some exhibition views from the "History lessons" installation ( scenographic idea by Lydia Kontogiorgi )
Participation in the Dave Bown Projects, June 2011, New York
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| Dave Bown Projects was founded in 2005. The initiatives of the privately held U.S. company focus on advancing the field of contemporary art by engaging in scholarly research and distributing unrestricted monetary awards to visual artists. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Participation in the "mailto" project of the Drift Station Gallery, June 2011, Lincoln, Nebraska
mailto: a gallery, an email address, and a printer
The “mailto” tag was born with the web itself, creating a very useful link opening an email message to be sent to the site’s author. But the tag has become the scourge of web designers, with spamming robots trawling the web, targeting this bit of text to harvest email addresses. It is now generally considered “risky” to so openly publish one’s email address. Instead, designers resort to writing out the address as “anything [at] driftstation [dot] org” or more complex methods using JavaScript, PHP, etc.
For this exhibition, we exuberantly publish our email address and print anything received, and in doing so argue for a curatorial practice akin to chaos theory or aleatoric musical composition – that the initiation of a specific but open structure creates unexpected and diverse results. In this case, that structure is the open portal of an email address. As the digital files reach the printer (up until this point infinitely malleable and scalable), they are made manifest as fixed, physical objects. When hung on the gallery wall they each represent a small document in a curatorial process divorced from the geographically-focused perfection of the unique art object.
João Ribas’ 2009 exhibition Fax at The Drawing Center in New York City was built around a similar construct: a technology that allowed artists from around the world to deliver their work not by courier but by an electronic message. The site of production became dual, with the artist creating a piece in his or her studio that was then translated by the fax machine into an electronic signal, and finally back into physical form in the gallery.
mailto: differs in two important ways. First, it uses a contemporary and more flexible means of transmission, unlike Fax’s embrace of flawed and retro technology. But more importantly, we have not just asked well-known artists to send in works on a closed line. Instead, the doors have been thrown open to anyone with an email address. The flood of responses – almost 600 emails making up over 2,000 printed pages – included unexpected and exciting works such as photographs of homemade superhero costumes, intricate ASCII drawings, a series of spam email look-alikes targeted at art collectors, and continuous blasts of copy/pasted Facebook updates arrived in our inbox.
There are also the unexpected correspondences that come from the structure of email itself. A faulty email address sends a “message undeliverable” reply, which is auto-replied by our email, much like Cory Arcangel’s Permanent Vacation where two computers running email programs constantly auto-reply to each other until they crash or the exhibition ends.
Perhaps more than anything, the response to our open portal seems to sum up the kind of interactions a gallery receives when thoroughly and exuberantly engaging the internet: the colloquialisms and lingua franca of email communication, the diverse approaches and stylistic differences to how to respond to such an open invitation, spam and phishing attempts, and some great and weird art.
Jeff Thompson (June 2011)
From: meliti Kontogiorgi
Subject: "headhunter" - Meliti Kontogiorgi
Date: May 31, 2011 3:26:29 PM CDT
To: anything@driftstation.org
1 Attachment, 2.1 MB
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Meliti Kontogiorgi
http://meliti.blogspot.com/
Subject: "headhunter" - Meliti Kontogiorgi
Date: May 31, 2011 3:26:29 PM CDT
To: anything@driftstation.org
1 Attachment, 2.1 MB
--
Meliti Kontogiorgi
http://meliti.blogspot.com/
Η Αίθουσα Τέχνης αγκάθι-κartάλος (Μηθύμνης 12 και Επτανήσου Πλ. Αμερικής, τηλ 210 8640250) οργάνωσε και παρουσιάζει την έκθεση φωτογραφίας της
Μελίτης Κοντογιώργη
Τα εγκαίνια θα γίνουν την Τρίτη 24 Μαΐου 2011 στις 8 το βράδυ.
Η έκθεση περιλαμβάνει 21 φωτογραφίες από 3 διαφορετικές ενότητες: την ενότητα Space copies, την ενότητα Last life και την ενότητα 9 little terrorists.
Από την ενότητα Space copies παρουσιάζονται 3 εικόνες αστικών τοπίων. Η επιλεκτική απομόνωση και επανάληψη στοιχείων της εικόνας στοχεύει στη δημιουργία μιας σύνθεσης που μετουσιώνει τη βαρύτητα της πόλης, « παγώνει » τα τοπία αυτά και τα τοποθετεί σε ένα διαφορετικό χρόνο και χώρο.
Από την ενότητα 9 little terrorists εκτίθενται 12 φωτογραφίες που απεικονίζουν 9 διαφορετικά και επαναλαμβανόμενα πρόσωπα, ντυμένα με σύμβολα και χαρακτήρες της σύγχρονης ποπ κουλτούρας και της μυθολογίας του “καλού” και του “κακού”.
Τέλος, από την ενότητα Last life παρουσιάζονται 6 πορτραίτα ανθρώπων ως χαρακτήρες δυστοπικών σκηνικών, φορώντας μάσκες που απεικονίζουν το ίδιο τους το πρόσωπο. Έμπνευση αποτέλεσε η φράση του Γιώργου Χειμωνά «Ο κόσμος να γίνει εικόνα. Αυτή θα είναι η τελευταία ζωή των ανθρώπων, να τους σκεπάσει μια εικόνα» (Οι Χτίστες, Εκδόσεις Καστανιώτη, Αθήνα, 2001, σ. 7).
Η Μελίτη Κοντογιώργη γεννήθηκε το 1978 στην Αθήνα και από το 2003 ζει και εργάζεται στη Γαλλία. Σπούδασε κοινωνιολογία και φωτογραφία στην Αθήνα και στο Παρίσι και από το 2006 έχει συμμετάσχει σε ομαδικές εκθέσεις σε γκαλερί, πολιτιστικούς χώρους και φεστιβάλ στην Ελλάδα και στη Γαλλία. Αυτή είναι η πρώτη ατομική της έκθεση.
Διάρκεια έκθεσης 24 Μαΐου – 2 Ιουνίου 2011
Ώρες λειτουργίας: Δευτέρα έως και Σάββατο 11:30 - 13:30
& Τρίτη, Πέμπτη, Παρασκευή 18:30 – 20:30
& Τρίτη, Πέμπτη, Παρασκευή 18:30 – 20:30
Where is my happiness?
1 Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, Pennsylvania State University, 2008, p.139.
Mixed media installation
Words by Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, 12 ashtrays, 19 smoked cigarettes (butts), ash, 2010
9 little terrorists
9 little terrorists presents an ironic take on the stereotyped symbols produced by the current pop myths that provide the definitions of good and evil. These 9 figures are constructs of a social game where everything is included, deconstructed, reshaped and redefined as visual stereotypes. How does photography construct a face as an image? How does this process take its meaning from the surrounding social reality? These figures reveal the process by which the stereotyped images are manufactured and “dressed”. This cynical and mocking mix of some of today’s most clichéd social, religious, political and cultural characters challenges the use and usefulness of concepts such as legality and terrorism. Cut off from any other reference they stare at us unassumingly, dressed in these highly stereotyped symbols of today’s culture.
Series of 23 photographs, fine art print, 5 at 75x110cm and 18 at 50x75cm, 2010
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