Written by Jenny Marketou
Most recently my artistic research is focused in investigating DISRUPTIVE PROCESSES which comprises various projects, workshops and event formats taking place from October 2016 to present .They are constituted as non-hierarchical open projects in which knowledge is reciprocated and embodied. From the idea of impulse and movement taking place in the exhibition space, the projects seek to reconfigure the roles of the creator and the audience with an emphasis on social and environmental justice and address the ecologies of the present .Receding from the traditional experience of art, they shed light on the virtues of participation in generating new and multi-faceted narratives.
If we look back historically collectives tend to emerge during periods of crisis; in moments of social upheaval and political uncertainty within society. Such crisis often forces reappraisals of conditions of production, re-evaluation of the nature of artistic work, and reconfiguration of the position of the artist in relation to economic, social, and political institutions
‘The Artist as Producer in Times of Crisis’ by Okwui Enwezor, 2004
The second iteration of my project Ever-growing through the City, 2020 Interdependence Show, Radiator Gallery in New York which investigates systems of tensegrity and equilibrium, interdependence, cause and effect, and connection. The topic of interdependence and interconnectivity seems to have a particular relevance and resonance in our culture. Ever-growing through the City, is an on-going collective construction of a sculptural space. It develops during a process of constructing together. It enhances the skills of material negotiation (soft and hard). The working process include the construction of “tensegrity units” and a building process that is adapting to each participant needs and desires. Ever growing through the City as a temporal sculptural construction is meant to be built during the duration of the 5 weeks exhibition and during a series of workshops open for everybody and especially to young students from diverse communities and secondary schools based in Queens, NY. The idea is to create a free and open physical and mental space which will serve as the basis for dialogues. By means of discussions and instructions, visitors are invited to take experimental routes, navigate, move around, interact and freely engage with the environment, while at the same time becoming the builders of the work. The sculpture is site-specific and built especially for each site so that it reacts on and alters the room. The building process is ongoing and will keep on mutating according to the builders. The process materializes negotiation, weighs, dissensus and consensus, and suggests collective discerning of form. It is built of wood, threads, but also found materials collected by participants, who are asked to bring material to add to the work. The workshops and construction is facilitated by me.
The project has not come to completion because due the Covid19 epidemic the gallery we closed on March 14, 2020 ten days after the opening and the date of reopening remains still unknown