Research Catalogue

Islington studio flat 4, at 14 Barnsbury Road, London, 2022, privately rented. Interior design and styling, as art installation. Looted, 2024. Investigatory research with artworks, 2023-24. Interactive research blog. The exposition aims to highlight the role of women within an interwoven narrative about a complex and international criminal case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_(magazine) My personal belongings were still at the property for two months, after I left on 27 March 2024 and was asked to collect them by 3 or 4 April from Woolwich. After I left, the landlords moved in two or three under aged, who I have never met, so that they pretend to be my daughters. Subsequently, they must have been 'removing' them one by one over the last few months and until October 2024. The company behind 14 Barnsbury Road was deemed illegal through the courts, on 22 April, 2024, shortly after I was forced to leave at the end of March. The maintenance employed many Polish citizens, all dressed in black with black caps, adopting the XRW supporters' fashion code. The household of tenants was mixed and multicultural, but mainly British natives, with the exception of a couple from Hong-Kong, an American citizen, and myself, a naturalised British citizen, originally from Greece. Twenty-two (22) and twenty-three (23) photographs, including two (2) plus one (1) of myself: NOT a missing person, from the 2022-2023 period in the eventually looted, in spring 2024, Islington studio. Twenty-four (24) missing persons for twenty-four (24) non-EU and EU fake passports with my family's Greek surname; plus one (1) that might also be connected with a missing Greek teenager, therefore twenty-five (25). Two (2) more missing persons for two (2) more fake passports without my family's surname: an Italian and a Romanian name. Two (2), plus one (1) targeted cultural producers: the anti-fascist Greek musician, Pavlos Fyssas, aka Killah P. (domestic); the Belgian filmmaker of Jewish origins, Chantal Akerman (global), who lived and worked in France, as well as the US, and whose personal details, specifically her life insurance policy and her medical file, got stolen in connection with the case, can be added to the toll of two (2) deceased. My personal details, name known as and artistic name, as well as numbers connected to my personal details, were stolen, too, while I (post-global) was targeted as a cultural producer, an artist and former academic. Was I going to be the third victim? Golden Dawn were originally pagans, drawing from the ancient Greek mythology and ritualistic practices, including human sacrifice. The visual imagery and the art included in the photographs is influenced by the marketing and advertising industry; I brushed shoulders briefly with students in the creative industries teaching at the Winchester School of Art. I used this an ironic commentary on Golden Dawn trying unsuccessfully to create a brand through propaganda, not political marketing. The art world has been traditionally male-dominated. This has not changed dramatically in contemporary art. Female artists have sometimes adopted male attitudes, or personas, to break into the art scene; see Sarah Lucas and Tracey Emin from the YBA movement. I hold the view that art is not gendered, that there is no art for women or so-called women's art. Good art transcends such categories, tapping into more universal experiences. Saying this, I would like to quote Nancy Spero, who doesn't crudely distinguish between male and female art, as follows:"What if the default gender for 'artist' were female? What if, when we looked at a work by a woman, we said to ourselves, "That is art," and when we looked at a work by a man, we automatically identified it in our minds as 'men's art'?" In 1999, I wrote a long essay about the architectural uncanny, which I submitted as my graduation thesis for my first MA in architectural theory. I called it "Space as a 'Bad' Object: A criminal investigation on the notion of space". I got inspiration from detective novels and real-life crime stories. The long essay was about the role of architectural space in crime. It was unsupervised until submission: I received a distinction by a Bartlett staff member. I took the digital photographs in conceptual adherence with that essay. I was a postgraduate philosophy student 9/2017-11/2019 at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. In this exposition, I include new photographs from a series of digital photography called "Forensics", taken with my mobile phone, after I was forced to leave the Islington property I was renting, on 27 March 2024. I gave the photography series that name, because it has served the purpose of investigating, recording and tracking a crime, for which architectural space, such as private rentals, has been used. For Chris, my former neighbour, who was suddenly transferred by his employer, from London, where his daughter lives, to somewhere outside of London; and for Lawrence, a second generation immigrant from Nigeria, whose temporary post was prematurely terminated, though he was planning to return to his legal studies. And for Ali. And for Oliver, also my former neighbour. In memory of Howard, also a tenant at Bellview, and former neighbour. To all those who don't just "play" the cultural and racial diversity clause; they don't just rely on identitarian politics, because the class problem has not been resolved for them, either; but also because generalising on identity (for instance religion, race, gender) is an unsophisticated way of preventing strategic and/or tactical alliances, necessary for protecting the rights of minorities or other underprivileged groups and populations. Saying this, the UK must stand up against racism, especially against people of African descent. Special thanks to two white British men, who worked in France ("Fiennes") and Spain ("Clooney"). A Nigerian was among the Golden Dawn victims of assassination in Greece. I was listening frequently to Massive Attack, a British trip-hop band, when I was living in Islington. Sophie Calle is a French writer and photographer, working on themes of identity, intimacy and everyday existence. Her work is partly inspired by the detective fiction genre. She wrote an art book, to accompany some of her photography, called "Double Game", inspired by her written correspondence with the fiction writer Paul Auster.

This exposition or archive is a work in progress, under construction, for gathering material of encounters with junipers.

This is the working document of a six-month residency with the Sound and Image Research Centre at the University of Greenwich, summer 2025, funded by the Arts Council England DYCP program. As an exposition, it records the field trip element of the project and begins to explore the role of spatial audio composition and installation in forging deeper relational connections with place. Ultimately, it asks whether the spatial audio encounter alters the subjective position of the human listener towards a more posthuman subjectivity. As the project evolves more will be added with the hope of an eventual live performance of selected compositions and a broader exposition on the role of field recording as a compositional method.

In the last days of June 2024 I learned something I would rather not know. Aware that the act of forgetting is something that often simply happens, I started a daily practice of checking if I could still remember what I would like to forget. The question I found myself asking as time passed and I failed is if the desire to remember is what makes us forget. or In the last days of June 2024, I learned something I would rather not know. Something I wanted to forget. Aware that the act of forgetting is something that often simply happens, I start a daily practice: at the end of each day I sit down, stamp a date on a notebook page and take note: Do I still remember? I write using charcoal, a material that has little permanence. To work with charcoal is to constantly fight its desire to go away. Every night I take the time to see if I can still remember what I would like to forget. I know how to remember, I don’t know how to forget. I do nothing to forget, I simply let time pass and register the presence of this thing I now know. I don’t know how to actively forget, and I choose not to learn ways to do it. I wait for it to happen. As time passed and I failed, I found myself asking if the desire to remember is what makes us forget. I fail over and over again. I still remember.

This practice-led research exposition by architect-researcher Elina Koivisto explores how conducting architectural practice through the framework of feminist spatial practice can provide possibilities for un-learning harmful habits and reaching towards uncertain speculative futures. The case study project Kudos – Library for Material Relations realized in Espoo, Finland as a co-creative process between human and non-human participants, provided a lens through which the current material and social relations in architecture-making were challenged, applying the conceptual thinking of posthuman feminist thoughts on care and interconnectivity. Reflecting on the project, architecture is seen as a tool for feminist becomings rather than as a producer of mere artefacts, and meaning and significance are found in the process of its making.

“No one knows what the experiment is worth, but I imagine it’s better than sitting on your own hands.” Possible and barely possible moves is inspired by the kung-fu film Drunken Master, where simulated intoxication is used as a way to confuse the opponent. 
In the project, I used sketches of the movements in the film as a starting point for physical improvisations and looped GIF animations. Imbalance and loss of control have been used as a consistent method – both to generate material and as a way to surprise myself.
 Failing at something you've set out to do can sometimes generate new ideas.