The event is co-organized by the Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre - Associated with the Pierides Foundation [NiMAC] and the Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture, Cultural Services, in collaboration with AHDR (Association for Historical Dialogue and Research) and SIDESTREETS Initiative.
Curatorial team: Yiannis Toumazis, Louli Michaelidou, Anber Onar, Despo Pasia, Kyriakos Pachoulides, Elena Stylianou.
26.09 – 8.11.2014
Treasure Island seeks to expand discourses of the past in Cyprus. It seeks to shed critical light on dominant modes of historical representations, and address those stories that have been subjugated, manipulated or silenced by hegemonic historical discourses and artistic, literary or theoretical practices. Moreover, the project aims to underline the broader meaning of the political in art, in the local context: On the one hand, as a drive for a critical (re)negotiation of the modern history of trauma, conflict and violence, as well as of any totalizing ideological strategies of approaching, thinking and narrating the past, particularly in relation to national or cultural identification. On the other hand, as an attempt to deal with a broad spectrum of crucial issues that affect Cypriot society, beyond the Cyprus Problem. Ultimately, the project aims to bring forth the culturally inconspicuous, and the latent patterns of Cypriot historical experience, both in the colonial and postcolonial contexts. The project features a diverse group of Cypriot and international participants (artists, directors, academics, writers, activists and other cultural agents), and has welcomed a variety of presentational formats such as visual works, performances, theoretical discussions, film screenings, talks, literature/poetry readings, public interventions and educational programmes. The central aim is that, the wide range of expressions presented in the project, will offer possibilities and opportunities for reflection and re-evaluation of the Cypriot past and present, highlighting the multiplicity, criticality, openness and fluidity of contemporary art practices in the local context, while asserting their relevance to the broader field of political and social-scientific research on Cyprus.
Emin Çizenel GADRİYE (2010) Installation (mixed media on canvas, 170 x 465 cm / video, 15 min / text) Courtesy of the artist Gadriye takes an oft-repeated but unspeakable story (more common than rare in rural areas of Cyprus and the world in general) and transforms it through a painting and video installation into an audience experience, which is, at various moments and to varying degrees, aesthetically pleasurable, humorous, dark, and disconcerting. In this work, the subject – zoophilia – is lifted from its original context of a “true story” and is only present by implication in natural and aestheticized brushstrokes, images and sounds. These allusions open up the space of the art exhibition or gallery to the “outside world” of experiences, memories, desires and prohibitions through the mediation of the audience. Thus, there is no judgment in the work, no story – the construction of these is left to the viewer, who must negotiate between the visual and intellectual experience of the surface presented, and what is left unsaid below it. This mental negotiation is problematic, because it involves a network of intellectual, psychological and experiential connections, some of which are pointed to in the “Report” that accompanies the works: the reconstruction or re-invention of a memory, the shift from a rural to an urban context, the role of the law in regulating desire, the underground economy of human trafficking, the social and psychological consequences of breaking down traditional distinctions between humans and animals, transformative concepts of gender, shifting and conflicting cultural norms and taboos, and so on. Complicating these significations in Gadriye is the implicit paradox – and the conscious or unconscious (self-) censorship involved – in viewing the painting in the public space of the exhibition, while watching the video in an installation, which suggests a private viewing in a dark, solitary space.
Adonis Florides “Cyprus is an Island”: What was said, what was not said Screening/Discussion [in English] 8 October (See Programme) Cyprus is an Island by Ralph Keene (1946, 34 min) Adonis Florides (director), in conversation with Costas Constantinides (film scholar) and Yiannis Papadakis (social anthropologist) Screening/Discussion [in Greek] 1st November (See Programme) Cyprus is an Island by Ralph Keene (1946, 34 min) Adonis Florides (director), in conversation with Christodoulos Panayiotou (visual artist) and Stavros Karayiannis (English literature) “To find a film about a people as yet unfilmed. A people of whom there was a great deal to say, but of whom a great deal must be left unsaid.” These were the instructions received by director Ralph Keene and writer Laurie Lee while obtaining approval by the Colonial Office and the Ministry of Information of the United Kingdom in 1945 to film the documentary Cyprus is an Island, in Cyprus.
The documentary is perhaps the most important cinematic recording of Cyprus during the colonial period. Director and producer of the film is Ralph Keene, an acclaimed British documentary filmmaker and producer of the period 1930-1960 [Journey into Spring, 1958 | Under Night Streets, 1958 | The people’s land, 1943, etc.]. Screenwriter of the film is the poet and author Laurie Lee, who would subsequently become known for his novels and poetry collections [Land at war, 1945 | The Firstborn, 1964 | Two Women, 1983]. The film was produced by Greenpark Production. Three Cypriots participated as film assistants: Michael Cacoyannis, then taking his first steps in the field of cinema (and possibly the first time his name ever appeared in film titles), Polys Constantinides and Ahmet Jemal. The music score of the film is the Greek Suite (Elliniki Souita), by Greek composer Peter Petrides. Screening of the documentary and discussion with guest speakers invited by director Adonis Florides and the public about what was ultimately said and what not, in an attempt to investigate the reasons for which something becomes visible or silenced, to deconstruct the cinematic structure of the film and to reflect on its colonial gaze.
Antonis Hadjikyriacou Life Chances: Four Families in a Greek Cypriot Village by Peter Loizos (1974, 43 min) Copyright: The Royal Anthropological Institute Screening/Discussion [in English] 4 October (See Programme) Antonis Hadjikyriacou (historian), in conversation with Olga Demetriou (social anthropologist), Zelia Gregoriou (theory of education) and Adonis Florides (director) The 1974 film Life Chances: Four Families in a Greek Cypriot Village is a cinematic presentation of Peter Loizos’ anthropological research. One of the world’s most prominent social anthropologists, Loizos documents everyday life and social mobility in the Cypriot countryside in the 1960s and 70s. By focusing on the rapid socio-economic transformations of the period, the film presents the family stories of four brothers and sisters from Argaki. It explores the Cypriot transition to modernity and shifts attention to the winners and losers that this process entailed at the micro-level of a rural family. By shifting between the personal and the collective, these stories constitute a microcosm of the village, the Greek Cypriot community, and Cyprus at large. After the screening, a round-table will touch on issues such as the postcolonial condition of Cyprus, gender relations, modernization, urbanization, and the development of socio-economic structures.
Lia Haraki The Record Replay React Show (2014) Performance, 30 min
26 September, 10 October & 8 November (See Programme)
Sound and movement composition/Performance: Lia Haraki Sound advisor and technical support: Christos Hadjichristou Production manager: Yiangos Hadjiyiannis Courtesy of the artist (.pelma.) The Record Replay React Show is a solo performance where a soundscape is made visible and a choreography is made audible.
With the help of the Loop station technique and sound composer Christos Hadjichristou, Lia Haraki is able to compose the piece live on stage, taking all risks included in live recording. Once the first layer of the structure is recorded, it gets replayed, and the performer reacts on the already existing layer, thus creating more layers while navigating herself from order to chaos. Lia Haraki says about the piece: “I was interested in creating a landscape of sound and a soundscape of movement. The material and layers came from three very existential concepts: TIME, SPACE and MATTER and so I focused on reacting to the questions WHEN? WHERE? and WHAT? As a result, a multi-layered universe was produced, where I ended up reacting to the sound of my own voice and so it was like I was having a dialogue with myself. This allowed a sort of confusion in the end, made of different versions of me, which led to a kind of an identity crisis on the spot. At the same time, the form was leading me by its nature to reinvent new strategies of dealing with time and space over and over again, and while I was making those choices I was simultaneously hearing the ones I made earlier in the piece. So it became like a sort of life-game when your past is there, embodied and heard in your conscience, but at the same time you are already making new decisions in the present moment, that build the future. And this unlimited set of opportunities, given to us in every moment, must be life’s most generous quality and the piece’s most optimistic side.” For the Treasure Island project, Haraki will react to the sculptural studies for the Liberty Monument, exhibited in the space.
Eleni Kamma 4. MUHAVERE/Conversation (2014) Installation (HD video, 22:45 min, colour, stereo sound / figures in cardboard, plastic film, dimensions variable) Video Participants: Anna Marangou (archaeologist, historian, writer), Takis Hadjittofis, Christodoulos Antoniou Pafios, Thodoris Kostidakis (karagkiozis players), Euripides Dikaios (theatre director). Video: courtesy of the artist and Nadja Vilenne Gallery. Figures: courtesy of the artist, the Cyprus Folk Art Museum collection of the Society of Cypriot Studies, Thodoris Kostidakis and Christodoulos Antonios Pafios
The project Oh, For Some Amusement! is expected to be completed by the end of 2014. and is supported by the Mondriaan Fund, NiMAC Cyprus, PiST/// Istanbul and Theater aan het Vrijthof, Maastricht.
Nurtane Karagil Gel bak göresin / Come and have a look (2014) Installation 180 x 250 x 200 cm (Painting on paper – Ewey Gooey (2013), 211 x 107 cm / LED lights) Courtesy of the artist Come and have a look is an installation that aims to recreate the view of the “north” from the “south”, where the work is exhibited, providing a playful mise-en-scène of what lies beyond the borders of the division in Cyprus. The painting Ewey Gooey in Come and have a look is part of Nurtane Karagil’s ongoing sticky things series, which started in 2012. According to the artist, the series enunciates the multiple distortions and disturbances that are witnessed in the Cypriot communities of the past and the present, and proposes viewing everyday life issues as part of a universal condition, when looked at from a distance. The painting simulates the iconography of division in a small island, as a persistent problem that has become a cultural way of being. The work carries an observable sloppy and hasty, child-like aesthetic, evoking most people’s early childhood experience of seeing and expressing the world through painting. The depicted characters, buildings, landmarks and other features, inspired by real city images and situations, are rendered on paper offering the viewer a fresh take of everydayness in the life of the city. In its entirety, the series does not intend to say something new, but instead to promote understanding of the different perspectives through which Cypriot reality is experienced. Ewey Gooey, which was initially exhibited in northern Cyprus, simply hanged on a wall, has been incorporated as part of an installation piece for the purposes of this exhibition. In an effort to capture that which exists “outside” and carry it into an interior space, the work was re-imagined to symbolically mark the transfer of a “boundary”, across boundaries.
The work focuses on the profession of the Karagiozis player and his role as a mediator of the Cypriot political reality in the twentieth century. Furthermore, it examines the changes in the relation of creator-spectator during the transition of the entertainment media, from traditional participatory forms of entertainment, such as the shadow theater, to the more recent domination of cinema and video.
The complete work Come and have a look emerges from reallife experiences, reflecting the attempts of many Cypriots during the past decades of seeing “the other side” by reaching out, climbing on a roof, looking through a peephole, or travelling up to the top of a mountain. Enjoy the view.
The project is an installation consisting of a video projection and an archival presentation and is part of a larger project with title Oh, For Some Amusement!. The video projection shows parts from a videotaped critical discussion (total duration of 1.5 hours) between the archaeologist-historian Anna Marangou and the karagkiozis players Takis Hadjittofis, Christodoulos Antoniou Pafios, Thodoris Kostidakis and theater director Euripides Dikaios.
Gabriel Lester The Big One (2011)
The panel, the organization and the recording of the discussion took place in January 2014 at the Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre, during Kamma’s Artist Residency at the Center. For the purposes of the archival presentation, the artist is curating a vitrine, consisting of Shadow Theatre figures referring to events in recent Cypriot history.
Film, 12:36 min (RED transferred to HD video) Courtesy of Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam Presentation [in English] 24 October (See Programme)
The Big One follows the logic of a narrative drama, but without proposing an explicit plot or characters. The film depicts the grand spectacle of a lottery draw, wherein a large group of people partake in a ritual to tempt fate, while being observed by an audience. The anonymous characters proceed through the various stages of this ceremony, as both spectators
and participants observe and imagine destiny unfolding. Underscoring both the human desire for change and (cosmic) justice, as well as the gaze inward, the characters in the film seem to undergo an inner search, looking for what they could imagine would happen if they were to become the lucky winner. Viewed in the context of Cyprus, the work seems to strike an uncanny chord in relation to the financial, moral and existential crisis of the last few years. This interplay between perception, imagination, and desire form a driving force behind Lester’s practice. His artworks, films, and installations originate from an aspiration to tell stories and construct environments that propose their own narrative interpretation. Lester’s artworks are either implicitly narrative, explicitly visual or both at once; they suggest both rational consciousness, as well as associative and magic thought.
The Liberty Monument, Nicosia Installation (20* original sculptural studies by I. G. Notaras, retrieved from storage) Courtesy of Larnaca Municipality Relevant presentation [in English] and performance by Chrystalleni Loizidou (art historian) and Lia Haraki respectively, 10 October (See Programme) The Liberty Monument in Nicosia, comprising 17* realistic bronze figures on a white marble structure, stands at Podocataro Bastion of the city’s venetian walls, overlooking Adamantios Korais Street, which leads to the Archbishopric Palace. Created by Greek sculptor Ioannis G. Notaras, the monument was commissioned by the first President of the Republic of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios III and was erected in 1973 with the aim to commemorate the “Cypriot Hellenism’s fights for freedom” and the “E.O.K.A 1955-1959 Liberation Struggle”, while also bearing a “precept” for future generations to “always fight for freedom”. Fourteen years later, in 1987, the House of Representatives officially declared it as “The Monument of the E.O.K.A. Struggle”. Beyond its explicit symbolisms, the story of the monument reflects the disconcerting chronicle of the birth of the Cyprus Republic itself. Archival documents suggest that the initial decision for its commissioning in 1959 (also making reference to Archbishop Makarios and general Grivas as dominant sculptural forms), may have taken place with the intention to create a monument for enosis (union with Greece) at Kykkos Monastery. Its completion during the 1960s, with Makarios now in Presidency and the shift of official policies in light of the Independence, as well as the escalation of intercommunal troubles, did not only lead to the postponement of its installment, but also to a reconsideration of its location and context. For many years, the figures were kept in storage (two of them were allegedly stolen in the meantime) and the platform by the Nicosia Bastion laid bare until the monument’s eventual installment in 1973: in the bleak height of EOKA Bʹ, (minus the statues of Makarios and Grivas, and any carvings of fighter’s names), covered-up and awaiting an unveiling that never took place. A year later, during the 1974 coup and an attack against the Archbishopric, the monument suffered damages, including a shot through the chest of Liberty’s figure. “As a comment on the fluid nature of political and historical perception it could be said, rather fancifully, that this is a monument designed for enosis, commissioned for independence and named after liberty. Of course statements such as the above might appear to be either impossible to substantiate
or anachronistic. It is more appropriate and less controversial to say in conclusion that looking at the Liberty Monument’s treatment at different times reveals the fluidity of approaches to symbolism, history and memory, as well as different approaches to public ceremony and narrative and their use to either reflect or project socio-political consensus. It is a product, in short, of the complex difficulties and issues of representation around the establishment of a Cypriot independent state. Finally, this work’s subsequent treatment can be seen as a concise and startling metaphor for the struggles, the failures, the oversights, the symbolic conflations and the historical disconcertion contained in post-1974 reinventions of Cypriot nationalisms” (Loizidou, 2010, pp. 98-99).
WORKSHOPS, 4 – 31 OCTOBER, 2014 Meeting point: Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre [NiMAC] Participation is open to any number of workshops. For bookings, contact literaryagencycyprus@gmail.com or visit the Literary Agency Cyprus page on Facebook
Information retrieved from Loizidou, C. (2010) “The Liberty Monument of Nicosia”, in Loizos, P., Philippou, N. & StylianouLambert, T. (Eds.), Re-envisioning Cyprus. Nicosia: University of Nicosia Press, pp. 89-101.
Workshop 3: Wednesday, 15 October, 13:30-16.30 (mixed) Workshop leader: Stephanos Stephanides Guest: Aydın Mehmet Ali
*The exhibition features 17 original sculptural studies corresponding to the figures of the actual monument, and three additional busts, of Makarios III, Dionysios Solomos and Nikolaos Katalanos, which eventually were not included.
Literary Agency Cyprus / Whirling Words Writing Nicosia… beyond barriers (2014) Writing workshops/readings Coordinator: Aydin Mehmet Ali Members/participants: Tina Adamidou, Alev Adil, Nicoletta Demetriou, Marianna Foka, Miranda Hoplarou, Andriana Ierodiaconou, Maria A. Ioannou, Kathy Kattashis, Bahriye Kemal, Lisa Suhair Majaj, Münevver Özgür, Eftychia Panayiotou, Marilena Zackheos Literary Agency Cyprus / Whirling Words is a group of award winning writers, poets, photographers, artists and more. For this project, they run writing workshops and readings on the streets of Nicosia, during five city walkabouts (two of which will be women-only) during the months of the exhibition. A selection of landmarks is used to provoke deeper readings, imaginings, interpretations, reflections, memories, fantasies, perhaps already in the palimpsest (the treasure) of the city. New creative writing (treasures) by participants will contribute to the existing palimpsest and Nicosia landmarks will be eternalised in the Anglophone literatures of Cyprus. The walkabouts, readings and locations will be filmed and photographed and this material will be edited in the form of short films that will be then exhibited at the Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre (NiMAC). The aim is to reclaim the whole city by removing emotional, language and imagined barriers and in effect to re-imagine the political in literature, by recreating layers of stories, places, images, histories, taking them to the streets, to the accidental audiences. Important questions about memories, the past, the future, borders and barriers, the construction of identities, his- and her-stories, and taboos will be raised, with the aim to provoke the silenced. The team also seeks to challenge dominant literary discourses which deny the multicultural, multi-lingual, multi-faith essence, histories and literatures of this city and to promote new Anglophone literary work and writers, challenging manipulation, silencing, marginalisation and exclusion, enabling participation of the “outsiders”; women’s stories will be a focus. Each workshop will be limited to ten participants and anyone with a passion to say something about Nicosia is welcomed to attend and re-write Nicosia beyond barriers.
Workshop 1: Saturday, 4 October, 16.30-19.30 (women-only) Workshop leader: Rachel Pettus Guest: Lisa Suhair Majaj Workshop 2: Friday, 10 October, 18:00-21.00 (mixed) Workshop leader: Marilena Zackheos Guest: Marios Epaminodas
Workshop 4: Friday, 24 October, 21:00-24.00 (mixed) Workshop leader: Aydın Mehmet Ali Guests: Münevver Özgür and Agnieszka Rakoczy
Mediterranean coastal tourism and global capital; c) The Master Plan for a Government Office complex in Nicosia, which envisioned an efficient bureaucratic mechanism as a means for building a unified State administration. In exposing an archaeology of discourses on Cyprus’s physical landscapes, resources, identities, economics and/or politics, this work revisits particular constructions of Cyprus as a sought-after “treasure,” hopefully shedding some critical light on current idealizations of Cyprus. Ultimately, Treasured Microcosms aims to advance alternative interpretations of this locale’s realities and potentials.
Panayiotis Michael I. Balloon (2012-2013) Balloon, dimensions variable II. Architectural Drawing (2014) Video animation in loop, 2 min
Workshop 5: Friday, 31 October, 16:00-19.00 (mixed) Workshop leader: Nicoletta Demetriou
III. Zygote (2014) Dictionary, shelf, 34.5 x 32 x 12 cm
READINGS (open to public) Wednesday, 22 October, 19.30-21.30 at Rüstem Kitabevi (24-26 Girne caddesi Street, Sarayönü, Nicosia)
IV. Kennedy Avenue (2014) C-Print, 39 x 48.5 cm
Wednesday, 5 November, 19.30-21.30 at NiMAC (19 Palias Ilektrikis Street, 1016, Nicosia)
Mesarch Lab Treasured Microcosms (2014) Installation (table with archival exhibits - models, booklets, maps / audiovisual material) 840 x 80 cm Mesarch Lab – University of Cyprus: Panayiota I. Pyla, Petros Phokaides, Konstantina Kalfa, with the collaboration of Georgia Daskalaki, Giannis Papadopoulos, Emilia Siandou, Giorgos Tryfonos, Elisavet Andreou, Giorgos Chrysostomou Visiting Cyprus in 1897, initially with a philanthropic agenda, the Scottish sociologist-planner Patrick Geddes identified Cyprus as a “microcosm”: due to the variety and resources of the Island’s physical landscapes, Cyprus constituted for Geddes a paradigmatic case suitable for projecting larger visions for economic and planning experiments around the world. Treasured Microcosms unpacks Geddes’s conceptualisation of Cyprus as a microcosm of the “global” milieu, and juxtaposes it to other 20th century discourses that also perceived Cyprus as variously absorbing or reflecting the vibrations of wider sociopolitical processes such as, modernisation, nation building, the cold war or non-alignment. The differing interpretations of Cyprus-as-microcosm are presented through archival fragments (maps, photographs, drawings, written documents, films) – accompanied by targeted commentary – from the following highly acclaimed international architectural/planning projects: a) The renowned designer and visionary Buckminster Fuller’s 1966 proposal for a “World Man Centre” for Cyprus, aimed as a paradigmatic response to inter-communal conflicts, as well as to cold-war antagonisms, the United Nations peace missions, and even to post-political visions of the globe; b) The 1973 Golden Sands Hotel in Famagusta that was key to state and private agendas to place Cyprus on the map of
Courtesy of the artist Panayiotis Michael’s major research and artistic interest focuses on the notion of transitional periods as a process of identity construction: the ways in which identity, as a fluid process of formation and re-formation, can contribute to other positive changes in our social environment, behavioural background, political and personal ethics, etc. He employs personal, social and political incidents, behaviours, statements, etc., as material to produce art and create new “realities” and dreamy environments full of brand new “promises” and assumptions, open to alternative observations and approaches, as well as to new ways of communication. His work systematically investigates how personal experiences play a role in the understanding of given information, whether this is a newspaper article, a postcard depicting an exotic destination, a political story, an object or an environment.
Meropi Moiseos, Eleni Papadopoulou & Nasa Patapiou Here Lie The Books, Rizokarpaso 1931-32 (2014) Presentation/Discussion [in Greek] 18 October (See Programme) Meropi Moiseos (journalist), Eleni Papadopoulou (photographer), Nasa Patapiou (historian/researcher), in conversation with Niyazi Kızılyürek (political scientist), Bishop Makarios of Kenya, Takis Hadjidemetriou (Member of the European Parliament) In 1931, the Holy Synod of the Church of Cyprus met for a meeting-trial during which it condemned and excommunicated three progressive teachers of the time: Tefkros Anthias [Andreas Pavlou], Patapios Christodoulou [P. Fotinos] and Papaloizou [P. Athonas]. The reason was the circulation of Tefkros Anthias’ poetic work Second Coming, published by P. Fotinos, who also wrote the preface. The three teachers were at the time between 26 to 28 years old. The specific book was deemed as dangerous and “disavowed” both by the Holy Synod
and the British colonial officials. Thus, P. Fotinos relocated as many books as he could to his hometown Rizokarpaso, in an attempt to rescue them and asked a cousin to hide this “damned poetry” the best way he could. The books were “entombed” around 1932, deep under the floor of a room in Rizokarpaso. When in 1994 the man who buried the banned books was asked to disclose what he knew about them, he revealed his secret. Right before his death, he also drew a map indicating the exact location where he had buried the books. Almost a century later, the team begins a search for the ‘entombed books’, with the aim to bring to light this act of obscurantism by way of excommunication, but also to unveil a whole era of the history of Cyprus where progressive intellectuals, texts and ideas where stigmatized, persecuted and condemned. During the presentation and open discussion, speakers from the fields of politics and historical research and a representative of the Church of Cyprus, will challenge this obscure and unknown period of Cypriot history. More so, Parathyro, the culture supplement of Politis newspaper, will publish a special edition on the same topic with relevant texts, which will be circulated with the Sunday newspaper.
Christodoulos Panayiotou New Office (2011) 9 C-Prints, framed, each 30 x 30 cm Images sourced from the archives of the Press and Information Office, Nicosia, Cyprus Courtesy of the artist and Rodeo Gallery Christodoulos Panayiotou’s work asks timely questions about how we come to understand ourselves as part of a general notion of “the public” or more specific entities, such as a country or a nation. It also demonstrates how theatrical displays or spectacles evoke a sense of power and authority, and how our interactions with certain spaces, objects, and even natural phenomena transform their meaning. An important part of Panayiotou’s practice is characterized by rigorous research of archival material.
Kennedy Administration, A Thousand Days. The photographic constellation is emblematic of the artist’s emphasis on identifying and uncovering hidden narratives in the visual records of history and time, especially in the context of Cyprus’ modern political history, prompting the development of new understandings and dialogues.
new ways of reading perception in everyday experience, and by extension, habits of shifting attention through deferred moments of observation. Thus, this gesture stands as only one among many means to interfere with traditions of practicing time in linearity, by enhancing the physical space in which doodling is both attended to and highlighted.
Savvas Papassava Playing Card Walking Stick (2010)
Johann Pillai (Sidestreets Initiative, Nicosia) Monument to Fragmentation (2014)
Red and blue playing cards, copper, 820mm, 1.2kg Courtesy of the artist
Installation (2 digital prints, 120 x 250 cm and 120 x 380 cm / archival film transferred to DVD / mosaic object) Courtesy of the artist and the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC)
Several years before the artist’s grandmother passed away, she began revealing stories and anecdotes concerning the life of her father, a blacksmith from the village of Komi Kebir, Cyprus. Those prosaically given accounts of unusually poetic moments that obfuscated fictions from reality, triggered an interest in his inchoate ancestral identity. The artist’s grandmother described the length of her father’s first wife’s long hair, as if she had seen it sweep the streets while walking, or the blacksmith’s widowed mother stabbing a man in the leg on the third time he knelt before her to propose. Humorous and profound, steeped in myth and characteristically folksy, with anti-heroes and wry moments, these stories have produced for the artist an impression of the past both alien, but oddly familiar. The most mystical of these stories was one about a walking stick the blacksmith had made from folded playing cards, aided by the tools of his trade. On display, for the first time in Cyprus, is an initial replica of the Playing Card Walking Stick. Its subtle rings of red and blue merge together into a marbled pattern. This work is part of an ongoing project for which the artist is producing artefacts inspired from these distant stories, aiming to make tangible links to the past.
This series of nine black and white photographs constitutes one part of a select grouping of images that Panayiotou sourced from the archives of the Republic of Cyprus’s Press and Information Office, depicting various ceremonies, meetings, events, and displays during the term of the first President of the Republic, Archbishop Makarios III (1960- 1977). Part of a larger group of works (approximately 200 photos and 3 slideshows following the formatted titles of Wonder Land, Never Land and I Land), this is the only one intended to follow a strict chronological order.
pick nick ...do delay (2014)
New Office consists of images depicting Makarios III seated in his new office, receiving guests and dignitaries. In addition to the repetition of formal poses, greetings, and gestures, one’s attention is drawn to the furniture and decorative effects that serve to contextualize this political figure. The progression of images traces the decoration of the new presidential office after the 1974 events, during which the previous office was destroyed. The gradual appearance, in space, of Greek vases, a statue of Justice, an orientalist painting depicting an island scenery, and a book on the Kennedy Administration, tells a story about how objects and effects create a particular narration of the Republic of Cyprus and its desired identity, especially in relation to both the “East” and the “West”. They also tell a tale about the iconography of power.
…do delay is an act of loitering around the city with a portable projector and a collection of (art) videos. It is a walking improvisation that inserts ephemeral reveries of moving images in public spaces of Nicosia by suggesting open relations between what the group selects to screen and what it is encountered in the urban landscape. Not having in mind any predetermined routes or sites, the walks and screenings arise in a spur of a moment to tend to temporary layers of the city’s changing settings. ...do delay is, also, an impulse that could interrupt the everyday transaction of prescribed attention(s). In this sense, the screenings work like doodles, those, almost, unconscious sketches drawn while daydreaming or losing interest in that particular ‘authorized’ moment. They appear unexpectedly on walls and surfaces in Nicosia, while people’s attention is otherwise occupied. Hence, pick nick temporarily engages with perceptions that slip through normalized and normalizing ways of seeing.
This group of photos constituted the nucleus of Panayiotou’s exhibition at the Saint Louis Museum of Contemporary Art (US) titled One Thousand and One Days, combining allusions to the traditional collection of Middle Eastern folk tales, 1001 Nights, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s 1965 chronicle of the
Open-air intervention/projections Twice a week for 4 weeks, beginning in October Projections include works by Ivan Argote, Anna Lascari, Conny Karlsson Lundgren, Zohra Opoku, Vassiliea Stylianidou, Marie Zolamian
The open interventions hope to incite modes of displaying and exhibiting that can, perhaps, be a means of activating
Visual Lecture/Presentation [in English] 29 October (See Programme) This Treasure Island exhibit chronicles an obsession: the attempt to research, find and reconstruct, for the first time, the history, events, and physical characteristics of a major work of art that disappeared in 1958 and somehow mysteriously appeared in Cyprus. This was the largest and most important work by one of the main figures in Turkish art history: the 227m2 mosaic wall created by Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu for the Turkish Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World Fair. The pavilion, Turkey’s first international expression of its modernism, brought together most of the living major figures in the country’s history of art, architecture, classical music and opera, and politics. Its 100 meter-long linking mosaic wall (which many art history and architecture textbooks describe as “lost”) was the first artistic expression in Turkey of the concept of pluralism and multiculturalism; in Cyprus it has acquired numerous other significations. The exhibit and the accompanying presentation trace to the present, through historical mishaps and the political mayhem of wars, military coups and chance discoveries, the trials and tribulations of the wall between Belgium, Turkey and Cyprus over half a century. Specifically, the presentation will deal with question such as: As world’s fairs are essentially curations of narratives of official national identity, how does one represent ‘nation’ or ‘country’ or ‘region’ outside of its geographical location? To what extent can a wall or border represent (rather than inside/ outside inclusion or exclusion) linkage and unification? Does the historiographical “writing of the disaster” (Blanchot) participate in the transference of its trials and traumas (LaCapra, Rancière) and preclude the renewal of tradition, ownership or reconstruction (Toufic)? Can archives, exhibitions, artworks and monuments resist absorption into memorial narratives, and instead express fragmentation and forgetting?
Alexandros Pissourios Time After Time (2014) Digital Video, 28 min, sound 3 digital prints, 60 x 49 cm in frames, with glass from Cyprus Museum storage windows Images from restoration laboratory of the Cyprus Museum, Nicosia Courtesy of the artist Antiquities Law Rough Proof 6th October 1934
Part II Ancient Monuments 6. The Director of Antiquities may, with the approval of the Governor, from time to time, by notice in the Cyprus Gazette declare any object building or area which he considers to be of public interest by reason of the historic, architectural, traditional, artistic or archaeological interest attaching hereto be an ancient monument and shall at the same time declare whether such monument shall be added to the First or to the Second schedule to this Law, as the case may be. -----------Departmental Correspondance: 10th April 1935 3 [...] In a recent conversation, the attorney General informed me that in the draft bill he has now substituted for the word “area” in the list of objects susceptible of being scheduled, the word “site, which he does not consider to cover the case of Famagusta.[...] J.R Hilton Director of Antiquities -----------17th Apri 1935 985/34 His para. 3 The word ‘site’ (which appears in cl.2 of the Bill) is the correct one. One speaks of a “historic site” not of a “historic area”. By a slip I put “area” in cl.6 but have since rectified this. The fact that the Director Of Antiquities has construed the word “area” as enabling him to declare the whole town as an ancient monument sufficiently indicates its inappropriateness. The next thing he would be doing, I suppose, would be to schedule the whole island as an ancient monument. H.W.B Blackall Attorney General END (From State Archives) The work Time After Time develops through the recording of circular time, its main axis being the movement of light on the Cyprus Museum installations. The process begins from the storage spaces, created during the 1930s to meet the growing storage needs of the archaeological collection. A series of light-recordings points to a relationship between the space and the viewer, where the backstage scene of the museum becomes just as significant as the foreground. At the same time, certain accidental discoveries in the museum’s photographic archive acquire special importance, for instance, an old polka score by music teacher Dina Mascalchi, entitled “The English Occupation of Cyprus”*, briefly appearing in the film as a sound interlude. During the process of recording the movement of light or the everyday maintenance and conservation work by the employees, and the study of the photographic archive, the work brings forth a new dimension of time inside the spaces of the museum. Moreover, it re-negotiates the public’s relationship with the normal functioning of the museum, which now emerges as a stage on which the archaeology of a place unfolds. The investigation continues inside the photographic archives of the pottery workshops, selecting images taken during the ceramic artefacts’ conservation process. Through this observation, the ways in which the archaeological process
is documented, as well as the conditions through which the visitors interact with the antiquities of a museum, become transformed. * The polka piece is performed by Clio Papadia.
Saramarasamsara Metro Mentality (2014) Installation/interactive, participatory project at NiMAC and Rüstem Bookstore (24-26 Girne caddesi, Sarayönü, Nicosia) A project initiated by Sophia Hadjipapa-Gee, with major collaborators Elizabeth Hoak-Doering, Demetra Englezou, Oya Akin & Gürgenç Korkmazel Metro Mentality promotes a novel way to explore and inhabit Nicosia. Its website is a platform for a map, which will be progressively enhanced and updated by the communities living in the city. At first, contributions will be crowd-sourced at the exhibition venue. Users are invited to add text and images to the street map of the city, within and just outside the Venetian walls. Because of its history of inter-communal strife, violence, and war, Nicosia has not benefited much from urban infrastructural development. However, contesting narratives and a wide variety of cultural interactions have produced deep and contrasting histories within a comparatively small area. The idea of a “metro mentality” comes from big cities, where the time between stops is short, where the stops may be very different in character, and their location is often based on function. When walking in Nicosia, it does not take long, before one comes across what might elsewhere be called a ‘stop’. In creating an imaginary metro map, this project aims to please the flâneur and to be useful for anyone who wants to get to know the city better. It shares the local understandings of, and uses for landmark areas of Nicosia; and, in some cases, it may ‘officially’ mark these places by bringing attention to their common appreciation. The metro map format, which sits over a half-tone street map, also brings the city down to a set of walkable trajectories, illustrating how close everything actually is (both in time, and in space). Metro Mentality is a participatory project initiated by Sophia Hadjipapa-Gee, which invites many agents, collaborators and small-scale crowd-sourcing, as well as the functionality of Google to make a pro-active difference in the status-quo of Nicosia. The Metro Mentality project is taken as a prototype for an application, the funding for which is in preparation and it will follow the successful completion of this first round of work.
Nicolas Tschopp Entropic icons (2014) 5 digital print diptychs in frames (10 prints, 44 x 29 cm and 29 x 44 cm each) Courtesy of the artist During the past two years, Nicolas Tschopp’s work has been evolving around the notion of entropy, in relation to abandoned government or military owned buildings. Entropy is a concept used primarily in thermodynamics to quantify the unavailability of a closed system’s energy, that is also taken as a measure of a system’s disorder and condition to chaos. The artist is interested in examining the “entropy of an image”. More specifically, he is interested in the ways in which the inherent
energy of its visual messages can evolve or transform into chaotic and uncontrolled propaganda. Having grown up in France – a battlefield of two World Wars - and having in mind that WWI started exactly 100 years ago, the artist was surprised to discover that some of its war propaganda remnants were still intact and continued to emit their messages in dilapidated buildings. These messages did not seem to ‘age’, but instead their negative energy seems to have survived the process of decay, as if no one ever considered or dared to alter or challenge them. For this specific photographic project, the artist worked with an abandoned military garrison in the heart of Nicosia, a compound situated close to the University of Cyprus, which houses several such nationalistic war propaganda images. Beyond the notion of entropy, and the degree to which (as much as the processes through which) the messages of these images become propagandist, parallels between the vividly painted frescoes and religious iconography can also be drawn. These accentuate, as much as question, the current status of these images and their ‘sacredness’. The slogans appearing in the photographs (from left to right): Diptych 1: (left) “I am proud to be born Greek. Put Greece inside your soul and you will feel all the grandeur” Diptych 2: (top) “The unconquerable race” Diptych 3: (left) “AERA!” (Greek fighter’s slogan during WWII); (right) “1st Regiment’s Armament Storage” Diptych 5: (left) “Amongst the mother and the father and all of the ancestors, the highest and most honorable value of all is the nation”
Evanthia Tselika & Marina Hadjilouca Rethinking conflict and urban space (2014) A socially engaged art experiment Educational workshops / posters / video / interactive installation In collaboration with Antigoni Sofokleous, artist and art educator at Pancyprium Lyceum, and Myria Konnari, graphic designer With an emphasis on the pedagogic turn of contemporary art and design and the narratives of the socio-spatial urban environment of Nicosia around the Nicosia Municipal Art Centre (NiMAC) this is a project in progress that unravels and develops throughout the duration of the exhibition. This socially engaged series of workshops will involve young people from the Pancyprium Lyceum in a creative process of reflection and reinterpretation that will address notions of social and political conflict, spatial conflict and everyday conflict. The young people will be exposed to the narratives of traders who work in the area around the Centre, as well as to archival imagery and narratives of this urban environment, and they will be invited to consider its current context and identify sites and situations of conflict within it. Through their engagement with these narratives of memory and transformation, young participants will be encouraged to creatively respond to the changes that the area has been experiencing, and how they interpret the notion of conflict in the urban space and the processes of regeneration and gentrification that this area is undergoing. The project involves actions by the students in the city public space, as well as a final outcome that will be presented within the exhibition space in the final week of the exhibition. The space allocated to the project within the Municipal Art Centre will transform as the project develops through young people’s
engagement with the creative process, addressing how we perceive socio-spatial changes within the urban environment, how we interpret contested public spaces and how we understand the notions of the private and the public.
Stefanos Tsivopoulos Untitled (The Remake) (2007) Single channel video, HD Cam and archival footage, 14 min Courtesy of the artist and Prometeogallery di Ida Pisani “Untitled (The Remake) combines archival footage from the years of the 1967-1973 military dictatorship in Greece which depicts official festivities and parades staged by the Colonels (replete with the ‘obligatory’ nationalistic visual rhetoric harking back to Greece’s glorious past), with Tsivopoulos’ own video footage; the latter constitutes the core of the film. For this work, the artist re-constructed a television studio of the late 1960s, complete with all the original technical equipment that was used during this period; it was during this time that National Greek Television and Radio were also established. In the film, actors are cast in the role of two newscasters – one male, one female, dressed in the fashion of the day – and a cameraman, whom we can see preparing for the daily bulletin. In the background, television monitors show international news footage of the day, and original black-and-white footage depicting the real newscasters from that time, preparing for the broadcast that Tsivopoulos has painstakingly reconstructed. Apart from mirroring the act of representation and that represented, and exposing the technical processes involved in the re-construction of reality, what is particularly interesting in Untitled (The Remake) is the co-existence of different modalities of time, the constant interplay between reality and its re-construction, and finally the sense of temporal displacement that dictates the work’s ‘mood’. In that sense, Tsivopoulos’ work shares some of the same key concerns with that of the Canadian artist Stan Douglas, who has become known for creating complex, shifting time frames and elusive parallel levels of narration in his film and video works. Untitled (The Remake) retrieves forgotten master narratives, reminding us of how television was used for propaganda purposes by the state (it still is, no doubt, only the methods have become much more subtle, and private enterprise has also entered the field), while highlighting the aesthetics and ultra-nationalist ideological clichés of the dictatorship era to question their meaning today.” From Katerina Gregos’ text “Past Imperfect”, included in Stefanos Tsivopoulos’ monograph “The Real The Story The Storyteller”, published by the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, 2008.
Sholeh Zahraei & Kamil Saldun Gomşu / Neighbor (2013) Video, 5:09 min Courtesy of the artists In Cyprus and in Palestine, there exists a custom that predates phones or text messaging - a custom that seems more common amongst the older generation of Turkish Cypriots, although many Greek Cypriots practiced it as well: If a neighbour was absent, visitors would cut a little branch or flower from the garden or the area around it and leave it at the door to indicate their presence while the home owner was away.
The type of brunch or flower, and the way it was placed, acted as signatures of the specific visitor, representing a vital and personal form of communication, which, in the age of technology, seems to slowly disappear. The short video Gomşu records the gesture of leaving flowers at the door of a neighbor who no longer resides there. The film was shot in the open part of Varosha, at an abandoned house where the marks of the recent past are still visible. The abandoned house itself becomes a symbol of the trauma and loss experienced by many displaced Greek- and TurkishCypriots over the years. In the recent history of Cyprus, replete with conflict and violence, many people were forced to leave their homes and were often separated from their families, friends and neighbors. This has resulted in both an individual and collective sense of loss that was intuitively passed down to next generations. Gomşu attempts to uncover several layers of history, culture, and tradition, and act as a metaphor for a sought-after bridge between post-war psychology and the longing for peace. At the same time, it seeks to highlight shared past memories, emotions, hopes and efforts towards reconciliation.
PROGRAMME OF EVENTS, WORKSHOPS, PRESENTATIONS, EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMME Rethinking conflict and urban space - a socially engaged art experiment
FRIDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER 2014
SATURDAY, 18 OCTOBER 2014
PERFORMANCE, 20:00 @ NiMAC The Record Replay React Show (2014, 30 min) Lia Haraki (Opening)
PRESENTATION/DISCUSSION [in Greek], 10:30 @ NiMAC Here Lie the Books, Rizokarpaso 1931-32 (2014) Meropi Moiseos, Nasa Patapiou and Eleni Papadopoulou in conversation with Niyazi Kızılyürek, Bishop Makarios of Kenya and Takis Hadjidemetriou
SATURDAY, 4 OCTOBER 2014 SCREENING/DISCUSSION [in English], 10:30 @ NiMAC Life Chances: Four Families in a Greek Cypriot Village by Peter Loizos (1974, 43 min) Copyright: The Royal Anthropological Institute Antonis Hadjikyriacou in conversation with Olga Demetriou, Zeleia Gregoriou and Adonis Florides WRITING WORKSHOP [in English], 16.30 – 19.30 @ NiMAC and various locations within the walled city of Nicosia (women only) Writing Nicosia – beyond barriers Literary Agency Cyprus/Whirling words Workshop leader: Rachel Pettus | Guest: Lisa Suhair Majaj
WEDNESDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2014 SCREENING/DISCUSSION [in English], 19:30 @ Rüstem Bookstore (24-26 Girne caddesi, Sarayönü, Nicosia) Cyprus is an Island by Ralph Keene (1946, 34 min) Adonis Florides in conversation with Costas Constantinides and Yiannis Papadakis
FRIDAY, 10 OCTOBER 2014 WRITING WORKSHOP [in English], 16.30 – 19.30 @ NiMAC and various locations within the walled city of Nicosia (mixed) Writing Nicosia – beyond barriers Literary Agency Cyprus/Whirling words Workshop leader: Marilena Zackheos Guest: Marios Epaminondas PRESENTATION [in English], 19:00 @ NiMAC “cyprus pussy”: Culture jamming/On Cypriot commemoration in the 21st century & its interventions Chrystalleni Loizidou PERFORMANCE, 20:00 @ NiMAC The Record Replay React Show, (2014, 30 min) Lia Haraki
WEDNESDAY, 15 OCTOBER 2014 WRITING WORKSHOP [in English], 13.30 – 16.30 @ NiMAC and various locations within the walled city of Nicosia (mixed) Writing Nicosia – beyond barriers Literary Agency Cyprus/Whirling words Workshop leader: Stephanos Stephanides Guest: Aydin Mehmet Ali
WEDNESDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2014 READINGS FROM THE WRITING WORKSHOPS [in English] 19.30 – 21.30 @ Rüstem Bookstore (24-26 Girne caddesi, Sarayönü, Nicosia) - Open to the public Writing Nicosia – beyond barriers Literary Agency Cyprus/Whirling words
FRIDAY, 24 OCTOBER 2014 PRESENTATION [in English], 19:00 @ NiMAC Nonverbal Communication Gabriel Lester WRITING WORKSHOP [in English], 21.00 – 24.00 @ NiMAC and various locations within the walled city of Nicosia (mixed) Writing Nicosia – beyond barriers Literary Agency Cyprus/Whirling words Workshop leader: Aydın Mehmet Ali Guests: Münevver Özgür and Agnieszka Rakoczy
SATURDAY, 25 OCTOBER 2014 EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMME Rethinking conflict and urban space - a socially engaged art experiment Evanthia Tselika and Marina Hadjilouca in collaboration with artist and art educator at Pancyprium Lyceum, Antigoni Sofokleous, and graphic designer, Myria Konnari
Evanthia Tselika and Marina Hadjilouca in collaboration with artist and art educator at Pancyprium Lyceum, Antigoni Sofokleous, and graphic designer, Myria Konnari
SATURDAY, 1 NOVEMBER 2014 SCREENING/DISCUSSION [in Greek], 10:30 @ NiMAC Cyprus is an Island by Ralph Keene (1946, 34 min) Adonis Florides in conversation with Christodoulos Panayiotou and Stavros Karayiannis
WEDNESDAY, 5 NOVEMBER 2014 READINGS FROM THE WRITING WORKSHOPS [in English] 19.30 – 21.30 @ NiMAC - Open to the public Writing Nicosia – beyond barriers Literary Agency Cyprus/Whirling words
SATURDAY, 8 NOVEMBER 2014 DISCUSSIONS [in English], 10:30 @ NiMAC The Past as Treasure Hunt Part I, 10:30-12:00: “Buccaneers and Buried Gold”: Deconstructing memory and fiction with Yiannis Hamilakis, Nicolas Papadimitriou and Stephanos Stephanides Part II, 12:00-13:30: “The Stockade”: Barriers in Education / Education of Barriers with Mete Hatay, Aydin Mehmet Ali and Yiannis Papadakis
SATURDAY, 8 NOVEMBER 2014 PERFORMANCE, 20:00 @ NiMAC The Record Replay React Show (2014, 30 min) Lia Haraki (Closing)
WEDNESDAY, 29 OCTOBER 2014 VISUAL LECTURE/PRESENTATION [in English], 19:00 @ NiMAC Monument to Fragmentation Johann Pillai
FRIDAY, 31 OCTOBER 2014 WRITING WORKSHOP [in English], 16.00 – 19.00 @ NiMAC and various locations within the walled city of Nicosia (mixed) Writing Nicosia – beyond barriers Literary Agency Cyprus/Whirling words Workshop leader: Nicoletta Demetriou EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMME, 16.00 – 19.00 @ NiMAC Opening of student’s exhibition with works produced during the educational program
NiMAC Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre, Associated with the Pierides Foundation 19, Palias Ilektrikis, 1016 Nicosia, T: 22797400, www.nimac.org.cy Office hours: Monday – Friday, 8:00-15:00 Exhibition hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10:00-21:00 Sunday – Monday Closed Co-organisers:
In collaboration with: