Research Catalogue

"Unlike unrealized architectural projects, which are frequently exhibited and circulated, unrealized artworks tend to remain unnoticed or little known. But perhaps there is another form of artistic agency in the partial expression, the incomplete idea, the projection of a mere intention? Agency of Unrealized Projects (AUP) seeks to document and display these works, in this way charting the terrain of a contingent future." From AUP-eflux Archive In painting, the artist can also be a model for the artwork. In performance art, artist and model come together for the performance. The exposition explores the role of figuration in contemporary art. Some of the material was selected for my participation in conceptual artist's Janine Antoni workshop, "Loving Care", Performance Matters: Performing Idea, Toynbee Studios, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2010. With essay about Marina Abramovic's work, published at eflux/Art and Education papers, 2012; originally presented as a conference paper at the Yale Centre for British Art, 2010, slides including the artist's writings. Fragments of the research for the installation project, developed in the studio and through my participation in urban research workshops, have been archived at AUP-eflux Archive.

Performance philosophy is still something of a ‘wild frontier’ where fundamental questions can be re-posed concerning the nature of wisdom and love, life and truth. For if love and wisdom are not co-extensive with verbal communication, then philosophy may be legitimately pursued by performative means. In this session the participants aim is to enact and unfold a set of trajectories rather than describe or 'define' their work in words alone. Passion and grief are disruptive currencies. Passion and grief not only seem un-necessary for biological life, they frequently threaten it. Yet a life lived without them would seem impoverished. Whether one views these turbulent affects as parasites, invaders, or as the engines of higher culture, they inhabit philosophy as an ineradicable black-market haunts all states and empires. We aim to consider this under-zone on its own terms, weaving theory with demonstrations of transferable techniques for cross-disciplinary research.

Happening, 2016. Participant's research, including improvised full recorded interview with first generation Albanian immigrants to Greece, images, and thematic text. The research was conducted for the workshop, "Logics of Worlds", inspired by Alain Badiou's work and organised by architect Filippos Oraiopoulos, at Athens School of Fine Art (ASFA), Master of Visual Arts (Marios Spiliopoulos, Giorgios Xiropaides), December 2016. Adopting the political approach of Badiou's "L' Organisation Politique" to apply direct intervention for societal problems, including immigration and labour, I used play as a method to facilitate improvised discussions. People share and respond more freely when participating in structured, but playful interactions, such as those a game involves. Albanians speak three languages, Albanian, Italian and, a few of them, Greek, so I wasn't able to translate parts of the conversation. Avlona is an English now obsolete name for Vlore, an Albanian seaport and former ancient Greek colony Aulon. Albanians came as refugees in Greece initially in the 1990s, after the fall of communism in their home country. Religion was banned in communist countries. Notably, the men I spoke to didn't want to be visualised. Hence, the exposition aims to juxtapose the experimental and the conceptual in the fine arts; and to make the 'invisible' visible. Badiou is also known for his philosophy of metaphysics of the four "truth procedures": Politics, Science, Love and Art. The workshop was slightly interrupted by a performance art student, who brought a live hen to slaughter in the studio. This can be taken as a metaphor for scapegoating (by symbolically re-assigning the gender of male) Albanian non-EU refugees. For this exposition, I include an essay by Pantelis Boukalas, in Kyriakos Katzourakis, O "Dromos Pros Ti Dysi" (The Way to the West), 2001, as well as Kyriakos Katzourakis' introduction in English. I don't have any personal or other connections with Albania - or North Macedonia or Kosovo: I had never visited before 2024. This was a project to research and document in an artistic manner the refugee and immigration crisis, as I experienced it in my native Greece and to voice my opinions on this topic from my perspective as a native Greek. I spoke to non-EU economic refugees. Non-EU economic refugees must not be confused with political asylum seekers, who encounter persecution for political reasons from the countries of origin or citizenship. Albania (North Macedonia and Kosovo) is a non-EU country; Greece, my native (and my parents' and grandparents' native), has been in the EU since 1981. I have also been a UK national, by naturalisation, since 2011. Paradoxically, the outcome of this project was that fictitious non-EU "daughter" of mine has been on UK police databases, as 22 Italian/Albanian female. I must have been given birth to a daughter in Albania in 2002! (!! the "prostitute"; that's believable!! Golden Dawn's, the BNP's, and others' cultural "imagination" with regards to Albanians): factually speaking, in 2002, I was living in Athens, Greece, engaged to be married to my former husband, a Greek national, working at MOB (Mauve) Architects, as an architect designer, with an international cohort of colleagues. In 2009, I was living in the UK as an EU lecturer at the University of East London - also known as Betty Nigianni, by my students and colleagues. I never participated in any public demonstrations in the United Kingdom. Greek children take their father's surname and the Greeks don't have many children; they're suffering from a shrinking population, although they are in the EU since 1981. My concerns about serious international organised criminal activity (not even honouring children's basic rights) were reported and confirmed by the Greek, Scandinavian and Albanian authorities. The British authorities have been lagging behind for a long time, intentionally, with their impossible unverified "stories", bashing the left - or whatever is left of it - and whoever is decent. The Greek Golden Dawn - with their "Big Idea" (Megali Idea) of conquering foreign countries, like North Macedonia, and their chronic attacks on immigrants and refugees in Greece - was convicted as a criminal organisation in October 2020. They invented the 'concept' of the 'Real Greek', dependent on any Greek's political orientation. Now they're losing their sixty seven (67) appeals - and early releases. The conversation took place during the period Golden Dawn was prosecuted in the Greek High Courts of Justice (Areios Pagos), 2015-2020. Many non-EU immigrants to Greece provided testimonies in the courts, despite the fact they were frightened. Manolis Glezos was the only Greek politician, who went to visit Magda Fyssa, Pavlos' mother, in the Greek courts. For Pavlos Fyssas, aka Killah P. For Alain Badiou, a communist-Maoist political philosopher, and the OP. For the missing Albanian and of Albanian ethnicity immigrants. For Michalis Katsouris. For the "Other Greek Left". Thanks to the Albanian embassy in London and the Tirane and Durres police. Thanks to Edi Rama. Thanks also to Skopje police and Pristine police. Thanks to the Italian police and refugee authorities at Bari. Finally, thanks to the Greek police chief and the Greek police organised crime division. Investigatory research with artworks.

Scrape Elegy is a participatory multimedia art installation designed as a critical exploration of our presence on and engagement with social media. The work uses sound, a physical installation in the form of a pink public toilet, and participatory practice through visitors’ Instagram accounts. It joins the postmodern art procession of toilet-based installations and plays on the aesthetics of the banal (Maffesoli 1999) as a critique of society, much like such works as Maurizio Cattelan’s America (2016) and Gelitin’s Locus Focus (2004). It calls attention to the ethical issues surrounding data scraping technology by using the very same technology to read visitors’ Instagram captions from their accounts back to themselves. Sound becomes the medium for self-representation, subverting the text- and photo-based platform of Instagram. The work is personal and user-specific, using parasitic platform practices to create a critique of modern internet capitalism and tech oligarchies (Sætra et al. 2021). Scrape Elegy is a comedic mourning poem, a monologue, and a private show for the individual in a commercialized, globalized, corporate, pink Instagram world. Download Accessible PDF

'Bummock: Tennyson Research Centre' is an artistic research project involving three artistic researchers: Andrew Bracey, Danica Maier and Sarah Bennett. A bummock is the unseen — submerged — part of an iceberg, and comprises the largest volume of ice, compared with the tip — which is visible above the surface of the water. Likewise, archives hold more items than are commonly viewed or accessed. In Bummock, we choose to bypass the catalogue to engage with materials directly, establishing a 'controlled rummage' method as an alternative approach to standard archive access practice. This iteration of the Bummock project explores, examines, and creates new artistic research from five years of working with the Tennyson Research Centre (TRC), Lincoln, UK. This exposition has been collaboratively authored by the three artistic researchers and is structured into two sections. The first, labelled the 'controlled section', serves to introduce the project and its core concerns. The second, referred to as the 'rummage section', provides visitors with the opportunity to navigate their own path through the archival objects from the TRC and the artworks created. Within this section, individual reflections and critical discussions on three themes are presented: our past experiences working with archives, the research journey of the project, and potential future directions stemming from our research. The exposition concludes with a collective summary of findings and a film documenting the project. The contribution of this exposition is twofold: first, to unveil and disseminate the artistic research associated with the project, and second, to identify the key benefits that artists can bring to the archive by employing the 'controlled rummage' approach. The intention is to establish a framework that facilitates future use by other archive users. Download Accessible PDF

Doof Beeld deals with interdisciplinary collaboration and how multisensory perception affects the appreciation of art. These themes are explored through several thought experiments and a discussion of the collaborations between John Cage & Merce Cunningham, and Richard D. James & Chris Cunningham.