Artistic portfolio 2013 - Fenia Kotsopoulou

ARTISTIC PORTFOLIO

FENIA KOTSOPOULOU 2013

ARTISTIC PORTFOLIO FENIA KOTSOPOULOU 2013 PARTIAL FULFILLMENT FOR THE MA/MFA CHOREOGRAPHING LIVE ART LINCOLN PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE (LPAC) LINCOLN, UNITED KINGDOM TEXTS WRITTEN BY FENIA KOTSOPOULOU 2013/2014 DESIGN BY FENIA KOTSOPOULOU PHOT0 BY DAZ DISLEY, FENIA KOTSOPOULOU PRINTED BY BUDGET PRINT THE WORKS REPRESENTED IN THIS BOOK ARE THE ORIGINAL CREATIONS OF THE ARTIST. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCE OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, WITHOUT A PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION.

COPYRIGHT © UNIVERSITY OF LINCOLN 2013/2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

www.feniakotsopoulou.de

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION # FENIA KOTSOPOULOU //1 # OVERVIEW OF “2013 PROJECTS” //4 PART ONE PRACTICE BASED RESEARCH: “(DIS)-REMEMBERING” # RESEARCH: P.A.F (WHERE/WHY/WHAT/HOW) //12 # PHASE ONE: “(DIS)REMEMBERING: AN ARCHIVE OF ME AND MY FATHER” //16 # PHASE TWO: “(DIS)REMEMBERING: THE REMNANTS” //22 # PHASE THREE: “(DIS)REMEMBERING: THE BODY” //26 # PHASE FOUR: “(DIS)REMEMBERING” //30 # BIBLIOGRAPHY //34 PART TWO PHOTO-ARCHIVE //37

INTRODUCTION

FENIA

KOTSOPOULOU //1

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CURRICULUM VITAE fenia kotsopoulou (1981) is a greek cross-disciplinary artist who straddles performance art and site-specific performance, dance and videography. she currently lives in england (lincoln) where she attends ma/mfa in choreographing live art. she holds a ba honours in dance from the national dance academy of rome (italy) and a ba honours in italian literature and language from the aristotle university of thessalonikis (greece). her dance training background consists of diverse dance styles (modern, contemporary, release, jazz, primitive dance) as well improvisation, voice and movement, traditional dances, contact improvisation). she develops interactive and site specific performances, as well as creating short dance and documentation videos. during the creative process, she explores different fields like photography, video art, painting, psychoanalysis and philosophy in order to find elements for further experimentation and investigation. she is mainly inspired from the daily life and every detail related to human interaction with technology and nature, gender roles and diversity, social and political issues. the body as gathering place of emotions, personal and collective memory, fragmentation, transformation, the role of archive and the performativity of documentation are some of the topics of her projects/performances. in search of an holistic way to express her vision (and based on a rhizomatic approach of making art) she collaborates with artists from different fields and different cultural backgrounds. an important part of her movement exploration regards revisiting greek/ balcan folk dances to discover how these can influence a contemporary dance setting and become rich source for socially engaged art projects. since 2005 she has participated in several inter-cultural exchanges, dance festivals and artistic venues and as performer and choreographer, as well as collaborative and cross-disciplinary projects. her work has been presented in greece, italy, germany, sweden, france, england, croatia.

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she gives workshops in creative movement and improvisation, body research and experimental fusion of contemporary dance and urban traditional dances (improfolk workshops). in 2013, as part of her studies, her activity extended towards curatorial practices. she created/curated the first edition of the mini festival “inteconnectivity & live art�, which was held in the lincoln performing arts centre. fenia is a member of the international dance council cid of the unesco.

0VERVIEW 2013 PROJECTS

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#VIDEO PROJECTS 2013# ”FRAGMENTS OF EXPERIENCE” (GE) a series of video documentaries from the artistic residency/ performance: “ptosis” by pavlos kountouriotis. these videos - made to encapsulate the process and help it find a new life - document only some tiny fraction of the work and function both as a historical record and as a new artwork themselves. link: vimeo.com/79558038

“FRAGEOGRAPHY” (UK) a collaboration with the digital/sound practitioner daz disley that aims to build a production process to take account of the boundaries and dialogues between space and movement, pixels and code in order to bring together video art and site specific performance as a unified expressive artwork. the first output is the video: “IN-ner Space revisited”, selected for “the wrong - new digital art biennale”. link:frageography.wordpress.com

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#PERFORMANCES 2013# “WERK IT” (UK) censorship. you better lip sync for your lives! pussy riot vs. macho and his gun. WHO DO I WANNA BE? are you not afraid of your body’s image? the words that stay are raw, creux, raw, creux. an exploration led by filipe canha (pt). with: fenia kotsopoulou, irene atmatzidis, vagia kapousidou, and katerina giannoula. link: vimeo.com/66359121

“ALICE IN ANIMA(L)AND”(GE) what kind of world is anim(l)and? what body tale does alice bring from there every time? what does she take with her before going back? improvisation dance performance inspired by the exhibition in cell63 art gallery, directed by luisa catucci. link: www.cell63.com

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one part

“(DIS)REMEMBERING” practice based research

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# WHERE/WHY/WHAT/HOW# performing arts forum (P.A.F), located in the village st. erme in france for two weeks: 26th august until 10th september. the initial theme of my research - “construction and deconstruction of identity” was especially inspired by the reading of slavoj zizek:”how to read lacan” and of alain badiou: “Handbook of Inaesthetics”. the starting point of my research (with autobiographical – autoethnographical characteristics) was my interest to investigate and explore the topic of identity in relation to the family constellations: how these family relationships and connections determine the construction of personal identity? during the period of the artistic residency i had the opportunity to go deeper, critically reflect on the creative process, built up the conceptual framework of the project and through experimentation define how this research was to proceed for the creation of a unified body of artwork. also, technology and other media like video and photography were used as supportive tools. an explanatory and informative example of the research & development was a blog, accessible to the public: http://experpractice.blogs. lincoln.ac.uk/. here it can be traced how the project was transformed and developed. this investigation, exploration and the moments of crisis within the process, concluded with a more clear conceptual direction. the connection of my research to identity became more subtle and the prevalent topics were my relationship with my father, the encapsulated memories of a personal archive and the exposure/ sharing of intimate material with the audience. the research/project would be untitled :”(Dis)remembering” and in this next phase included the creation of a series of performances presented in mini-festivals at the lincoln performing arts centre.

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“(DIS)REMEMBERING” - a practice based research project - started within my studies in ma/mfa choreographing (2013/2014) live art at the university of lincoln for the purposes of the course “research and development”. this project would pass different levels of development: -research, conceptualization and experimentation during the artistic residence at the performing arts forum (p.a.f), with pavlos kountouriotis and jan ritsema as mentors.

-dissemination, presentation and documentation in the context of four mini-festivals which were held in the lincoln performing arts centre. specifically my approach and intention was towards a research through artistic practice centred on a studio project which would result in the production and presentation of an unified artwork. additionally. documentation during the creative process has been taken as a significant component of the research. as a result, within five months, from august to december, i developed four performances, each of which was a reflection of the ongoing development and investigation with regard to different aspects of the project. “(dis)remembering”, in its essence is an autobiographical project linked to the problematic but still intimate relationship with my father and the memories encompassed with it. the need to preserve them lead to the creation of an archive that became the cornerstone of the project and was seen as a material and metaphorical mechanism speaking about power, and about maintaining power, about the power of the present to control what is, and will be, known about the past, about the power of remembering over forgetting. it could be considered an exploration of other ways of experiencing the present, and thus of viewing the past. (more info: www.feniakotsopoulou.de/disremembering)

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Nowhere in the arts can the desire to simply stop things disappearing, and the feeling that one is able to access the past, be stronger than in the live performance archive. *

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“Autobiography is the product of various factors- real experiences, together with things heard, seen , read, narrated, invented.

Fact and fiction are inextricably woven together.”

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* Matthew Reason, Archive or Memory?

The Detritus of Live Performance,2003

* Barbara Steiner , Autobiography,

*from: Franz Kafka, Letter to my father,

There are known knows.

There are known unknowns.

There are unknown unknowns.

(Donald Rumsfeld)

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Cultural theorists, most notably Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, see “the archive” as a central metaphorical construct upon which to fashion their perspectives on human knowledge, memory, and power, and a quest for justice.

According to Badiou Event is: the creation of new possibilities. It is located not merely at the level of objective possibilities but at the level of the possibility of possibilities. An event is a “major historical turning point, or moment of rupture in time and space, which brings something new into the world”. It is a rupture of a situation caused by awareness of what is missing from this situation.

* Joan m. Schwartz and Terr Cook, Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory , 2002

*notes on: Alain Badiou: Handbook of Inaesthetics Chapter: Art and Philosophy, 2004

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And Zizek will add a 4th one: There are unknown knows. This means that there are things that we don´t know that we know. This lack of awareness of what we know determines our actions and feelings and also decentralize the subject. Lacan refers that the subject is always “decentred ” so that teh individual is deprived by his most intimate subjective experience that guarantees the core of who is. * notes on: Zizek, How to read Lacan.

Chapter: from che vuoi? to fantasy: Lacan with eyes wide shut, 2008

2004

“You asked me recently why I maintain that I am afraid of you. As usual, I was unable to think of any answer to your question, partly for the very reason that I am afraid of you, and partly because an explanation of the grounds for this fear would mean going into far more details than I could even approximately keep in mind while talking.”

1920 *

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�So many years will be spent searching, studying, classifying,

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before my life is secured, carefully arranged and labelled in a safe place- secure against theft and nuclear war - from whence it will be possible to take it out and assemble it any point. Then being assured, of never dying, I may finally rest�

* Christian Boltanski, Research and Presentation of All that Remains of My Childhood, 1944-1950, 1969

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#PHASE ONE#

(DIS)REMEMBERING: an archive of me and my father

event:mini-festival “apocalypse. the death of performance� curated by the ma/mfa choreographing live art students 26th october, 2013

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Fenia Kotsopoulou

“(Dis)remembering: An archive of me and my father” Studio 1 // 1800-2100 on going installation/participatory performance

description:

usually archives are made to keep artefacts safe, preserved and many times secret. this archive demands the opposite from you. this archive documents my troubled yet intimate relationship with my father. you are allowed steal, destroy, eradicate or erase all the data and information in this very private archive.

about: “(dis)remembering: an archive of me and my father”, is the first outcome of the practice based research “(dis)remembering”. a participatory experience and installation lasting three hours took place at lpac (lincoln performing arts centre) as part of the mini-festival that was organized from the ma/ mfa: choreographing live art students. a personal archive of memories, thoughts and information regarding the complicate relationship with my father was created from material originating before, during and after skype conversations with my father over the period of a month. voice recordings, self-portraits, drawings, unsent letters, video depicting the symbolic impact each conversation had on me, constituting a database shared with the audience in a format of installation with which they were allowed to interact. at the entrance of the space, the visitors received a sheet of paper with the following message:

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welcome to the archive of memories, experiences and thoughts about the troubled relationship with my father. here you may find traces and information that shed light on the nature of that relationship. you are here not just to skim through and read these data but most importantly to take an active role in making it‌. disappear. by entering in this space you consent to select the data you want to eradicate, eliminate or change by using the tools provided. take your time and feel free to put this archive in to oblivion.

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PERFORMING AS CURATOR: within the space, i performed as the artist’s curator (myself). in this role i welcomed visitors and after a short tour with further explanations of how they could experience the space, they were left alone to read, observe, watch, cut, destroy what was exposed. i was there in order to keep locating more material in each place/ sector. there were four sections containing data : • • • •

unsent letters personal thoughts written on a blackboard photo(s) video(s) and sound.

the visitors eliminated data and i added data as curator to create a space in a continuous state of flux.

MULTIPLE LAYERS OF INSTALLATION’S CONTENT: • sharing intimacy and memories with the spectators with the consent that they could destroy the original data. this was a mechanism to experience my past in different ways and investigate how people reacted and used their agency when they were allowed to interfere with someone else’s personal information.

• a personal memory was shared and transformed into a collective memory, due to the interference of other as is the case with the game ‘chinese whispers’ this an information exchange, at each step the opportunity

sort of people. created for the

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information to be altered. by changing the nature of the data does the nature of the personal memory also change ? • archive and its role was definitely the relevant aspect of the installation. usually archives aim to maintain something in safety from disappearance, as well as preserving it for the future. they function as a store of accumulated information for safe keeping. the idea of bringing a personal archive to its oblivion, proposed within the performance/installation, comes in juxtaposition with an archive’s primary function : an idea of letting go of the past and its restrictions.

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#PHASE TWO#

(DIS)REMEMBERING: the remnants

event:mini-festival “remains� curated by irene atmatzidis 10th december, 2013

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fenia kotsopoulou

“(Dis)remembering: the remnants” studio 3 // 1700-1800 installation/participatory performance

DESCRIPTION: a personal archival space of data about the troubled relationship with my father has been already displayed in order to be changed/destroyed/transformed/disappeared by the audience. the remnants of the old memory, retouched by strange hands create now the a new experience. nothing is lost...neither the unspoken words, nor the unsent letters.

about: “(dis)remembering: the remnants”, is the second development of my research, taken the form of a participatory installation, the focus was still on memory, archive, and the participation of the audience who keep on changing the nature of the original work. the visitors are invited to use the leftovers from the previous performance(“(dis)remembering: an archive of me and my father) - pieces of paper with sentences and words from letters written to my father. these pieces are the material for a collage- a new letter the visitor composes which has as recipient: fenia. a kind of “dadaistic” composition, apparently marked by nonsense and incongruity, symbolizes the re-composition of personal memories that comes back to myself as a “gift” from others.

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at the same time, in the space there are all the other remaining elements/data from the previous performance (videos/broken cd/destroyed photographic album/curator’s stamp) inside a cage of pigeon holes. the cage has multiple symbolics meaning thus is present in all the four performances. it is the main object that functions in several modes : as a scenographic element, as a metaphoric place of imprisoned memories, as a carrier of messages for the audience. this participatory performance/installation reflects the process of memory based on a constant construction deconstruction and reconstruction of information.

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#PHASE THREE#

(DIS)REMEMBERING: the body

event:mini-festival “the social body� curated by vagia kapousidou 11th december, 2013

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fenia kotsopoulou

“(dis)remembering: the body” studio 3 // 1700-1800 durational performance

description: my body as vessel of memories my body as an archive of emotions my body as a space where i am looking back over time my body as a symbolic codification of spare parts of events. this performance is part of the project “(dis)remembering. an archive of me and my father”, a conglomeration of data regarding the relationship with my father. here, the focus is on the way that the body translates, resists, and share the emotions and memories of events from the past.

about: “(dis)remembering: the body”, is the third development of my research. a loop of events throughout the course of the performance consisting of a series of steps from composition of a text to its subsequent placement in a pigeon hole for it to become accessible to the audience. on the floor is a scattering of several hundred screws and nails, which become the bed for the performance. as i write, i sit, kneel and lie on the screws, before traversing them to confront the cage, which i then climb up and over in order to reach and label one of the pigeon holes, before depositing the text and returning to the writing phase. this loop of action continued for the three hours of the performance.

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the audience is free to come and go, and again, choose their mode of interaction - either as passive observer, or as interlocutor having the choice to open a pigeon hole and digest the communiquÊs of which only one is addressed directly to the audience. walking barefoot on screws: bare feet are associated to childhood and innocence. walking on nails and screws can be seen as a test of an individual’s strength and courage or as metaphor of the emotional pain and difficulties to communicate with yourself and/or with the others.

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#PHASE FOUR#

(DIS)REMEMBERING

event:mini-festival “interconnectivity & live art� curated by fenia kotsopoulou 12th december, 2013

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fenia kotsopoulou “(dis)remembering” studio 3 // 1730-1830 one to one performance/installation description: a sort of autobiography. a sort of a self portrait in process. a sort of conglomeration of traces from my relationship with my father. a sort of a personal archive where the data are inextricably woven together in order to create a new memory. about: “(dis)remembering”, is the last development of my research. the strike through (dis) now clearly indicates the moment to remember - abandoning the idea of forgetting through the alteration of memories. in a series of intimate one-on-one encounters in a small room under a ritualistic atmosphere a “memorial” dedicated to the figure of “father” is slowly building up which encapsulates the entire journey of this research/project. once more the audience’s active contribution determines and defines the final outcome. each time a person steps into the space after taking off their shoes is invited to sit next to me and to chose one of the objects found inside the pigeon hole. the ritual is followed

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by a story i narrate regarding this object and its relation with my personal history. afterwards a simple parade leads us toward the “memorial” where the selected item is placed in the way s/he likes. within this structure every encounter has a different degree of intensity accompanying it reflecting the way the person deals with this intimate moment. in this one to one experience i directly explore the idea of the boundaries between art and life being intensified and blurred in performance. the “memorial” stands in the room not only as a physical object created, erected or installed to commemorate those involved in the process of the memories’ transformation, but also as a reminder of the symbolic death; the death of the past; the death of the event; the death of the performance.

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#BIBLIOGRAPHY#

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badiou, a., 2005, handbook of inaisthetics, stanford california: stanford university press zizek, s., 2006, how to read lacan, london: w w norton w w norton & company ltd reason, m., 2003, archive or memory?: the detritus of live performance,new theatre quarterly (19:1),82-9,[online] accessed january 14, 2014, available from: http://www.nyu. edu/classes/bkg/methods/reason.pdf schwartz j, cook, t., 2002, archives, records, and power: the making of modern memory , archival science, (2), 1-19, [online], accessed january 13, 2014, available from: http:// www.researchgate.net/publication/227120284_archives_records_ and_power_the_making_of_modern_memory steiner,b., yang j., 2004, autobiography, london: hudson ltd

thames &

the archive: documents of contemporary art,edited by merewether ch., 2006, london: whitechapel art gallery

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two part

photo archive

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“(dis)remembering: an archive of me and my father�

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“(dis)remembering: an archive of me and my father�

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“(dis)remembering: an archive of me and my father�

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“(dis)remembering: the remnants“

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“(dis)remembering: the remnants�

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“(dis)remembering: the remnants�

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“(dis)remembering: the body�

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“(dis)remembering: the body�

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“(dis)remembering: the body�

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“(dis)remembering: the body�

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“(dis)remembering”

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“(dis)remembering”

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“(dis)remembering”

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“(dis)remembering” “(dis)remembering”