The Concept

Since Romanticism the aesthetics of ancient Greek ruins have enchanted artists and travelers alike. More recently, the ruins of the proverbial Greek crisis have also invited artists, students, activists and tourists to move to Athens in order to learn from it. In such a way, documenta 14 “Learning from Athens” can be seen in the context of this more general interest of a politically sensitive international art world in the urban ruins of the economic crisis. Ruins, moreover, have played a central role in the history of documenta itself, as an art institution: the ruins of the WWII, among which the first documenta was staged in Kassel, served as a prism through which documenta imag(in)ed and explored its possible futures. Originally planned as a secondary event to accompany the Bundesgartenschau, that first documenta alluded to the ruins of the war and their transcendence, through the metaphor of gardens. documenta 14 exhibited artworks in landscaped archaeological sites (e.g. in Aristotle’s Lyceum, the Athenian Agora, the Philopappos hill, etc.) thus, once again bringing to the fore the relationship between ruinous pasts and gardens as a source of life and renewal.

This workshop explores documenta 14’s “Learning from Athens” by taking into account the background of the crossing historical trajectories of interest in ancient Greek (and other) ruins. It will work on and with documenta 14 artworks as well as with other artworks that have drawn from, or alluded to ancient Greek heritage. Given the historical role ancient Greek art played as a canon in the shaping of various traditions on or against which modern and contemporary art were shaped, the workshop addresses the following questions: How do approaches to and feelings caused by modern Greek ruins differ from those related to ancient Greek ones? Is it a paradox that it is the ruins once again that are making the city vibrant, lively and appealing to a new wave of travelers? To what extent do ruins of the past feed into present artistic interest, and how does this interest mingle with the interest in the urban ruins of the Greek sovereign crisis? How does this interest interfere in processes of learning about a city and how will it translate into or influence local cultural policies in the long-term?

The workshop will work on themes that revolve around concepts and topics such as “local” and “world heritage”, “ancient and contemporary ruins”, “the original” and “the copy”, “the fragmented” and “the monumental”. Artists and anthropologists will work together without dividing tasks. They will experiment together with images, concepts, texts and things in order to produce work in-between art and anthropology which will be gradually exhibited on the walls of the space that will host the learning from documenta closing event.

Participants

Campus Novel (Giannis Cheimonakis, Giannis Delagrammatikas, Foteini Palpana, Yiannis Sinioroglou and Ino Varvaniti) | art collective | Fotini Gouseti | visual artist; PhD candidate, University of Peloponnese | Giorgis Manoudakis | student of anthropology | Androniki Ntalla | archaeologist, art historian | Anna Pantelakou | student of theory and history of art | Sol Prado | visual artist | Giorgos Sakkas | anthropologist, archaeologist University College London | Fay Zika | philosopher, Athens School of Fine Arts