Sheltered Gardens. Parallel Programme with performances
Curated by VASKOS (Vassilis Noulas and Kostas Tzimoulis) and Kika Kyriakakou
Organized by PCAI, with the support of the Greek Ministry of Culture and the British Council
Participating artists: Theodoros Chiotis, Phoebe Giannisi, Ermira Goro, I broke the vase, Dimitra Ioannou, Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Leda Papaconstantinou, Aris Papadopoulos & Martha Pasakopoulou, VASKOS (Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis), VIGIL (Despina Sanida-Krezia & Fotini Stamatelopoulou), Iria Vrettou
22 – 24 September 2022
Diomedes Botanic Garden, Athens, Greece
A walk in the garden is a call to a poetic disordering of the senses! It is a walk of the eyes across colours and shapes, a walk of the ears across sounds and chirps, a walk of the nostrils across smells and fragrances, a walk of the hands across objects and surfaces. These simultaneous walks lead to a long stroll through an expansive reality. It is in the garden, that imagination, mind and mood blossom and reconnect! Synaesthesia and unexpected encounters become possible.
We intended the curation of the public program in the Garden to be such a walk. A hybrid program that engages all the senses. The performances that accompanied the exhibition on the first three days, served as secret guides to sensory stimuli, as well as indicators of an expansive experience of the garden. We consciously invited artists from different fields: storytelling, visual arts, poetry, dance, performative lecture, experimental music. We subconsciously hoped for an internal osmosis of arts and environment, a hybrid awaking of multiple senses.
Through the performances and the different artistic means used each time, our attempt was to destabilize the normative patriarchal discourse, towards a critical perspective and the subversion of stereotypes, the emergence of new sensibilities, imagination and fluidity of identities and roles. Visitors, spectators, artists, walkers, we all inhabited together -as a utopian community- in various locations in the garden’s time and space, and we developed different strategies and speeds, with walking actions or fixed points, short or long durations, speech or no speech, with sound or in silence. We conversed and coexisted with the flora and fauna of the place without disturbing its delicate balance. Instead, we attempted to provoke our own disruption, our own turmoil in order to find ourselves – for as long as a walk in the garden lasts – in a new mutual attunement! Trying to walk together, side by side, with heightened senses and synchronous pace.
VASKOS 