Daily Lazy: AyeBaDome:Super at Thkio Ppalies / Nicosia

AyeBaDome:Super

29/01 - 05/03/2016

Artists: Orestis Lazouras, Panagiotis Mina, Nayia Savva, Efi Savvides, Constantinos Taliotis, Maria Toumazou, Marina Xenofontos, Natalie Yiaxi

Curated by Peter Eramian

Texts by Evagoras Vanezis

Poster by Nico Stephou

thkioppalies.org

ΘΚΙΟ ΠΠΑΛΙΕΣ

2b Kissamou

Palouriotissa

Nicosia 1040

Cyprus

AyeBaDome:Super, Installation View, Thkio Ppalies 2016

Constantinos Taliotis

Efi Savvides

Maria Toumazou

Marina Xenofontos

Natalie Yiaxi

Nayia Savva

Orestis Lazouras

Panagiotis Mina

https://youtu.be/Zs_K1c5x_MM
Panagiotis Mina

https://youtu.be/VRG1YayhG8s
Nayia Savva

The conditions of the appearance of AyeBaDome are not clear. AyeBaDome is a word of hybrid mutation; the result of autocorrection by a mobile phone’s algorithmic surveillance of its user’s typing habits. Autocorrection and predictive input methods layer language formation with a technologically mediated level of complexity, which creates words that can be used as the new vernacular.

AyeBaDome:Super presents an opportunity to usurp the signifying power of this hybrid. By giving it the status of an open discursive field that functions within the interstitial space of art, an open, non-whole point of enunciation is created. The works in this exhibition create series of fluid differentiality. Working differentially - that is, creating with and whilst immersed in cultural tropes that often appear as the very thing that blocks change- is the contemporary exigency of our being-with.

In a society such as the Cypriot one, where the local dialect creates a disjuncture between official and everyday speech, the space for differentiation is continually open and local identities are built on difference. It is this disjuncture that allows the works in this exhibition to raise their demands in a way that reveals what constitutes the innermost convictions and desires that create the shared intersubjective space of society. AyeBeDome is a hybridising sign that challenges us to give time to the works themselves to infiltrate and infect processes of translation and thus change and expand the social conditions of political enunciation.

Critical commentary by Evagoras Vanezis

Orestis Lazouras created a situation in which SUPERSTANDARD could mean both ‘a jewelry line’ and ‘an exhibition at Thkio Pallies’. For the jewelry campaign, the catalogue aesthetics of a DIY shop were used because of their effectiveness, without attempting ‘subversion’ or ‘irony’. At the same time the idea for a fashion shoot that could advertise the exhibition was set in motion. This attempt at polysemy proved difficult given the confusion created by the happenstances that linked the two efforts. The problem of circulating the catalogue, which led to the fixing of an arbitrary price for the jewelry, voided for the time being the commercial aspirations of the brand. Τhe unattainability of polysemy led to a cannibalisation game where the two different approaches started eating at each other. The makeshift structure presented here, with a picture from the unrealized exhibition campaign used to create its top, mirrors the practice of using billboards that advertise things of the past in a way that makes them practical in the now, effectively ignoring their content. The work emerges as a remnant for a venture that was frustrated before it even started, but its presence begs the problematic of its own mythology as haunted by the empty time of its presentness.

In the promotional video for an experimental artist that partakes in AyeBaDome, one watches the result of collaboration between a commercial image producer and an art maker. The experimental artist in question exists as a refraction of the three different identities that compete in the performatively contested location of the screen. Panagiotis Mina inserts himself in the picture and creates a work in which the viewer is transported from outer space to Cyprus with the aid of a surrealist signifying chain. This is juxtaposed with the first utterance of the artist ‘When art speaks’ and thus the parameters of a rewiring of spatial and temporal borders are set –his claim as experimental is substantiated through the very act of riding a wave as it passes through different localities and mediums –the commercial, the artistic, image, sound. This latitude is reflected in the way in which the artist has used this video in order to extract three teaser trailers, which advertised the exhibition on social media. In his sound performances (another part of his practice) Mina is interested in the production of noise and thus the power of what indeterminateness creates and communicates. In the passage from sound to moving image, an imperative tone that mimics a didactic discourse creeps in. ‘When art speaks’ is completed with ‘keep silent and listen’ in order to affect a direct response from the viewer. What is at stake is the right to claim for oneself the productive capacity of the habits that we are and to partake in the dissemination of its histories, thus embracing that moment of dissonance in a way that qualifies an alternative presence. A viral instantiation of this is DJ Khaled’s Snapchat videos, in which he ‘preaches’ to a new generation not to be complacent about their appropriation of his hotline bling.

Nayia Savva presents a video of altered found footage, a hidden camera segment from Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation’s New Year’s Eve show from 1984, entitled ‘Petroleum in Cyprus’. An elaborate prank played on an unsuspecting landowner, Mr. Michael Savva, it is structured upon five acts that make up a very Cypriot tragicomedy. The sudden appearance of experts from the government that claim that the field is a hotbed of oil make the owner give a candid expository remark: ‘I am the one with the cabbages’. The plot rises with the appearance of the sheikh, climaxes with Mr. Savva’s naive overreaching (hubris), the action falls as the protagonist is made aware of the fact that he played his cards wrong, and resolution comes in the form of the big revelation. Nayia stripped the video of dialogue and soundtracked it with the score of Ridley Scott’s Alien, slowed it down, and then added English subtitles. The result is a video in which the little details which make it truly tragic come to light- from the body language of all involved to the Sheikh’s ominous rosary which counts down to the time of catastrophe- a looming doom which Savva’s viewer continually anticipates because of the score, but in vain. The authoritative figures that push the protagonist to hubris reappear to take it all away -a rags-to-riches story- cut short by a deus ex machina that crudely punishes by revealing that the disappearance of the surplus entails the loss of everything. When the resolution comes, the protagonist is happy to have been put back in his place -a full circle, an intolerable injunction- happy to be the one with the cabbages!

Through her photographic practice Efi Savvides acts on this project as a chronicler of changes on the facades of houses in Ayios Dometios area. Each photographic frame acts as a medium of recording elements for a portrait of the migrants who locate themselves there (because of cheap rent and closeness to their workplaces). They remain faceless - though not invisible - in the social constructions of Cypriot society. The work consists of double-faced photographs that show the same frame during the time period 2012-2016, and a round table that contains them –a central meeting point. A facade is the ultimate threshold that simultaneously operates as a border and as an invitation. This dialectical opposition creates the unique visual language of the city, whose continuous state of flux mirrors the flows of its inhabitants. The two facades of these ‘migration houses’ reflect this opposition and bring to the surface the traces of the adoption of a language that mediates the feeling of non-permanence (makeshift structures, paradoxical upkeep of elements that remain traditional) and the efforts of migrants to displace the outsider’s gaze in such a way that points toward their home country. The disruption of migrant flows in these houses (economic crisis, transference of houses to owner’s children) is also obvious through the eradication of outlandish elements and the prevalence of a class-hybrid minimal aesthetic which separates the displaced from the locally settled.

Constantinos Taliotis’ ongoing research project around the Video Home Entertainment (VHS) films that flooded the Cypriot market between the decades of 1980 and early 1990s, constitutes the starting point of various actions. These films are spectrally haunted by the structural conditions of a local complex built on a paradoxical loan; on the one hand it entered in exchange with foreign reference codes in an effort to develop its commercial viability, and on the other hand it assimilated these codes as a purely local currency that became a culturally coherent unit. With the discarding of video from the middle of the 90s onwards, a seeming distraction of its characteristic codes followed, as is usual with pop culture in Cyprus. This leads to an absence of pop culture from the writing of collective history. In essence the aesthetic parameters of video and the 80s never disappeared; they are simply fragmentarily refracted in the personal and public space. In AyeBaDome:Super, Taliotis creates a way to work through these transfusions -which the video medium itself intensified- by combining different video montage methods. Εach deals with a certain evolution of a visual code, in the process creating a poetics of video via which a discussion on this form of pop entertained can emerge. These poetics acknowledge the inventiveness of the local videotape venture and exculpates an aesthetic code which has invariably affected the mode of living in Cyprus. This plurality of image production engendered by the video now finds its new loan carrier, a hybrid living room structure which transgresses the personal and public division of aesthetic production in a continually shifting art space.

Maria Toumazou mediates the perceptive effects of repetition and transversal on a plane of parallel narrative formations. She turns to an archetypal form: the chair. Thematically, she has been experimenting with alternative uses of chairs and examines the performativity of an object at the moment in which its form opens up to an alternative usage framework. This, in conjunction with her research on the presence of modernist buildings in Cyprus and their forceful invocation of ideas of utopia, has led to the fashioning of an uncanny series of objects for a dystopian future. In the sculptural series comprising three small chairs and four photographs printed on Perspex, a contemporary usage of the baroque can be detected. The old effort to create environments in which the sacred could be experienced leads to a fashioning of a counterpart idea, in which objects inhabiting the space create an exploratory environment where ideas for the future can be explored. The candle lining suggests a difficult intertwining of utility and sacredness, where a familiar object misses the mark of its presently conditioned purpose. On the photographs a couple in a restaurant and a child playing (both unknown to the artist) present the capture of private instances on public grounds, creating a narrative spill over which leads to the fourth photograph, where an unknown woman is overseeing the production of the lining of the small chairs, on video chat. The artist suggested that a possible title for the project is ‘Working from Home’, thus emphasizing the ‘domestic’ and ‘private’ nature that slips into the work.

Marina Xenofontos presents an installation consisting of freestanding metal steps; a lightbox; and a painting entitled ‘Lemon Dance in New York’. The three create a special poetics of the in-between, an intersubjective space where symbols from the archives of Christophoros Kyiakides meet her own artistic sensibility. A chance encounter with Kyriakides’ board game, ‘Six Continents Stars Compass’, catalysed a strong fascination that led to the uncovering of his archive. The publication presented upon the last step, part of Xenofontos’ practice- based research, brings to the fore the rich universe of Kyriakides’ personal symbolism that she creatively harnesses as a means of an alternative, atypical handling and systematisation of themes and issues that she finds affinities with. The lightbox and the metal steps on view are based on Kyriakides drawings. He named the freestanding structure ‘The Steps of Life’. This, in conjunction with her handling of his rich symbolism, situates an act that coordinates (maps) itself as a process of making-public what would have remained hidden. ‘Lemon Dance in New York’ depicts a dance that the Cypriot expatriates used to practice as part of their celebrations. The painting is a token of appreciation to Kyriakides: he was obsessed with the American dream and intended his board game for worldwide distribution. With this painting the artist grants credence to Kyriakides’ frustrated dreams of moving to the United States and imagines him as part of a community in which he had invested a lot of his personal situatedness.

The diachronic problems of the local art scene and the newly justified blatant exploitation of a growing number of ‘cultural workers’, has stiffled the voice of artists and culture as an active part of society. Natalie Yiaxi submits to AyeBaDome an idea that will be processed as the exhibition unfolds. ‘AAAFAY Donation Station’ paradoxically exists as both a mobile sculpture and a direct course of action, and this dual status will not change once the intensity of the prevailing space allows the dust to settle, as it were. Faced with the donation station, the viewer has a choice. One can express interest, pledge funds or directly donate money for the cause of Adopting An Artist For A Year; or just admire the booth’s aesthetics and walk away. The artist expresses her intentions through a radio campaign, a printed leaflet and a website. All three borrow from emotive charity commercials but the tone is ironic and exasperatingly funny in equal measure, creating the conditions for a confrontation within codes that feel eerily familiar and thus allow for the problem in question to be discombobulated and made visible. The creation of this ironic charity fund indexes conditions of social and political inequality and provides a platform for artists to create in a way that allows them a degree of freedom and decency. If the idea unfolds in days of retrograde planets then the money raised will be used for the settling of debts incurred for the creation of the campaign and ‘AAAFAY Donation Station’ will stand, as it does now, as a monument to the lack of bread and butter.