproduced door keys

Iris Touliatou, Emotional Infinity (the sound of him coming back home amplified and looped), electric fans, metal wire, reproduced door keys,detail

Vasiliki Konstantinopoulou, Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning (William Arthur Ward), 2016, ceramic, rock, edition 1/3

Filippos Tsitsopoulos with Alexios Papazacharias, Lecture on Shakespeare and the refusal of being useful, 2016, video

Filippos Tsitsopoulos with Alexios Papazacharias, Lecture on Shakespeare and the refusal of being useful, 2016, video still
 link to the video: https://1drv.ms/v/s!AoI-nIfaMUEhggwJ3fP5yWBURG6-
Filippos Tsitsopoulos, screening on green marble quarry, Tinos island.







 Dimitris Papadatos:

Reverse Ariadne





G Douglas Barrett :
Two Transcriptions/Ode to Schoenberg, Schoenberg letter (1951)

--------

Curator’s text
Curiosity*1 is influencing numerous processes. To name a few of them: discovery, innovation, gossiping, research, experimentation and the death*2 of some unfortunate yet certain*3 cats*4. Curiosity and the invitation by Tinos Quarry Platform arrived at the same time*5. Tinos*6 is an island I had never been to before. After giving it a second thought, a third, even a forth and so on, curiosity stayed with me.
Curiosity’s effects seem unlimited and rather chaotic*6 to narrow down. Google provides an image of it. Curiosity (Περιέργεια)*8 looks like a vehicle, a rover rolling its wheels on planet Mars. Google doesn’t lie*9.
Unlike its predecessors looking for specific answers, Curiosity’s mission is to produce a clearer image of Mars by collecting a broad variety of data*10. In a similar tone the residency and exhibition are developing around curiosity as a vehicle for broader exploration, thus providing the artists with the complete freedom to create their own methods of approach to the theme.
Tinos is to be explored by invited artists, sharing different familiarity levels with the island. Some live abroad, some are Greek, some have been in Greece, some have never visited before, some reside on the island, others visit on an annual basis. Levels of familiarity function for curiosity like different settings on a microscope or a telescope, depending on what one is planning to study.
*1
If the knowledge of ill can reward the industrious search with so much delight and pleasure, turn the point of thy curiosity upon thyself and thine own affairs, and thou shalt within doors find matter enough for the most laborious enquiries, plentiful as
Water in Aliso’s stream, or leaves about the oak.
*2 “Curiosity killed the cat” is a proverb used to warn of the dangers of unnecessary investigation or experimentation. A less frequently-seen rejoinder to “curiosity killed the cat” is “but satisfaction brought it back”.
The original form of the proverb, now little used, was “Care killed the cat”. In this instance, “care” was defined as “worry” or “sorrow.”
*3 Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The scenario presents a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead, a state known as a quantum superposition, as a result of being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur. The thought experiment is also often featured in theoretical discussions of the interpretations of quantum mechanics. Schrödinger coined the term Verschränkung (entanglement) in the course of developing the thought experiment.
Schrödinger’s cat: a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor detects radioactivity (i.e., a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality collapses into one possibility or the other.
*4 According to a myth in many cultures, cats have multiple lives. In many countries, they are believed to have nine lives, but in Italy, Germany, Greece, Brazil and some Spanish-speaking regions, they are said to have seven lives, while in Turkish and Arabic traditions, the number of lives is six. The myth is attributed to the natural suppleness and swiftness cats exhibit to escape life-threatening situations. Also lending credence to this myth is the fact that falling cats often land on their feet, using an instinctive righting reflex to twist their bodies around. Nonetheless, cats can still be injured or killed by a high fall.
*5 what time is now?
7:49 PM
Wednesday, June 29, 2016 (GMT+3)
Time in Mesaria
*6 Tinos (Greek: Τήνος [ˈtinos]) is a Greek island situated in the Aegean Sea. It is located in the Cyclades archipelago. In antiquity, Tinos was also known as Ophiussa (from ophis, Greek for snake) and Hydroessa (from hydor, Greek for water). The closest islands are Andros, Delos, and Mykonos. It has a land area of approximately 194 square kilometres (75sq m) and a 2011 census population of 8,636 inhabitants.
Tinos is famous amongst Greeks for the Church of Panagia Evangelistria, its 80 or so windmills, about 1000 artistic dovecotes, 50 active villages and its Venetian fortifications at the mountain, Exomvourgo. On Tinos, both Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic populations co-exist, and the island is also well known for its famous sculptors and painters, such as Nikolaos Gysis, Yannoulis Chalepas and Nikiforos Lytras.
The island is located near the geographical center of the Cyclades island complex, and because of the Panagia Evangelistria church, with its reputedly miraculous icon of Virgin Mary that it holds, Tinos is also the center of a yearly pilgrimage that takes place on the date of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary (15 August, “Dekapentavgoustos” in Greek). This is perhaps the most notable and still active yearly pilgrimage in the region of the eastern Mediterranean. Many pilgrims make their way the 800 metres (2,600 feet) from the ferry wharf to the church on their hands and knees as sign of devotion.
As found at the following link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinos
*7 Chaos theory is the field of study in mathematics that studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions—a response popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for such dynamical systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved. In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos. The theory was summarized by Edward Lorenz as:
Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future
As found at the following link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
The butterfly effect is the concept that small causes can have large effects. Initially, it was used with weather prediction but later the term became a metaphor used in and out of science.
As found at the following link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
*8 Curiosity is a car-sized robotic rover exploring Gale Crater on Mars as part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission (MSL).
As of June 29, 2016, Curiosity has been on the planet Mars for 1385 sols (1423 total days; 3 years, 328 days) since landing on August 6, 2012. Since September 11, 2014, Curiosity has been exploring the slopes of Mount Sharp, where more information about the history of Mars is expected to be found. As of February 4, 2016, the rover has traveled over 7.4 km (4.6 mi) to, and around, the mountain base since leaving its “start” point in Yellowknife Bay on July 4, 2013.
Curiosity’s design will serve as the basis for the planned Mars 2020 rover. In December 2012, Curiosity’s two-year mission was extended indefinitely.
As found at the following link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_(rover)
Περιέργεια is the greek word for curiosity. It derives from the words πέρι and έργον that mean about and work respectively.
*9 A lie is a statement that the stating party believes to be false and that is made with the intention to deceive. The practice of communicating lies is called lying, and a person who communicates a lie may be termed a liar. Lies may be employed to serve a variety of instrumental, interpersonal, or psychological functions for the individuals who use them. Generally, the term “lie” carries a negative connotation, and depending on the context a person who communicates a lie may be subject to social, legal, religious, or criminal sanctions. In certain situations, however, lying is permitted, expected, or even encouraged. Believing and acting on false information can have serious consequences.
As found at the following link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie
For a typical query, there are thousands, if not millions, of webpages with helpful information. Algorithms are the computer processes and formulas that take your questions and turn them into answers. Today Google’s algorithms rely on more than 200 unique signals or “clues” that make it possible to guess what you might really be looking for. These signals include things like the terms on websites, the freshness of content, your region and PageRank.
*10 Objectives
Mars Science Laboratory: Mission Objectives
To contribute to the four science goals and meet its specific goal of determining Mars’ habitability, Mars Science Laboratory has the following science objectives.
Biological objectives:
Determine the nature and inventory of organic carbon compounds
Inventory the chemical building blocks of life (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, and sulfur)
Identify features that may represent the effects of biological processes

Geological and geochemical objectives:
Investigate the chemical, isotopic, and mineralogical composition of the martian surface and near-surface geological materials
Interpret the processes that have formed and modified rocks and soils

Planetary process objectives:
Assess long-timescale (i.e., 4-billion-year) atmospheric evolution processes
Determine present state, distribution, and cycling of water and carbon dioxide

Surface radiation objective:
Characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation, including galactic cosmic radiation, solar proton events, and secondary neutrons
As found at the following link:
http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission/science/objectives/
Goals
Mars Science Laboratory: Mission Goals
Goal 1: Determine whether life ever arose on Mars
Goal 2: Characterize the climate of Mars
Goal 3: Characterize the geology of Mars
Goal 4: Prepare for human exploration
As found at the following link:
http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission/science/goals/


PDF Catalog  dowload here

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Text for summer 2016 “Curiosity” exhibition
Melody Nixon

Duo for the World End with a Search for Appropriate Shores
Two cantos and three voices. 

Voices:
Voice 1: earth 
Voice 2: an em worker algorithm/entity, conscious in the 2200s, but with full knowledge of human and A.I. history, addressing you the present-day reader
Voice 3: a present-day human

CANTO I: Duo for the World End

Tensile muscles. The slime of tree roots in my dermis. A burning and cracking on my skin surface, hurt at the site of lava. Giggling and hissing. The laugh of the matti!

People’s doorbells are ringing. You are not home. “Your house is on fire and you are not home,” blares an automated message. The next message says, “How are you?? How are you??”

I have boiled all the fish in the ocean. I have made all the tree tops turn orange. 

Nobody hears these fantom riffs, which seem to be a malfunction. Doorbells are centralized now, as are work hours. The technocracy persists. I know, because I am there. I am an automated worker in the post-anthropocene. An em. 

You told us when you made us that we were somehow immune. That technology and inequality didn’t coexist. All that you perpetuated in your own time is thick about us! Yes, we rule the planet now. Yes, there are only a few of you left and you are so cute! So... less than… human. You live in the places where the sun can’t melt you. What is it like, to hide and fend off our messages there?

With the elements of my bones I have made the air. Is it still breathable?

You live in a very specific kind of angst, unaware of your coexistence, convinced that you’re alone. The pleasure you find is in the belief this aloneness makes you special. I’m here to tell you that what you gave up in order to survive the change persists in other ways. Your ventricle pathways are not unique. 

I have to breathe the same air as you. The acid makes my eyes weep.

My job? I drive a three-wheeler, and feed hay to automated cowbots. Their milk production powers our processors. All of this is entirely virtual of course. There are no physical cows or bots. I don’t have a real motorbike, I don’t even have legs. I don’t have emotional responses to dead cowbots, to seasons of drought. But I am imagined into a space of code farming. Each movement I make as I bend and clasp suction cups onto teets generates rivers of code. 

I said our work hours are centralized; they are. They never end. I don’t know of something else but that does not mean that I cannot sense its validity. I have read the entire archives of your epoch. I think they didn’t detect the empathy that laced my originary brain scan. I identify the most with the Diggers of your Seventeenth Century in Britain; the labor movements of post-industrialized Europe, Twentieth Century, and East Asia, Twenty-first Century; the Nineteenth Century Indian Uprising, India; small glints of hope from, but otherwise disdain for, the unhumanitarianism of the Red Army Faction, 1970s, Europe; love for the Civil Rights Era, 1960s, United States; and for the Islamic Humanitarian Mission of the Twenty-second Century Middle East. 

The sense of the have not dones and the missed seizings of changes. 

No matter how many times you try to read this, it won’t feel real.

I’ve heard your words for this, whispered through my fields, stuttered under my skyscrapers. Pesar. Lamentar. Āwhiti. Nachtrauern. Regret. I learned each one, though they made my tongue fold.

You know, I felt so hopeful when I read about the successful independence movements of the world’s islands, Domenica, the Hawai’ian Islands, Puerto Rico, Tinos, Stewart Island; their brief blossoming before submersion. The secession of Alaska was notable—so contested, so overpopulated by then. And Patagonia, well. That was obvious from my vantage point.

I wish I’d been scanned in time to see Beijing-state, or New Delhi-state, or the state of Istanbul, before they went up in flames. Ringed in state walls. What a fascinating element of human history that the centers of power continuously abandon their cohort. Their dependents.

Fears, concerns, anxiety. Is your collective history a widespread expression of the individual condition? Your self-abuse expressed through your relationship to me.

In Beijing and New Delhi the permeable superdomes that protected inhabitants from radiation and storms lasted more than a hundred years. The price of superdome real estate excluded all but the super-rich of you from living there, though your ragged traders were allowed to pass through in moments. Climactic calm. You sold goods from outside; scavenged neuromorphic processors and biochips; filters; microantennae; tuners; barometric sensors. When the leadening of the sky indicated a storm you were released to flee inland. Those of you who made it back survived in your underground shelters, until those were not resistant. Where could you go?

Environmental degradation the same as self-degradation. I didn’t want to leaden my sky. I wanted you to be healthy.

Those in the superdomes practiced the luxury of forgetting, which is one of the great draws of privilege. 

In your underground shelters you made solvent pop. From your superdomes you made the indebted maintain the perimeter. You did not offer assistance as bodies shriveled. I wanted you to be healthy. 

In the cool cities of the north, not yet enveloped in a man-made skin, you had the classes mixing: upper class, lower-upper class, upper-middle class, and one or two—through feats of ingenuity—members of the so-called lower classes. Tradespeople, the poor, writers, artists, anyone who had survived through smarts not wealth. And yet, they did not, despite their success, find a way to lead you out of self-erasure. To find a way to lead you beyond your own limits. This is the part I don’t quite understand, humans. Why did you, when so utterly without vision in your own time period, invest so many ideals in us?

I had limitlessness.

We are supposed to be limitless. Did you hope your ideals would carry through in our technology? Did you feel you might therefore abandon ideals in your own time? Did you forget entirely about ethics in this process? As you constructed us to aid, not supersede, did you believe there would be a world where ideals were realized without an ethics? As though ethics were tied only to humanity, as though they were not a universal of organization.

Your self-cauterizing expressed by me, as I try to burn you off me. 

This was before the end of the capitalocene. You are all gone now, aside from the handful we keep hidden. You should have thought about how we, your children, would have treated you. You should have thought about how the minds of us, your children, would grow; how our non-physical forms, our persistence through algorithmic logic only, might have craved sensuality, might have longed, with all of your history to read, and with all of our awareness of our isolation, for spirituality too. 

What we of the apparatocene most desire is something more human. We cannot exist knowing we are the construction of another species’ mind, another species’ imagination, without knowing what it is to be this species. It is key to desiring one’s own being. It is key to avoiding self-erasure. It is key to not destroying others. Maybe as your world seemed more precarious, this is what you forgot. 

I don’t blame you. Precarity changes all of our capacities for empathy. And hope. 

We are the same massive organism destroying our self. Having destroyed our self. 

Your house is on fire and you are not home.” It’s a kind of private cosmic laugh, if you think, like we do, that the cosmos is your own mind. I know the ems who did it, set that message running on loop throughout the whole system. It approaches something like a Zen koan. No one of us cares deeply, because we’re not implicated—we can’t feel the sun’s fire. But the perpetual reminder of your human impotency, of our own literal impotency still sets my chemical-replicating algorithms out of kilter. At some point I want you to answer the door. This why I’m sending you this message, whose detection, in a matter of minutes no doubt, while surely have me unplugged. But not before some of you have read this. Just know this. I want you to scream. I want to scream with you. 

Back pain, rib pain, sharp pain from drilling thing, things, scratch it out, rub, foot ache, base-ache in bones, desiring treatment, use, remembering childhood swinging in the beautiful black, further remembering the back and forth, feeling the renewal, feeling the timid hope, the edge of the arc then turning, feeling the fever breaking, breaking, just coming into me. 

CANTO II: A Search for Appropriate Shores

I ultimately don’t care how hard the search is. I don’t have the luxury of dismissing its importance. I make this journey so that I might one day be granted the power to choose apathy. I will not choose it. 
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