Marcus Stephen, M.P. President of the Republic of Nauru
Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Emir of the State of Qatar, and H.H. Sheikha Mozah
Paul Biya, President of the Republic of Cameroon, and his wife, Mrs. Chantal Biya
Alhaji Dr. Yahya A.J.J. Jammeh, President of the Republic of The Gambia
Prince Mohamed Bolkiah, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Brunei Darussalam, and H.R.H. Pengiran Anak Isteri Pengiran Anak Hajah Zariah
Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi, President of the Union of the Comoros, and his wife, Mrs. Djoudi Hadjir
T.H. Milo Djukanovic Prime Minister of Montenegro, and his wife, Mrs. Djukanovic
Minister of Foreign Affairs King-Akerele of the Republic of Liberia
Madhav Kumar Nepal, Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, and Mrs. Nepal
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey, and his wife, Mrs. Erdogan
And the Spanish president's goth daughters
President Marcus Stephen of Nauru meets the Obamas at the Metropolitan Museum New York along with other world leaders
TUVALU: Tiny Pacific state in crisis
By MICHAEL FIELD for stuff.co.nz
LATEST: A tiny South Pacific nation, Tuvalu, has resorted to emergency rule and its leadership under armed guard, sources on the capital atoll of Funafuti say. The third smallest state on earth - after the Vatican and Nauru - has a population of just 10,400. Sources say the country's solitary navy boat, Te Mataila, is now guarding the shoreline of the side-by-side residences of the Governor General Iakoba Itaeli and Prime Minister Willy Telavi. A state of emergency has been declared and any gathering of 10 or more people prohibited. There has been a march on Funafuti but so far there has been no violence, the source says.
Tensions are high however as people from the Nukufetau island community have demanded one of their members of parliament, Lotoala Metia, resign. There has been a continuing power struggle in the 15 seat Parliament. Last year, a large part of the New Zealand Defence Forces took part in a major exercise on Funafuti, designed to prepare the nation for tsunamis and other civil disasters. The island nation is 1100km north of Fiji and has drawn the attention of environmentalists who fear it will disappear due to global warming. Tuvalu makes much of its money from fishing and the sale of its internet domain suffix, dot TV.
Source:
© 2010 Fairfax New Zealand Limited
Country Profile BBC:
TUVALU
Tuvalu is a group of nine tiny islands in the South Pacific which won independence from the United Kingdom in 1978. Five of the islands are coral atolls, the other four consist of land rising from the sea bed.
All are low-lying, with no point on Tuvalu being higher than 4.5 metres above sea level. Local politicians have campaigned against global warming, arguing that climate change could see the islands swamped by rising sea levels.
OVERVIEW
Life on the islands is simple and often harsh. There are no streams or rivers, so the collection of rain is essential.
Coconut palms cover most of the islands, and copra - dried coconut kernel - is practically the only export commodity. Increasing salination of the soil threatens traditional subsistence farming.
Tuvalu depends on foreign aid, the income from the sale of tuna fishing licences and the interest from a trust fund set up in 1987. The sale of postage stamps also brings in revenues.
It is one of a handful of countries to have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which has funded the construction of Tuvalu's largest building - a three-storey administrative headquarters.
Tuvalu has shown ingenuity by exploiting another source of income. It has sold its internet suffix - .tv - to a Californian company for several million dollars a year in continuing revenue. The company sells the suffix on to television broadcasters.
Some of the money has been used to pave roads - which were formerly made of crushed coral - and to build schools.
FACTS
Full name: Tuvalu
Population: 11,000 (UN, 2010)
Capital: Funafuti
Area: 26 sq km (10 sq miles)
Major language: Tuvaluan, English
Major religion: Christianity
Life expectancy: 62 years (men), 65 years (women) (UN)
Monetary unit: 1 Tuvaluan dollar, or 1 Australian dollar = 100 cents
Main exports: Copra, handicrafts
GNI per capita: Estimated to be lower middle income: $996 to $3,945 (World Bank, 2009)
Internet domain: .tv
International dialling code: +688
First Island Seen by Christopher Columbus For Sale
High Cay, Bahamas was the first land that Christopher Columbus spotted on his famous journey when he discovered the new world. Just imagine, crossing the ocean for months not knowing if you will ever see land again... and then all of a sudden, this beatiful island is spotted! Amazingly, this 31.46 acre island is on sale! Listed at $3,000,000 U.S., the island boasts 3 different beaches, and although it doesn't have a dock at the moment, there is an ideal sheltered spot to build one. The Bahamas is a great place to purchase an island, because of its stable government, balmy weather and close proximity to the U.S. Although this island has a lot going for it, the history of the island is what makes it really attractive.
Source: http://private-islands.blogspot.com/
Wirtland to grant citizenship to Julian Assange
Dec 28, 2010
Wirtland citizenship for Julian Assange
Government of Wirtland decided to grant Wirtland citizenship to Julian Assange. The official letter from the world's first sovereign cybercountry underlines Mr. Assange's "great accomplishments in changing the public perception of internet and its role in the world's balance of power". Official residence permit was issued in the name of Julian Assange.
"Your example has vividly demonstrated how quickly and efficiently the internet can influence real life. While citizenship of a cybercountry may seem merely symbolic today, you know better than anybody else the potential of cyberspace and the role of web social projects in the near future. Wirtland offers our citizenship to show our support to your case, and our appreciation of your achievements," - states the Wirtland's letter to Mr. Assange.
Mr. Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, is currently under house arrest in England pending an extradition hearing. For his work with WikiLeaks, Assange received a number of awards and nominations, including the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award and Readers' Choice for Time magazine's 2010 Person of the Year.
Source: http://wirtland.blogspot.com/2010/12/wirtland-citizenship-for-julian-assange.html
With kind regards,
Cristopher Luengo
PR Attache
Foreign Office
Government of Wirtland
WIRTLAND
www.Wirtland.com | www.Wirtland.net | http://Wirtland.blogspot.com | www.Wirtland.org
Book: The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
The Invention of Morel
Adolfo Bioy Casares, introduction by Suzanne Jill Levine, prologue by Jorge Luis Borges, translated from the Spanish by Ruth L.C. Simms.
Jorge Luis Borges declared The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of The Screw and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Set on a mysterious island, Bioy’s novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious. Inspired by Bioy Casares’s fascination with the movie star Louise Brooks, The Invention of Morel has gone on to live a secret life of its own. Greatly admired by Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Octavio Paz, the novella helped to usher in Latin American fiction’s now famous postwar boom. As the model for Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Last Year in Marienbad, it also changed the history of film.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914–1999) was born in Buenos Aires, the child of wealthy parents. He began to write in the early Thirties, and his stories appeared in the influential magazine Sur, through which he met his wife, the painter and writer Silvina Ocampo, as well Jorge Luis Borges, who was to become his mentor, friend, and collaborator. In 1940, after writing several novice works, Bioy published the novella The Invention of Morel, the first of his books to satisfy him, and the first in which he hit his characteristic note of uncanny and unexpectedly harrowing humor. Later publications include stories and novels, among them A Plan for Escape, A Dream of Heroes, and Asleep in the Sun. Bioy also collaborated with Borges on an Anthology of Fantastic Literature and a series of satirical sketches written under the pseudonym of H. Bustos Domecq.
Suzanne Jill Levine is the author of numerous studies in Latin American literature and the translator of works by Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and Manuel Puig, among other distinguished writers. Levine’s most recent book is Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fictions. She is a professor in the Spanish Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
New York Review Books
Copyright © 1963-2011 NYREV, Inc. All rights reserved.
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
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
