Iori Wallace at Kunstverein Düsseldorf

Iori Wallace:
WONDERTOONEEL

11 December 2010 - 30 January 2011

The passion to collect rapidly loses its ardour as soon as it meets the obsession to catalogue and classify the coveted items of interest. In his work the Welsh artist Iori Wallace (*1982) often reworks such classifications and shifts the focus from the objects themselves onto the peripheral characters, conversations and domestic dramas surrounding the collecting, display and desire of handcrafted objects.

Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen © 2010

AOSIS - Alliance of Small Island States

Secretary-General Addresses AOSIS Meeting on Climate Change. On the eve of the Summit on Climate Change, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (left) addresses a high-level meeting of the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) on the same issue, held at the Rose Center of the American Museum of Natural History, in New York City.


About AOSIS
The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that share similar development challenges and concerns about the environment, especially their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. It functions primarily as an ad hoc lobby and negotiating voice for small island developing States (SIDS) within the United Nations system.
AOSIS has a membership of 42 States and observers, drawn from all oceans and regions of the world: Africa, Caribbean, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, Pacific and South China Sea. Thirty-seven are members of the United Nations, close to 28 percent of developing countries, and 20 percent of the UN's total membership. Together, SIDS communities constitute some five percent of the global population.
Member States of AOSIS work together primarily through their New York diplomatic Missions to the United Nations. AOSIS functions on the basis of consultation and consensus. Major policy decisions are taken at ambassadorial-level plenary sessions. The Alliance does not have a formal charter. There is no regular budget, nor a secretariat. With the Permanent Representative of Saint Lucia as its current chairman, AOSIS operates, as it did under previous chairmanships, out of the chairman's Mission to the United Nations.
AOSIS's first chairman was Ambassador Robert Van Lierop of Vanuatu (1991-1994), followed by Ambassador Annette des Iles of Trinidad and Tobago (1994-1997), Ambassador Tuiloma Neroni Slade of Samoa (1997-2002), Ambassador Jagdish Koonjul of Mauritius (2002-2005), Ambassador Enele Sopoaga of Tuvalu (acting chairman 2005-2006), Ambassador Julian R. Hunte of Saint Lucia (2006), Ambassador Angus Friday of Grenada (2006 - 2009), and the present chairman Ambassador Dessima Williams of Grenada.

Copyright © Alliance of Small Island States 2009

Nauru Project Collaborator Dan Coopey's solo show 'Position 1' opens at the Agency Gallery, London

Dan Coopey's solo show at the Agency Gallery, London, opens in the end of October 2010. The exhibition will also feature a video piece commissioned by the Nauru Project and based on Dan Coopey's research on the Pacific tradition of String Figures.

Position 1





(two-channel videos & ink jet prints, 2010 courtesy the artist)

Dan Coopey
Position 1
30 October – 16 December 2010
Private View, 29 October, 6 – 9pm

Dan Coopey’s first solo exhibition at The Agency gallery, incorporating wall works, video and large-scale sculpture, continues the British artist’s ongoing investigations into the restrictions placed upon visual language by it’s incumbent means of representation.

A series of monitors relay demonstrations by a string figure expert as he goes through various modes of representing narratives through this ancient transcultural means. The expert remains anonymous however – his face digitally obscured – concentrating the viewer’s attention on the ability of depiction using the limiting constraints of string and the human body. The work continues themes brought to prominence in a previous extensive body of work Print Errors (2008 –) in which images were abstracted and ultimately destroyed by the failures of a home printer in the dying stages of its ink cartridge. Like the failure inherent in that body of work, here the instructor is always faced with the likelihood that his art will fail in its representative aims. With no sound, and the storyteller’s facial expressions obliterated; the narrative to the actions are lost, leaving only changing abstracted, architectural, models of string. The ongoing human desire to communicate primary imagery through secondary means is documented as being not merely a modern, technologically minded preoccupation but something far more historic and perhaps even intrinsic.

A series of 31 fly posters pasted to the gallery walls display an illusive narrative. Taken from a 1970’s Israeli children’s book with the original Hebrew text removed, the illustrations depict abstract shapes in bold flat colours seemingly shifting between each page. Without an eligible translation these mysterious images are akin to the forms depicted in the videos, autonomous and devoid of translation their apparent logic remains internal.

Dominating the gallery’s two floors are a series of architectural scale sculptures in which different coloured, densely woven wool sheets are stretched between two ceiling and floor mounted steel poles, their natural fall broken by the angled leaning of a glass sheet. In differing the angle relationship of glass to material in each work Coopey highlights the issue of constraint and limitation against variation again, this time in a design context. In repeating the work Coopey is asking the viewer to consider the gallery space and the sculpture’s formal makeup in the same context as the string figures: a situation of constant variability within unchanging formal parameters.

A duo of wall-mounted, A4-printed, Adobe-standard colour spectrum, collated at a spiral, act as formal pivot to the exhibition: within their arrangement they mask off significant blocks of colour leaving a dominating pigment, which in turn, relate formally to both the sculptural and video-based work. The spectrum, as generated by computer software, is demonstrative of the wide colour range available to the software user; yet ultimately it remains a limited construct.

Dan Coopey’s solo exhibitions have included Doodad at the Hayward Gallery Concrete space curated by Tom Morton in 2009. Group shows include SYC New Contemporaries;Wysing Arts Centre Presents at the Wysing Arts Centre as part of Field Broadcast; Riff Raff at A Palazzo Gallery curated by David Southard; Meteor at New Court Gallery curated by Oliver Basciano (all 2010); and Urchin Eater at Yinka Shonibare’s Guest Projects in 2008. He was recently proclaimed one of ten sculptors to look out for by Ten magazine.

theAGENCY
66 Evelyn Street
London, United Kingdom

Cabinet Magazine Summer 2010 Issue: ISLANDS

Table of Contents

Columns
Colors / Red
Maggie Nelson
Something dipped
Ingestion / Table Manner
Anthony Grafton
The disposition of the Last Supper
Inventory / An Anthology of Memories from Cabinet’s Published Past
Alejandro Cesarco
Working through our issues
Leftovers / The Future of Neglect
Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss
Urban renewal and the politics of refusal
Main
Radiantly Malevolent
Adam Jasper
Louis Wain’s psychotic cats
Blue Notes
Brian Dillon
Selling the siren song of the medicine cabinet
Scratch and Sniff
Gary Leggett
Diagnosing the allergic reaction
If It’s Part Broke, Half Fix It
George Pendle
The sincere horse sense of Dr. George W. Crane
Artist Project / Transmission
Maria Friberg
Dry Mountain Water
Allen S. Weiss
Afloat on a sea of stones
Cabinet v. Beşiktaş
Soccer as never before
Islands
Lords of the Ring
Alistair Sponsel
Beneath the surface of the atoll
Islands and the Law: An Interview with Christina Duffy Burnett
Sina Najafi and Christina Duffy Burnett
The juridical shape of America’s insular empire
Artist Project / Pulau Pejantan
Institute of Critical Zoologists
The Silence of the Dams: An Interview with Tetrapod No. 16-2-77
Mats Bigert, Sina Najafi and Tetrapod No. 16-2-77
Isles of Safety
Tom Vanderbilt
Considering the traffic island
A Topical Paradise
Hernán Díaz
Literary archipelagos since the great age of exploration
Artist Projects / Washed Ashore
Keren Cytter, Jason Dodge and Annika Ström
On the Monstrosity of Islands
D. Graham Burnett
Betrayal, solitude, madness, despair
The Islanders
Andreas Hiepko
Castaways in a divided Berlin
Artist Project / 65-Point Plan for Sustainable Living
Jeremy Drummond
An Archipelago of Centers
Sandy Isenstadt
A modernist reinvention of the kitchen
And
Postcard / Loss Accountability of Top-Down Ontologies
Mary Mattingly
Bookmark / Napoleon, Penguins, and Beef Tea
Cabinet is a non-profit organization. Please consider supporting by subscribing to the magazine, buying a limited edition artwork, or making a tax-deductible donation.

© 2010 Cabinet Magazine

A review of Judith Schalansky's Atlas of Remote Islands

Nauru isn't covered by Judith Schalansky in her Atlas of Remote Islands – just published in English by Penguin – but the found narratives woven into the histories of the fifty other islands profiled, will strike a chord with those familiar with the Pacific island’s tragic story. In her introduction Schalansky, a typographer by trade, explains she harboured a long endured fascination with maps and the exoticism that they hold within their careful cartographic coding, stemming she reasons, from the isolation of her childhood growing up behind the wall in East Berlin. Schalansky’s still-maintained preoccupation with the romantic notions of islands, which she raptures about, is strange given the stories of paradise lost, betrayal and criminality that she unearths in the histories of many of the fifty inhabited and remote islands subsequently profiled.

Each island is given a double page spread, with a carefully illustrative map on one side, faced with a short anecdotal history on the other, researched by the author through rare books. Also included for each is a timeline and a figure charting the diminutive population size of these communities. The reader hears stories of rotting whale carcasses subsuming the uninhabited Antarctic island of Deception; the tinpot despotism of the lighthouse keeper of Clipperton Atoll in the Pacific Ocean; the death of marooned sailor Harry Eld at the beaks of a thousand birds on Australia’s Macquarie Island; the much media-covered abuse rife among the 48 residents of Pacific Pitcairn; and the historic high child fatality rate among the Hebridean people of St Kilda. The histories that Schalansky recounts are not verifiable fact, but they offer a narrative in which – for all the geographic symbolism of the maps therein – humans play the central role. The reader cannot help but be left with a pessimistic take on our condition. That as a species, we are prone to the kind of horror that Joseph Conrad subjected Charles Marlow to as the protagonist in Heart of Darkness, one that, given isolation from distraction, people’s propensity to instigate an unnerving terror on each other, comes to a frightening fore.

Oliver Basciano

Lilypad: A Floating Island for Climate Change Refugees

It has pretty much become universally accepted that global warming is having an effect on global ocean levels. The effects of sea level rise are potentially devastating with millions of coastal and island inhabitants at risk of being displaced. For example, it is predicted that within 60 years the island nation of Kiribati, home to 90,000 people will be completely submerged beneath the sea.

In response to this potential devestation, engineers and scientists are attempting to come up with ways to support a growing population on less land. One of the more interesting proposals is known as “Lilypad.” Lilypad is a floating Ecopolis for climate change refugees.

Designed to house up to 50,000 people Lilypad travels the ocean currents from the equator to the poles following marine streams. Lilypad is a prototype of an auto-sufficient amphibious city. The city will feature green technologies such as solar, wind, tidal and biomass energy production. The double skin exterior of the city will be constructed of polyester fibres covered by a layer of titanium dioxide which reacts with UV rays to enable the absorbtion of atmospheric pollution.

No word on whether or if this type of floating city will ever be developed, but its sad that we have to consider developing these projects in order to preserve human survival.

For more information visit Vincent Callebaut Architects
http://www.vincent.callebaut.org/

Source:
http://www.privateislandsblog.com

The Kiribati Islands

Part of the British Colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, the Gilberts adopted the name Kiribati at independence in 1979. The state comprises 33 islands in the mid-Pacific ocean.
Geography:
Kiribati consists of three groups of tiny very low-lying coral atolls scattered across 1,930,000 sq miles of ocean. Most of the islands have central lagoons.
Climate:
Central islands have a maritime equatorial climate. Those to north and south are tropical, with constant high temperatures. There is little rainfall.
People & Society:
Local people still refer to themselves as Gilbertese. Apart from the inhabitants of the island of Banaba, who employed anthropologists to establish their racial distinction, almost all people are Micronesian. Most are poor subsistence farmers. The islands are effectively ruled by traditional chiefs, though there is a party system based on the British model.
The Economy:
Until 1980 when deposits tun out, phosphate from Banaba provided 80% of exports. Since then, coconuts, copra, and fish, have become the main exports, but they islands are still dependent on foreign aid.
***Insight:In 1981, the UK paid A$10 million to Banabans for the destruction of their island by mining.
FACTFILE:
Official name: Republic of Kiribati
Date of formation:1979
Capital: Bairiki (Tarawa Atoll)
Population: 91,985
Total Area: 274sq miles (710 sq km)
Density: 336 people per sq mile
Languages: English, Kiribati, Other
Religions:Catholic 53%, Kiribati Protestant 39%, other 8%
Ethni Mix: Micronesian 98%, Other 2%
Government: Non-party Democracy
Currency: Australian $ = 100 cents

Source: Atlas, Dorling Kindersley Limited

Nauru emergency extended until October

Nauru’s caretaker government has extended a state of emergency for another 21 days until early October. The country has been stuck in a political stalemate for months, ruled for the past three months by a caretaker government using emergency powers.
This came after Parliament failed to elect a new President following two general elections. Nauru’s caretaker president Marcus Stephen has said the opposition should take any challenge it has to the Supreme Court over its claim that the state of emergency is illegal.
News Content © Radio New Zealand International
PO Box 123, Wellington, New Zealand
Posted at 23:22 on 15 September, 2010 UTC

Family Heraldry Crest for the island of Meropi by Maria Georgoula for artists' residency 'Legitimate Possession'

The small island of Meropi off the coast of Kardamili, Messinian Mani, Peloponnese

The ‘little Island’ (‘nisaki’ in Greek) or what is also referred to as the island of ‘Meropi’ is situated off the coast of the small town of Kardamili in the Messinian section of the Mani Peninsula south west of the Peloponnese. The island is small and uninhabited. Its only building, a small chapel with house named after Virgin Mary on its north west side overlooking Kardamili, was built around the end of the 17th century for a small group of monks to keep as a monastery. The island also bares a remaining section of a Venetian fortress that can be seen from the bay of Kardamili together with the chapel. During heavy floods between 2001 and 2003, a section of the building collapsed and a supportive section was added. Findings from the Venetian period also include a marble lion’s foot that is displayed in the museum of Kardamili and a cracked bell that lies on the island. There is also an olive plain with a threshing floor and three cisterns one of which may still be used if needed.
A Venetian map of 1707 refers to the island as ‘La Mad’ presumably an abbreviation of 'La Madonna' the name of the church. The island has also been referred to as ‘Mile Limani’ deriving from ‘Kardamili Port’ while the British Navy mentioned it as ‘Chapel Island’. Nowadays, many locals refer to the island as ‘Meropi’, a Greek female name possibly given by a Greek soldier working for the geographical section of the Greek army after his beloved one. Finally, the island has also been referred to as ‘Amygdaloniso’ meaning ‘almond island’ after its almond-resembling shape.
Almost no historical or other material can be found on the island apart from a brief reference by Greek travel writer and journalist Kostas Ouranis and another equally brief by Evliya Celebi the Turkish traveler and civil servant who visited the Mani in 1670. He described it as, "A rocky and dry island, its Kastro is found on the north coast and in its interior are three churches and other buildings. There are many cisterns which provide water for the sheep and goats of villages opposite which graze the island." Evliya also tells how "The Gazis (Turkish soldiers) of Koroni attacked and destroyed the island with their frigates, transferring its inhabitants to the mountains opposite where they created the village of Prasteio…."
In 1862, the family of the current owner purchased the island from the monks. Today the island is also used as a mark for fishermen. Each year, on 23rd August a service takes place in celebration of Virgin Mary.

Text based on an interview with owner Mr.Takis Skoufis

ΘΕΜΙΤΗ ΚΑΤΟΧΗ / LEGITIMATE POSSESSION ΕΙΚΑΣΤΙΚΗ ΣΥΝΑΝΤΗΣΗ / ARTIST RESIDENCY

Δελτίο Τύπου
28/07- 07/08/2010
ΕΚΘΕΣΗ/EXHIBITION
Εγκαίνια: Σάββατο, 07/08/2010
Διάρκεια: 08/- 30/08/2010
ΚΑΡΔΑΜΥΛΗ / ΜΕΣΣΗΝΙΑΚΗ ΜΑΝΗ
Συντονισμός / Υπεύθυνος παραγωγής: Θεόδωρος Ζαφειρόπουλος
Από τις 28 Ιουλίου έως τις 7 Αυγούστου 2010, 26 Έλληνες και ξένοι καλλιτέχνες θα συναντηθούν και θα «κατασκηνώσουν» στην Καρδαμύλη της Μεσσηνιακής Μάνης με σκοπό να παράξουν έργα και in situ δράσεις, εντός των 10 ημερών της διαμονής τους. Με την ολοκλήρωση της παραγωγής, από τις 7 έως και τις 31 Αυγούστου ,τα έργα τους θα παρουσιαστούν σε δημόσιους και ιδιωτικούς χώρους της Καρδαμύλης. Παράλληλα, θα πραγματοποιηθούν επισκέψεις, ομιλίες και παρουσιάσεις από επιστήμονες, αρχιτέκτονες, θεωρητικούς και επιμελητές. Το πρόγραμμα είναι ανοιχτό στην συμμετοχή, την παρακολούθηση αλλά και τις παρεμβάσεις από το κοινό της τοπικής κοινωνίας.

Μετά την ολοκλήρωση της εικαστικής αυτής συνάντησης θα εκδοθεί δίγλωσσος κατάλογος ο οποίος θα παρουσιαστεί σε μια ειδική εκδήλωση το Φθινόπωρο του 2010.
Άξονας όλης της δράσης, η «Θεμιτή Κατοχή».

Τι γίνεται όταν η ελευθερία της καλλιτεχνικής έκφρασης συγκρούεται με τους διαφορετικούς νομικούς κανόνες? Μπορούμε π.χ να χρησιμοποιούμε χώρους και αντικείμενα που καλύπτονται από ιδιοκτησιακό καθεστώς χωρίς την άδεια του κατόχου?

Η ροή της ζωής διαμορφώνει συμπεριφορές, δικαιώματα και υποχρεώσεις που αποτυπώνονται σε κανόνες ηθικής ή νομικής φύσεως. Οι νόμοι είναι η πιο διακριτή και αυστηρή διατύπωση κανόνων. Η ηθική, η αθωότητα και η λυτρωτική ένταση της δημιουργίας και των δημιουργών, που συντελούν ταυτόχρονα στην πιο διεισδυτική ματιά στις κοινωνικές εξελίξεις, διαμορφώνουν τους δικούς τους ιερούς άγραφους κανόνες.

Ας ονομάσουμε το δημιουργικό αυτό δίλημμα «Θεμιτή Κατοχή». Ο όρος «Θεμιτή» αναφέρεται στις άδολες προθέσεις του δημιουργού και ο όρος «Κατοχή» στα νομικά δικαιώματα του κατόχου. Έτσι, μέσα από την ένταση αυτού του διλήμματος καλούνται όλοι οι συμμετέχοντες καλλιτέχνες να δημιουργήσουν τα έργα τους, πάντοτε σε συνομιλία με το ιδιαίτερο φυσικό και κοινωνικό περιβάλλον της Μεσσηνιακής Μάνης.

Το συγκεκριμένο project θα αποτελέσει μια γενικευμένη δοκιμή της θεμιτής κατοχής. Με αφετηρία το γεγονός της συγκεκριμένης εδαφικής εντοπιότητας της Μάνης που συχνά παρουσιάζεται ως το προπύργιο ανεξαρτησίας και εδαφικής ακεραιότητας, η πρόκληση απέναντι στις «δυνατότητες» χρήσης- χρησιμοποίησης και χρηστικότητας του Ιδιωτικού και Δημόσιου χώρου αποτελεί μια ιδιαίτερα οξυδερκή πρόκληση απέναντι στην οποία η Σύγχρονη Εικαστική σκέψη και πρακτική μπορεί να καλύψει ένα εξαιρετικά ευρύ ερευνητικό φάσμα.

Το project υποστηρίζεται από φορείς της Αυτοδιοίκησης και Ιδιώτες του Δήμου Λεύκτρου Μάνης.

ΣΥΜΜΕΤΕΧΟΝΤΕΣ ΚΑΛΛΙΤΕΧΝΕΣ
Johanes Abendroth, Νίκος Αρβανίτης, Εριφύλη Βενέρη, Μαρία Γεωργούλα, Xinglang Guo, Θεόδωρος Ζαφειρόπουλος, Μαίρη Ζυγούρη, Matteo Fraterno, Δημήτρης Θεοδωρόπουλος, Έλσα Κιουρτσόγλου, Άννη Κωστοπούλου, Ιλάν Μανουάχ, Sven Mueller, Massimiliano Scuderri, Λουκάς Μπαρτατίλας, Σοφία Ντώνα, Νίνα Παππά, Θάλεια Ραφτοπούλου, Αλέξια Σαραντοπούλου, Ζάφος Ξαγοράρης, Μαρία Τσιγάρα, Carly Schmitt, Φίλιππος Ωραιόπουλος, Φούλα Σακέλη, Γιάννης Καπέλλος, Νίκος Κασκούρας.



Για περισσότερες πληροφορίες:
Email: kardamiliproject@gmail.com
Τηλ: 6945 586045

Utopia Project 2010: Utopia & Nature

International Residency Programme organised by the Athens School of Fine Arts in collaboration with the Slade School of Fine Art & The Utrecht School of Art.

UTOPIA & NATURE
Based on H.D. Thoreau's “Walden
EXPERIMENTATION AND RESEARCH IN CONTEMPORARY
ARTISTIC PRACTICES

Utopia as an expression of unlimited imagination and desire is a concept that has always fascinated artists. Art can see in utopia a means to lift the restrictions of reality and accomplish the free expression of its visions. Starting from this connection and its various instantiations in the history of art, this workshop deals with the multiple significations, implications and dimensions of utopia. In everyday discourse the term ‘utopia’ is usually connected with an ideal future, with what seems impossible within the confines of reality, and is thus bound to create margins for many and often contradictory interpretations. Utopias are the places of dreams and hopes for a better life, which provide an escape from an always incomplete and constraining status quo. Sometimes they involve grandiose metaphysical schemata, other times they take the form of ephemeral shelters distanced from detailed sociopolitical reflection. Always, however, their creation is based on the criticism of established (political and aesthetical) institutions and social structures. Inspiring antithetical political and artistic practices, praised but also criticized, utopia has been a focus of debate for many disciplines and approaches. By blending theoretical discussion, aesthetic reflection and the artistic work of the participants, this workshop aims at critically exploring the various interconnections between theory and praxis, vision and reality, desire and finitude, utopia and dystopia.
In this workshop we will research methods and tactics and we will ask from the students to collect material or to archive material that they already have and reconsider it, to think alternative ways of presentation of materials, ways of incorporation of them in their pictorial language. The aim of the workshop is to exhibit the results of this research, the ideas or the work that will come out of it.

This year’s workshop investigates the relationship between contemporary artistic practices and the natural environment. Art is often seen and spoken in terms of being environmental, critical and subversive. For the past decades, the natural environment has seen radical changes and has been at the forefront of many contemporary art projects. What is the relationship between art and nature? During the workshop, we will consider different ideas in contemporary art making and theory to examine from varying perspectives the question of art and nature.

Location

Utopia Project is an international program organized by Asfa. The residencies take place in the annex of Asfa in Rethyno Crete every July for about 20 days. Asfa provides a range of accommodation listings and arranges a special group rate at a student hotel each summer as well as student travel and city guides.

The annex is uniquely placed on the top of Evligias Hill in Rethymno, 15 min walk from the center of the old historical town. Daily bus schedule links Rethymno to the airports of Chania and Heraklio.

Island_Built Event by Aristide Antonas & Filippos Oraiopoulos

UNIVERSITY OF THESSALY / SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING / DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE + + + + + + + LANDSCAPE WORKSHOP / ARISTIDE ANTONAS - CONCEPTUAL DESIGN WORKSHOP / FILIPPOS ORAIOPOULOS / PEDION AREOS 38334 VOLOS
ISLAND – built EVENT

A SERIES OF DESCRIPTIVE CONSTRUCTIONS, INITIAL APPROACH, AN IDENTITY PENDING :
The project revolves around the island of Youra. The island lies in the Aegean sea, six hours from Volos, and is part of Magnesia Prefecture’s Sporades islands. Youra is deserted, as are most of the islands in the region. Some of them (Trikeri, Alonnisos) were places of exile for political prisoners, while others belonged to Mount Athos monasteries (Kyra Panagia, Pappous) or were used as pastures (Piperi). The small number of buildings on Youra (traces of a small monastery, a preserved church, ruins from the first installation of the first guards, today’s installation of the guards) points to the island’s deserted state. Until being ceded to the Greek State, Youra was a hunting ground for Greece’s kings. The island also has mythological associations, since – legend has it – the Cyclops’ cave is placed –according to a legend- there. Shipwrecks are a common occurrence at Youra; many sunken ships and their loads are gradually being located in the deep waters of the greater region. A ship carrying 200 immigrants ran aground on the deserted island on 26 December 2001. Youra is located in the middle of the Alonnisos marine park; it is a protected biotope and may not be visited without special permission from the Sporades Forest Office. The island is guarded by two to three guards who have rotating ten-day shifts.
The ISLAND – built Event project constructs the island’s pending identity. The interest lies in the difficulty of forming a local identity, seen as a dynamic, creative act. Specific events have led to the island being identified as a certain form: thus, it has become an island of shipwrecks, of politics, of ecology, of desertedness or of isolation, depending on one’s perspective. Each individual act performed on the island has formed or reformed it as a different form. The built event that is being organized, involving the presentation of projects and talks on the island, will replace the island’s lack of identity (lack of generality) with something. The island’s pending identity is thus a platform or an open forum. The place is interpreted as a collection of produced narrations describing it and of constructions that it awaits. It is defined by patience. This patience (which welcomes and organizes the pending identity) characterizes the project. The project is presented as an action stemming from this patience.
The procedure involved in bringing the project to fruition entails the following practical steps:
A. Artists, philosophers, anthropologists, scientists and architects as well as the students from the University of Thessaly’s TAM School of Architecture: (final year students and graduates) and other Schools are invited to participate in the project.
B. From the start of the spring semester students will work on the project of the University of Thessaly’s TAM School of Architecture. With the students’ involvement in the project’s production process, it is the educational process that is introduced into its production process, and not the other way round.
C. Discussions and debates will be held at the TAM Department of Architecture between special guests and the students, on issues relating to the island of Youra and which also concern other islands in Magnesia Prefecture (Trikeri, Alonnisos, Kyra Panagia, Pappous, etc.). One month after the project’s commencement – on 5 April – the students and any of the guests who are interested will visit the island of Trikeri, and on 16 and 17 April there will be a first visit to Youra, heading from Alonnisos and via the Sporades islands.
The insistence on the place itself cannot be understood without conceptualization. An itinerary and a meeting on the island form a research field on intentions and inventions of the island. Intentions and inventions are presented through discourses and constructions. In the field of the uncertain island, the place itself and any identity of the place stay suspended. In the same field the built event is the notion that provides a substitute for identity without betraying suspension. The decision, the coincidence and the incident organize each time temporary structures of the built event.
The two days of discussions have been organized as follows: Having agreed to participate in the project from the start and having received the available material (conception of the project – key concepts, photographs, geographical, historical and anthropological material, written accounts, etc.), the participants will visit the place on 14 May (Saturday) during a joint trip. There, they will share their initial thoughts on the subject and exchange views at the place itself (Youra), weather permitting, or on the closest inhabited island (Alonnisos). In the meantime, once the project has commenced, the participants will be able to send their thoughts or projects (material that they have developed with a specific construction in mind for the island or letters expressing their agreement, objections or alternative ideas pertaining to the project’s organisation), thus creating interventions throughout the project’s duration by developing a network that promotes the ongoing exchange of information and critiques. They can bring or send the final draft of their (philosophical, anthropological, scientific, poetic, theatrical and other) speech and their constructions (whether in the form of art, film, photography, music or other) by June, at which time – if necessary – one last visit to the island will be arranged, marking the ‘end’ of the project.
D. During the project’s production, based at the TAM Department of Architecture in Volos, artists, philosophers, anthropologists, architects and scientists will, alone or in groups, present talks or constructions referring or corresponding to a visit to the island of Youra or other similar places in the Magnesia region (Trikeri, Alonnisos – places of exile; Pteleos beach – place of shipwrecked immigrants, etc.). The same participants can also present a new talk or construction specifically on the particular project during these two days.
E. Lastly, different agencies (Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly, Alonnisos Municipality, ecological agencies, Forest Office, Volos immigrant support group, immigration agency, etc.) will be invited together with the previous guests to develop the project into a permanently open forum on this particular island.
The project is already in progress and its duration will be determined by the action taken by people regarding Youra and according to the contracts being drawn up. If we conceptualize the project’s structure (built event) as the plot of a live, realistic theatrical play, then the roles of the participants will be identified with their actual participation. The project will officially come to an end at a specific date and time to be announced. The results of the ISLAND – built Event project (discourses and constructions) will be placed in containers (mobile exhibition spaces) for viewing, while sheets submitted by the participants will be compiled into a large book to which new material will be able to be added (the book will be bound with removable screws). Thus, although presented as a temporally specific ‘theatrical’ event, the project will remain permanently open. The first stage in the process will be presented in a separate edition. The staging of such an architectural project (built event) aims at composing the content and unfolding the process dialectically through ongoing transformations in the internal time of the project’s constructions.

















ARISTIDE ANTONAS & FILIPPOS ORAIOPOULOS

Orkney Islands

The Islands of Orkney are a group of 70 islands and skerries 10km (6.2 miles) from the north-east tip of the Scottish Mainland. The largest island, known as ‘Mainland’ is home to most of the total 20,000 population but the main north islands of Shapinsay, Gairsay, Stronsay, Wyre, Rousay, Egilsay, Eday, Sanday, Westray, Papa Westray and North Ronaldsay and the south islands of Graemsay, Hoy, Burray, Flotta and South Ronaldsay are also populated. Although Burray and South Ronaldsay are ‘islands’ they are connected to Mainland Orkney by causeways. A few of the very small islands also have permanent or seasonal residents.
The islands of Orkney and Shetland are littered with archaeological remains. People first came here over 5000 years ago and many of their remains survive. New architectural sites are discovered every year. Some, such as Skara Brae, were buried under sand, only to be exposed by a winter storm thousands of years later; Skara Brae presents a fascinating glimpse of stone age life from the beds with their little shelves and cubby holes, to the remains of jewellery and medicine. Research is ongoing here and elsewhere excavation by archaeologists continues to uncover new information. The islands are therefore of enormous interest to anyone who enjoys first-hand contact with ancient settlements and buildings, and the people who once lived here.

The State of Sabotage

Robert Jelinek and Christoph Steinegger, Graphic by Gustave Doré and SGD
The formation “Sabotage” was founded by artist Robert Jelinek in the area of the Documenta IX in Kassel in June 1992. Sabotage” began operating in 1992 as a small project and collective, later 1994 as Sabotage Communications- an art organisation and music label, than a union of various sublabels brought together by their shared way of thinking and similar style of expression through different media. Since 1992 more than 100 international “public sabotages” have taken place in form of performances, actions, events and exhibitions. There are a number of flexible subdivisions which emerge as the needs arise and dissolve under their own inertia. Each of the sublabels primarily works within its medium, nevertheless their bonds are firm and fruitful.

The fields of activities of Sabotage defy definition of contents, theme and geographic concentration and therefor different projects and target groups are represented in different sublabels such as: art: Sabotage actions (1992-95), Alibi Service (1992-95), Sabotage projects (since 1995) or CaSH (1998). music: Sabotage Recordings (1994-99), Craft Records (since 1995), Subetage Records (since 1999).

“Sabotage” in this sense means the braking of conventions, the artistic interruption of processes of thinking and manipulational transfer. “Sabotage” is not a technic that transports meaning. Sabotage transgresses positions without presenting a new social order, provokes thinking by intervening in the official discourse. Sabotage is the experiment to brake up incrustation of an organised bourgeois society that insulates itself against all changes and tries to make thinkable new possibilities.

Atlantium Global Sovereign State

The Empire of Atlantium is a unique parallel sovereign state based in New South Wales, Australia.


Atlantium recognises that the days of nation-states founded on fixed geographical locations or majority ethnic identities are numbered, as global mobility, cultural evolution, and the growth of electronic communication networks render the assumptions that underlie and provide justification for their existence increasingly obsolete.

In an age where people increasingly are unified by common interests and purposes across - rather than within - traditional national boundaries Atlantium offers an alternative to the discriminatory historic practice of assigning nationality to individuals on the basis of accidents of birth or circumstance.

Atlantium has a heritage that spans three decades. What began as a local political statement by three Sydney teenagers on 3rd Decimus, 10500 (27th November, 1981) has since evolved into the world's foremost non-territorial global sovereignty movement and state entity, with a diverse, rapidly growing population living in some ninety countries.

Atlantium is predicated on a belief in the inevitability and the desirability of eventual global social, economic and political union, and it operates as a secular, pluralistic, liberal, social democratic republican monarchy. We encourage the active participation of Citizens in the public life of the Empire, and invite anyone with the desire and motivation to forge their own destiny as a true citizen of the world to consider joining us.


George II
Imperator et Primvs Inter Pares
Sovereign Head of State

The Virtual State of NSK

The NSK State was created in 1992 by the groups comprising the Slovene arts collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK). Amongst others these included the groups Laibach, IRWIN, Noordung, New Collectivism and the Department of Pure and Applied Philosophy. Neue Slowenische Kunst was founded in Ljubljana in 1984 as socialist Yugoslavia began to fracture. By the end of that decade the NSK groups had gained a reputation across Western Europe, America and Japan. NSK works and actions have commented on many of the political events of the last two decades and NSK is now widely acknowledged to have played a key role in the political and cultural history of Slovenia and former Yugoslavia, even being credited with playing a role in the pluralisation of society and culture in 1980s Slovenia.
The NSK State was created in the aftermath of Slovene independence. It has carried out a series of temporary ‘Embassy’ and ‘Consulate’ events in locations including Moscow, Ghent, Berlin and Sarajevo plus other collective actions. The State is conceived as a utopian formation which has no physical territory and is not identified with any existing national state. It is inherently transnational and describes itself as ‘the first global state of the universe.’ It issues passports to anyone who is prepared to identify with its founding principles and citizenship is open to all regardless of national, sexual, religious or other status. It now has several thousand citizens across numerous countries and all continents, including a large number in Nigeria. The NSK State itself is a collective cultural work, formed by both the iconography and statements of its founders and its citizens’ responses to these and to the existence of the state. It is also part of the wider ‘Micronations’ movement which has grown increasingly visible and received growing critical and theoretical attention in recent years.
www.times.nskstate.com

Micronesia 1900 A.D.-Present, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The twentieth century represents a tumultuous period of cultural, political, and artistic upheaval for the peoples of Micronesia. In 1900, Germany controls the vast majority of the region, including the Marshall, Caroline, and Northern Mariana Islands as well as Belau and Nauru. Britain holds a protectorate over Kiribati, which later becomes a formal colony, while the United States has political authority over Guam. The presence of larger numbers of Westerners and the continuing activities of Christian missionaries have an increasingly profound impact on many Micronesian cultural and artistic traditions.
From 1908 through 1910, the Hamburg Südsee Expedition, traveling widely among Germany's colonial possessions, documents the arts and cultures of Belau and the Caroline and Marshall Islands. The expedition also acquires vast collections of Micronesian art and material culture. Museums and universities in other parts of Germany also assemble substantial holdings of Micronesian objects. Following the German defeat in World War II, the League of Nations transfers authority over Germany's Micronesian possessions to Japan.
The Japanese colonial period witnesses the further erosion of Micronesian art and culture. In one instance, however, a Japanese expatriate is responsible for the development of a new tradition within Micronesian wood carving. During the 1930s, folklorist Hijikata Hisakatsu (1900–1977) persuades Belauan artists to carve scenes depicting incidents from their traditional histories and legends, traditionally carved and painted on the rafters of ceremonial houses, on smaller portable boards for sale to outsiders. The creation of these "storyboards" develops into an important Belauan art form, which continues to the present. The late 1930s and early '40s are also marked by the increasing construction of fortifications, airstrips, and other military installations throughout Japan's Micronesian territories as the nation prepares for war.
Of all the cultural regions of the Pacific, Micronesia is the most severely impacted by World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Allied and Japanese forces fight many of the major battles of the Pacific campaign on Micronesian islands. These include Tarawa in Kiribati, Chuuk (then known as Truk) in the Caroline Islands, Peleliu in Belau, and Saipan in the Mariana Islands. In 1945, the aircraft Enola Gay takes off from Tinian in the Marianas to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. After the Allied victory, control of Japan's Micronesian possessions is transferred to the United States, which administers them as a Trust Territory. In 1946, the U.S. begins the first in a series of nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands when it detonates an atomic bomb on Bikini Atoll. The testing program ends in 1958.
In the 1960s, the islands and archipelagos of Micronesia gradually begin to achieve political independence. Nauru is first in 1968, followed by Kiribati in 1979, Belau in 1981, and the Federated States of Micronesia (encompassing all the Caroline Islands except Belau) and Republic of the Marshall Islands in 1986. At the end of the century, only Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the majority of whose inhabitants vote to remain part of the United States, are under the authority of a foreign nation.
For Micronesia's artistic traditions, the first half of the twentieth century sees a dramatic decline in many art forms as the result of colonial and missionary influences. A number of Micronesian sculptural traditions, such as the creation of dilukai (female gable figures) in Belau, and masks in the Mortlock Islands (part of the Caroline Islands), cease to be practiced during this period. However, other art forms such as the carving of hos (weather charms) and seated figures in the Caroline Islands, the construction of the elaborately decorated ceremonial houses in Belau, as well as the majority of women's arts, such as weaving and plaiting, continue. The second half of the century sees a growing renaissance of Micronesian cultural and artistic traditions. In 1955, what will later become the Belau National Museum is founded in the capitol of Koror. The gradual independence of Micronesian nations that begins in the 1960s is accompanied by renewed interest and respect for indigenous art and culture. The numerous art forms that survived the colonial period are rejuvenated and taught to new generations of artists while others are revived. In the final decades of the century, a significant contemporary art movement begins to develop among Micronesian artists.
In Europe and the United States, the latter half of the twentieth century witnesses a growing awareness of the spare and elegant aesthetic qualities of Micronesian art. Micronesian objects, formerly considered simply as sources of anthropological information, begin to be appreciated and displayed as works of art. Initially, Micronesian pieces are incorporated into general exhibitions of Oceanic art, such as Arts of the South Seas in 1946 or The Art of the Pacific Islands in 1979. In the 1980s, museums and art galleries begin to mount exhibitions devoted exclusively to Micronesian art. These include broad surveys such as The Art of Micronesia in 1986, and explorations of specific traditions like Palau (Belau) in 1992.

Basket (Egadakua), late 19th–early 20th century
Nauruan people, Nauru, Caroline Islands
Pandanus leaves, fiber, shark's teeth
H. (excluding handle) 3 1/2 in. (8.9 cm)
Gift of the American Friends of the Israel Museum, 1983 (1983.545.1)



In former times, the people of Nauru in the Caroline Islands used small box-shaped baskets, called egadakua, to carry personal items such as drinking cups and containers for precious oils. The baskets were also associated with childbirth, where they were used to hold the implements and substances needed to bring the newborn into the world. Like all the fiber arts on Nauru, egadakua were created by women. The baskets were typically adorned with designs that served as family emblems, indicating the rank and lineage of the bearer. Although the woven portion of this basket is unornamented, the rows of shark teeth that adorn the edges possibly served to indicate the family affiliations of its owner.

Bracelet, late 19th–early 20th century
Nauruan people, Nauru, Caroline Islands
Fiber, coral beads, traces of feathers
Diam. 2 in. (5.1 cm)
Gift of the American Friends of the Israel Museum, 1983 (1983.545.26)



As among other Micronesian peoples, women on Nauru excelled in the fiber arts, creating a diversity of beautifully plaited ornaments and accessories. Possibly intended for a child, this small bracelet, only two inches in diameter, is remarkable for the fineness and detail of its decorative plaitwork, executed in alternating strips of plain and dyed black fiber woven together to create a rhythmical geometric design. The bracelet is further adorned with pink coral beads that were originally accented with small bundles of feathers, only traces of which remain.

Nauru Coat of Arms

'Watering Can' New Poem Collection by Caroline Bird

Caroline Bird’s two earlier collections were acclaimed for their exuberant energy, surreal imagination and passion - 'a bit of a Howl for a new generation', wrote the Hudson Review. Watering Can celebrates life as an early twenty-something. The poems, writes Caroline Bird, 'contain prophetic videos, a moon colonised by bullies, weeping scholars, laughing ducks, silent weddings - all the fertiliser that pours on top of your head.' The extraordinary verve and compassion of her verse propels us into the anxiety of new responsibilities. Raw but never hopeless, Watering Can has comedy, wordplay and bright self-deprecation.

What an original captivating and spellbinding voice. Bird is fearless like 'the girl who dropped her ice-cream down a volcano and leaped in after it'. She’s dangerous and witty too with a rare quality of imagination. This is a wonder, a beautifully written book of poems. - Lemn Sissay

Published by Carcanet December 2009

New species of Sea Urchin for auction on Ebay

You can get almost anything at eBay. Now it seems you can even discover a new marine species at ebay.

Sea Urchins are a member of the Phylum Echinodermata, Class Echinoidea. Rather then having arms or legs the sea urchin actually has long spines as a substitute. These spines are used primarily for camouflage, locomotion, and defensive purposes. The sea urchin feeds on sea grasses, algae, and decaying organic matter. One can see their close relationship to the sand dollar and starfish by looking closely at their underside, near the middle, where the familiar 5 pointed star pattern can be found. Its body is enclosed in a rigid shell, or test, made up of ten double rows of immovable plates firmly joined in a regular pattern. Sea urchins reproduce sexually by discharging either eggs or sperm into the sea, where the eggs are fertilized. This animal, which feeds primarily on vegetation and small organisms, can easily repair damage to its shell, spines, tube feet, and pedicellarieae by regenerating new parts. Sea urchins live on undersea rocks, ledges, boulders, or coral reefs.