Wednesday 27 January 2010

Interview for Ozon magazine , plus LIFO cover and Interview


Photo: Nikolas Ventourakis


Theo Michael – (when) smoke gets in your eyes

Eight years ago, Theo Michael left Thessaloniki for London. Once there, as the genuine eccentric that he is, he drinks his coffee at “Broadway Market”, he frequents the basement of “Quinto” bookstore (searching for books on Archaeology, History and Paleontology) and, naturally, he visits his favorite museums such as the John Soane Museum, the British Museum and the Pitt Rivers in Oxford. Theo Michael is mounting his first solo exhibition. It is hosted by AMP Works, a new venue established by AMP gallery. The exhibition will run until November 7, 2009. Its title is “Smoke from the Edge of the Known” and will consist of a series of works on paper-a combination of drawings, collage and printings- as well as of some cabinets containing exotic curios…
Smoke from the Edge of the Known…What exactly is burning there? Is there an ominous message of which you are the bearer? “Anyway one looks at it, this is a burning world. It’s not only burning at the edges but also in its very core. Post 9/11 hysteria, panic over global warming and the aftermath of the recent financial crisis stand out as landmarks of 21st century malaise…Conventional progress has been limited to Youtube, Facebook and Wi-Fi. Our world is more akin to destruction than to creation. Through my work, I propose the idea of ‘relapse’ as the new progress. Something not so terrible after all, if we accept that the ideas and investments of recent decades have been highly problematic.”
What is the creative process behind your work?
“I am, primarily, a collector of images and objects. Then I act as a collageur, a bricoleur and a painter. I collect any image-irrespective of provenance-that distracts my attention. It is an automated process that I’ve been practicing for the last ten years. I have a digital archive (or chaos) of 80000 untitled, unclassified images that grows constantly. This archive functions as a diary. Mostly, however, it serves as a mapping of my brain, a tool that helps me think when I look at it. That’s how my work begins. From the random and uncontrollable merging of images. They can take any form, since I’m not interested in the medium…”
“…80000 traces, remnants, documents, fossils, relics of the past.”
Is there something aesthetically pleasing to be found in relics? “Relics constitute the foundation but, at the same time, the destination of any civilization. Watching them we get a distorted, false sense of progress.”
Dystopian, retrogressive, dark and not so distant. So, is there any beauty in the beast called the Future? “The Beauty of the Beast…if the future is a beast, how could we possibly describe the present? Time is an interesting concept but it could be abolished as a dimension, the fourth dimension so to say. By that I mean: ‘I don’t own an i-phone. Do I live in the past? In Tokyo, Sony employees get to use e-paper and 3D printers. Do they live in the future? Some tribes in the Amazon don’t know of the existence of iron. Do they live in the past? Sometime soon we will be able to clone mammoths and dinosaurs. Their re-emergence, therefore, is in itself a futuristic scenario…All of the above are happening or will happen in the dimension we call space. The concept of time, thus, becomes merely a communicative and linguistic convention.”
As a “foreigner” in the greek zeitgeist, which images do you consider representative of what is termed Contemporary Greek Culture?
“ In Athens, anything I see around me can be explained through the interaction between the two principle national narratives: classical antiquity and Orthodox Christianity. These polar and conflicting opposites have created this neo-hellenic profile…I try to collect and use objects and documents of micro-historical value where this neo-hellenic character is depicted.
In one of your drawings you place the New Acropolis Museum in an indefinable, lunar landscape. Are you insinuating something? Are you risking a rather bleak prediction for the future? “There were a lot of thoughts around this particular choice. At the same time there was a difficulty in expressing them…I want for the images I create to be one step ahead of language, even in my own mind. I am very much preoccupied with the instinctive delivery of my work in an effort to escape from the legacy of reason, a legacy which I judge to be unsuccessful in the first place. I create a new image spontaneously without looking for excuses. To interpret works of art is essentially useless. It offers explanations to those who are not so sure about their taste. What actually happens is simply that if there is something that attracts us we like to look at it…And if we like it very much we might also take it with us.”


http://www.ozonweb.com/en/art/theo-michael-when-smoke-gets-in-your-eyes




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Thursday 21 January 2010

Neptune of Sansovino



http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrtheomichael/sets/72157623043420419/

Suck-Sex-Full-Veterans-Tits


ARTISTS FOR ATHENS PRIDE II

Κοκτέιλ – Δημοπρασία στην γκαλερί The Breeder


Η γκαλερί The Breeder σάς προσκαλεί στην δημοπρασία που θα γίνει το Σάββατο, 6 Φεβρουαρίου, 8-10 μμ, τα έσοδα της οποίας θα διατεθούν εξ ολοκλήρου στο Athens Pride.
Από τις 6 και μετά θα σερβιριστούν κοκτέιλ.

Η τιμή εκκίνησης για όλα τα έργα θα είναι 300 ευρώ.

Θα δημοπρατηθούν τα έργα των καλλιτεχνών:

Στβ Γιαννάκος, Zoë Charlton, Χρήστος Δεληδήμος, Χριστίνα Δημητριάδη, Κωνσταντίνος Κακανιάς, Κατερίνα Κανά, Em Kei, Jeremy Kost, Kalup Linzy,

Τέο Μιχαήλ, Ντόρα Οικονόμου, Χριστόδουλος Παναγιώτου, Άγγελος Παπαδημητρίου, Μαρία & Ντόρα Παπαδημητρίου, Λήδα Παπακωνσταντίνου, Poka-Yio,

Γιώργος Σαπουντζής, Scott Treleaven, Sharon Thomas, Νίκος Χαραλαμπίδης, Πέτρος Χρυσοστόμου, Μανταλίνα Ψωμά

Επιμέλεια έκθεσης: Andrea Gilbert




Proud to be Flesh

Proud to be Flesh: A Mute Magazine Anthology of Cultural Politics after the Net

Illustrations and artwork by: 50% Gray / Alexa Wright / Alexei Shulgin / Allen Tannenbaum / Amita Baviskar / Ammirati Puris Lintas / Andre Dipper / Angelo Rindone / Anja Kirschner / Ansuman Biswas / Benedict Seymour / Bureau of Inverse Tech / Carey Young / Catherine Story / Chiara Birattari Zoe Romano / Chris Wilcha / Coco Fusco / CORP Death Squad / Damien Jaques / Daniel Jackson / David Shrigley / Esiri Erherienne Esi / Etoy / FAT / Francis Upritchard / Gustav Metzger / Indymedia South Africa / Jakob Jakobsen / Jamie Robinson / John Latham / Jordan Crandall / Laura Bangert / Louise Oldfield / Lubna Hammond / Max Mlinaric / Merlin Carpenter / Nils Norman / Olia Lialina / Pauline van Mourik Broekman / Per Wizen / Pil and Galia Kollectiv / Pirat Byran / Quim Gil / Ricardo Dominguez / Simon Worthington / Sophie Rickett / Stephen Duncom / Stephen Willats / The Yes Men / Theo Michael / Vito Acconci / Vuk Cosic / William Shoebridge Richard Dawson / Zeigam Azizoff

Contributors and interviewees: Saul Albert / Irina Aristarkhova / The Artist Placement Group (APG) / Brian Ashton / Richard Barbrook / John Barker / Will Barnes / Caroline Bassett / Anustup Basu / Amita Baviskar / Franco Berardi (Bifo) / Josephine Berry Slater / Josephine Bosma / Marc Bousquet / James Boyle / The Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT) / Ted Byfield / Andy Cameron / Vuk Cosic / Gregor Claude / Eileen Condon / Michael Corris / Florian Cramer / Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) / Mark Crinson / Chris Darke / Anthony Davies / Mark Dery / Anna Dezeuze / Ricardo Dominguez / Economic Observatory at the University of Openess / María Fernández / Simon Ford / Matthew Fuller / Coco Fusco / David Garcia / Andrew Goffey / Paul Helliwell / Brian Holmes / Hydrarchist / Matthew Hyland / Anthony Iles / Kevin Kelly / Jamie King / Dmytri Kleiner / Kolinko / Arthur Kroker / Hari Kunzru / Peter Linebaugh / The London Particular / Geert Lovink / Suhail Malik / Melancholic Troglodytes / Flint Michigan / Jeff Mills / Angela Mitropoulos / Ewan Morrison / Neil Mulholland / David Panos / Luciana Parisi / Celia Pearce / Richard Pithouse / Simon Pope / Eddie Prévost / Louis Rossetto / Andreas Rüthi / Tim Savage / Pit Schultz / Benedict Seymour / Howard Slater / Keston Sutherland / Horacio Tarcus / Tiziana Terranova / Palle Torsson / Ben Watson / Stephen Willats / Steve Wright / Brian Wyrick / Soenke Zehle
About the book

Chapter Titles:
1. Direct Democracy and its Demons:Web 1.0 to Web 2.0
2. Net Art to Conceptual Art and Back
3. I, Cyborg: Reinventing the Human
4. Of Commoners and Criminals
5. Organising Horizontally
6. Assuming the Position: Art and/Against Business
7. Under the Net – the City and the Camp
8. Reality Check: Class and Immaterial Labour
9. The Open Work

In late 1994, back in the days of dial-up modems and Netscape Navigator 1.0, Mute magazine announced its timely arrival. Dedicated to an analysis of culture and politics 'after the net', Mute has consistently challenged the grandiose claims of the communications revolution, debunking its utopian rhetoric and offering more critical perspectives.

Fifteen years on, Mute Publishing and Autonomedia are delighted to announce the publication of Proud to be Flesh: A Mute Magazine Anthology of Cultural Politics after the Net. The anthology selects representative articles from the magazine's hugely diverse content to reprise some of its recurring themes. This expansive collection charts the perilous journey from Web 1.0 to 2.0, contesting the democratisation this transition implied and laying bare our incorporeal expectations; it exposes the ways in which the logic of technology intersects with that of art and music and, in turn and inevitably, with the logic of business; it heralds the rise of neoliberalism and condemns the human cost; it amplifies the murmurs of dissent and revels in the first signs of collapse. The result situates key – but often little understood – concepts associated with the digital (e.g. the knowledge commons, immaterial labour and open source) in their proper context, producing an impressive overview of contemporary, networked culture in its broadest sense.
Proud to be Flesh features a bold mix of essays, interviews, satirical fiction, email polemics and reportage from an array of international contributors working in art, philosophy, technology, politics, cultural theory, radical geography and more. Accessible introductions, a chronological arrangement of chapters and three full-colour image sections grant special insight into the evolution of key themes over time.

In its refusal of specialisation, Proud to be Flesh is unique in its field. It offers a compelling view onto the messy but exciting moment that was the turn of the millennium as well as being an incomparable sourcebook for those seeking to push forward analysis of the global crisis that has since ensued.

"There are precious few arenas left in which contemporary art and culture are examined from a critical perspective that is willing to challenge both the clichés of academic art theory and the techno-topian disengagement of contemporary new media discourse. Proud to be Flesh provides an invaluable guide to the past fifteen years in the evolution of art; a period during which the boundaries between art, culture and technology have been eroded and re-consolidated in ways that are both troubling and promising. Mute's writers remind us that there are always real bodies, and consequences, behind the gleaming abstraction of 'new' media. They have managed an almost impossible task: to remain both substantively critical and accessible to a wide readership."

-Grant H. Kester

Chair of Visual Arts at University of California, San Diego, and author of

Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (2004)

here's the link





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