Initiator

Building on the tradition of commissioning art installations at Paleo Eleourgio (Old Oil Mill), Eleusis 2021 aims to transform the city into an open workshop at the disposal of artists, where the encounter with the artworks becomes part of the everyday life. Specifically, Initiator has an educational character and takes the form of an in-situ exercise, emphasizing on the production process as a series of relationships between the city, the citizens and the artists. Art is an encounter. Eleusis 2021 focuses on supporting artists in their first professional steps, providing them with the space and time to work on their ideas and the technical and financial resources to realize them.

Based on the structure of the ancient ceremony of the Eleusinian Mysteries, we attempt to create new ceremonies, contemporary initiations to contemporary secrets. The structure is triadic: the curators are the mystics who have the ability to interpret the particular codes of the installation, the artists are initiated for the first time, and the “epopteia” (supervisors) are the collaborators who are at the highest degree of initiation and have a deep knowledge of Eleusis.

The initiation process to installation art was carried out in collaboration with the 40mcube, art centre in Rennes and in particular with the curator Anne Langlois, and the artist and founder of Mosquito Coast Factory in Nantes, Benoît-Marie Moriceau. Also, under the “supervision” of Giorgos Skianis, founder and, for many years, head of the visual art installations at Paleo Eleourgio, of Kalliopi Papageli, for many years in charge of the archaeological site and the Archeological Museum of Elefsina, as well as the collector Kostas Lykidis. Finally, in collaboration with the artistic team of Eleusis 2021 and in particular, with the Artistic Director Kelly Diapouli and the Director of Contemporary Art Eleni Riga, who is responsible for the design and coordination of the programme. The pilot was launched on October 8th 2018, with an one-week intense workshop, a period of in-situ research and production, culminating with this exhibition.

Eleusis 2021 European Capital of Culture

The story of Eleusis is based on a big secret, that of The Mysteries. The ancient remains, located in the center of the city, constantly testify to this fragmentary past, which, as time passes, continues to amplify an occult dimension that contributes to our representation of the city. If people came from far away to be initiated, many of them basically came to work or to find a place to live. Industrial density is part of a chapter whose ruins attest to an inevitable transition. The French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss said that “the intrinsic value attributed to the myth comes from the fact that the events, supposed to take place at a time of time, also form a permanent structure. It refers simultaneously to the past, the present and the future.” The many faces of the city seem to allow overlapping layers of stories to coexist in a small geographical area.

The story of Eleusis is based on a big secret, that of The Mysteries. The ancient remains, located in the center of the city, constantly testify to this fragmentary past, which, as time passes, continues to amplify an occult dimension that contributes to our representation of the city. If people came from far away to be initiated, many of them basically came to work or to find a place to live. Industrial density is part of a chapter whose ruins attest to an inevitable transition. The French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss said that “the intrinsic value attributed to the myth comes from the fact that the events, supposed to take place at a time of time, also form a permanent structure. It refers simultaneously to the past, the present and the future.” The many faces of the city seem to allow overlapping layers of stories to coexist in a small geographical area.

If in Ubik, Philip K. Dick’s famous science fiction novel, the schizophrenia of the reality sounds like a resilience to capitalism, it is because objects or spaces of everyday life pass imperceptibly from one time to another, making them thus obsolete even before having existed. Initiator’s artists, who went from different countries from Europe, spent a month in Elefsina observing the city, meeting inhabitants to imagine works in response to the complexity of a given context. The question of the point of view is central to the conception of their works, be it from a personal point of view—from the order of ideas, from partiality, from an ideological position—or from a physical point of view, privileged, restricted or enlarged on the urban landscape.

Today, they give us visions and stories invented by and for the city, focusing on one or more aspects of its history. The works produced at the end of their residency take very different forms but have this in common to invest the city of a particular look, like a passage underlined in a book, as if we were experiencing unexpectedly a series of distorting mirrors. Reflections, far from producing faithful images, allow us to access, through unusual and distorted frames, different levels of realities.

Anne Langlois, Benoît-Marie Moriceau

Map:

Download the maps here.

1↓
Sophie Innmann , GROOVE 2000, 2018, reinforced concrete & wax on iron bars, 150 x 25 x 12 cm → Old Municipality building at Nikolaidou Str. opposite to number 74

2↓
Evi Kalogiropoulou, No smoking, 2018, marble, steel, dimensions variable → Seafront at Kanellopoulou Str., opposite to Paleo Eleourgio

A green cross glows in the dark. Or is it a crescent?, 2016, neon lamps, dimensions variable→ Dimitros

3↓
Doruntina Kastrati, Untitled, 2018, Structural Metal Grid and Concrete, 4.51 x 1.54 x 0.20 cm → Outdoors archaeological space at Dimitros str. & Sotiriou Gkioka

4↓
Hortense Le Calvez in collaboration Lorie Ballage, Wreckology, 2018, wood, metal, ropes, found objects, variable dimensions → Seafront at Kanellopoulou Str. near Jumbo

5↓
Panos Profitis and Despina Charitonidi, Clouds, 2018, ytong block, iron rods, concrete mixture,dimensions variable → Parking lot at Eleourgio, Kanellopoulou Str.

Initiated artists

Sophie Innmann holds a degree in Fine Arts from Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe, where she graduated in 2014 as Meisterschülerin of Prof. Leni Hoffmann. Various residencies and grants followed, for example at CIA in Paris (FR) or Hangar, Barcelona (ES). Her work has been shown internationally in museums and galleries including Moscow Museum of Modern Art (RU) and Kunsthalle Basel (CH). Her conceptual interventions incorporate her interest in human activity in relation to time and architectural settings.

Evi Kalogiropoulou is a visual artist. She has studied in Athens and London and currently works in both cities. Kalogiropoulou has exhibited in various spaces in London, Germany, and Greece such as Chisenahale Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery in London. She works mostly with moving image installations, experimental film, and sculpture; her projects explore ideas associated with the inclusion/exclusion, cross-culture identity, female figures in Ancient Greek mythology and sci-fi environments.

Doruntina Kastrati born in Prizren in 1991, studied Graphic Design at the University of Prishtina, Faculty of Fine Arts. Kastrati lives and works between Prizren and Prishtina. Kastrati has presented her work in the twelfth edition of the Young Visual Artist Award (2014) at the National Gallery of Kosovo, where she was announced as the winner of this edition. Throughout the period of January-March 2015, she attended the International Study Programme and Curatorial Programme (ISCP). In January 2016, she became the winner of the first edition of the Foundation, led by artist Petrit Halilaj. In February 2017 she opened her first personal exhibition Red Landscape curated by Vala Osmani at Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art. In August 2017 Kastrati exhibited in the first edition of Autostrada Biennale curated by Manray Hsu in Prizren, Kosovo, by presenting a big scale installation called “The long walk”.

Hortense Le Calvez (b. 1988) is a multidisciplinary artist exploring themes of environmental dystopia, eco-anxiety and the anthropocene. Her water-based practice, under the name Forlane 6 Studio, depicts irrational aquatic fictions in the form of in-situ sculptural installations. She works and lives in Poros, Greece.

Despina Charitonidi (b. 1991, Athens) lives and works in Athens. She has studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma and at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht. She has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome and has participated at the Nue Now Amsterdam. She has received the International Sculpture Price Edgardo Mannucci twice.

Panos Profitis (b. 1988, Athens) lives and works in Athens. He has studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in Antwerp and at the Athens School of Fine Arts. In 2017 he had his first solo show at the Annie Gentils Gallery in Belgium. He represented Greece at the Young Artist Biennial in Ancona, Italy, in 2013. Since 2016 he has been working with Despina Charitonidi. Their collaborative work has been presented in Antwerp, Rome and Athens.

Initiators

Anne Langlois

Anne Langlois is a curator, co-founder and co-director of 40mcube and executive producer for the Fondation de France’s New Patrons action. Anne Langlois holds a Master’s Degree in exhibition and in history of art. In 2001, with her collaborator Patrice Goasduff, she founded 40mcube, a contemporary art centre which concentrates a studio for the production of artworks, an artists’ residence, a training organization and an office for organizing contemporary art projects. Considering that public space is a place to be invested by artists, 40mcube presents works there punctually, creates a sculpture park, the HubHug Sculpture Project, and includes citizens in the commissioning of art works. Anne Langlois also regularly participates in programmes of public commissioning artworks and in the program 1%, commissioning artworks for public buildings. In parallel with its exhibition programme, 40mcube is setting up a studio for the production of works, artist residencies on the territory and in companies, and founded, in 2014, the first professional training course for artists, GENERATOR, in collaboration with the Ecole Européenne Supérieure d’Art de Bretagne.

For more information:

http://www.40mcube.org

Benoît-Marie Moriceau The installations of Benoît-Marie Moriceau develop according to the circumstances of the exhibition or according to the nature of the places in which he is brought to intervene. The different places he invests can be considered as much as the supports of his works as the works themselves. Since 2006, his work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions including The Relative Size of Things & The Vertigo of The Infinite Champs Libres in 2018; Rien de plus tout du moins at Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine in 2014, L’hiver te demandera ce que tu as fait l’été at the gallery Mélanie Rio in Nantes, Scaling Housing Unit in Maison radieuse Le Corbusier among others. His works have been regularly presented in group exhibitions in France and abroad including Fieldwork Marfa in Texas and Hapax Legomena at Mercer Union in Toronto in 2013; Dynasty at the Palais de Tokyo and at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris – ARC and No Soul For Sale, A Festival of Independents at the Tate Modern in London in 2010. In 2011, the artist inaugurated the workshop Mosquito Coast Factory, designed by the architecture studio Tolila + gilliland and in which exhibitions are regularly organized.

For more information:

http://ddab.org/fr/oeuvres/MORICEAU
http://www.mosquitocoastfactory.com

We would like to thank:

The citizens of Elefsina and especially Rea Manousaki, Meletis Kavvadias, Antonis Marougkas, Stavroula and Christodoulos Mpalokas.The workshops, craftsmen and authorities: Giorgos Giannopoulos, fine carpenter Konstantinos Κallieris, mechanical from the Garage Nikos “To Teleio” Charalampos Gargaretas from the port authority, OLE Tomi and Mario Marko, welders Dimitris Selimis, Melina Analyti, Nikolas Arnis, artworks’conservation