Mapping paths of convergence:
Artists, anthropologists and frequenters of an Athenian beach meet on the occasion of a public art event.
During the summer of 2009, Athens Biennale (a private initiative of a group of artists and curators named XYZ) took place at Paleo Faliro, an Athenian suburb near the sea. XYZ proposed to seven curators to organize the Biennale exhibition based on the concept of “Heaven”. Two of them, Dimitris Papaioannou (visual artist and choreographer) and Zafos Xagoraris (visual artist and assistant professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts) curated a public art event called “Heaven Live”. The curators proposed, for the occasion, a series of performances, discussions and other forms of public interventions, as well as a number of installations and other “material” artworks. They, also, formed a group of volunteers whose role was to “broadcast” the events, to create an archive - as a form of installation- at “Flisvos” (a building situated in the area), in order to give an overall view of “Live”, and to promote contacts between the invited artists and the people passing or living in the area. At the same time, a second group was formed, intersecting with the first one, by Elpida Rikou (anthropologist and artist, teaching anthropology of art at the Athens School of Fine Arts and participant in one of the events of “Live”), in order to adopt an anthropological perspective on “Heaven Live”. This group included two anthropologists (Alexios Tsigas, who became a member of the “broadcast”group and Marianna Stivachta, who chose not to participate in it) and myself (a visual arts student of Athens School of Fine Arts and a member of the “broadcast” group, as well).
Thus, I had the opportunity to meet and co-operate with artists and anthropologists, during an art event which was international and multicultural, connecting people from different places of origin, artists but also frequenters of Faliron beach or visitors(some of them tourists), who were involved in it in lots of different ways. I came to know and adopt -up to a certain point- the anthropological perspective, while doing fieldwork in the area where the events were taking place. I became closely related to one group of swimmers who, during the winter time, tended to “inhabit” a specific area on the beach. I observed their strategies of appropriating certain artworks that were installed in “their” place and how they rendered them part of their everyday life. Actually, not only this group of people but other frequenters of the beach, as well as occasional visitors, “adopted” certain artworks, approaching them, as I have noticed, mainly as material objects that could be useful to them in specific ways.
In case of art projects based on live workshops or performances, the spectators frequently faced the challenge to actively participate in them. Several local groups or individuals invested time and energy in art projects, developing a sense of ownership of certain artworks or using the occasion for promoting their own “image”. Since the “public’s” participation was essential to the concept of “Heaven Live”, spectators were not held at a distance from the artworks (as it is common in museums, galleries and other art exhibitions), but actually, became “the artwork” themselves, using their bodies as essential parts of the common sensuous experience, created in situ by their involvement in the art projects. By investing physical labour or by just being present, participants developed a different, more complicated, perspective of the events, as well as of the locations these events took place.
In fact, the site chosen for “Heaven Live” was perfectly adapted to the Biennale’s overall concept of “Heaven”. “Live” completely neglected the city and placed the emphasis on the beautiful beach of Paleo Faliro. A large busy road and the railways passing beside it functioned as a physical boundary between the city and the beach and the artists did nothing to contradict or comment on this with their work. In this way, the visitors of the Biennale were transported from one situation (city’s life) to another, completely opposite (the “paradise” of the beach). Also, whereas in cities, the “outside” is often a space we traverse to go “inside”, in the case of “Live”, emphasis was placed on the outside, while the inside- the Flisvos building, being the only space indoors situated in the area- “housed” a variety of representations of the outside. However, as this evasive art event unfolded in time, the archives of Flisvos “materialized” it in the form of a huge collage of photographs, videos, mappings and texts and finally, this building became the core of “Live”.
I started to create my own maps for this occasion and I gradually came to compare the site to a living body, developing according to the complex situations occurring inside its boundaries. The same as the human body, this specific place acquired its own orientations, measures and movements, due to multiple networks connecting sites where events occurred and people participating in them. Inside this body’s changing and permeable boundaries, I assumed that the best way to apprehend networks of social interaction -difficult to identify since they didn't have a precise material outcome- was through my own body and the experience of my senses.
In the case of open air discussions and live workshops, for instance, I felt I was implicated in a dynamic auditory space without fixed boundaries, developing in time: people talking, surrounded by sounds of the waves, the wind, birds singing, music, footsteps, laugher- and the quasi-absence of certain sounds, such as the noises of the city. I also tried to identify distinctive smells and associate them with particular situations and places. Olfaction played, for me, an important role in remembering and associating current and past experiences and I thought that smells could, also, excite particular emotional responses to people participating in the events.
My drawings of improvised maps of the area were inspired by my own and other people’s itineraries that I have recorded. They were accompanied by photographs and notes that provided more precise information on space, people and things. They were an attempt to create a visual synthesis of the whole context. I added indications of experiences based on other senses in the form of notes, symbols, figures, lines and shadings on the maps (for example, I tried to indicate certain smellscapes by small dots or circles).
This activity permitted me, also, to make some interesting remarks. For instance, I located a small garden created by a frequenter of the beach, only some yards away from the installation made by a group of artists, sociologists and others (named “Filopapou”), wishing to promote, in diverse ways, the creation of new “utopian” spaces, gardens included. While this improvised garden went unnoticed by the representatives of the “art-world”, the “gardener” himself, being in the presence of “art”, claimed affinities of his work and artistic creation. His was not the only “intervention” made on the beach by people who were not artists. I located arrangements of fruits, bits and parts of wood, plastic and other objects, placed on the sand, hanging from trees, etc. Artists and the biennale visitors ignored them. Actually, the curators attempted to include in “Live” certain more “structured” activities that took place in the area (open-air chess playing, cycling etc.) or, rather, to encourage art projects which would merge “invisibly” with the local “life” (as one of them, Z.Xagoraris, has declared). My maps gave me the opportunity to observe in situ this play with the categories (“art”-“non-art”-“everyday life”, etc.) and helped me reconsider the ways artists and “non-artists” relate to certain aspects of contemporary art.
The maps I created became my visual tools, which I regularly employed in exploring the relationships between people and their surroundings. I used them as reports of my research and as a way of understanding my own implication in it. They are an attempt to visualize the multiple networks of communication I perceived in action, the relationships I formed with many others and the ways I chose to confer an identity to the site, based on my own itineraries. They invite comments that will, hopefully, further the dialogue I started with anthropology.
