Performative Transcending Somatic Dinner at Korinis 4 / Athens, Greece

Performative Transcending Somatic Dinner 


A dinner with works by:

Andreas Angelidakis, Eleni Bagaki, Savvas Christodoulides, Evi Kalogiropoulou, Katerina Komianou, Eva Papamargariti, Olga Miliaresi-Phoca, Maria Papadimitriou, Panos Papadopoulos, Vasilis Papageorgiou, Dionysis Kavallieratos, Irini Miga, Angelo Plessaas, Georgia Sagri, Socratis Socratous, Eva Stefani, Sofia Stevi, Valinia Svoronou, Thanasis Totsikas, Amalia Vekri, Evgenia Vereli. 

Curated by Lydia Antoniou and George Bekirakis 

With the kind support of NEON Organization for Culture and Development. 


Korinis 4, Athens, 10553

3/11/21-12/12/21 

Wednesday - Sunday 17:00-21:00


                                     

                                     






























































We come together, a unifying blossom against a crisis to move towards a common cause. What will the ground be made of today, cement, earth or quicksand? 

The days are delirious and no longer have a name. Bad habits like staying in and rejecting invitations have become prescribed. There is a water drought. Were we ever fluid? 

You are cordially invited to bear witness to a performative ritual, a ceremonial banquet of the present works of the absent bodies. 

In this moment in time, it was important for us to ask ourselves how we find ourselves back in the exhibition spaces, collectively. The gesture of gathering invited artists around a table, is intertwined with both the contemporary socio-political condition of isolation and introversion, and the fragmentation that has historically pervaded contemporary art. Oscillating between digital presence and physical absence, we choose to refer first to the already existing networks of collaboration in the field of Athenian art, our friends, in order to collectively produce common space. Through the processes of exchange and inversion of the hierarchical model of exhibition production carries, the possibility of performing social relations arises, allowing us to imagine a new institutional framework through communities and exchanges. 

For a really long time we have not been able to gather in cultural institutions, museums and galleries -- an exhausting condition for us, as these same spaces are also our spaces for critical thinking and socializing. Being still impossible to gather together, the possibility of interacting around the experimental model of Performative Transcending Somatic Dinner enabled us to think about how we all want to exist together in the contemporary art scene in Athens moving onwards. 

With PTSD, we playfully use the performativity of social gathering and the pleasure one derives from it as a starting point, with the ultimate aim of creating unexpected connections between artworks and aesthetics, methods and and artistic practices. We identify similarities and differences between a group of artists whose work has shaped critical debates in contemporary art in Athens over the last twenty years and attempt our own approach to collective practices of care. You are cordially invited, the reception will be brilliant.