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ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS PORTFOLIO! ! ! ! ! !
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THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com 1www.thebreedersystem.com rue des Lilas, MC 98000, Monaco, t: +377 97987990, monaco@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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Andreas Angelidakis, www. documenta14.de, Nick Korody http://www.documenta14.de/en/artists/945/andreas-angelidakis
Andreas Angelidakis
Andres Angelidakis, Unauthorized, 2016, digital video, color, sound, 7min, courtesy Andreas Angelidakis and The Breeder, Athens
Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) (2017) Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D Polytechiou 8, Athens Andreas Angelidakis tries to make sense of where we are and how we got here. His work emerges from the experience of being in place: in Greece, in climate change, in architecture, in psychoanalysis, in the internet, in a body. Angelidakis, who was born in Athens in 1968, addresses the question of site specificity at a time when to be in one place is to be already in several others. His short film Vessel (2016) describes the ancient cynic Diogenes as “like an ancient internet user” who defies allegiance to just one place. In the multimedia project Domesticated Mountain (2012), the artist posits suburbia as the accumulation of things we’ve done online, while in Walking Building (2006) an itinerant museum wanders around Athens, responding to the structure of artistic production post-internet. To be in place is to be in time, haunted at once by the past and by the future, by the present and its effects. It is to find oneself in a world under construction by builders we cannot see. Angelidakis states in Vessel that, if you look at Europe today, “it looks like the information Greece exported, registered in the form of buildings.” Ideas about places affect places—but ideas are inherited. He reads contemporary Athens through the nineteenth
century, the internet through ancient Greece. Angelidakis thinks the future in retrospect and imagines the present as a ruin. But “a ruin is a building in transition. All buildings are in transition.” So he places scaffolding at the entrance to his retrospective at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens in 2014; he 3-D prints ruins made of bones. An architect who no longer builds, Angelidakis says that he quit the profession to focus on architecture itself. Because of this he can defy its prohibitions. He lets the personal invade his work; he fosters ambivalence and uncertainty. “Maybe,” he says, “we just don’t need any more new buildings. Maybe reconfiguring existing ones is enough.” Angelidakis compares Diogenes living in a jar with his dog to circumstances today, where “we all sleep in our screens next to our dogs.” Did living in the jar make Diogenes who he was, or did his house turn into a vessel in reaction to who he was? Angelidakis has “always treated buildings and objects as characters, emotional beings,” he says. “As much as we design buildings, buildings and spaces design us.” —Nicholas Korody
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ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS Unauthorized (Athinaki Techniki) Documenta 14 Athens Curated by Adam Szymczyk The project is an attempt to investigate the social, political and economic forces that shaped Athens as we see her today, by tracing her development back to the refugee crisis of 1922 and the migrant surge of the 1950s. The introduction of the concrete building technology, the invention of the system of Antiparochi and the notion of Afthereto become the key actors in a story about defying authority. The research into the story of Athens blurs into a psychoanalytic research into the story of the artist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdtPLCh-sXI
THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki) 2017, Mixed-media installation including found objects, archival material, 3D prints, photographs, and video. Documenta 14, Athens, curated by by Adam Szymczyk.
THE BREEDER Andreas Angelidakis Athinaiki Techniki, 2017 transcript from video “People came to Athens in waves, first from Asia Minor in 1922 then after the wars from all over Greece. The concrete frame became the way people these people would make their homes. Like shelving unit first built just a frame then gradually based their lives on it. Starting with one floor for the family, and later one for each kid. As these concrete frames became homes, they became evolving unauthorised portraits of the Greek family, perhaps even society itself. I wonder to my analyst why I was so interested in these unauthorised illegal buildings? I have been working on them for years and I still didn’t know what the exact attraction is. He replied ‘maybe because you're unauthorised as a kid too, you were a boy playing with dolls and trying out your dolls or mothers dresses. Could I have seen myself in these buildings? Could I have represented a person and how could we find out more about this person? What questions should we ask these buildings? How could we understand their life?'“
THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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THE BREEDER ! Andreas Angelidakis DEMOS The first definition of Demos that comes back from google is “the populace of a democracy as a political unit”, referring to the Ancient Greek Δήµος, the people of a state. Further down on the list of definitions, Demos comes back as the plural of Demo, or demonstration. Demo can mean the test run of a software, the preview of a piece of music or even a street demonstration. Even further down the list, Demo comes back as demolition. On the hill of Pnyka in 5th century BC, a set of steps provided a higher spot for the speaker of the demos. The combination of speaker, audience and steps was called Ecclesia of Demos, often translated as Assembly, “a group of people gathered together in one place for a common purpose”. If you google Ecclesia or Assembly, you might realize that in our world of screens, Assembly means a “a construction code language for a computer, or other programmable device”. It is a language where modules are combined as parts to a variable architecture. Could a variable architecture mean a Demo Architecture? Trying out different spaces, to produce a variety of Ecclesias, a typological series for the gathering of a populace as a political unit? The gatherings of today take many forms. People gather on the streets to demonstrate, in public space or on walls and threads on the internet, posting their comments, replying, discussing. A single user can have a voice as strong as a corporation, a teenagers’ video of a cat can receive more likes than a political leader. Change and revolution can be initiated outside of the structures that we recognize as dominant. Following the brief for a Parliament of Bodies by Paul B. Preciado, a module for a Demo is proposed. A single soft concrete step, upon which one can stand up to speak or sit down to listen. The module is multiplied into copies and variations of itself, like “a construction code language for a computer or other programmable device”. A physical space is a programmable device. The module is placed along the entire perimeter of the space. As people gather and sit on opposite steps, they look at each other as much as they look at the programmed event. The Ecclesia of Demos has been inverted, no longer a central plinth to provide visibility to one but a gathering for all. The next time the people gather, the space has shifted into two exedras of opposition. Another time they find a single mountain of steps with the seating facing outwards. Are the steps for the speakers or for the audience? Would the audience occupy the center to be surrounded by speakers, or did the audience indeed become the speakers? Each variation is a demo for a space of public programs. Each demo is demolished to make way for the next Demos. What the modules negotiate is the distinction between stage and audience, between performer and participant, between broadcasting and receiving, hierarchies that are constantly being challenged in the age of the internet. As the Public Program of d14 unfolds over time, the modules gradually form a language, each variation of the space a new definition of Demos. Endnote The Public Program of d14 in Athens was located inside a late 1800s military THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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THE BREEDER ! barrack, famous for its use as a detention center during the Dictatorship in 1967-1974. When democracy was restored, the building was renovated into an exhibition venue. As the Demo begins to develop its definitions, the building shell itself begins to negotiate its own history, sporadically removing layers of exhibition walls, uncovering parts of the space that witnessed its use as a headquarters for the military police, the famous EAT ESA torture chambers. Smaller gestures begin to appear, perhaps wall panels removed to uncover windows blocked by metal bars, ceiling panels shifted to allow for lighting and projection hardware. As the module configurations negotiate the parameters of a public program, the building launches an investigative renovation of its own history. -Andreas Angelidakis !
THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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Andreas Angelidakis, Demos, 2016, Foam and vinyl seating modules, dimensions variable (Thirty blocks (two-step): 100 × 140 × 140 cm, twelve blocks: 50 × 140 × 140 cm, sixteen blocks: 50 × 140 × 70 cm, and sixteen blocks: 50 × 70 × 70 cm), Parko Elefterias, Athens Municipality Arts Center and Museum of Anti – dictatorial and democratic resistance
Andreas Angelidakis, Demos, 2016, Foam and vinyl seating modules, dimensions variable (Thirty blocks (two-step): 100 × 140 × 140 cm, twelve blocks: 50 × 140 × 140 cm, sixteen blocks: 50 × 140 × 70 cm, and sixteen blocks: 50 × 70 × 70 cm), Parko Elefterias, Athens Municipality Arts Center and Museum of Anti – dictatorial and democratic resistance
Andreas Angelidakis, Demos, 2016, Foam and vinyl seating modules, dimensions variable (Thirty blocks (two-step): 100 × 140 × 140 cm, twelve blocks: 50 × 140 × 140 cm, sixteen blocks: 50 × 140 × 70 cm, and sixteen blocks: 50 × 70 × 70 cm), Parko Elefterias, Athens Municipality Arts Center and Museum of Anti – dictatorial and democratic resistance
Andreas Angelidakis, Demos, 2016, Foam and vinyl seating modules, dimensions variable (Thirty blocks (two-step): 100 × 140 × 140 cm, twelve blocks: 50 × 140 × 140 cm, sixteen blocks: 50 × 140 × 70 cm, and sixteen blocks: 50 × 70 × 70 cm), Parko Elefterias, Athens Municipality Arts Center and Museum of Anti – dictatorial and democratic resistance
Andreas Angelidakis, Demos, 2016, Foam and vinyl seating modules, dimensions variable (Thirty blocks (two-step): 100 × 140 × 140 cm, twelve blocks: 50 × 140 × 140 cm, sixteen blocks: 50 × 140 × 70 cm, and sixteen blocks: 50 × 70 × 70 cm), Parko Elefterias, Athens Municipality Arts Center and Museum of Anti – dictatorial and democratic resistance
Andreas Angelidakis, Demos, 2016, Foam and vinyl seating modules, dimensions variable (Thirty blocks (two-step): 100 × 140 × 140 cm, twelve blocks: 50 × 140 × 140 cm, sixteen blocks: 50 × 140 × 70 cm, and sixteen blocks: 50 × 70 × 70 cm), Parko Elefterias, Athens Municipality Arts Center and Museum of Anti – dictatorial and democratic resistance
Andreas Angelidakis, Demos, 2016, Foam and vinyl seating modules, dimensions variable (Thirty blocks (two-step): 100 × 140 × 140 cm, twelve blocks: 50 × 140 × 140 cm, sixteen blocks: 50 × 140 × 70 cm, and sixteen blocks: 50 × 70 × 70 cm), Parko Elefterias, Athens Municipality Arts Center and Museum of Anti – dictatorial and democratic resistance
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ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS Report from Athens Documenta 14 Kassel curated by Adam Szymczyk Andreas’ Angelidakis project for d14 in Kassel is an installation showcasing the “results” of his investigation at “Unauthorized - Athinaiki Techniki, his presentation at d14 in Athens.
THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, Ads for Athens 2017, Digital print on plywood and Plexiglas, metal frame, LED light 120 Ă— 82 Ă— 5 cm installation. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, video projection 2017, color, sound 30 min. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, video projection 2017, color, sound 30 min. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, video projection 2017, color, sound 30 min. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, Ads for Athens 2017, Digital print on plywood and Plexiglas, metal frame, LED light 120 Ă— 82 Ă— 5 cm installation. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, Ads for Athens 2017, Digital print on plywood and Plexiglas, metal frame, LED light 120 Ă— 82 Ă— 5 cm installation. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, Ads for Athens 2017 Digital print on plywood and Plexiglas, metal frame, LED light 120 Ă— 82 Ă— 5 cm installation. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, Ads for Athens 2017, Digital print on plywood and Plexiglas, metal frame, LED light 120 Ă— 82 Ă— 5 cm installation. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, Untitled 2017 3D print, 25 × 30 × 20 cm. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, Untitled 2017 3D print, 25 × 30 × 20 cm. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, Untitled 2017 3D print, 25 × 30 × 20 cm. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, Untitled 2017 3D print, 25 × 30 × 20 cm. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, Untitled 2017 3D print, 25 × 30 × 20 cm. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, Untitled 2017 3D print, 25 × 30 × 20 cm. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, Home (Faliro 1–4) 1971, Color photographs 30 × 40 cm each. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, Home (Faliro 1–4) 1971, Color photographs 30 × 40 cm each. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, Home (Faliro 1–4) 1971, Color photographs 30 × 40 cm each. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
Andreas Angelidakis, Report from Athens, Home (Faliro 1–4) 1971, Color photographs 30 × 40 cm. Documenta 14 Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk.
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Andreas Angelidakis Polemos 2017 Named for the Greek spirit of war and battle, Polemos is comprised of 136 foam blocks covered in various camouflage fabrics. Together the blocks create a massive military tank, which can be disassembled and reassembled in other formations—including seating for visitors to the Fridericianum museum (where the piece was exhibited during documenta 14). Clearly a comment on the uncertain nature of war, Polemos is the result of Andreas Angelidakis multidisciplinary practice in art and architecture.
THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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Andreas Aggelidakis, Polemos, 2017, Foam and vinyl seating modules, dimensions variable (Ten blocks: 50 × 70 × 70 cm, 110 blocks: 50 × 70 × 140 cm, 16 blocks: 50 cm × 70 cm), Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, Installation View
Andreas Aggelidakis, Polemos, 2017, Foam and vinyl seating modules, dimensions variable (Ten blocks: 50 × 70 × 70 cm, 110 blocks: 50 × 70 × 140 cm, 16 blocks: 50 cm × 70 cm), Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, Installation View
Andreas Aggelidakis, Polemos, 2017, Foam and vinyl seating modules, dimensions variable (Ten blocks: 50 × 70 × 70 cm, 110 blocks: 50 × 70 × 140 cm, 16 blocks: 50 cm × 70 cm), Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, Installation View
Andreas Aggelidakis, Polemos, 2017, Foam and vinyl seating modules, dimensions variable (Ten blocks: 50 × 70 × 70 cm, 110 blocks: 50 × 70 × 140 cm, 16 blocks: 50 cm × 70 cm), Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, Installation View
THE BREEDER I used to build my feelings, now I watch them leave a selection of works by Andreas Angelidakis La Loge, Brussels 07/02/18-24/03/18 Drawing on two main sources of inspiration – the city of Athens and the Internet –, the work of Andreas Angelidakis deals with ruins and antiquities, whether they be ancient or modern; real or virtual. His animated videos and 3D-printed ornaments generally rely on existing buildings and digital artifacts that often look dated or disposable, and which operate as allegories of architectural and historical conditions. In films like Vessel, Domesticated Mountain, and TROLL or the Voluntary Ruin, Angelidakis gives buildings a voice, treating them as if they were anthropomorphic creatures driven by their own internal desires. Though forms of repression (financial, technological, social, or sexual) and the structural shock of the Greek government debt crisis have rendered these edifices silent and obsolete, Angelidakis presents them as ruins, nature, or specters – half building, half something else. Far from being inert, these ‘living’ buildings have emancipated themselves as they transition into a state of timelessness. Ultimately, they will overcome the false cult of progress and futurity. Rather than the fixed materialisation of a design into a built reality, Angelidakis is interested in architecture as an immaterial idea that floats and transforms through the different vectors of an evolving society, continually producing affections and feelings like an organic body. At La Loge, a personal voice overblends with the ambient soundscapes of the films, creating a specific situation to relate to the selection of films and bibelots* on view. The five videos – Domesticated Mountain, Troll, or the Voluntary Ruin, Iolas, Vessel, and Unauthorized – are made in the period between 2011 and 2016, and are the result of Angelidakis’ wanderings and encounters in the online realm, collaged together with found footage and screen captures, and rendered into a lo-fi artisanal narrative. In the installation, each video can be viewed as a singular work in its own right, saying something about buildings’ emotional life (take for example the modernist building Chara* who longs to become a mountain in order to find inner peace, or the suburban house which transforms into a domesticated mountain as the result of internet shopping and the accumulation of cardboard boxes), while also taking part into a larger part in Angelidakis’s metanarrative – a performance in five acts of sorts. The films are accompanied by a series of slowly rotating bibelots bathing in coloured lights. These 3D models – a vessel, a flower pot, a bone domino – are small structures based on found objects which the artist imagined as architecture. The bibelots are remnants of forgotten objects, fantasy ruins, or hard copies of expired online constructions. The narrative strategies employed in the exhibition (streams of consciousness and melodramatic scores, to name but a few) are the same Angelidakis might have used to analyse the buildings and cities appearing in and out the exhibition. Esoteric and generous at once, the show excavates the subconscious aspects embedded in the work, and offer a glimpse into the artist’s psyche. Angelidakis’ proposal not only unearths processes of fantasy and construction but also offers room for his personal memories and references to guide the work. * Bibelots are small decorative or commemorative objects that have no particular use and often are of low value. * Chara means Joy and is the name of a utopian, modernist building that takes up an entire city block in Athens.The well-intentioned, but failed project was constructed by architects Spanos and Papailiopoulos in 1960 to house low-income citizens, but, in a rapidly changing urban context, no longer fulfills its purpose. THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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Andreas Angelidakis, I used to build my feelings, now I watch them leave, 2018, installation view at La Loge, Brussels
Andreas Angelidakis, I used to build my feelings, now I watch them leave, 2018, installation view at La Loge, Brussels
Andreas Angelidakis, I used to build my feelings, now I watch them leave, 2018, installation view at La Loge, Brussels
Andreas Angelidakis, I used to build my feelings, now I watch them leave, 2018, installation view at La Loge, Brussels
Andreas Angelidakis, I used to build my feelings, now I watch them leave, 2018, installation view at La Loge, Brussels
Andreas Angelidakis, I used to build my feelings, now I watch them leave, 2018, installation view at La Loge, Brussels
Andreas Angelidakis, I used to build my feelings, now I watch them leave, 2018, installation view at La Loge, Brussels
THE BREEDER Andreas Angelidakis Crash Pad Crash Pad was first commissioned for the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art and presented at KW in Berlin in 2014, curated by Juan Gaitan. The installation picks up the idea of the intellectual 19th century salon as setting for cultural and political conversations. Angelidakis arranges Greek folklore rugs handmade in the Greek countryside in an Ottoman tradition. Thus the project refers to the Western intellectual and scholar imagination of Ancient Greece at that time that was inspired by contemporaneous researches like Heinrich Schliemann's archeological excavations of those ideal ruins. It originated the imaginary of Greece as the heart of European's civilization and occident culture until today. There is also an economic parallel to today that Crash Pad refers to: The liberation of the nation in 1830 and the introduction of the concept of a Modern Greece after the Greek War of independence was accompanied by differences and struggles between Britain and Turkey. It lead to the first bankruptcy of modern Greece in 1895. In order to supervise the debt of Greece, the original version of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was put in place by France, England and Germany. Today we find Greece and Germany in an awkward financial exchange and somehow history repeats itself. Crash Pad offers a space for contemplation and discourse.
THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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Andreas Angelidakis, Crash Pad 2014, installation view at 8th BERLIN BIENNALE, KW Berlin. Courtesy: Andreas Angelidakis and The Breeder. Photo: Uwe Walter
Andreas Angelidakis, Crash Pad 2014, installation view at 8th BERLIN BIENNALE, KW Berlin. Courtesy: Andreas Angelidakis and The Breeder. Photo: Uwe Walter
Andreas Angelidakis, Crash Pad 2014, installation view at 8th BERLIN BIENNALE, KW Berlin. Courtesy: Andreas Angelidakis and The Breeder. Photo: Uwe Walter
! ! Andreas Angelidakis Crash Pad 2015 mixed media dimensions variable Courtesy The Breeder, Athens installation view at The Breeder booth, Frieze New York, 2015
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Andreas Angelidakis, Crash Pad, 2013, proposal for the 8th Berlin Biennial! !
Andreas Angelidakis, Every End is A Beginning, 2014, installation view at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
! Andreas Angelidakis, Study for Crashpad, 2014, three dimensional color print, 17x25x1 cm, framed dimensions 45 x 55. cm
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! Andreas Angelidakis, Study for Crashpad, 2014, three dimensional color print, 17x25x1 cm, framed dimensions 45 x 55. cm
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Andreas Angelidakis, Study for Crashpad, 2014, three dimensional color print, 25x18x1.5cm, framed dimensions 55.5 x 45 cm
Andreas Angelidakis, Study for Crashpad, 2014, three dimensional color print, 25x18x1.5cm, framed dimensions 55.5 x 45 cm
THE BREEDER ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS Soft Ruin / Building an Electronic Ruin Andreas Angelidakis’ sculptural installation Soft Ruin, and single-channel video Building an Electronic Ruin translate Alois Riegl’s idea of “age value” into the now out-dated online life-simulation game. Building an Electronic Ruin follows the “avatar” of the artist in Second Life, as he goes step-by-step through the process of “building a ruin” on this online platform. This act of construction parallels the crumbling popularity of the game—a “ruin” in its own right. This video by Andreas Angelidakis talks about electronic ruins. As the web is full of abandoned websites, disused platforms and portals. Long-term disregard transforms buildings into ruins - both in virtual and in real life. A ruin is a building in transition. Second Life was once a platform full of users, now it doesn’t almost empty. One day, Facebook will follow the same fate, becoming our ancient Rome. In Building an electronic ruin, Andreas Angelidakis shows how anyone can build a building in Second Life, introducing digital structures destroyed by fire, earthquakes and sudden circumstantial changes. Angelidakis, Greek-Norwegian artist and architect, whose work ranges over art and architecture, physical and virtual reality, the way it is and the way it exists on the Net - celebrates, through Building an eletronic ruin, the swan’s song of the digital era next to become a past one, the echo of digital into reality and the emulation of reality made by the digital process - which consequently becomes analogical. It’s the paradoxical construction of our future ruins, the digital erection of equally digital ruins, in a metalinguistic operation based on a killing-and-rising process. The installation Soft Ruin, on the other hand, comprises soft sculptures that recall the ruins Angelidakis himself builds in the video. Building on a history of soft-sculptures, he translates the crumbling popularity and outdatedness of the game—thereby, a ruin in its own right—into a tangible phenomenon. To view the video click https://vimeo.com/26494555
THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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Andreas Angelidakis, Building an Electronic Ruin, 2011,video installation, duration 4’30�, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athe
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Andreas Angelidakis, Building an Electronic Ruin, 2011,video installation, duration 4’30�, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
Andreas Angelidakis, Soft Ruin / Building an Electronic Ruin, installation view at Frieze London 2015
Andreas Angelidakis, Soft Ruin, 2015, photoprint fabric, foam, dimensions variable, (4 columns, 2 pyramids)
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Andreas Angelidakis, Soft Ruin, 2016, photoprint fabric, foam, dimensions variable 3 slabs each 200x200x30cm, 8 columns each 200x30x30cm, 4 foundations each 120x120x60 cm. Building an Electronic Ruin, 2011, HD video. Installation view at ALT Art Space, Istanbul 2016
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! Andreas Angelidakis, Soft Ruin, 2016, photoprint fabric, foam, dimensions variable 3 slabs each 200x200x30cm, 8 columns each 200x30x30cm, 4 foundations each 120x120x60 cm. Building an Electronic Ruin, 2011, HD video. Installation view at ALT Art Space, Istanbul 2016
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Andreas Angelidakis, Soft Ruin, 2016, photoprint fabric, foam, dimensions variable 3 slabs each 200x200x30cm, 8 columns each 200x30x30cm, 4 foundations each 120x120x60 cm. Installation view at ALT Art Space, Istanbul 2016
THE BREEDER ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS FIN DE SIÈCLE SWISS INSTITUTE ANNUAL ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN SERIES:INAUGURAL EDITION, FIN DE SIÈCLE Sep 17 - Nov 23 2014 Swiss Institute announces the inaugural edition of its Annual Design Series, an exhibition curated by renowned Greek-Norwegian architect Andreas Angelidakis entitled Fin de Siècle. A curatorial homage to Eugène Ionesco’s 1952 absurdist play “The Chairs,” the exhibition will include an eclectic array of late 20th century design pieces sourced from museum and private collections. Presented in an immersive mise-en-scène, this unique selection of chairs resonates with the drama of Ionesco’s tragic farce, 20 years after the celebrated avant-garde playwright’s passing. The exhibiton will include pieces by Martine Boileau, Mario Botta, Andrea Branzi, Marcel Breuer, Nacho Carbonell, Oswald Dubach, H.R. Giger, Pierre Jeanneret, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier), Reto Kaufmann, Wilhelm Kienzle, Gian Franco Legler, Frédéric Levrat, Alessandro Mendini, NN, Paolo Palucco, Charlotte Perriand, Gaetano Pesce, Ugo La Pietra, Bruno Rey, Alfred Roth, Peter Shire, team form ag, Kurt Thut, Peter Truog, Robert Venturi, Lawrence Weiner, and Armin Wirth. In “The Chairs,” an elderly couple recounts the demise of civilization to a stage full of empty chairs. Absent of any sitters, the audience is left to imagine the invisible figures that the increasingly incoherent Old Man and Old Woman address. In Fin de Siècle, the chairs themselves speak asynchronously, cast as characters and imbued with life. Directed into small vignettes of imagined conversations and actions that transcend periods and design movements, their dialogue echoes the modernist promise fading away. Curator Andreas Angelidakis writes: “In our current moment of plurality and infinite flux, these objects from the past era of grand movements are juxtaposed with one another. Let us contemplate their inaudible conversations.” Highlights include seminal innovations in mass production by Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier, and Armin Wirth; experiments in utopian design by Pierre Jeanneret; imaginative creations that extend reality by H.R. Giger and Alessandro Mendini; and whimsical splashes of color by Robert Venturi and Peter Shire. At this moment the audience would have in front of them … empty chairs on an empty stage decorated with streamers, littered with useless confetti, which would give an impression of sadness, emptiness and disenchantment such as one finds in a ballroom after a dance; and it would be after this that the chairs, the scenery, the void, would inexplicably come to life … upsetting logic and raising fresh doubts. –Eugène Ionesco THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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Swiss Institute Annual Design Series: Inaugural Edition, “Fin de Siecle�, curated by Andreas Angelidakis, Swiss Institute, New York, 2014
Swiss Institute Annual Design Series: Inaugural Edition, “Fin de Siecle�, curated by Andreas Angelidakis, Swiss Institute, New York, 2014
Swiss Institute Annual Design Series: Inaugural Edition, “Fin de Siecle�, curated by Andreas Angelidakis, Swiss Institute, New York, 2014
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Swiss Institute Annual Design Series: Inaugural Edition, “Fin de Siecle�, curated by Andreas Angelidakis, Swiss Institute, New York, 2014
! ! Swiss Institute Annual Design Series: Inaugural Edition, “Fin de Siecle�, curated by Andreas Angelidakis, Swiss Institute, New York, 2014 ! ! !
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Swiss Institute Annual Design Series: Inaugural Edition, “Fin de Siecle�, curated by Andreas Angelidakis, Swiss Institute, New York, 2014
Swiss Institute Annual Design Series: Inaugural Edition, “Fin de Siecle�, curated by Andreas Angelidakis, Swiss Institute, New York, 2014
THE BREEDER ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS I:I Period Rooms Het Nieuwe Institut, Rotterdam 1:1 Period Rooms by Andreas Angelidakiscomprises part two of a triptych on the interior. Het Nieuwe Instituut chose the period room as the point of departure for a programme about exhibition models and the interior as an educational model. In the middle of the last century the period room in museums made way for the ‘white cube’. Modern art demanded neutral, white walls, not historically decorated rooms, and the period rooms were relegated to storage. From 1 February to 6 April 2015 Het Nieuwe Instituut chose to focus on the period room as a point of departure for a programme about exhibition models. With his installation 1:1 Period Rooms Greek architect and architect Andreas Angelidakis tells a story about the shifting meaning of space in the history of exhibition making. The installation incorporates period rooms from Amsterdam Museum's collection that have not been on public view since the 1970s. These period rooms originally came from the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where then director Willem Sandberg in the late 1930s started to place art works in front of bare, white walls for the first time (initally as conservator and from 1945 as director). Sandberg used the period rooms as office and study space and they were no longer used for exhibitions. In the 1970s the period rooms were finally dismantled and put in storage. The installation 1:1 Period Rooms is made up of five spaces, each of which represents a passage from an imaginary discussion between the period room and the white cube. Each 'room' was constructed using the wooden frames that restorers generally use to build a period room.
THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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Andreas Angelidakis, 1:1 Period rooms, installation view at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, 2015
Andreas Angelidakis, 1:1 Period rooms, installation view at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, 2015
Andreas Angelidakis, 1:1 Period rooms, installation view at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, 2015
Andreas Angelidakis, 1:1 Period rooms, installation view at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, 2015
Andreas Angelidakis, 1:1 Period rooms, installation view at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, 2015
Andreas Angelidakis, 1:1 Period rooms, installation view at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, 2015
THE BREEDER ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS Fantasy Ruins: Bags, Body Parts and Bibelot 1st Chicago Architectural Biennial 2015, Chicago Buildings are the central characters in Andreas Angelidakis' work. His buildings evolve through time, express emotions and act on their feelings. Sometimes we find them on a path to completion, other times toward a state of ruin. The buildings in Angelidakis' works come alive, they leave places, reach new destinations, suddenly explode or gradually erode. As 3D printing technology developed in the 2000s, its use became a medium of its own, eventually leading to buildings designed only to be 3D printed. This transition coincided with the advent of social media, and somehow this provides who would live in these buildings. The 3D printed works are thus buildings inhabited by likes and regrams on instagram and tumblr. But how big is a like? How much room does a retweet take? In online dictionaries the Bibelot is described as a French term invented for all these objects that have no clearly understandable use apart of our potential emotional involvement. A bibelot can be an object of exquisite or abominable taste. A bibelot is an object that always belies the presence of a collector, a bibelot is always part of a series. What are cities if not large scale collections of bibelot buildings?
THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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Andreas Angelidakis, “Fantasy Buildings, Bibelots, Body Parts and Bags”, 2015 Installation view at 1st Chicago Architecture Biennial “The State of the Art of Architecture”
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! Andreas Angelidakis, “Fantasy Buildings, Bibelots and Body Parts”, 2015 Installation view at 1st Chicago Architecture Biennial “The State of the Art of Architecture”
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! Andreas Angelidakis, House for my mother, 2015, zCorp 450, color 3D print
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Andreas Angelidakis House for my Mother II (Ode to Guy Rottier) 2015 zCorp 450, color 3D print
Andreas Angelidakis House for my Mother II (Ode to Guy Rottier) 2015 zCorp 450, color 3D print and mixed media
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Andreas Angelidakis Leftover Sack 2015 zCorp 450, color 3D print 25x25x20 cm
! Andreas Angelidakis, Broken Doll, 2015, zCorp 450, color 3D print
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Andreas Angelidakis Bibelot 2015 zCorp 450, color 3D print 34x14x17 cm
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Andreas Angelidakis, Broken, 2015, zCorp 450, color 3D print
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! Andreas Angelidakis, LIDL bag house, 2015, zCorp 450, color 3D print
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Andreas Angelidakis Untitled 2015 zCorp 450, color 3D print 59x25x19 cm
! Andreas Angelidakis Domesticated Mountain 2014 zCorp 450, color 3D print 16x27x22 cm
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! Andreas Angelidakis LIDL bag domino 2015 zCorp 450, color 3D print 16.5x22x20 cm
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Andreas Angelidakis Fin de Siecle Prototype 2015 zCorp 450, color 3D print
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! Andreas Angelidakis, Broken 2015, zCorp 450, color 3D print !
THE BREEDER ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS VESSEL Liverpool Biennial 2016 Tate Liverpool Melding the classical story of Diogenes the Cynic, who famously slept in a large ceramic pot in the agora, with Facebook updates and scrolling online news feeds, these works by Andreas Angelidakis consider the vessel surface as the original screen.
VESSEL was first presented along with a series of 3D sculptures at the 2016 Liverpool Biennial in Tate Liverpool.
https://vimeo.com/225103433 password: thebreeder
THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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Andreas Angelidakis, installation view at Liverpool Biennial 2016, Tate Liverpool
Andreas Angelidakis, installation view at Liverpool Biennial 2016, Tate Liverpool
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Andreas Angelidakis, installation view at Liverpool Biennial 2016, Tate Liverpool
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Andreas Angelidakis, installation view at Liverpool Biennial 2016, Tate Liverpool
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! ! Andreas Angelidakis, Generic Pot, 2017, zcorp 450 3D color print, 23x20x20 cm
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Andreas Angelidakis, Fragment Domino, 2017, zcorp 450 3D color print, 39x20x15 cm
Andreas Angelidakis, Protogeometric House, 2017, zcorp 450 3D color print, 23x20x27 cm
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Andreas Angelidakis, Shell House, 2014, Mixed Media, 25x20x20 cm, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
THE BREEDER ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS Every End is a Beginning Retrospective Exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens 14 May -31 December 2014 The solo exhibition shows a series of architectural studies exploring transformative states and mutations, moving from the architecture of building to “the architecture of the unbuilt, the immaterial, the virtual”. This ideology of the ruined is reflected in the exhibition space and the semi-lit and derelict hallways of the museum itself, which is currently transitioning into the collection’s permanent residence.
THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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! Andreas Angelidakis, installation view, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
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! Andreas Angelidakis, Three-Dimensional Print, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
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! Andreas Angelidakis, Cloud House, 2014, Three-Dimensional Print, 25x15x20 cm, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
Andreas Angelidakis, Hand House, 2014, Three-Dimensional Print, 25x15x20 cm, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
! ! Andreas Angelidakis, System of Objects, 2013, installation view, variable dimensions, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
Andreas Angelidakis, Blue Wave, 2014, Three-Dimensional Print, 25x15x20 cm, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
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! Andreas Angelidakis, Every End is a Beginning at National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
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! Andreas Angelidakis, Every End is a Beginning at National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
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Andreas Angelidakis, Parrot Ruin, 2012
THE BREEDER ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS, CASINO, TROLL 2012
Andreas Angelidakis, Casino, 2012 Mixed media (plywood, digital video with sound, screens, digital print on masonite, paper, found objects), 145x160x40 cm Courtesy The Breeder, Athens / Monaco
Andreas Angelidakis. Troll, 2012 Mixed media (plywood, digital video with sound, screens, digital print on masonite, paper, found objects), 183x120x40 cm, Courtesy The Breeder, Athens / Monaco THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com 1 rue des Lilas, MC 98000, Monaco, t: +377 97987990, monaco@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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THE BREEDER Troll (the voluntary ruin) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EZvOm6zMmk Casino https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKuaSodQ0uw "Casino" and "Troll" are studies of two iconic modernist buildings in Athens. Both are emblematic modernist buildings of the 50's, both failed in their intentions and both are used as vehicles to talk about the current anthropological and financial crisis in Athens. Each of those buildings represents a side of the current two-fold crisis engulfing the city: The Civic side of the crisis is represented by the housing block “Chara”, and the Economic side by the luxury resort and casino of “Mont Parnes”. The housing block, startlingly different from its surrounding cheap and profit driven pseudo-modernist polykatoikies decides the city is no longer a valid environment and one day decides to leave, just like the immigrants leaving for their countries and the Greeks taking off in search of better fortunes. (Athens took its current shape during a mass internal migration from the 1950s and onwards, when Greeks from every corner of the WWII and Greek Civil War ravaged country moved to Athens for jobs and modern comforts. This was followed by a wave of financial immigrants from Eastern Europe, North Africa and Asia that began in the 1990s.) The video and installation narrates the story of the building, while going off in the theoretical future scenario of its transformation into an inhabitable mountain. The casino was built in the late 1950s with Marshall Plan funding, commissioned by the Karamanlis government. It was to be, like many Marshall Plan constructions, a perfect billboard for the future promised to all NATO participating countries, a hi-tech modernist emblem positioned on top of mount Parnitha, visible from the entire city of Athens, and who knows maybe even from Moscow. The building was also heavily used to promote the Greek Economy and Tourism, forces to consider in the European landscape and perhaps part of prime minister Karamanlis' plan to establish Greece as a valid European partner. Things did not exactly turn out like this, and the luxury resort proved a shaky investment criticized by many as a mediocre, unplanned building. The rooms were too small for a mountain resort, the pool reminded one of a beach side fancy but was too windy to ever use, the public spaces of the hotel were hard to navigate and offered none of the spectacular views that the location promised. The hotel went quickly bankrupt, and began a steady decline of alternating bankruptcies, renovations and unsuccessful conversions into a school of tourism, a state casino, a privately owned hotel and recently a half demolished ruin about to be re-built as a copy of its previous self. Between these failed attempts to revive the building came earthquakes, fires and structural failures just adding to the list of problems for this unlucky building. More than an unlucky capitalist gamble, it seems as if the mountain itself was rejecting its modernist occupant, as if constructing this building on top of this nature reserve was a perfect example of hybris.
THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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THE BREEDER At the same time, the country’s economy underwent a similar series of failed renovations, seemingly unable to follow the course of capitalism, as it evolved from a cold-war political game of domination to the casino capitalism of financial markets and to today's crisis capitalism. In the end, the building that was meant as a billboard for the strength of the economy became an emblem of its failures, inhabiting the peak of the current economic warzone. The project researches this history, but takes a sharp turn into a future where the development of a cottage economy follows the fantasy solution of a midnight explosion. The broken pieces of the exploded casino scatter on the slopes of Mount Parnitha and slowly grow into small shelters, the modernist fragments helped into completion by the tree trunks of Parnitha, hybrid cottages that escape into a future of local independed economies. Andreas Angelidakis has developed an artistic voice that switches between the languages of architecture, curating, writing and Internet. He often speaks about spaces, buildings and the society that inhabits them, with the exhibition format acting as vehicle for ideas and medium for his artistic practice. His exhibitions challenge the viewer both in terms of their content, their format and the constantly shifting role of the exhibition maker. Both works by Andreas Angelidakis had been exhibited in "Made in Athens", the show at the Greek Pavilion of the 13th Venice Architecture Biennial (2012) and were also part of his retrospective exhibition at EMST, National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (2015).
THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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! Andreas Angelidakis, Casino, 2012, Mixed media, 145x160x40 cm, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
Andreas Angelidakis, Casino, 2012, installation view at "Made in Athens" , 13th Venice Biennial of Architecture, Mixed media (plywood, digital video with sound, screens, digital print on masonite, paper, found objects), 145x160x40 cm
Andreas Angelidakis, Casino, 2012, detail view, mixed media (plywood, digital video with sound, screens, digital print on masonite, paper, found objects), 145x160x40 cm
Andreas Angelidakis, Casino, 2012, detail view, mixed media (plywood, digital video with sound, screens, digital print on masonite, paper, found objects), 145x160x40 cm
Andreas Angelidakis, Casino, 2012, detail view, mixed media (plywood, digital video with sound, screens, digital print on masonite, paper, found objects), 145x160x40 cm
Andreas Angelidakis, Casino, 2012, detail view, mixed media (plywood, digital video with sound, screens, digital print on masonite, paper, found objects), 145x160x40 cm
Andreas Angelidakis, CasinoRuin, 2012, Digital print on archival paper
Andreas Angelidakis, Troll, 2012, Mixed media (plywood, digital video with sound, screens, digital print on masonite, paper, found objects), 183x120x40 cm
Andreas Angelidakis, Troll, 2012, installation view at "Made in Athens" , 13th Venice Biennial of Architecture, Mixed media (plywood, digital video with sound, screens, digital print on masonite, paper, found objects), 183x120x40 cm
Andreas Angelidakis, Troll, 2012, detail view, Mixed media (plywood, digital video with sound, screens, digital print on masonite, paper, found objects), 183x120x40 cm
THE BREEDER ! Andreas Angelidakis Domesticated Mountain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUtvvWI-QZ0 Domesticated Mountain targets the suburban home as the traditional vehicle for an architectural manifesto. Positioning the home in an expanded notion of suburbia, i.e. The internet, the suburban home is the accumulation of all the things we do online, and so it needs to be redefined from scratch. Redefining what makes our suburban home in the time of facebook and twitter and tumblr and pintrest, suggests examining the primitive state of a house. The primitive state of such a suburban home is a truck of boxes being deposited on the sidewalk by a transport van. These boxes contain the house - the house is a readymade, rented from an online agency of houses, picked from a list according to specifications. In this internet suburbia no more houses are designed, because enough readymades exist already -. This initial primitive state of a house arriving at its location as a set of transport boxes is a condition that continues throughout the life of this house, and perhaps becomes it's death. The inhabitants constantly need more products to satisfy their ever expanding needs (Do we need a raw almond puree maker? Yes we do). But to be exact, they do not need the almond puree maker to make almond puree, they need it to satisfy their need of needing it. They just want to buy it, but not necessarily own it or use it. So the inhabitants of the house go through evolutionary stages. First they move all their stuff from their previous house, then they continuously purchase more stuff on the internet, but gradually become so saturated with browsing and buying that they forget what they bought. Boxes of bargains arrive at the house but nobody remembers buying them, because they have already discovered another site with better bargains, faster browsing, cheaper shipping. This compulsive internet shopping is part of the inhabitants growing list of compulsive browsing behaviors. Every night they get lost in psychogeographic drifts down the jpeg avenues of tumblr, scrolling down cartesian city grids of thumbnails, making their situationist derives by caressing their ipad screens. In these derives, they find everything: products to want, and buildings they like and archive material to reblog and beautiful girls to make friends with. They find objects to order and have sent home and information to fill up their blogs and clothes to wear while browsing for more. Soon they are saturated. They have seen all the images that exist on the internet, they have browsed all the bargain bins many times over, but they need more things to scroll through, sometimes not even looking at what they are looking at, just caressing and scrolling. They don’t need to buy products anymore, they just add them to their dreamboxes, mark them as favorites, leave them rotting in the shopping cart in case they need something to want later on. Slowly they realize that their home has become a mountain of things, stacked boxes of almond puree makers and organic ironing kits. And while this accumulating was going on, they got saturated with accumulating, with buying, with owning. Now it was enough to just click on something and it had already partially been consumed. Consumed enough so that you could just scroll down to the next consumable image of product or information or person. Had this evolutionary process of boxed products reached it's post-capitalist conclusion? Was it enough to just “consume” online without ever buying anything? Would the suburban house, along with its mountain of objects just evaporate into an ephemeral scroll up to the suburban sky? No more products? No more buildings? No more images? No more real people? Just an endless scroll of gaussian blurriness, a slow vertical drift into our internet suburbia. THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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Andreas Angelidakis, Domesticated Mountain, 2012
Andreas Angelidakis, Domesticated Mountain
! Andreas Angelidakis, Domesticated Mountain, 2014, Three-Dimensional Print, 30x30x25 cm, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
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Andreas Angelidakis, Room (Domesticated Mountain), 2012, site specific installation, installation view at GloriaMaria Gallery, logistics and courier packaging
Andreas Angelidakis, Group Mountain, installation view at The Breeder, Athens, 2013
Andreas Angelidakis, Group Mountain, installation view at The Breeder, Athens, 2013
THE BREEDER ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS IOLAS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmqxmVnXn64 “Iolas� is the result of a study on the abandoned villa of collector and gallerist Alexander Iolas in Athens. The video narrates a story of transition where a house moves from a state of symbioses with its proprietor, into a state of ruins after the owner passes away. It starts with the story of the house up to the present but then drifts off into a fictional narrative about the house and its contents, on the way commenting on the nature of collecting, exhibiting, and constructing, on the relation of art and architecture.
THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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! Andreas Angelidakis, Iolas, video installation view, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
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! Andreas Angelidakis, video installation view, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
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Andreas Angelidakis, Villa Iolas, 2013, video still
Andreas Angelidakis, Untitled (Chair for Alexander Iolas), 2010, found chair, gold foil
THE BREEDER Andreas Angelidakis The Feeder Project (Collage Nation) In an engraving dating to 1836, we can see an interesting incident from the Athenian life of that period. The main room of The Beautiful Hellas café is split in two compartments: on the left side, customers are dressed in European way, drinking beer and smoking cigars while a billiard table is placed in between. On the right part of the room, the rest of the customers are traditionally dressed in fustanellas and colorful woven vests and seem to drink raki, while smoking the traditional chibouk. At the center of the image, a man wearing a redingote, the trademark of Europeanized “Alafranga” Greeks, talks with a man who wears a fustanella and the traditional cloak, a thick woolen shepherd’s coat.
In this simple way, Bavarian artist Kollnberger illustrates not only a scene of everyday life, but also the wider dichotomy of society during the instauration of the Modern Greek state. It was the time that would eventually lead the country to the bankruptcy of 1896, under the governance of Charilaos Trikoupis and the enforcement of inspectional measures prescribed by the International Economic Committee. Back then, and even today possibly, Greece was the outcome of a peculiar collage. On the one hand were the Alafranga, the Greeks coming from Europe who attempted to establish the new state as the ideal continuation of ancient Greece; therefore they imported neoclassicism, the European way of dressing, as well as the royal family. The Alafranga envisioned Greece as a European country, where people should dress modernly, speak formal Greek and admire the romantic charm of the white marble ruins of Acropolis. The actual Greece had just been detached from the Ottoman Empire and hence still kept many elements from the East. The warriors still wore the traditional
THE BREEDER fustanella and were hidden in the mountains, covered with lambskins and colorful thick knitwear. They also wanted to be part of the country being shaped right then. They would built their homes with any available material and make their sheepfolds from branches and pieces from ruined houses. Even churches were built from the debris of ancient temples. All these would result in a continuous collage, an early method of recycling buildings. We could say that they constructed their own ruins. Even nowadays, in the Greek province but also in cities, it’s common for the houses to evolve within time through additions and extensions, in order to accommodate the whole family. Even today, Greece is a collage of its glorious and somewhat iconic ancient past and the living “real” present. The space of the Breeder Feeder is the synthesis of two distinct proposals for the furnishing of a restaurant. The first restaurant is designed as a series of ergonomically dimensioned white elements that refer to the methodologically organized marble pieces of an ancient structure. The other consists of vintage furniture from the 70’s and the 80’s, a bit rustic and in a way traditional, that was found in flea markets around the area of Metaxourgio in Athens. In their coexistence, these two restaurants are tangled, bound, cut and glued back together. An old table is cut in four halves and its pieces are placed between the white furnishing, supporting tables and completing sitting areas. The wooden rustic chairs are split in the middle and placed on white footstalls, as if they were exhibits. All the leftovers are re-used in a continuous collage of two systems, of the ideal white system and the random meeting of old furniture. Joined with visible brand-new metallic elements, these objects eventually see their functionality being transformed: chairs turned into benches, tables extending to columns, new seats emerging from the composition of older ones, traditional colorful textiles spread on the white sleek surfaces, in an architecture that consists of what we are thinking and of what we have found before us, in a snapshot of amalgamation between the iconic and the real.
Andreas Angelidakis
Andreas Angelidakis, Breeder Feeder, two system restaurant, mock up, 2010
Andreas Angelidakis, Breeder Feeder, two system restaurant, mock up, 2010
Andreas Angelidakis, CrashPad / Feeder, 2014, mixed media installation, installation view at “Every End is A Beginning� at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
Andreas Angelidakis, CrashPad / Feeder, 2014, mixed media installation, installation view at “Every End is A Beginning� at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens /
Breeder Feeder, designed and realized by Andreas Angelidakis in 2010, The Breeder, Athens
Breeder Feeder, designed and realized by Andreas Angelidakis in 2010, The Breeder, Athens
THE BREEDER ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS Exhibition architecture for Alejandro Jodorowsky retrospective at CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux 28.05.2015- 31.10.2015 Alejandro Jodorowsky has impacted generations of actors, writers, film directors and visual artists by constantly presenting his audience with a strikingly prolific and diverse range of work. The CAPC, museum of contemporary art of Bordeaux, will present in 2015 the first major retrospective of this internationally acclaimed Chilean artist. In the central Nave, transformed by Greek architect Andreas Angelidakis to highlight the Jodorwsky's visual world, the museum will present for the first time rarely seen and exclusive archives, drawings, comics, films, etc. This spectacular and emblematic space offers the occasion to present an artistic world mixing theatre, performances, cinema, readings and illustrations. The aim of this unique exhibition, deeply embedded in the visual world of the artist, is to provide the viewer with an initiatory journey at the heart of Jodorowsky's “mystery”, where rational and irrational coexist side-by-side.
THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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! Andreas Angelidakis, exhibition design and architecture for Alexandro Jodorowsky’s retrospective at CAPC Bordeaux, 2015
! Andreas Angelidakis, exhibition design and architecture for Alexandro Jodorowsky’s retrospective at CAPC Bordeaux, 2015
! Andreas Angelidakis, exhibition design and architecture for Alexandro Jodorowsky’s retrospective at CAPC Bordeaux, 2015
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ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS BIOGRAPHY SELECTED TEXTS ! ! ! ! ! ! !
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e x THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com 1www.thebreedersystem.com rue des Lilas, MC 98000, Monaco, t: +377 97987990, monaco@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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THE BREEDER
ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS Artist CV & Exhibition History
THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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THE BREEDER ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS Biography Andreas Angelidakis was born in Athens in 1968. He studied Architecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and continued his studies at Columbia University (MSAAD) in New York where he graduated in 1995. From the beginning of his career he has been working at the intersection of art and architecture, often expanding onto other disciplines such as curating and writing. Andreas Angelidakis is included with major installations at Documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel (2017) curated by Adam Szymczyk. He also presents ambitious installations for the public program of Documenta 14 in both cities (Demos in Athens and Polemos in Kassel). His solo exhibitions include: Soft Ruin, ALT Art Space, Istanbul, 2016 / Every End is a Beginning, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, 2014 / CrashPad - Preliminary Statement for the 8th Berlin Biennial Kunstwerke, Berlin, 2014 / Group Mounain, The Breeder Athens, 2013 / Domesticated Mountain, GloriaMaria Gallery, Milano, 2012 / The Angelo Foundations Headquarters, with Angelos Plessas, Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2009 / Hotel Blue Wave, Inmo Gallery, Los Angeles, 2006 / Blue Wave, MU center for art and architecture, Eindhoven, 2005/ Neen World, The Breeder, Athens, 2003 / Future Paris, Visionaire Gallery, New York, 2001. He has worked on and participated in a number of large-scale group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, such as 12th Baltic Triennial at CAC Vilnius, 2015 (exhibition architecture) / Supersuperstudio at PAC, Milano, 2015 (co-curator, exhibition architecture) / Alejandro Jodorowsky, survey exhibiton, CAPC Bordeaux, 2015 (exhibition design) / 1:1 Period Rooms, Het Nieuwe Institute, Rotterdam, 2015 (curating and exhibition desing) / Fin de Siecle – Inaugural Edition of Annual Design Series, Swiss Institute, New York, 2014 (curating) / DO-IT Moscow, Garage Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2014 (exhibition design) / System of Objects – The Dakis Joannou collection reloaded, DESTE Foundation, Athens, 2013 (curating and exhibition design) / A Rock and a Hard Place, 3rd Thessaloniki Biennial, 2011 (exhibition design) / Model Kits – Selections from the Latin American collection, MUSAC, Leon, 2010 (exhibition design) / Heaven, 2nd Athens Biennial, 2009 (exhibition design), Collateral, Hangar Bicocca, Milano, 2008 (exhibition design). Selected group exhibitions are: Documenta 14, Athens & Kassel / Liverpool Biennial 2016 / Chicago Architectural Biennial 2015 / Frieze Foundation commissions, Frieze Art Fair London, 2013 / MADEINATHENS, 13th Venice Biennial of Architecture, Greek Pavilion, 2012 / It’s a wonderful life, Kunsthalle Athena, Athens, 2012 / 1st Beijing International Design Triennial, Beijing, 2011 / Concrete Islands, Analix Forever, Paris, 2011 / Somewhere else, Espace Louis Vuitton, Paris, 2011 / The Politics of Art, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, 2010 / The Bar, Kunsthalle Athena, Athens, 2010 / THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
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THE BREEDER ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS b. 1968, Athens, Greece Lives and works in Athens, Greece Nationality: Greek / Norwegian Education 1989- 1992 Bachelor of Architecture 1992, Southern California Institute of Architecture SciARC, Santa Monica, Sci-Arc. 1994-1995 Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design at Columbia University, New York Solo exhibitions 2016 Soft Ruin, ALT, curated by Mari Spirito, Istanbul, Turkey 2015 1:1 Period Rooms by Andreas Angelidakis, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam 2014 Every End is a Beginning, Retrospective exhibition, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens Crash Pad, Preliminary Statements for the 8th Berlin Biennale, KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin Philosophy/ Decorating the Council, Justus Lipsius European Council, Brussels 2013 Group Mountain, The Breeder Gallery, Athens 2012 Fantasy Solutions, Gallery Zina Athanasiadou, Thessaloniki Domesticated Mountain, GloriaMaria Gallery, Milan 2009 “The Angelo Foundation Headquarters” collaboration with artist Angelo Plessas, Jeu de Paume museum espace virtuelle. www.jeudepaume.org “Headquarters”, collaborative exhibition with Angelo Plessas, Rebecca Camhi Gallery, Athens 2008 “Cloud House”,Video projection at YAMA Project, Istanbul 2006 “Hotel Blue Wave”, INMO Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 2005 "Blue Wave", MU Foundation, Eindhoven, Netherlands THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
THE BREEDER 2003 "Neen World", The Breeder Projects, Athens Greece 2002 "Inside-Out", Analix Galerie, Geneva "Pause", with Jean-Pierre Khazem, Fargfabriken Stockholm 2001 Last Year, with Angelo Plessas, Electronic Orphanage "Visionaire 34 featuring Andreas Angelidakis", Visionaire Gallery, New York, USA Second City, MAGAZIN project space, Centre d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble, France. Special projects 2017 DEMOS, installation for the pulic program “Parliament of Bodies” of Documenta 14 in Athens, curated by Adam Szymczyk and Paul B. Preciado POLEMOS, installation for the pulic program of Documenta 14 in Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk and Paul B. Preciado Regionale 2017, Kunsthalle Basel (curating and exhibition architecture) 2015 Supersuperstudio at PAC Milano (co-curator) Alexandro Jodorowsky at CAPC Bordeaux (exhibition architecture) 12th Baltic Triennial at CAC Vilnius (exhibition architecture) 2014 Fin de Siecle, curated by Andreas Angelidakis, Swiss Institute, New York DO-IT (Exhibition architecture), Garage Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow 2013 The System of Objects, The Dakis Joannou Collection Reloaded by Andreas Angelidakis, DESTE Foundation, Athens May 2013 (co-curator, exhibition architecture) PAPERWEIGHT, (Exhibition architecture), Haus der Kunst, PAOLA curated by Andreas Angelidakis, The BREEDER, Athens 2011 A Rock and A Hard Place, 3rd Thessaloniki Biennial (exhibition architecture), Thessaloniki, Greece 2010 Model Kits – Selections from te Latin America Collection, (exhibition architecture), MUSAC, Leon 2009 Heaven, 2nd Athens Biennial, Athens (exhibition architecture) 2008 Collateral, Hangar Bicocca, Milan (exhibition architecture) THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
THE BREEDER Group Exhibitions 2017 Documenta 14, Learning from Athens, Athens and Kassel, curated by Adam Szymczyk 10th Biennale International Design Saint Etienne, France Planets, Paphos 2017, curated by Elena Parpa, Paphos, Cyprus Untopia / Dystopia, MAAT, Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon Brotherhood/ Shelter, Neumeisterbaram, Berlin 2016 Liverpool Biennial, July 2016 Art & Nature, Merano, curated by BAU Object Oriented Ontology, Intelligentsia Gallery, Beijing Genii Loci, Manege, Saint Petersburg, Russia Winter is Coming (Homage to the future), curated by Maria Arusoo, Galerie George Karl, Vienna 2015 The State of the Art of Architecture 1st Chicago Architecture Biennial, Chicago 2014 Panda Sex, curated by Tom Morton, State of Concept, Athens 2012 Tourism Landscapes, Greek Pavilion at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennial A Wonderful Life, Kunsthalle Athena MON CORPS EN VILLE, Galerie Magda Danysz, Paris. Una fine che non finisce di finire (An end that never ends to end), La Rada art center, Locarno. Curated by Riccardo Lisi MADEINATHENS, 13th Venice Biennial of Architecture, Padiglione Grecia 2011 1st Beijing international Design Triennial, curated by Benjamin Loyate, Beijing, China METASCREEN, curated by Miltos Manetas, GloriaMaria Gallery, Milan ASAP launch, Standard hotel New York, www.a—s--a--p.com 1st Design Triennial Beijing, curated by Benjamin Loyate Concrete Islands, curated by Elias Redstone, AnalixForever, Paris, Somewhere Else, Espace Louis Vuitton, Paris, February 2011 2010 Politics of Art, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens The Stockholm Exhibition, Stockholm, Centre for Visual Introspection, Sofia, The Bar, Kunsthalle Athena, Athens On Escape, B Gallery, Athens Design Biennial of St Etienne The State of Things, Holon Museum of Design, Israel 2009 THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
THE BREEDER Expanded Ecologies, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens “Artes Musicales”, Alden Biessen, Belgium, Artists for Athens Pride, The Breeder, Athens 2008 Everyday Utopia, Think21 Gallery, Brussels Sonho da casa propria, traveling exhibition, Cordoba If Tomorrow Never Comes, Rodeo Gallery, Istanbul Transexperiences, 798 Art Space, Beijing Athensville, Art Athina, Athens A Personal Shout, Torino Gay and Lesbian Film Festival Sueño de casa propia, Casa del Lago Juan José Arreola, Mexico City Teleport Fargfabriken, FF NORR, Ostersund “n Present Tense, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens 2007 Sueno da case propria, Casa Encendida, Madrid New Trends in architecture, Barcelona Pavilion, Barcelona Nuit Blanche, Hotel d’Avret + Second France, Paris and Second Life Loop video Festival, Technical chamber of architects, Barcelona Sueno da casa propria, BAC, Geneva Heterotopias, Thessaloniki Biennale, Thessaloniki New Trends in Architecture, Artfront Gallery, Tokyo 2006 The Grande Promenade, National Museum of Contemporary Art, EMST Athens Neen Demo, Benaki Museum, Athens New Trends in European and Asian Architecture”, Patras Manetas-Angelidakis-Plessas”, Rebecca Camhi Gallery, Athens SuperNeen, Galleria Pack, Milan, Italy "nvisible Hotel, Deste Foudation, Athens 2005 NeenDay, Sketch Gallery, London Sonar A La Carte, Sonar Electronic Media Festival, Barcelona 2004 NeenToday, Mu, Eindhoven, Holland Salon, curated by Casey Spooner (Fischerspooner), Deitch Projects Brooklyn 404 Festival, Castagnino Museum, Rosario, Argentina Celebrating the Demon, 2 years after whitneybiennial.com, Fargfabriken, Stockholm 2003 AfterNeen, Casco Projects, Utrecht, The Netherlands, Design Film Pool, Svensk Form Foundation, Stockholm experimenta design Bienal, Lisboa, Portugal Group show, Muca Roma Museum, Mexico In Transit, Zappeion Megaron + Syntagma Square, Athens Alto Impatto Abientale, Musei Civici di Regio Emilia, Bologna, Italy, Playgrounds & Toys, John Kirakossian School, Yerevan, Armenia THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
THE BREEDER Big Brother: Architecture + Surveillance, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece. 2002 12th city, 25th Bienal of Sao Paulo, participation with Armin Linke, Brazil www.whitneybiennial.com, online exhibition 2001 Biennale.net, hosted online at www.biennale.net, and live at Deitch Projects Brooklyn, Stockholm At Large, organized by KTH and Fargfabriken Biennale of Young Architects, organized by the Centre for Architecture, Athens Biennale of Tirana, organized by Giancarlo Politti and Flash Art International. Tirana, Albania Massless Medium, an exhibition of new media by Creative Time, Brooklyn Anchorage, USA 2000 Dreaming in Print, 10 years of Visionaire Magazine, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York Venice Biennial of Architecture, Greece pavilion, curated by Elias Zenghelis A Landscape for the Electronic Orphanage, Petit Glam, Tokyo Japan 1999 Landscapes of Modernization, Netherlands Architecture Institute, Curated by Yorgos Simeoforidis e-spaces/ genese, Purple Institute, Paris, France. Curated by Francois Roche
THE BREEDER 45 Iasonos st, GR 10436, Athens, t/f: +30 210 33 17 527, gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
Andreas Angelidakis, Every End Is a Beginning, EMST National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, review by Michelangelo Corsaro, Art Review, September 2014
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ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS Selected video works
IOLAS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmqxmVnXn64 “Iolas” is the result of a study on the abandoned villa of collector and gallerist Alexander Iolas in Athens. The video narrates a story of transition where a house moves from a state of symbioses with its proprietor, into a state of ruins after the owner passes away. It starts with the story of the house up to the present but then drifts off into a fictional narrative about the house and its contents, on the way commenting on the nature of collecting, exhibiting, and constructing, on the relation of art and architecture. Domesticated Mountain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUtvvWI-QZ0 Domesticated Mountain targets the suburban home as the traditional vehicle for an architectural manifesto. Positioning the home in an expanded notion of suburbia, i.e. The internet, the suburban home is the accumulation of all the things we do online, and so it needs to be redefined from scratch. In this internet suburbia no more houses are designed, because enough readymades exist already. This initial primitive state of a house arriving at its location as a set of transport boxes is a condition that continues throughout the life of this house, and perhaps becomes it's death. Troll (the voluntary ruin) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EZvOm6zMmk The film 'Troll' tells the story of a modernist, low-income apartment building in Athens that wants to be a mountain. The building, called Chara ('Joy') was built by Spanos and Papailiopoulos architects in 1960, taking up an entire city block with a network of interior gardens. Over time it has felt the effects of Athens' extensive urbanization and deteriorating economy. Angelidakis takes a leap of imagination, suggesting that the accumulation of plants and soil in this garden-housing overtakes the architecture and Chara wants to become a mountain and leave the city altogether. Angelidakis suggests that ruins are just buildings on their way to becoming nature. Casino https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKuaSodQ0uw "Casino Ruin" is a study of the luxury resort and casino of “Mont Parnes”, an iconic modernist building of the 50s in Athens, which failed in its intentions and is used as a vehicle to talk about the current anthropological and financial crisis. !
Andreas Angelidakis, “Fin de Siècle”, New York Times, by Ken Johnsons, 16 of October 2014
ART & DESIGN
‘Fin de Siècle’ OCT. 16, 2014
Some of the 20th-century chairs in the exhibition “Fin de Siècle,” at the Swiss Institute. CreditDaniel Perez/Swiss Institute
Pieces of furniture in design exhibitions are usually treated as artifacts of strictly historical and formal interest. “Fin de Siècle,” an entertaining exhibition of 20th-century chairs, is wildly different. It turns chairs into characters in a florid theatrical production. Organized by the architect Andreas Angelidakis, the show presents an improbably eclectic, high-low assortment of 43 pieces. It includes Modern classics by Marcel Breuer and Pierre Jeanneret; fanciful postmodern works by Robert Venturi and Mario Botta; the monstrous Harkonnen chair, which H. R. Giger conceived for the movie “Dune” (it wasn’t used); and the “Gaiam Classic Balance Ball Chair,” which exercises people while they sit at their desks. The installation has an avant-garde nightclub’s ambience. Displayed singly and in groups in the darkened gallery, the chairs are illuminated by blinking, revolving, strobing and glowing lights of many different colors. Some specimens have been placed on top of, or within, the wooden crates they were shipped in. Spooky electronic music fills the air. In this dramatic environment, the chairs seem to have personalities.
Modernist pieces exude airs of aristocratic elegance. Elaborately decorative ones preen in once-trendy styles that now seem ridiculous. In the gallery’s basement, there’s a short, dreamy video by Mr. Angelidakis about a villa, now derelict, built by the impresario Alexander Iolas to house his art collection. As if all that were not enough, there’s this conceptual layer: The show is meant as a homage to Eugène Ionesco’s 1952 play, “The Chairs,” in which an elderly couple prepare a collection of empty chairs for a revelation about the meaning of life that never comes. ‘FIN DE SIÈCLE’ Swiss Institute 18 Wooster Street, SoHo Through Nov. 23
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“Fin de Siècle” curated by Andreas Angelidakis, “At the Swiss Institute, a survey of Eccentric Chair Designs, Sept 16, 2014, by Su Wu, T Magazine Blog, New York Times
At the Swiss Institute, a Survey of Eccentric Chair Designs DESIGN BY SU WU SEPTEMBER 16, 2014 6:00 PM
The “Fin de Siècle” exhibition at the Swiss Institute features a variety of modern and postmodern chair designs in dialogue with one another. Alessandro Mendini, “NONCHAIR,” c. 1981. Courtesy Dennis Freedman
In Eugène Ionesco’s 1952 absurdist tragedy, “The Chairs,” the last two survivors of an apocalypse speak to a group of chairs that purportedly have invisible occupants. That the vacant seats are not the only witnesses to the couple’s suicide at the end of the play — the chairs in the actual audience being occupied by viewers — heightens the sense of lost promise. In those chairs lies the slightness of the distinction between useful objects and relics. “We are after the end of the world, in our culture and in our perception of
“Fin de Siècle” curated by Andreas Angelidakis, “At the Swiss Institute, a survey of Eccentric Chair Designs, Sept 16, 2014, by Su Wu, T Magazine Blog, New York Times stuff,” says the Greek-Norwegian curator and architect Andreas Angelidakis, who conceived of the inaugural design exhibition at the Swiss Institute as a sequel of sorts to Ionesco’s play: just chairs, no people. He credits his therapist with the reference. “These are not the key pieces of modernist design, but an eccentric selection,” Angelidakis says of the survey, “Fin de Siècle,” opening tonight. “I didn’t curate it as museum overview, but as a casting director. Each chair was picked based on character, like casting actors.” Many of the chairs in the exhibition come from the same modernist time span as Ionesco’s literature. For Angelidakis, these between-the-wars and midcentury chairs — from the likes of Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and Marcel Breuer — represent offerings to the altar of egalitarianism. That they are now deeply coveted (and accordingly valued) creates dramatic tension alongside more recent designs, some of which critique the very idea of function. “Modernism’s failure was that it tried to produce a good thing, not necessarily a desirable thing,” Angelidakis explains. Not all of the pieces in the show are intended for sitting, as in Alessandro Mendini’s “objects for spiritual use” and Nacho Carbonell’s cocoon of paper and chicken wire — for the fear of fallout, “a chair with a cave you can hide in,” Angelidakis says. Arranged in small vignettes, and spotlit as for the stage, the chairs appear to create their own dialogue about the future of design. “With the Internet, the whole idea of what’s new has shifted to mixing together what is there,” Angelidakis says of the unconventional installation. “I’m always interested in ways of describing, ‘What now?’” “Fin de Siècle” opens tonight and is on view through Nov. 23 at the Swiss Institute, 18 Wooster St., swissinstitute.net.!
A n d r e a s A n g e l i d a k i s , A r t n e t n e w s , S e e t h e To p Te n B o o t h s a t F r i e z e N e w Yo r k 2 0 1 5 Rozalia Jovanovic, Saturday, May 16, 2015
Installation view of Andreas Angelidakis at The Breeder. Photo: artnet News.
{..} The Breeder , Athens It was hard to miss Andreas Angelidakis's “Crash Pad." For this installation, Angelidakis converted the booth into an "Oda," or a welcoming room of the kind that existed in palaces during the Ottoman Empire, with 19th century Greek rugs, pillows, and thematically appropriate sculpture like simulacra of Corinthian columns made from cardboard or created with 3-D printers. “The work intends to challenge our conception of the Classical Greek aesthetic," said GeorgeVamvakidis, one of the gallery's co-owners. Fair visitors should feel welcome to take a rest and socialize among the pillows [..]
Andreas Angelidakis , Look Before You Sit: At Frieze New York, the Seats Are All Sculptures , Hyperallergic by Benjamin Sutton on May 14, 2015
[..]A few of Frieze’s seat sculptures are brashly maximalist. Athens gallery The Breeder has given over the bulk of its booth to a stadium-seating style installation by Andreas Angelidakis, “Crash Pad” (2015), which is punctuated with columns and books, and draped in colorful carpets. At three locations in the fair, as part of its Frieze Projects program, The artist Korakrit Arunanondchai has installed recliners sheathed in bleached denim atop kaleidoscopic carpets. The installations are riotously colorful, to the point of being intimidating, but by day’s end on Wednesday they were in high demand.[...]
Andreas Angelidakis, “Crash Pad” (2015) in The Breeder’s booth at Frieze New York
Andreas Angelidakis, Fireplacechats.wordpress, Frieze New York 2015: old, new and some participation too, By Louisa Buck ,May 15,2015 [..]Athens’s The Breeder was outfitted with carpets, columns, and Byzantine-esque icons for Andreas Angelidakis’s Crash Pad (2015). […]
Andreas Angelidakis, ART OBSERVED, AO ON SITE – NEW YORK: FRIEZE NEW YORK ART FAIR ON RANDALL’S ISLAND MAY 14TH-17TH, 2015 , D. Creahan 16 May 2015 [..]Another highlight came at The Breeder, where artist Andreas Angelidakis had installed an immense, stepped rug installation that invited viewers to sit on its surface. - [..]
Andreas Angelidakis, 8th Biennale for Contemporary Art, Art forum by Eva Scharrer, May 2014
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Andreas Angelidakis, 8th Biennale for Contemporary Art, Art forum, by Eva Scharrer , May 2014 ! !
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Andreas Angelidakis August 2014 By William Hanley
Photo courtesy Andreas Angelidakis and Pin-Up magazine
Hand House, 2010.
Andreas Angelidakis is not sure why millions of people are obsessed with cat videos. “It’s a curious thing, what captures people’s attention,” he says. “Architecture is a lot slower than that kind of exchange of images.” Much of the work of the Athens and Oslo–based designer, artist, and curator imagines awkward encounters between the seemingly fixed presence of architecture and the fleeting visual effluvia of Internet culture. He responded to a call from Pin-Up magazine to conceive a Case Study house for contemporary Los Angeles by first mining Twitter conversations about the city, creating Hand House, 2010. For another series, he finds readymade digital models on the Web, which he then collages—sometimes along with crude scans of found objects—and 3-D-prints. At the center of much of his work stand classic forms of modern architecture and imagery that references Greek economic history—witness Bone Domino, 2014, with its homage to Le Courbusier and nod to the ubiquitous hastily built concrete structures that began to dot the Greek landscape in the 1960s. Angelidakis developed his practice while studying architecture at SCI-Arc and then Columbia University. “I think like an artist, but with the tools of an architect,” he says. “I try to tell stories with buildings.” A survey of his work is on view at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens through September 7, and he is curating a show at the Swiss Institute in New York that will run September 17 to November 23. (
System of Objects, curated by Andreas Angelidakis, DESTE Foundation Athens, www.wallpaper.com
Dakis Joannou's art collection goes on show at the Deste Foundation, Athens
By James Reid
Perhaps the biggest problem with an art collection as staggeringly vast as Dakis Joannou's is: how do you show even a fraction of it in a relevant, compelling way? Ever at the vanguard of contemporary art, collecting emerging and established artists with the same gusto, Joannou possesses so many outstanding pieces by key artists, it's a daunting proposition for even the most fearless curator. Previous overviews of his collection have been presented at his Deste Foundation in Athens by the likes of Massimiliano Gioni (director of New York's New Museum) and Jeffrey Deitch (now director of MOCA in Los Angeles). Big footsteps in which to follow, indeed. An unexpected but brilliantly prescient choice to curate Joannou's 2013 show, 'The System Of Objects', was the theoretical architect Andreas Angelidakis. 'I like buildings but I'm not sure I want to be the one building them. I like them like beaches and mountains and clouds, as part of an extended idea of nature,' says Angelidakis of his ambiguous job title. Yet he was able to view Joannou's collection and present it in a rich, fluid exhibition. 'After these conceptually groundbreaking [Deste] shows came a moment when the Dakis Joannou Collection became so big, a show bigger than a concept was called for.' Showing not only art
System of Objects, curated by Andreas Angelidakis, DESTE Foundation Athens, www.wallpaper.com but also Joannou's furniture collection and even his property portfolio, Angelidakis devised a labyrinthine space where hierarchies are upended and the visitor wanders through an almost physical approximation of a Tumblr page. The show's title - and, indeed, Angelidakis's entire approach - was inspired by Jean Baudrillard's 1968 leftist manifesto 'The System Of Objects', a roadmap to the ensuing years of consumerism and the psychology of want. As Angelidakis says in his curatorial essay: '"Wanting" is a new form of internet consumption, a theoretical purchase that involves only the currency of "like".' For a generation reared on the internet, he implies, there is no need to physically own something to assert awareness and define taste; 'liking' is intellectual ownership. Online a Rembrandt masterpiece has the same value as a kitten sitting on a puppy. In fact, which would get more likes? In this way Angelidakis's exhibition treats everything on show with the same reverence or irreverence - works scattered around or leaned against walls, or viewed through apertures cut into the gallery walls or floors. A pair of stretchy American Apparel leggings are positioned next to a meticulously crafted Tauba Auerbach grid painting; iconic gems are tucked away down dead-end corridors. Even the path through the gallery itself is not always clear: skeletal rooms within rooms lead viewers in all directions, mimicking how easy it is to disappear down a rabbit hole when looking for things online. The show is a trip, reaching a fevered climax in the final room, where hundreds of images - including canonical works by Ed Ruscha and Jeff Koons stand next to photos of stilettos and stools, printed out roughly and pinned to the wall. The sheer volume of Joannou's collection becomes apparent, and all the more staggering. It's a brave and democratic way of showing one of the world's great collections of contemporary culture. Above all this, atop a tower of wooden crates festooned with drawings and photographs, is a bronze George Condo bust of Dakis and his wife, Lietta, surveying everything. 
Andreas Angelidakis, Critick’s picks, Art Forum, 13 May 2012 ! !
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Andreas Angelidakis 05.13.12 AUTHOR: MARCO TAGLIAFIERRO
04.18.12-05.28.12 Gloria Maria Gallery A pile of large cardboard boxes in the center of the gallery greets visitors to this exhibition by the Athens-based artist and architect Andreas Angelidakis. Upon careful observation, it becomes clear that the heap is an angular igloo, or even a mountain, which visitors can enter by passing through a cavity on either side. From the inside, it is evident that the structure could be inhabited, as there are two chairs and two benches, which vaguely evoke the radical sensibility of Ettore Sottsass. The assembly, which is held together by strips of black adhesive tape, consists entirely of packaging used for commerce; the white FedEx boxes reappear most noticeably. Titled Domesticated Mountain Room, 2012, the work alludes to motley principles of functionality that normally are second nature to design and, obviously, architecture, but it also expresses a spirit that is decidedly “other” with regard to conventional design, even that which is presented as radically experimental. This show, curated by Maria Cristina Didero, also includes architectural plans for this installation and other such residential structures; the diagrams hang on the gallery’s bare cement walls, along with six videos that describe the works’ functional potential. Inside the installation of boxes, looped video is also projected. Here a collage of images—both moving and static, some produced by the artist, some found on the Web—depict a slow fall of boxes that, in turn, come together to compose an ideal dwelling. Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.!
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Andreas Angelidakis, Andreas Angelidakis is‌ , by Monika Szewczyk, Mousse Magazine, April- May 2015
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Andreas Angelidakis, catalogue, Every End is a Beginning at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, we Athens can see the evolution of a building as an architectural utopic concept rather than as a reality that includes the building’s function. From the moment a building starts being used, from the moment a city is inhabited, it will never be the same. The moment when the designed object accurately represents the design idea is a fleeting instance between the completion of construction and its inhabitation, and that is usually the instance it is captured to record the completed building, it’s the moment it is photographed for publicity. Thus we have an entire history of architecture whereby the
Andreas Angelidakis & Daphne Vitali A conversation on the occasion of the exhibition Every End is a Beginning
Daphne Vitali Let’s start with your current exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST), which is entitled Every End is a Beginning. The exhibition presents a series of architectural studies that pertain to concepts such as reuse, mutation, transformation and relocation, and features works exploring the transition from one state to another: a pile of cardboard boxes from online purchases transforms into a dwelling, a block of flats into a mountain, a cloud and a rock into a home, an entertainment venue into an economic experiment, and an old factory into a hybrid museum. The works included in the exhibition are buildings and structures that transform and evolve. A representative piece of yours, Cloud House, which is based on the concrete frames of Le Corbusier’s buildings, is presented in the exhibition in the process of evolving, in three separate models, without showing the final stage. What is it that inspires you in the constant evolution of buildings? Andreas Angelidakis I would say that, more than anything, I’m interested in buildings as living organisms, as personalities engaged in actions with other personalities. In architecture, and also in cities, there is always a “final” state that is cited as ideal. An architect’s complete design is usually the building that has been made. A completed city is one that conforms to the image that the town planners and designers want to assign it. Neither buildings nor cities, however, ever take on a final image, unless we’re talking about ruins. All other buildings, all cities never stop evolving, and therefore changing. I have always been interested in architectural movements that pertain to evolution, such as the Metabolists in 1960s Japan. Even there 12
buildings are immortalised in a non-real moment of their life. In contrast, ruins, when captured, include in their form all the transmutations they have undergone, they function as an album of memories where all moments are captured in one. DV The concept of transition also comes up, on the one hand in the relocation of the Museum from the building that hosted its activities in the last few years to the one that will become its permanent home and, on the other hand, in the transition that Greek society has been undergoing in recent years. At the same time, one could argue that your artwork in its entirety pertains to a transition from the architecture of building to the architecture of the unbuilt, the immaterial, the virtual. Tell us about this particular direction in your architectural work. How do you see the architecture of the future? AA It is clearly impossible to predict the future in a practice as complex as architecture, but we
have certainly begun to see a series of changes in the architect’s profession. We find ourselves at a time when there is no clear direction in design, like there has been in the past with the various movements that prevailed, such as Modernism, Postmodernism and Deconstruction. And though the age of movements has passed, we are also seeing an aversion to what we’d term the architect’s “signature”, with starchitects becoming increasingly less popular among new architects. Perhaps that’s also partly due to the ongoing economic crisis, as well as the direct relationship between the constant development required by our current capitalism and the construction of new buildings by famous architects. And we also notice that these new buildings are not truly useful to their users, like they were in the time of Modernism, when they had something to offer to their inhabitants; new buildings only serve the development of the economy. Which brings us to the question of whether we already have enough new buildings, and need no more? Many refer to modernism as the last period during which an architect was truly useful, when these days they, too, are merely another marketing tool. Of course the internet changes all that, even the economy. And we can see that successful marketing doesn’t require a new building, but an interesting building, even if it’s old. And we also see that in the economy of the internet, in other words the viral economy, it is not necessary to
invest money, but to invest time and attention. The works of this exhibition address all of these issues: the value of a ruin, the value of converting a building, the value of discussing a building versus constructing a new one. DV The idea and the aesthetics of ruins are dominant in your work. Many of your
studies begin from a building in ruins, an abandoned structure that you use as a shell for the development of your ideas. From the wreckage of Soft ruin to the abandoned villa of Alexandros Iolas, and from the vacant rooms in System of Objects to the bankrupt Casino, you use derelict buildings, structures and debris to engage with the poetics of ruins. The charm of ruins has been an inspiration for many artists, whose quests invoke a new relationship with memory and history, but also often demonstrate an uncertainty about the future. How does the charm of ruins affect you?
AA As I mentioned earlier, a ruin is the most honest depiction of a building, since all buildings, as long as they’re inhabited, are in constant evolution, they are constantly ageing, and are, therefore, on a course towards the state of ruins. In Greece, of course, we often see derelict buildings that were never completed, usually for financial reasons. Or we see buildings that don’t comply with the model of “design – construction – habitation”, but consist of these phases in random order, i.e. construction, habitation, design, construction, further habitation, etc. This typology, which is generally referred to as arbitrary buildings, and whose mentality we come across even in the most official, legalised buildings, is a mentality of a constant and often reversed ruin. DV The piece entitled Monument to an Oncoming Disaster, the entrance to a marina constructed of breakwaters, was designed from the start as a future ruin. In this piece you foretell the development that the structure will undergo due to climate change, and you treat it, from the moment of its conception, as a future ruin of the contemporary era, assigning it a different future function. The marina transforms into a 13
future island. Tell us about this idea of ruins in reverse. AA Along with the studies Menir and Dolmen, the entrance to the Athens marina is a surrealist approach to ecology, which refers to a future that we do not know. It is an attempt to see that future as a primeval but also a technological landscape, a return to nature after the apocalypse. One way to look at ruins is as buildings that are gradually returning to their natural state, going from buildings to piles of building materials, becoming deconstructed. The entrance to the Athens marina is merely an intervention where we have planned for the use of that pile of building materials in a future where the level of the sea will have risen to the point where it will flood the coastal areas. Thus, in the present, it functions as a monument, a reminder of what might happen. DV The exhibition features a series of models that have been created by the method of threedimensional printing, the designs for which originate, mainly, from your earlier works Neen World and Sandbox. They are aged models, which, in Neen World, served as workshops for the artists of the Neen movement, which you had designed to provide them with a home on the internet, and in Sandbox, they were the buildings you had constructed in the virtual Sandbox, a place for experimentation in Second Life, where users can build without owning land. Since digital buildings are virtual buildings that
disappear with a click on your computer, one wouldn’t expect these buildings to degenerate. In spite of that you create, for this exhibition, a new series of models of these buildings, where 14
the signs of the passage of time, decay and rust are visible. Are these the ruins of the digital age? AA I have always been interested in the relationship between the actual and the virtual, the present and the ideal. One of the ways we comprehend the physical existence of an object is decay. These buildings, albeit never made in the conventional sense, were inhabited by avatars, representatives of natural persons on the internet. And so showing them bearing the
virtual wear of time is a way of showing they were real buildings, and that real people lived in them. Besides, the divide between the virtual and the actual ceased to exist a while ago; we are constantly living our lives between the two. The part of the exhibition with the threedimensional prints is perhaps its central point, the most “retrospective� in the conventional sense, because it contains models based on the first 3-D prints I exhibited at the Breeder gallery in 2003, as well as some very recent work, such as Shell House, a house made out of things I found on the beach (a shell, a fragment of a car mirror, a sponge), and things I found online (a three-dimensional human hand, an ancient column, a picture of sand with a visible watermark, a stamp for copyright protection). The models bring together almost all studies concerning the transition of a building from one state to another. DV In the video entitled Building an Electronic Ruin, which you created from Second Life, you mention that electronic buildings do not age.
What does age, however, are the websites we live in. As you characteristically say: “Perhaps one day facebook will be our ancient Rome and travellers will be taking photos of the ruins of facebook”. What happens when a website like Second Life stops being popular? What is the fate of electronic architecture? How real is virtual and online life, after all? AA Both are equally real. What changes is the intermediary, the interface we use to manage them. One could say that buildings and the built environment in general is also an intermediary, an interface through which we go to work, meet other people, organise all the activities of our lives. Similarly, on the internet we organise our activities on social networks, as well as on more remote places. Just like cities age, pages like friendster or myspace age and are abandoned. What is interesting is that when you go to your profile on friendster, you can still see your photo from 2003 and all the infrastructures through which you lived your digital life at the time, but there is no longer any activity. The piece Building an Electronic Ruin is a sort of tutorial whereby I attempt to teach an online building to fall apart. DV In studying your work, one can identify features from the Radical Design movement of the architectural avant-garde of 1968 and its representatives, such as the Superstudio and Archizoom groups, which drew their inspiration from technology with the purpose of creating a new reality, presenting fantastical and, arguably, extreme ideas. Instead of buildings that would serve functional purposes for the citizens’ lives,
the architecture of this movement was a visual experimentation at the crossroads between graphic design, architecture and technology.
How much did this movement influence your research, and in what way? Do you, too, strive for a constant search for a utopia in your work? AA The period of Radical Design interested me because it originated from two completely different movements, Pop Art and Arte Povera, and set in motion by the events of 1968, when the oil crisis in the Middle East also marked the beginning of a period of economic changes. I see many common features between that period and the one we’re living in now, and the internet is
something that contains both Pop and activism in constant fusion. When you’re on twitter you can see a photo uploaded by someone of their cat doing something cute, and then watch the Gezi Park demonstrations in Istanbul, and that’s precisely the same mixture of activism and pop that characterised Radical Design. At the same time, the work of the Superstudio, Archizoom and Memphis groups was a sort of early postmodernism characterised by the critical approach, which was subsequently lost from the postmodern landscape, as irony prevailed. The postmodern, however, in contrast to the modern movement, was the one that survived and flourished in the age of capitalism, open markets and the stock exchange, which is an economy based on the psychology and development of desire more than the actual product itself. When, for example, Steve Jobs died, the shares in Apple went down in value, although the product they represented hadn’t changed in the slightest. We are in a cyclical system, where capitalism needs constant development, and development needs its field of implementation. When the field of development becomes saturated, then comes the crisis, which creates a new field for development. Modernism did not have the means to survive in such a landscape, since what it dealt with was a “better product”. Postmodernism, in contrast, 15
focused on the “desired”, and thus managed to survive in this almost incomprehensible landscape of ongoing economic crisis. The critical dimension of early postmodernism is what interests me the most, because while it has the tools to survive in the current economic system, it can also take a critical stance towards it, and therefore help us overcome the present phase of the global economy. The internet is doubtless the best weapon for this new critical postmodernism. DV Your work is imbued with an element of nostalgia, evident in the buildings you design and the animations you create. Indeed, nostalgia is directly linked to the aesthetics of ruins, which, as we discussed previously, are contained within your work. At the same time, the nostalgic, backward-looking element meets, in your work, the contemporary, the topical and the still-to-come. Also, the way you use nostalgia seems to be equally romantic as it is playful. How has nostalgia defined your work and your aesthetics? AA Nostalgia is of interest to me as a psychological dimension that doesn’t recognise the accurate continuity of time, but mixes up moments in time into a new, nonchronologically organised landscape. This is also one of the main characteristics of our era, where expectation for anything that is yet to come has been replaced by a question about the future, and perhaps even fear of what’s coming. And, once again, the internet is the medium through which we see time become level, where information about the past is mixed in with information about the present and the short-term future. On the internet, it’s not so important whether something is new, as long as it captures our interest. An architectural design from 1974 may get more likes than a brand new building, and then comes something ancient. Nostalgia is an intermediary for seeing everything as old, for feeling nostalgic even for things that are yet to come. Besides, everything is better in the past. DV Another distinctive feature of your work is the coupling of opposites, such as the old and the new, the natural and the artificial, the virtual and the actual, the technological and the handmade. In addition, one can discern – on all levels of your research – a particular interest in techniques such as montage, composition, 16
collage, a patchwork of miscellaneous elements. This is evident even in the way you designed this catalogue, as it also seems to have been a defining factor in the way you designed the recent exhibition you curated, The System of Objects. The Dakis Joannou Collection Reloaded, at the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art. In the catalogue for this exhibition, you
note: “What is happening nowadays is a violent mixing”. Indeed, the present day is characterised by a coalescence of different fields, elements, and even sciences. Reading that sentence, however, I got the impression that this mixing is something you both denounce and exalt, at the same time. Tell us about this practice in your work. AA The coupling of opposites is something that probably originates from the fact that I was brought up between Greece and Norway, two countries and two societies extremely different from one another. Collage and patchwork probably come from the internet, which is a perpetual collage of diverse elements. Whenever I am called upon to design something, whether it’s an exhibition or a building or an object, I always search the internet first, as well as my own “library” of past projects, for the starting point. This may be one of the features of the New Critical Postmodernism, namely the view that enough objects have already been designed so that we don’t need to design more, but simply to mix up the existing ones. That’s probably also the overall philosophy on the internet, where what we upload or add has already been uploaded by someone else. As a method for creation, it is exactly the opposite of the Modern practice, whereby they strived to create something new. To admit that there are already enough designed objects and buildings strikes me as revolutionary,
as revolution is defined through the internet and the economy of sharing. DV One could argue that this “mixing” we talked about before also relates to your own artistic persona as architect, artist, curator, exhibition architect, writer, blogger. Does the internet age allow someone to take on all of these roles, as they can write, post, select, compose and create in the same space at the same time? Do you think contemporary art is a fertile field for experimentation around these concepts? How do see yourself, in your ever-changing role? AA These days it is probably inevitable to be all of the above. Every one of us is a bit of a blogger, a bit of a photographer, a bit of a publisher, a bit of a news service. Architecture contains all the tools one needs in this landscape, since studying it includes research, analysis and composition, with formal as well as social and economic parameters. And contemporary art has stretched its field so widely that a war correspondent is as much an artist as a mathematician. We live in the age of non-specialisation, when we are all a bit of everything, and thus my own practice follows suit. It just so happened that this fusion of specialties suits me even more, as I’ve always been interested in the things I don’t know. DV In this exhibition, you have created a space where you combine two works, Feeder, which you made for the restaurant of the Breeder gallery in 2010, and Crash Pad, which you created for this year’s Berlin Biennial. Both these works are characterised by the aesthetics of bringing together different systems. In Feeder, you use a system of white seating units and another of mismatched second-hand furniture you found in the Metaxourgeio area. This combination creates an interesting result that brings together the modernistic with the folk, the minimalist with the maximalist, the severe and pure with the haphazard and the “multicollectional”. Also, as you have said yourself, the two works refer to the two conflicting systems at play in Greece in the 19th century, namely, on the one hand, the Europeanised Greek Diaspora and, on the other hand, the guerrilla fighters of the Greek War of Independence. In Crash Pad, you also incorporate the aesthetics of ancient Greece to explore the relationship of Europe with our country. I would like you to talk to us about
the ideas you develop in these works, and about how you see the new installation that is formed by the coupling of these two works. AA In essence, Feeder and Crash Pad are versions and stages of the same project, they originate from the same research, but both works were in situ, so they were also influenced by their environment. The folkloric element that was present in Feeder through the traditional
rugs became dominant in Crash Pad, which, typologically, is closer to the Ottoman Oda, the room where their received visitors in Ottoman Greece. In Feeder, the white furniture played the role of architecture in ancient Greece, they were organised proportionally and by design, in a scientific way, if you like, whereas the second-hand furniture from Metaxourgeio was a composition of whatever we could find, whatever we could get hold of. The Greek War of Independence was organised in a similar way, by the Filiki Eteria, the Society of Friends, which represented intellectual research and the relationship of Greece with an ideal Antiquity which gave rise to the Renaissance, Neoclassical thought and the identity of the Western civilisation and, of course, Europe. The Filiki Eteria, in collaboration with Theodoros Kolokotronis’ band of guerrilla fighters, klephts and armatoles, which were the folklore, the state of Greece under the Ottoman Empire; those two opposite systems liberated Greece and created the contemporary Greek republic. The collaboration between them, however, was problematic, as were the early days of the republic, and led to the assassination of Ioannis Kapodistrias and to a contemporary Greece that couldn’t survive by its own means. Thus, when 17
Charilaos Trikoupis announced that Greece was bankrupt, the first version of the International Monetary Fund was organised by France, England and Germany, in order to oversee the large loan that had to be given to Greece, so that it could continue to function. All this took place in the late 19th century, and in the early 21st century we saw it all happen again. Crash Pad functioned as a preliminary statement for the 8th Berlin Biennial, based a little more on the taboo capacity of the Greek State, which never quite shook off its Ottoman identity, and remains, to this day, an EU member state under examination. All this is shown in Berlin as a welcoming room where visitors can take a rest and reflect on anything, even on the future of Europe. DV The semi-abandoned city of Athens, the derelict buildings we come across, as well as the half-finished Athenian landscape, and the landscape of Greece in general, have no doubt been a source of inspiration in your work. One example is Takis Zenetos’ building of the old Fix brewery, which served as an object of reflection in your piece Walking Building. In addition, the other two works of the Athens Trilogy series, Casino and Troll, originate from two existing historical buildings, the casino in Parnitha, and a 1960s block of flats on Patission Street, which you use to address the impact of socio-political developments in Greece. The Mont Parnes Casino, which was once a symbol of investment and the development of the Greek economy, is falling apart, while in Troll, the block of flats named Hara (Joy) strives to escape from the misery of crisis-riddled Athens and turn into a hybrid mountain that walks. While in some of
your works natural elements (such as a rock or a cloud) turn into buildings, in Casino and Troll the derelict buildings merge into the natural environment. Tell us about the works of this 18
trilogy. AA All three are representative buildings of the modern movement, and they stand for work, housing and leisure. All three buildings are forced to change their form in order to fit in to Athens, as it has become. I started with Walking
Building, when the EMST had relocated there temporarily, before the restoration had begun. When I was young, I remember driving by the FIX brewery in the car and how it looked to me like a spaceship in the middle of the city, a completely odd building that seemed to have come from someplace else. I later found out more about Takis Zenetos and the concept of this building that could, in theory, be extended indefinitely, like a building taken from a perpetual production line, and that’s what gave me the idea for Walking Building. It’s a fantastical scenario that functions as an allegory for the role of a Museum in a city. When Anna Kafetsi was preparing the Grand Promenade exhibition, she asked me to take part with this piece, even though it takes a critical stand against a conventional museum of contemporary art, but proposes, as a museum’s function, precisely what the Grand Promenade did, namely one that encompasses the entire city. The Grand Promenade was, for me, one of the most important exhibitions held in Athens in the
last few years. The next two studies refer, in essence, to the dual crisis Athens is going through – Troll to the civil crisis, and Casino to the economic. Troll began somewhat more accidentally. I was interested in the idea of the troll, a hybrid creature from Norwegian mythology, half mountain and half man. When I was growing up, we had an etching at home which depicted the moment when a troll enters Oslo, and it is as tall as a building but made of rocks and trees. The block of flats named Hara is the largest one in Athens and, although it was built as social housing, it followed the specifications and lofty ideals of the Modern movement, so that it could offer its inhabitants wellbeing and health. It had an internal courtyard and leisure spaces on the roof, following the example of Le Corbusier’s Unités d’Habitation. And so I decided it was the right building to comment on the vast number of average to bad apartment blocks that constitute Athens. Hara decides that Athens is no longer a habitable place, and leaves for the countryside, to turn into a mountain. Arriving at the mountain, we find the Casino of Mont Parnes, a building that, despite appearing to be based on the principles of the Modern movement, is nothing more than an effigy, an advertising board to promote the idea that the Greek economy is strong, since it is supported by funds from the Marshall Plan. Mont Parnes, a.k.a. “The Mountain”, as it was known in its day, is a classic example of what we call Hiltonism, buildings of U.S. technology constructed in NATO countries such as Greece and Turkey, which stood out boldly in their environment, since their purpose was to demonstrate the supremacy of the Western bloc over the Eastern. In that sense, Mont Parnes is arguably the product of postmodern thought rather than modern intention. What intrigued me was that, although this building was constructed to prove the strength of Greece, it was ultimately proven to be as unfortunate as the country’s economy. The building’s continuous bankruptcies and transmutations follow the ups and downs on the economy to the letter, and the decision, in 2008, to demolish it despite the fact that it was listed, in order to rebuild it from scratch, coincides with the beginning of the current crisis in Greece. In the video and the installation that comprise the study Casino, the script changes and an explosion breaks the
building up into infinite pieces, which scatter over the mountain. These fragments gradually become inhabited, serving as a model for a new type of economy, what is known as “cottage economy”, whereby each individual operates from their own home, independently of the state and public services, the way we all operate on the internet. DV You have described Athens as an emblematic example of the failure of modernism. Would it be fair to say that the works of the trilogy refer to that view? What are the features of the city of Athens you find interesting, and which would you change? What roles can virtual and actual architecture play today? Is it, in fact, “the time we no longer need buildings”, as you plainly state in your piece Domesticated
Mountain? AA Athens is certainly a perfect scenario for the failure of the Modern, since its basic ingredient, the block of flats, is nothing but a parody of Le Corbusier’s ideas. The frame, the pilotis, mass habitation and habitable roofs, instead of providing the residents with a better quality of life became excuses for faster and cheaper construction, random storage spaces for aerials and laundry and, of course, larger profit margins for the builders. In Athens I wouldn’t change a thing except they way we view the city, along with its residents. If all those who have come to live in Athens cease to be termed immigrants and we call them Athenians, the psychology of the city will change radically. Athens, with all of its negatives, has become a city completely distinct from the others in Europe, and all it needs to do is embrace its personality. That, by extension, will solve several of its practical problems. The buildings in my work are nothing 19
more than Trojan Horses, they exist to convey ideas from the internet and history to the here and now, wherever that may be. Domesticated Mountain is about that moment I mentioned
through which they express the manifesto of each era. Houses such as Le Corbusier’s Villa Sayoye or Mies van de Rohe’s Farnsworth House were landmark buildings in the evolution of architecture. With its two capacities of manifesto object and product of a series of infrastructures, I use the suburban house, transporting it to the age when we shop through screens, and when there are no longer any of the major movements that required manifestos. DV Your piece mirrorsite is a video that presents an environment of reflections, where cities and buildings are made of mirrors. The walls of the buildings seem to collapse and the mirrors become the ground, while new spaces are always being created from new spaces. This animation is shown in the exhibition through a hut made of cement boards. Tell us about this installation. How have Jean Baudrillard’s ideas influenced your work?
earlier, when we realise that there are already enough buildings and enough objects that we need no new ones. Also the moment when our desires as consumers are fulfilled so fast through the internet, when the time it takes to construct a building doesn’t allow it to fulfil them since, by the time it’s been built, the desire for it will have passed. DV In the intensely nostalgic animation entitled Domesticated Mountain, you capture the incessant and obsessive purchase of goods on the internet, which results in the accumulation of countless of cardboard delivery boxes. In this piece, you address the obvious economic activity that takes place globally online, and you refer to the internet as a new suburb where we live and operate. Tell us the story of Domesticated Mountain, and the neo-liberal nightmare you describe in the piece. What is it, really, that we long for in our lives in the new suburbs? AA In Domesticated Mountain, I use the suburban home in order to comment on the internet and our current state. The suburbs were created around product transportation infrastructures, near motorways and major commercial centres. At the same time, autonomous housing has always been the most appropriate building typology for architects, 20
AA Baudrillard interests me because everything he said from 1968 onwards, almost foretells the age of the internet. Mirrorsite refers to those ideas, even though it is a project made after the
attack on the twin towers, and I often wonder whether it has been influenced by it. Mirrorsite is a building that is never completed, it consists of mirror surfaces, like an office building, which never take on a final form and, ultimately, have nothing to reflect except themselves. As a piece, is it probably also influenced by Baudrillard’s book Simulations, where he talks about planet earth as a place where nothing remains authentic, and everything has become a
reconstruction. DV “VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language), animation techniques, photorealistic tools and computation in general, those contemporary technical architectural tools, are aimed more at the event and less at the architectural object”, wrote Apostolis Artinos in an article about your work. Experience versus the object, whether it’s a work of art or an exhibition or even an architectural object, seems to also be a priority in your research. As we have seen in your work, architectural design becomes a virtual or actual event, just like this exhibition is more of an event than a museological retrospective exhibition. Would you agree? AA I use these tools simply because they are contemporary, I don’t think anyone uses pen and paper to design anymore. I’m more interested in the landscape of technology as a place of reflection, because most new ideas come from technology and the internet and from how these change our own behaviours, meaning they will also change the way we live.
When it comes to this exhibition, what interests me much more than a museological retrospective exhibition is an exhibition that becomes not so much an event, but an experience. I always design exhibitions as experiences, which are better lived once the event of the opening night has been and gone. I imagine a visitor entering the museum on their own, perhaps even thinking it may be closed, and the door left open by accident. This way, they experience the museum as a ruin, and every sign inside of it has a story to tell.
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Ανδρέας Αγγελιδάκης, Interview with Andreas Angelidakis, EXTREME LAND, ATP diary
EXTREME LAND — Interview with Andreas Angelidakis "When we met Dakis, I said 'just tell him I want to destroy his foundation', and of course Dakis being a smart guy was intrigued instead of kicking us out." luglio 27, 2015 ATPdiary
System Of Objects DESTE Foundation !
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This! is! the! first! part! of!EXTREME& LAND,! a! research! project! developed!by!Luca&Marullo!(Parasite2.0)!devoted!to!understand!the! moment!of!transition!architecture!is!experiencing.!It!stems!from!the! belief! that! today’s! architect! can’t! fully! explore! the! complexity! of! the! present! through! the! classic! mediums! of! his! practice,! i.e.! the! architectural!project!or!the!built!object.! Through!a!series!of!dialogues!and!interviews!Marullo!investigates!the! practice! of! some! of! the! main! key! figures! that! cross! the! boundaries! between!art,!architecture!and!social!sciences.! The!first!interview!is!with!Greek!architect!Andreas&Angelidakis.! Luca& Marullo:& What& led& you& to& develop& this& hybrid& practice,& to& move&beyond&architecture’s&boundaries&to&encroach&upon&other& fields?&What&were&your&main&sources&of&inspiration?! Andreas!Angelidakis:!I!was!always!curious!and!lost!in!my!worlds,!so! it!was!a!natural!thing.!But!also,!when!I!was!studying!in!Los!Angeles,!I! met! the! artist! Jim! Isermann! and! his! then! partner! David.! I! was! thing! funny! opinionated! gay! kid! from! Greece,! I! guess! they! found! me! amusing!and!kind!of!took!me!under!their!wing.!Jim!too!me!along!to! art!openings!and!performances!that!his!friends!were!doing.!The!first! art!event!I!ever!attended!was!a!Mike!Kelley!performance!at!Beyond! Baroque!in!Venice!beach.!Jim’s!friends!included!Cathy!Opie,!Jim!Shaw,! Jefrey! Vallance,! Mike! Kelley,! Lari! Pittman! and! Hudson,! of! Feature! Gallery.! So! while! studying! architecture! I! had! this! parallel! education! on! contemporary! art,! and! it! was! clear! to! me! back! then!! that! architecture! gave! you! a! very! interesting! set! of! tools,! but! the! way! artists! responded! to! questions! of! creativity! was! much! more!
sophisticated.!It!helped!that!the!school!I!attended,!SciTARC!was!not!at! all! conventional,! but! really! a! kind! of! school! that! opens! up! your! possibilities.! I! remember! a! night! when! there! was! supposed! to! be! a! Chris! Burden! lecture! at! SciTARC! and! everybody! was! saying! that! he! always!cancels!lectures!at!the!last!minute!but!shows!up!incognito!to! see! whats! going! on.! Of! course! the! lecture! was! cancelled! but! the! evening! was! really! charged! with! rumor! and! speculation.! Another! pivotal! class! was! the! seminar! that! Mike! Davies! was! teaching,! based! on! his! preparatory! notes! for! the! City! of! Quartz! book.! We! got! to! see! parts! of! LA,! like! the! abandoned! subway! tunnels! running! underground! downtown,! and! the! LA! prisons.! We! also! got! to! look! at! public! space! in! ways! that! we! could! not! imagine.! And! then! after! graduating!and!returning!to!Greece,!I!was!lucky!to!meet!Adelina!von! Furstenberg.! Having! just! graduated! from! the! then! hippest! school! of! architecture!I!knew!everything!that!was!new!at!the!time.!Adelina!on! the! other! hand! was! one! of! the! first! curators,! maybe! the! first,! who! exhibited!Architecture!in!the!context!of!contemporary!art.!Being!the! eternal!radical!that!she!always!is,!she!also!saw!something!in!me,!and! really! provided! another! level! of! education! on! the! understanding! of! art! but! also! the! possibilities! of! architecture.! Of! course! these! were! educations!based!on!friendships,!its!not!like!these!people!decided!to! educate!me,!it!was!that!I!learned!a!lot!just!by!being!around!them.! LM:& In& your& work& is& present& the& classic& perfection& of& your& ancestors& and& Athens& brutal& modernity& of&Polikatoikia.& Tell& us& about& this& shortHcircuit& where& you& mix& these& two& elements,& creating& your& own& personal& poetics& and& grammar?& In&Troll&you&
transform& a& symbolic& building& of& the& Athens& modernity& into& a& sort&of&mountain,&a&living,&moving,&Acropolis.! AA:!Instinctively!I!always!saw!polykatoikies!as!kind!of!mountains,!the! way! that! their! balconies! are! overflowing! with! stored! summer! junk,! clotheslines,! small! illegal! additions! to! the! interior! german! shepherd! dog! locked! out,! as! if! in! a! yard.! They! are! quite! different! the! typical! european! modernist! building,! because! they! are! structures! that! are! organic,! they! keep! changing,! their! fabric! awnings! get! torn! by! the! wind! and! nobody! bothers! to! fix! them.! This! Greek! typology! is! based! on!the!folklore!identity!of!Greece,!as!it!developed!under!the!Ottoman! Empire.! It! is! a! way! of! building! that! uses! whatever! is! available,! no! plan,!no!organization,!just!fantasy!solutions!found!on!the!spot.!On!the! other!hand!there!is!another!greek!identity,!which!relates!to!antiquity,! the! perfect! example! of! organized! and! thought! through! architecture,! where!every!millimeter!of!marble!is!accounted!for,!and!it!stands!for! centuries! like! an! ominous! perfection.! These! two! systems! collaborated!in!the!inauguration!of!the!Modern!Greek!State,!in!1821.! The! folklore! was! represented! by! General! Kolokotronis! and! his!kleftes!and!armatoloifighters,! the! ancient! by! the! neoclassically! europeanized!Kapodistrias!and!his!Filiki/Etairia.!Once!they!liberated! Greece! from! the! Ottoman! Empire,! with! the! approval! of! Europe! of! course,! these! two! groups! could! not! come! to! agreement! as! to! who! would! have! the! most! ruling! power.! This! led! to! the! murder! of! Kapodistrias!by!Kolokotronis,!a!series!of!failed!governments,!and!an! eventual!bankruptcy!of!the!Greek!state!in!1893.!!At!that!point!France,! England! and! Germany! stepped! in! with! a! rescue! package.! They! also!
formed! an! organization! to! supervise! the! enormous! Greek! debt.! The! organization!eventually!grew!into!todays!IMF.! So! I! was! always! fascinated! by! these! two! conflicting! systems,! and! I! guess!my!work!is!informed!by!both.!There!is!a!constant!duality!and!I! end! up! against,! maybe! because! I! come! from! two! radically! different! cultures,! I’m! Greek! and! Norwegian,! digital! and! real,!! artist! and! architect! etc.! The! mountain! by! the! way! is! definitely! a! Norwegian! influence.! LM:& ”Every& end& is& a& beginning”& is& the& title& of& your& exhibition& in& Athens& EMST.& Tell& us& about& this& title& and& where& does& it& originate?& Does& it& also& have& to& do& with& the& political& and& economic&phase&Greece&is&experiencing?! AA:!I!kind!of!just!thought!of!the!title,!but!I!think!it!existed!before!in! Buddhist! sayings,! and! propably! has! been! used! so! many! times,! its! a! catchy! but! somehow! meaningful! phrase.! It! also! was! a! perfect! reflection! to! what! I! was! going! through! at! the! time,! in! reality! it! was! very! personal,! evn! though! I! presented! it! as! being! about! the! Greek! condition.! In! the! summer! of! 2010! and! in! a! period! of! three! weeks! my! father! passed!away,!I!was!diagnosed!as!HIV+!and!the!bank!took!the!family! home,! following! past! problems! in! my! fathers! company.! So! it! was! a! barrage! of! loss,! and! continued! when! my! mother! decided! to! end! her! life.!Dealing!with!all!this!has!been!extremely!difficult,!but!focusing!on! my! work! was! something! I! escaped! to.! Eventually! all! these! feeling! found! their! way! into! the! work,! because! that! is! something! that! happens!subconsciously!really.!Thats!why!I!think!the!show!ended!up! so! funereal! and! melancholic,! but! calling! it! Every! End! is! a! Beginning!
was!a!way!to!take!control!of!the!situation.!Even!though!I’m!clearly!a! Stoic,!I!am!also!from!the!North!so!I!know!when!to!grind!my!teeth!and! continue.! Of! course! HIV! is! not! a! very! big! deal! anymore,! its! like! diabetes,! you! take! your! pill! every! day! and! you! are! fine.! But! there! is! such! a! stigma! still! attached! to! it,! and! that! is! what! we! need! to! overcome.! But!making!the!show!appear!as!if!it!were!about!the!Greek!crisis!was! not!superficial,!its!just!that!I!really!know!what!it!is!like!to!loose!your! home,!I!know!what!its!like!to!find!your!past!belongings!fro!sale!at!a! garbage!collectors!flea!market.!So!it!was!an!honest!choice,!and!a!way! to!develop!my!work!further.!After!2010!I!decided!to!do!away!with!all! the! aspects! of! my! practice! that! were! not! fun! or! inspiring! or! challenging,! and! fell! into! the! category! of! “job”.! I! decided! to! take! a! chance!with!curating,!and!to!really!expand!towards!all!the!things!that! I!ever!loved.! LM:& What& brought& from& the& ruins& of& the& real& to& the& ruins& of& cyberspace?! AA:! I! was! always! fascinated! by! archaeology,! and! the! ways! that! fragments! are! supported! or! completed! with! new! parts.! Then! in! the! late!90’s!we!started!with!Miltos!Manetas!to!make!online!communities! for! artists! and! architects,! the! world! Chelsea.! I! was! building! like! a! maniac,! staying! online! for! hours! and! hours,! this! was! before! broadband.! Chelsea! became! a! place! where! I! could! use! as! a! sketchbook,!try!out!building!ideas!and!invite!people!to!walk!through! them! with! me.! When! the! financing! for! Chelsea! was! stopped,! the! server! hosting! expired! and! everything! was! lost.! Approximately! 50! buildings! were! gone! forever,! and! because! it! was! all! built! in! what!
today! we! call! “the! cloud”,! there! was! no! backup,! just! a! few! screenshots.!So!when!we!started!to!make!Neen!World!in!2002,!I!had! to!find!a!solution!about!how!to!not!loose!my!work!again.!3D!printing! had!just!arrived!as!a!technology!at!tech!fairs,!and!I!thought!this!was!a! more!direct!link!from!the!digital!to!the!physical,!rather!than!making! paper!models!or!drawings.!The!3D!print!was!a!quasi!digital!object,!so! it!was!perfect!for!documenting!my!online!buildings.!The!prints!back! then! were! monochrome,! they! came! in! a! offTwhite,! so! I! called! them! Ghosts! of! their! digital! self.! And! the! first! time! I! exhibited! the! prints! was!with!Breeder!Gallery!in!2003.!One!of!the!arrived!totally!broken! from!the!transport,!but!I!decided!to!show!it!anyway.!So!they!became! Ghost!Ruins.! Thats!how!I!started!thinking!that!online!buildings!don’t!grow!old!like! physical! one,! which! might! not! be! a! burning! questions! for! our! civilization,!but!to!me!it!was!fascinating.!Going!to!expired!webpages! became! like! a! Grand! Tour! for! me,! and! the! internet! grows! old! so! quickly.! LM:& Tell& us& about& the& experience& of& the& online& community&NeenWorld&and& its& virtual& city,& which& you& made& on&ActiveWorldsfor&Electronic-Orphanage?! AA:! It! was! one! of! the! most! exciting! times,! Angelo! Plessas! and! I! had! just!moved!to!New!York,!Miltos!was!living!in!Los!Angeles!and!running! Electronic! Orphanage.! He! would! visit! often! and! we! would! work! on! projects! like! Neen! World! and! WhitneyBiennial.com.! What! we! believed!in!was!that!there!was!an!art!that!came!from!the!time!of!the! internet,! and! we! were! fighting! for! it.! Many! of! the! things! we! were! saying,! like,! that! the! internet! is! not! a! piece! of! technology! but! an!
emotional!landscape,!you!can!see!today!in!what!we!call!PostTInternet! art.!I!guess!being!10!years!early!doesn’t!really!pay,!because!Neen!has! never! been! properly! evaluated! in! the! history! of! contemporary! art.! For! me! is! was! exciting! because! I! was! in! the! process! of! devising! architectures!for!avatars,!and!their!social!habits!are!so!different!from! real!people.!Avatars!had!short!attention!spans,!they!browsed!quickly,! they! abbreviated.! All! these! notions! found! their! way! into! the! work! I! did!for!Neen!World,!and!I!consider!that!an!almost!heroic!period.! Its! not! that! I! don’t! appreciate! the! work! of! the! postTinternet! generation,!quite!the!opposite,!I’m!thrilled!and!I!love!a!lot!of!it,!its!just! that!I!think!Neen!is!their!ancient!acropolis.! !
SI&Fin&de&Siecle !
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LM:& In& the& video&Building- an- Electronic- Ruin,&where& you& build& using&your&avatar&in&Second&Life,&you&discuss&about&the&state&that& characterizes&architectures&of&the&virtual&space,&not&to&suffer&the& effect&of&time,&to&be&eternal.&Perpetual&ruins.&The&words&backing& this& video,& as& in&Domesticated- Mountain,& seem& to& reveal& a& criticism&on&the&progressive&migration&to&the&virtual&space.! AA:! Well! I! never! was! one! of! the! people! who! thought! we! were! migrating!to!virtual!worlds,!as!I!said!before!the!work!we!did!at!Neen! really! was! the! first! footsteps! of! postTinternet,! not! the! last! steps! of! technology! art.! I! was! in! the! virtual! communities! as! an! observer,! looking! at! how! people! behave! differently! online,! how! buildings! are! perceived! differently.! Building! An! Electronic! Ruin! was! a! way! to! romanticize!expired!social!media!sites!like!Friendster,!which!was!the! ancient!version!of!Facebook,!and!now!of!course!it!is!abandoned.!I!was! also!looking!at!my!own!work!and!thinking!that!these!online!buildings! began!to!look!dated!after!a!few!years!because!time!did!not!leave!any! signs! on! them.! And! on! Friendster! my! profile! from! 2002! was! still! there,! with! all! of! my! 32! friends,! abandoned! of! course.! So! the! video! was!a!musing!on!the!nature!of!ruin!in!the!electronic!age.! LM:& In& your& work& for& the& Biennale& of& Thessaloniki,& the& Deste& Foundation& and& the& New& Institute& in& Rotterdam,& you& seem& to& play& provocatively& with& the& “white& cube”& and& its& contemporary& hegemony& in& art& spaces.& You& build& scenery& objects,& and& then& reveal& the& back& side,& the& fiction,& the& raw& structure,& what& is& hidden.&Can&you&tell&us&about&these&works?! AA:! I’m! a! strict! believer! that! exhibitions! should! be! experiences! as! well! as! displays,! and! that! the! exhibition! itself! is! a! medium! to! work!
with,! not! a! set! of! steps! to! execute.! I! started! working! on! exhibition! design,! though! design! is! really! a! horrible! wrong! word,! in! the! early! 90’s,!and!each!exhibition!was!an!opportunity!to!try!out!different!way! to! arrange! a! space.! Thessaloniki! Biennial! was! a! great! challenge! because!the!venues!were!not!only!museums!in!the!city!but!historical! venues,!!hamams!and!dome!mosques.!When!you!want!to!have!white! walls!inside!a!historical!space,!its!kind!of!sacrilege!to!just!try!to!turn! that! space! into! a! white! cube,! its! more! fun! to! pretend! that! a! white! cube!spaceship!landed!in!the!middle!of!the!space,!and!the!distinction! between!the!ancient!and!the!temporary!has!to!be!played!up.!And!the! you! get! all! sorts! of! in! between! spaces! that! are! surprising! for! the! visitor.!Some!spaces!where!really!inappropriate!for!art,!others!good! but!just!ugly,!so!it!was!maybe!the!first!project!where!I!got!to!test!so! many! ideas! at! once.! This! happened! also! because! the! curators! Paolo! Colombo!and!Marina!Fokidis!were!super!smart!and!fun!to!work!with,! and!that!is!always!crucial.! System! of! Objects! was! different,! it! started! because! Maria! Cristina! Didero!wanted!to!propose!a!show!of!my!own!work,!but!I!thought!that! didnt!make!sense!for!Deste,!so!I!just!told!her!“I!want!to!play!with!his! collection”.!When!we!met!Dakis,!I!said!“just!tell!him!I!want!to!destroy! his!foundation”,!and!of!course!Dakis!being!a!smart!guy!was!intrigued! instead!of!kicking!us!out.! Honestly!Maria!Cristina!curated!me!into!DESTE,!it!would!have!never! happened! without! her.!! There! I! decided! to! change! the! perception! of! the! building! completely,! to! “destroy”! Deste,! because! already! a! few! shows!had!taken!place!with!similar!spatial!configurations.!Also!it!was! a! change! to! look! at! the! dark! side! of! the! Joannou! Collection,! seminal!
works!a!bit!forgotten!since!the!80’s,!Greek!artists,!furniture,!fashion! and! mix! everything! together! in! this! kind! of! absurd! narrative! that! I! always! seem! to! do.! It’s! I! think! my! favorite! project,! because! I! had! access! to! this! amazing! collection! that! I! knew! and! had! followed! its! exhibition!history!over!decades,!and!the!resources!to!arrange!works! in!ways!completely!unexpected!to!the!audience.! Period! Rooms! was! again! different,! because! it! was! an! exhibition! without!artifacts,!just!exhibition!rooms!on!display,!a!show!about!the! history!of!exhibitions!really,!going!from!the!period!room!to!the!white! cube! to! the! rough! industrial! cliché! but! following! a! hallucinogenic! course.! LM:& In& Cloud& House,& or& Hand& House,& you& work& on& domestic& architecture,& transforming& it& into& an& element& with& a& strong& architectural& and& formal& symbolism.& How& do& you& use& architecture&to&convey&meanings?&Some&of&these&works&recalled& me&the&Ledoux’s&“Talking&Architecture”.! AA:!Most!of!these!projects!come!about!subconsciously,!and!I!will!look! at!them!later!and!say,!oh!look!there’s!me!escaping!to!New!York,!or!me! just!falling!apart.!Ledoux!could!be!a!reference,!a!lot!of!my!work!could! just! be! City! of! Chaux! for! the! internet.! I’m! also! always! interested! in! early,!radical!postmodernism,!but!mostly!I’ll!be!falling!asleep!and!I’ll! think!of!another!one!of!these!buildings.!Its!much!quicker!to!do!them! when! you! don’t! have! clients! to! discuss! them! with,! which! is! why! I! guess! I! turned! more! artist! or! whatever! one! wants! to! call! what! I! do.! More! and! more! these! buildings! become! my! way! of! dealing! with! reality.!
LM:& In& the& last& years& you& designed& architectures,& curated& exhibitions,&written&books.&What&are&your&future&projects?! AA:!Right!now!I’m!getting!ready!to!go!to!Vilnius!where!I’m!doing!the! space! for! their! 12th!Baltic! Triennial! at! CAC,! which! is! an! incredible! space.! Right! after! I’ll! be! showing! a! series! of! “buildings”!! at! the! 1st!Chicago!Architecture!Biennial,!its!a!project!called!“Fantasy!Ruins:! Bags,!Body!Parts!and!Bibelot”!with!buildings!made!from!supermarket! bags,!downloaded!body!parts!and!bibelot!that!I!find!on!flea!markets.! Then!I’m!coTcurating!a!show!called!Supersuperstudio!at!PAC!in!Milan,! where! I! selected! contemporary! artists! whose! works! function! as! potential! answers! to! the! questions! and! enigmas! posed! by! Superstudio! in! the! 60’s! and! 70’s.! So! I! great! variety! of! projects,! and! super!happy!to!be!coming!back!to!Milano.! !
Every&End&is&A&Beginning,&photo&by&Iris&Ermidou !
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Angelidakis, The state of the art of architecture- Chicago architectural biennial- Guidebook, Oct 15- Jan 16
Angelidakis, The state of the art of architecture- Chicago architectural biennial- Guidebook, Oct 15- Jan 16
Angelidakis, Super Superstudio, Andreas Angelidakis – Vittorio Pizzigoni – Valter Scelsi, Silvana Editoriale 2015
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Andreas Angelidakis, Frieze Foundation, Frieze Projects 2013, London
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Frieze Projects 2013
Andreas Angelidakis For his first commission in the UK, Greek architect Andreas Angelidakis creates a platform for all Frieze Projects’ activities. This unique and clearly defined environment acts as an island within the larger framework of the main fair and dynamically plays on the scale of bodies and objects. It comprises of lightweight modules that borrow the language of the white wall and configure the space, forming partitions, connections and display surfaces. While Angelidakis has previously worked with modular display systems, his structure for Frieze will be his first construction with a movable theatrical system. Andreas Angelidakis (b. 1968, Greece) lives and works between Oslo and Athens. He holds a BA in Architecture from Sci-Arc, Santa Monica, and an MSc in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University, New York. Angelidakis has recently curated and designed ‘The System of Objects’, DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens. Among the exhibitions he has designed are the 3rd Thessaloniki Biennale (2011) and the 2nd Athens Biennale (2009).!
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Andreas(Angelidakis,(Andreas(Angelidakis( The(Unproposal:(Building(voluntary(ruins(as(critical(practice,(Chisenhale(Gallery,(London,(2012(
CHISENHALE GALLERY Andreas Angelidakis The Unproposal: Building voluntary ruins as critical practice Tuesday 12 June, 7pm
Andreas Angelidakis The Unproposal: Building voluntary ruins as critical practice Tuesday 12 June, 7pm The Unproposal is a hybrid talk-screening of recently completed and ongoing projects by the architect, artist and writer Andreas Angelidakis. Taking the form of video and online communities, exhibition design, installation and publications, Angelidakis' work speculates on what architectural practice can be in the postcapitalist landscape of constant media consumption and perpetual crisis. This event is presented by SIM, a curatorial office run in collaboration between Stephan Tanbin Sastrawidjaja, Natasha Isaacs and Petros Moris. Andreas Angelidakis (born 1968, Athens, Greece) lives and works in Athens, Greece. Recent solo exhibitions include Domesticated Mountain, Gloria Maria, Milan (2012); The Angelo Foundation Headquarters (with Angelo Plessas), Jeu de Paume, Paris (2011); Headquarters (with Angelo Plessas), Rebecca Camhi Gallery, Athens (2009). Selected group exhibitions include Somewhere Else, Espace Louis Vuitton, Paris (2011); Politics of Art, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (2010); Design Biennial, St. Etienne (2010). In addition, he has participated in 25th Biennial of Sao Paulo (2002) and the Venice Biennial of Architecture (2000). 21st Century is supported by The Paul & Louise Cooke Endowment Trust. Booking advised. Please contact mail@chisenhale.org.uk for further information or to make a reservation.
Ανδρέας(Αγγελιδάκης,(Newsmaker:(Andreas(Angelidakis(,( http://archrecord.construction.com/(,(από(το(William(Hanley,(17( Οκτωβρίου(2013(
Newsmaker: Andreas Angelidakis By William Hanley October 17, 203
Greek architect Andreas Angelidakis has a penchant for designing exhibitions that are all-encompassing experiences. For the show The System of Objects, on view at the Deste Foundation in Athens through November 30, the Sci-ARC and Columbia alum curated a hybrid art and design exhibition from the vast holdings of mega-collector Dakis Joannou and then designed a maze-like warren of interior spaces for the work to inhabit. “There is a sense of a theme park,” he said just after the opening in May. “People tell me that they get lost, both literally— they don’t know where to go—and also in time, as if in a dream.” SLIDE
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Photo © Giannis Vastardis
Andreas Angelidakis
This week, the architect’s approach is on display at a smaller scale at the Frieze Art Fair in London, which runs through October 20. Curator Nicola Lees, who organized this year’s Frieze Projects (a series of exhibitions and events that runs in tandem with the commercial side of Frieze), invited Angelidakis to design a stage for performances taking place during the fair. He devised a 3,000 square-foot riff on a black box theater with a playful twist—its walls are modules made of lightweight foam that can be reconfigured to create a custom interior for each performance in the series. It has already become a bedroom for French artist Lili Reynaud-Dewar, and this weekend it will convert into a boardroom for a committee of children—all around age 12—convened by Finnish satirist of office culture Pilvi Takala, among other performances (view a full schedule here). The messy, continually shifting space contrasts with the brightly lit and comparatively orderly aisles of Frieze’s Carmody Groarke-designed pavilion in Regent’s Park. Record recently spoke with Angelidakis about designing for this unusual context as well as some of his forthcoming work. What appealed to you about designing a space for ancillary programming at an art fair? I was interested in how to design a space that would exist for just four days, but the art fair format is challenging. The visitor to a fair is quite different than a biennial or a museum exhibition visitor. With a biennial you have their full attention, and you can use the space to calibrate their experience. At a fair, you have all of these galleries exhibiting stuff, but with a merchandise mentality. Visitors arrive in your space already overwhelmed by visuals, so you have to provide an immediate experience. There is no time for preparing them, there are no introductory spaces. I was interested trying to do something refreshing. There is a black floor and black ceiling, and everything looks precarious and in flux. Why did you design the space with these lightweight modular walls? We needed something that could be reconfigured quickly, so we came up with the idea of foam walls and a general layout that feels undesigned and the result of actions rather than planning, even though we worked extensively on where and how each work would be placed. Also, Nicola explained her idea of the whole Frieze Projects exhibition, which is somewhat inspired by Lord of the Flies. There’s a childlike meanness to a lot of the work. So we made these enormous building blocks. It’s a little bit like a kid’s idea of an art fair. The big walls are quite monolithic, but because they’re styrofoam, you can move them around or lean one wall against the other as if it had fallen down.
It’s a space where things look as if they are the result of something, not carefully planned, as if someone was in there doing something and then left abruptly. You know, when a child’s toys are left behind on a carpet, you can see that the kid was up to something. In one sense, it’s playful, but in another, it evokes the idea of ruins. The Frieze project will only last for a few days. Do you have any longer term projects in the works? I have a book coming out next month that documents three years of workshops examining the Stockholm suburb of Väsby. In it, we’re trying to combine urban planning with a business sense, using theory as a way to brand development, which is kind of dirty. Then, Greece has the presidency of the EU next year—funnily enough—so I’m doing an installation for the building that will house the Council of the European Union. That will be my big Greek pride moment. (
LISTE catalogue 2015
The Breeder The Breeder Stathis Panagoulis George Vamvakidis Nadia Gerazouni
45 Iasonos str GR-10436 Athens
Shown at LISTE: Andreas Angelidakis, 1968, GR/NO Socratis Socratous, 1971, CY
Andreas Angelidakis Study for Bibelot, 2014 zCorp 450, color three dimensional print 25 x 19 x 1 cm
66 / 159
0/8/1 T +30 210 331 7527 M +30 69 4464 6800
Other Artists of the Gallery: Markus Amm, DE Marc Bijl, NL Vlassis Caniaris, GR Dora Economou, GR Stelios Faitakis, GR Zoi Gaitanidou, GR Maria Hassabi, CY Uwe Henneken, DE HOPE, GR Kalup Linzy, US Andreas Lolis, GR
The work of Andreas Angelidakis investigates the passing of time. Whether its history or archaeology, or even an imagined future, his work blurs the boundaries between memory and hallucination, between fiction and reality. Trained as an architect, his practice has evolved to include that of artist, exhibition maker and curator. He uses exhibitions as a medium in itself, a lens through which to re-examine the work and the world around it. In his videos, which often talk about the histories of buildings, time often switches from a critical view on the past to a fictional future, with the viewer invited along as Angelidakis combines personal memories with historical fact and architectural fantasy. The passing of time transforms into an eternal present, ruins get resurrected as actors in a city, and online communities turn into our Ancient Rome. Angelidakis’ flattening of time is often informed by the way we perceive the world through the internet. He has been experimenting with 3D printing since the first days of rapid prototyping, initially to archive buildings he designed inside online communities such
gallery@thebreedersystem.com www.thebreedersystem.com
Scott Myles, UK Angelos Papadimitriou, GR Chryssa Romanos, GR Jennifer Rubell, US Vanessa Safavi, CH Shirana Shahbazi, IR Gert & Uwe Tobias, RO Jannis Varelas, GR Alexandros Vasmoulakis, GR Allyson Vieira, US Gabriel Vormstein, DE
as Active Worlds. These first off-white maquettes, exhibited as early as 2002, were often labelled ‘ghosts’, real world representation of objects that existed only online. His recent work with 3D printing involves turning everyday objects into buildings, by adding elements that suggest scale or use, such as a staircase, a door, a column. A glazed ceramic flower shaped flowerpot becomes a house, commenting on the nature of the collectible bibelot as a vehicle for emotions and memories. Ancient Greek columns downloaded from online object libraries are 3D printed into ruins wrapped with Greek folklore rugs, echoing his installation for the 8th Berlin Biennial Crash Pad, a historical re-examination of the political history of Modern Greece. Recent shows include Fin de Siecle at Swiss Institute in New York (2014) where Angelidakis assumed the role of design curator, producing a show that was closer to an installation than a typical exhibition, and 1:1 Period Rooms at Rotterdam’s Het Nieuwe Instituut (2015).
Andreas Angelidakis, Curator & Artist at DESTE, Whitewall, by Stephanie Bailey, June 2014
ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS AS ARCHITECT, CURATOR, AND ARTIST AT DESTE
Andreas Angelidakis was trained as an architect, but has spent much of his career exploring the architecture of exhibitions and exhibition making, having designed the space for the second Athens Biennale in 2009, and the third Thessaloniki Biennale in 2011. “The System of Objects” is Angelidakis’s latest project, commissioned by the DESTE Foundation of Contemporary Art, founded by collector and art patron Dakis Joannou. Originally conceived by co-curator Maria Cristina Didero as an exhibition of Angelidakis’s work, it was decided that Angelidakis would instead curate a show that attempts to reload Joannou’s renowned collection, thus turning this “group exhibition” into a strange show in which Angelidakis acts as both designer, artist, and curator, all in one. WHITEWALL: What is the main idea behind “The System of Objects” in terms of this being a portrait of DESTE’s history? ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS: The central idea was that we would change the way DESTE has been exhibiting the Joannou collection, which related to my practice as, let’s say, a designer of exhibitions. I usually work with a curator to organise or design – though I don’t like “design” as a word – the space for the show. There are cases when a work is installed in its own room, or you don’t enter the room at all; like those concrete panel rooms where you see each individual work through the window. There are other cases where the viewer is challenged, and they don’t know whether they should enter a room or not. In my practice, I work a lot with how one exhibits an artwork and what that does to the artwork and the meaning of it, so we wanted to kind of try that with the collection and then the building. WW: How have you translated Baudrillard’s The System of Objects in how you worked with the art objects in the DESTE space? AA: I always liked The System of Objects because it casts light on our relationship with the objects we buy and the objects we surround ourselves with. I also really like the title and the title of chapters in the book: each one is inspiring. I like how Baudrillard talks about an antique chair not as a functional object but as a mythological object, for example. So that book functions as a base for the show – it is more like a carpet on which the show developed. The exhibition combines works from all the collections of Dakis Joannou; all very different to each other. The fashion collection is a collection of curators, because each year a different collector is appointed to select pieces. The furniture collection is a specific period, 1967-1975, called “68.” The Jesus figurine collection is basically variations of the same object, all baroque Jesus figures. The art collection is more personal. WW: We wanted to go into the “cage rooms” or “ghost rooms,” as you call them, in one section of the show. You had been talking about your interest in exhibition practice and somehow turning it inside out. AA: We call them cage rooms because the wooden frames present the structure of a room with no wall. I’m really interested in the history of exhibitions in contemporary art, which is really a new field because only now we are starting to understand what were the canonical exhibitions in contemporary art. In my work, I have developed a kind of vocabulary. In fact, this particular room with the wooden cages was a proposal for another exhibition, but the curator didn’t have the nerve to do it. Now, I’m the curator so I can take the risk! WW: You’ve literally turned the “white cube” inside out. You can see the backs of the works… AA: It’s so fascinating, because you can see where the work was bought, where it was framed. You can also imagine Joannou going to these places and selecting these pieces. Then in the case of Christiana Soulou, you can read the notes that she has left about each piece, which adds to the narrative of the work because these notes are also a kind of manual for all her future drawings.
WW: What is your opinion on the response from some artists in terms of how the works have been shown? You have appropriated artworks to produce an assemblage of your own making…. AA: Well, it’s not the first time something like this happens. In almost every exhibition I do, I don’t do a regular presentation otherwise people would do it themselves, the standard way. We also played with that. Even artists like Jakub Julian Ziolkowski, who figures in the collection quite strongly, even though we are only showing one piece (a painting of a pile of garbage) he really liked it. And his work is like, on this pile of crates hiding in one corner behind another painting. There are also other paintings of mountains at the top of the crates, the mountain as a kind of burial place, with the collector’s head placed on top of it. WW: How do you position yourself in the context of this exhibition? Are you an artist, an architect, curator, or all of the above? AA: I guess I am an architect and curator, but the result makes an artist, because the show in a way is a kind of work or a piece. I’m trained as an architect, but even from my student years I was involved in contemporary art. For me, the two are not separate and I think contemporary art allows that mixing. My first exposure to the Joannou collection is “Everything That’s Interesting is New.” And I was lucky enough to see the show before it opened because my friend was taking part,Vanessa Beecroft. She was doing a performance and I had a really good video camera and she asked me to be one of the people to shoot video for her. I was a student at Columbia doing my Master’s at that point, and I went to the show, the opening party, had the whole experience. Then I began finding out about previous shows, like “Psychological Abstraction,” “Cultural Geometry,” “Artificial Nature,” and “Post Human,” which were in the first period of DESTE, when it was in the House of Cyprus and curated by Jeffrey Deitch. I thought that those exhibitions, with their catalogues, were each a manifesto. And in each one, you could see ideas that were before their time, almost. So that was fascinating to see. And they were very daring and very radical. WW: How did those shows feed into “The System of Objects?” AA: For example, the Cypriot antiquities had been shown in “Cultural Geometry.” The catalogue of “Artificial Nature” features a page where it shows a kitten and a duckling and it says “Spiritualizing It”. These are not “works” but I made the two cats by Elad Lassry a central piece in the show, and it is on the cover of the catalogue, too. “Everything That’s Interesting is New,” is also another super-great title by Jenny Holzer. I think all the titles of DESTE have been very crucial because they describe the show… WW: …or the condition. AA: Yes, the condition. And you understand when you see it. Angelidakis will be participating in Paperweight, another exhibition design project at Haus de Kunst in Munich, curated by Felix Burrichter of PINUP magazine. In parallel, and together with Mia Lundstrom and many others, he is taking part in an ongoing project in Sweden, investigating new models for urban development. The project will result in a housing expo guided by a research process and a complex series of urban experiments, workshops, publications and temporary inhabitations. An international list of architects and theorists like Keller Easterling (Yale), Tina di Carlo (AA and AHO), Kazys Varnelis (Columbia), Jorge Otero Palios (Columbia), Fritz Haeg (Edible Estates) Andres Jacques (Office for Political Innovation) and many more will contribute and support the project through the completion and continuing investigation.
STEPHANIE BAILEY JUNE 12, 2013 !
Andreas Angelidakis, 1:1 Period Rooms by Andreas Angelidakis,!Het Nieuwe Instituut, February 2015
1:1 Period Rooms by Andreas Angelidakis 01/02/2015 – 06/04/2015 Tuesday — Saturday 10.00 — 17.00 Sundays and national holidays 11.00 — 17.00 Het Nieuwe Instituut Museumpark 25 Rotterdam
1:1 Stijlkamers by Andreas Angelidakis | film by Isaura San and David van Woerden Het Nieuwe Instituut is taking the period room as the basis for a programme devoted to exhibition models. For 1:1 Period Rooms, the Greek architect and artist Andreas Angelidakis designs an installation and draws on period rooms held in the collection at the Amsterdam Museum.
Midway through the past century the historically appointed period room in many museums made way for the ‘white cube’. Modern art needed neutral, white exhibition walls instead of historically decorated rooms. From 1 February to 6 April 2015 Het Nieuwe Instituut is taking the period room as the basis for a programme devoted to exhibition models. For 1:1 Period Rooms, the Greek architect and artist Andreas Angelidakis designs an installation and draws on period rooms held in the collection at the Amsterdam Museum, which have not been presented to the public since the 1970s. Installation Angelidakis sometimes highlights only a fragment or uses just the structure of the period rooms that will come to Rotterdam. He isolates and combines in an exploratory and associative manner as he tells a story about the changing meaning of space in the history of exhibiting. The installation consists of five spaces, each one a passage in an invisible discussion between the period room and other exhibition typologies. The crowning work of 1:1 Period Rooms is the Empire Room from the collection of the Amsterdam Museum. This 19th-century period room will be reconstructed for the exhibition in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam and Amsterdam Museum. On Wednesday and Sunday afternoons the public can watch the restoration experts at work. Period rooms A period room is a room that is decorated in a particular style. Such rooms were popular as museum presentations in the late 19th century. Furniture, wall covering and works of art had to combine to offer a ‘stylistically pure’ impression of the 18th century in particular. In response to rapid industrialisation, applied art from the baroque and renaissance periods were particularly seen as examples of good taste. The period room was an educational tool to evoke an ideal (national) past and to promote traditional crafts. White cube The period rooms that go on display at Het Nieuwe Instituut originally come from the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where in the 1970s they had to make way for the rapidly expanding collection of modern art. In the late 1930s, Willem Sandberg started to display works of art against clean, white walls, first as conservator and from 1945 on as director. The original historicist museum interior gradually made way for neutral exhibition galleries. Since then, the so-called ‘white cube’ has been a dominant typology in the museum world, although that dogma has been called into question in recent decades. Discursive programme
With 1:1 Period Rooms Het Nieuwe Instituut invites the public to discuss the design of the room as ‘representer’ of an ideology. The white wall was of great importance for the development of modern art. New developments such as digitisation and democratisation now call for new presentation models. The discursive programme of 1:1 Period Rooms focuses on the spatial strategies that in part determine discourse and representation in museums. Interior triptych 1:1 Period Rooms is one instalment in a triptych devoted to interiors. Het Nieuwe Instituut previously presented the exhibition 1:1 Sets for Erwin Olaf & Bekleidung. These will be followed in 2016 by an exhibition devoted to the showroom. Each instalment of the triptych is based on 1:1 models (i.e. at full size) and explores the meaning of representation and authenticity. The triptych forms part of the programme track Landscape and Interior.
1:1 Period Rooms by Andreas Angelidakis. Photo Johannes Schwartz
Modernity, ideology and the interior 20:00 – 22:00 In the framework of 1:1 Period Rooms Penny Sparke (Kingston University London) and Greg Castillo (Berkeley University of California) talk about the interior. ➝ Interiors on Display Designing for the domestic, 12/02/15 at Het Nieuwe Instituut Opening of four exhibitions Opening, 31/01/15 at Het Nieuwe Instituut
Photo: Αmsterdam Museum
Project 1:1 Period rooms by Andreas Angelidakis
Artist Andreas Angelidakis
Graphic design Bart de Baets
This project is part of the theme Landscape and Interior and the folder Interior triptych in annual instalments.
1:1 Period Rooms is one instalment in a triptych devoted to interiors. Het Nieuwe Instituut previously presented the exhibition 1:1 Sets for Erwin Olaf & Bekleidung. These will be followed in 2016 by an exhibition devoted to the showroom.
Het Nieuwe Instituut
Andreas Angelidakis, The Contemporary Ruin – A Manifesto, DOMUS, March 2011
Modern Athens was formed in 1950s, when Greeks migrated to the capital in droves and required housing, creating a boom in construction, augmented by the rise of architectural modernism and the Marshall Plan (aka the European Recovery Program, the American financial aid effort to rebuild Europe after World War II). The promise of new buildings and a new life tempted Greeks to the city of Athens en masse who abandoned the struggles of village life for the opportunities in the center. The great need for housing found its ideal tool in the solutions of the Modernist movement: concrete frame construction could provide multistorey housing on time and on budget, quickly becoming so popular as to turn the city of Athens into a mono-building urban mass. Polukatoikia was the name of this typology, and it would come to serve as an icon for the Greek city. The typology was loosely modeled on Le Corbusier's systems of Dom-ino on pilotis, but where the original promise was for great buildings that can make you healthy, happy and efficient, these cheap reproductions were merely easy and fast to build, providing handsome profits for developers. After decades of furious construction and profiteering, Athens resulted in a modernist ruin of a city: unkempt,
ugly, and chaotic—though very much alive. The notion of Ruin is central to the city of Athens, as the city is built around the most famous ruin of all: the Acropolis. But now ad hoc construction and the cheap modernist knockoffs have resulted in a city that often appears as a ruin itself, an indistinguishable sludge of concrete, balconies and TV antennas mixed with cars and garbage. The sludge that has become Athens continues like a large scale favela until it hits the surrounding mountains. The ruin can be described as a building in transition.
A recent image of Chara, the largest housing block in downtown Athens. It is also one of the few polykatoikies with a habitable courtyard, a little garden and a playground.
The concrete frame became synonymous with construction, spreading from the center to the countryside in the form of 2–3 story concrete frame mini-polykatoikias. In the 80s and thanks to legal loopholes, one could proceed with construction of such a building even without a building permit, if the structural frame of the building was completed in two levels. In short, if you wanted to build on land that was not zoned for building and you didn't have the money for a permit, all you had to do was build a concrete frame quickly without getting caught in the process. This resulted in hundreds and maybe thousands of Dom-inostyle concrete frames going up under cover of night, and then becoming as iconic as any classical ruin. These frames where almost never properly finished as buildings, because the law said to have two floors of frame and people could only afford to complete one floor. So to be legal in an illegal way, Greeks semi-inhabited these sometimes completely unfinished frames as one would inhabit a tree or a cave. With a few sheets of wind-resistant fabric, some planks of wood and scrap material, and the concrete frame becomes a "summer house." One could say that these frames are ruins in reverse. In a popular etching by the Norwegian artist Theodor Kittelsen, Henrik Ibsen walks slowly with a gentle Troll in the main street of Oslo whilst the panic-stricken population flees the giant.
Ruins are half buildings and half piles of earth; they are half structure and half random accumulations of building materials. Ruins are mid-way to being piles of dirt,
mountains perhaps closer to being organically alive. The moment of the inhabited building is seen as a transition between construction and ruination, both evolutionary stages in the transformation of land to building and vice versa. This would be an abbreviated modern history of how Greek land was filled by ad-hoc construction, but this could be the subject of another text and here we will focus on the center of Athens and a particular building. In this larger context of Greek economy and construction, we can consider the peculiar story of ?a?? (Chara: "Joy"). Chara is the name of the largest housing block in downtown Athens, built by Spanos and Papailiopoulos architects in the booming residential area of Patissia in 1960. The building represents the moment when modernist architecture became a welfare tool, providing low-income citizens with high-quality housing. In this way it is different from all the other polykatoikias because the purpose of the building was not gaining financial profit but delivering the original promise of Modernism. Standing alone in this sea of cheap concrete money makers, Chara seems to embody all that was going to go well for Athens, an ideal moment of urban civility, a proper student of Le Corbusier wearing her Sunday best stranded in a crowd of concrete frame hooligans.
Built by Spanos and Papailiopoulos architects in the booming residential area of Patissia in 1960, Chara (above an image of the 1960s) had the purpose to deliver the original promise of Modernism.
Chara is one of the few polykatoikies that take up an entire city block, and as such its one of the few buildings with a habitable courtyard. Typically the core of city blocks in Athens is left unused, because law prohibits construction. And where there is no construction there is also no profit, and so these city block cores named akalyptoi, were deemed unprofitable and left undeveloped, uninhabited and unused except sometimes as abandoned dumping grounds. So as the fortunate example of modernism called Chara (Joy) was not just a better building, with good intentions, it also had a little garden and a playground where all the others had garbage and neglect. The center of Athens received its second significant wave of migration in the late 1980s, this time not from the Greek countryside but initially from the Balkans and later from Pakistan, Kurdistan, African nations and so forth. The Greek state and even the Greek people were not at all prepared or educated to deal with this second wave of large-scale immigration, and the new citizens were and still are often ill-treated. Over the years the center of Athens became a sort of ghetto, and in a twisted political move a few years back, the city moved the methadone centers and drug addicts health services right in the middle of the immigrant concentration. Drugs, prostitution and illegal trade occupy the traditional center of the city, surrounding Omonia Square and further, while the most sought after residential areas of the 50s such as Kypseli and Patissia have become exclusive to the new citizens of Athens. The housing block of Chara is today almost exclusively inhabited by these new citizens.
In the short movie by Andreas Angelidakis, Chara transforms itself to leave the city. This is the ultimate reaction of the well-meaning modernist building that can no longer fulfill its goal in the urban context.
And suddenly the city finds itself transitioning into a major financial crisis, and the situation in these neighborhoods becomes unstable. The truth is that Athens is no longer a viable destination for immigration, and perhaps not even a sustainable solution for the people who have migrated here. In many cases the countries where they originally came from are better-off compared to Athens, and as a result many return to their countries, especially those coming from Eastern EU. The city of fast money from fast concrete, the architectural modernist ponzi-scheme, is suddenly going bankrupt. The concrete frame polykatoikia hooligans don't seem to care, they were already semi-ruined anyway, they know how to survive, but for a proper, idealistic modernist like Chara the situation is not as easy to accept. In a fictional scenario, the garden-housing of Chara could react to the decline of the city as if it were a living, thinking organism. Chara is no longer the happy destination for the new EU citizens, who seem to be abandoning the city to return to their home countries. The building reacts to this abandonment by transitioning to a peculiar type of ruin, one that draws soil and energy from its domesticated nature. Suddenly it becomes a "living" building that walks away from the urban context, a building fed up with being a building, a mass of concrete and soil more interested in becoming a mountain. A mountain seems to hold the modernist promise more effectively: you live close to nature, clean air, part of a healthy ecosystem. Troll refers to the mountain beings of Norse mythology, who appear as half-human half-earth monsters. In a popular etching by the Norwegian artist Theodor Kittelsen, Ibsen walks slowly with a gentle troll in the main street of Oslo whilst the panic-stricken population flees the giant. In the etching, the troll is larger than usual, almost larger in scale than buildings. One could imagine the troll as a wannabe building. Norway at one point offered to rescue Greece from the financial crisis with a bailout worth billions. In the short movie that constitutes the main architectural project, the role of the Troll is reversed. It is not a being that comes from the mountain; it is a building that imagines the role of the Troll. Troll is a building that exaggerates the fact that those plants grow inside it, imagines being filled with soil, becoming so fertile as to become a living organism. This is the ultimate reaction of the well-meaning modernist building that can no longer fulfill its goal as an affordable domestic utopia, because the city has made this impossible. In order to leave the city, the building needs to transform itself. Andreas Angelidakis
Andreas Angelidakis, “Art + Architecture: Andreas Angelidakis between the monumental and the particular�, Art+Architecture, by Nicholas Korody, 12 May 2015
Art + Architecture: Andreas Angelidakis between the monumental and the particular Nicholas Korody
Trained as an architect but often exhibited in art contexts, Angelidakis works beyond the boundaries of either field. Image courtesy Andreas Angelidakes
Buoyantly imaginative yet grounded by a commitment to sociopolitical realism, the work of the Greek-born architect Andreas Angelidakis defies categorization. In fact, while he was trained as an architect at SCI-Arc, Angelidakis' work is perhaps better known in contemporary art circles than among architects. After all, Angelidakis exhibits in museums (and online) more than he builds. Yet his work, which takes the form of renderings, videos, sculptures, dioramas and installations, is visibly marked by an architectural sensibility. With near-manic intensity, AngelidakisĘź work operates fluidly on the uneven terrain of the contemporary moment, invoking ecological disaster, digital and post-digital networks, economic
crises, celebrity culture – often all at once. At the same time, specters of history – both imagined and real – never escape his expansive purview. I first encountered the work of Angelidakis at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens. In the entrance lobby, he had erected scaffolding over the stairs, although I wasnʼt aware it was part of the exhibition until I was leaving. With a combination of subtle and grand gestures, he had completely transformed the architecture experience of the museumʼs subterranean galleries while simultaneously presenting a retrospective. Strange models stood on pedestals in front of large renderings, collages, and projected videos. A hand holding a modernist glazed box jutted out of a mountain. A machine-like building climbed over the neighborhoods of Athens. In one room, tapestries covered the walls and floors, which were littered with re-purposed antique furniture. The adjacent hallway was crowded with inflated fauxconcrete slabs and capped pyramids, some of which were embellished with digitally-printed graffiti. I reached out to Angelidakis to discuss some of these works and others, as well as his relationships with the internet, ecological awareness, and, of course, architecture.
In his project "Domesticated Mountain," shown in both images above, Angelidakis attempts to reconsider the suburban home within the context of the internet. He writes, "In this internet suburbia no more houses are designed, because enough readymades exist already." Credit: Andreas Angelidakis
From what Iʼve gathered from your biography, you were trained as an architect at SCI-Arc and identify as one. Yet your work tends to be found within contemporary art contexts. How do you situate yourself in relation to these two fields, which remain divided for the most part (at least in the popular imagination)? While studying at SCI-Arc in the late 80s and early 90's I got introduced to contemporary art by my friend Jim Isermann. LA was a vibrant scene that included Mike Kelley, Cathy Opie, Jim Shaw, Richard Hawkins, Dennis Cooper and many more – so while being trained as an architect, I got this extra education from Jim and his friends. I never really distinguished between art and architecture though I did understand that artists were quicker, and much less prone to insist on their “taste” as a guiding force for everything they did. Architects have this thing were they use all their powers to get the “realized” object to be as close to what they imagined, and I realized I was more interested in the process of ʻlets put these things together and see what comes out.ʼ So I guess I decided that the tools of architecture education were
really super useful, but less so what is generally expected of architects. And SCI-Arc was a great place to learn this.
Angelidakis' 2010 project "Monument to an Oncoming Disaster" imagines a monument designed around rising sea levels. On his blog, a description reads, "Using the geometric rock modules that break waves are usually built with, we balance an artificial island up at the future horizon line." (Both images from "Monument to an Oncoming Disaster") Credit: Andreas Angelidakis
The internet teaches us that you don't really need material things so much, you just need bandwidth and attention vitamins, a laptop and a cave to chill out in. Your work, in particular projects like Monument to an Oncoming Disaster for the Athens Marina, evidences an intimate awareness of ecological issues and a broader sense of imminent catastrophe. Iʼm wondering if thereʼs a relation between your specific mode of working and ecological awareness. At the same time, your work feels very at home on the internet, and seems concerned with both the aesthetics and conceptual ramifications of networked culture. In Domesticated Mountain, you describe the internet as “an expanded notion of suburbia,” that the “suburban home is the accumulation of all the things we do online.” How has the internet transformed the experience and ontology of dwelling and, by extension, architecture? I guess I approach ecological disaster from a romantic point of view, a sort of “fin de siècle” obsession, and letʼs all go live on a beach without buildings. Monument to an Oncoming Disaster was a competition by collector Dakis Joannou, for an entrance structure to the marina where he keeps his Jeff Koons-painted super-yacht Guilty. So I wondered what could be further from that slick colorful boat, and I came up with this disaster scenario structure made from stuff you would find around the marina anyway. Of course whenever you build something “ecological” or you buy a new hybrid car or whatever, you're immediately not ecological anymore because its always better to just use the old stuff. And that fits really well for me since I was always fixated on ruins and archaeology. So all my ecological projects are somehow prehistoric-tech, likeDolmen and Menir. The internet teaches us that you don't really need material things so much, you just need bandwidth and attention vitamins, a laptop and a cave to chill out in. In any case architecture does not really cater to need anymore, the modernists figured out how to take care of all that. For the last 40 years its been more about “want” and what we want at the time of internet changes much faster than a house.
Angelidakis, Reviews, Even – Issue 2, Fall 2015, Marina Fokidis
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Angelidakis, Reviews, Even – Issue 2, Fall 2015, Marina Fokidis