XRW (Implicature)
(2024)
Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
50 A3 drawings black and coloured markers, including:
3 A3 collages on paper with newspaper cutouts and printed photos.
12 A3 drawings on paper with coloured markers + 1 A3 with black ballpoint pen and markers.
13 A3 drawings on paper with black marker, and red, pale blue, gold, pink and orange markers +1 A3 wo-sided.
17 A3 drawings on paper with coloured markers.
1 drawing on sketchbook cover with red nail polish.
1 text drawing on sketchbook cover inside.
1 drawing on sketchbook cover back inside with black, orange and gold markers.
Some of the above is preparatory work for 4 large prints and 13 paintings.
22 A4 drawings with ballpoint pen.
I did the art between 2023-2024.
I adopted the visual vocabulary of the graphic novel, which I partly studied and read a lot about looking at different graphic artists' work, when I was attending classes at the University of Malmo, Sweden, in 2012. I mixed this with stylistic elements of the architectural sketch, using heavily the black marker and stick figures. Much of this work is, amongst other, about children. I wanted to emphasise that, by intentionally applying stylistic elements from children's drawings, too, in a naive architectural composition. Using this visual approach, I wanted to give a comically sharp twist to the otherwise dark subject matter.
"Pop and Politics" (Pop Og Politikk)
Where does the boundary run between art and popular culture? Pop art embraces the iconography of mass culture. Themes are taken from advertising comics, cinema and TV. The slick, impersonal style is a deliberate provocation.
In Norway, pop art is part of a broader left-wing protest movement. Everything from capitalism and imperialism to environmental and gender politics is subjected to critical scrutiny. The exclusive, unique artwork is replaced by mass-produced prints and posters, well suited to spreading a political message."
From the National Museum, Oslo, Norway.
For Nikos, Filip and "Brandon".
See exposition in connection with "The (Origins of) The Game", "Debris", and "The Loot".
Diffracting the Copenhagen Interpretation - Toward Non-Local Collaborative Art Practices
(2024)
Søren Kjærgaard, Carla Zaccagnini
'Diffracting the Copenhagen Interpretation: Toward non-local collaborative art practices' investigates the resonances of concepts from quantum theory in the realm of transdisciplinary practice-based artistic research. Throughout a series of protocols using diffractive methodologies, we intend to translate and embody concepts such as spacetime, entanglement, non-locality, uncertainty, indeterminacy, and superpositionality, and embed them as tools for our artistic practices. These concepts were chosen for their singularity in physics, but also for the ways in which they confront ontoepistemic pillars of ‘Modernity’, such as sequentiality, determinacy and separability.
The research is carried out by a transdisciplinary non-local core ensemble formed by Søren Kjærgaard, Amilcar Packer, and Carla Zaccagnini. The cities we inhabit – Copenhagen, Sao Paulo and Malmö – have been our laboratories. Departing from tools and methods learned from each-other's disciplines, we have been creating scores that guide our simultaneous actions while walking on the street –interacting with public spaces and their characteristics– or while lying asleep –in the most private of spheres.
On the one hand, in a practice we call ‘non-local walking’, scores conduct our collective experiencing of our cities, involving a diffractive methodology of reading and listening, and the entangled collecting of objects, words and other affections found in the urban terrain. On the other hand, the ‘entangling dream practice’ experiment is an attempt without aiming at success of meeting each other in our dreams. Both investigations are conceived as boundary-crossing transdisciplinary methodologies through which we create a relational, critical consciousness and sensing that stimulates unexpected outcomes, embracing failure.
These scored performances have resulted in cartographies, drawings, moving sculptures, audio works and writings. Across these various materializations, unexpected connections, constellations, and coincidences e/merge, unveiling yet unheard polyphonies that give resonance to the urban and mental spaces, as potentized terrains awaiting (re)circuitry, and, as fields of forces that await to be (re)experienced.
The (origins of the) game
(2024)
Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
Happening, 2016. Participant's empirical 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, only 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 non-EU refugees in Greece initially in the 1990s, after the fall of communism in their home country. Religion was banned in communist countries. The democratisation of Albania began shortly afterwards, in 1994, when Albanians started protesting for political pluralism in their country. At the beginning of the transition period after communism, Vlore became a port through which smuggling, mainly from Italy, was taking place.
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 performing arts 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 familial connections with Albania - or North Macedonia or Kosovo, all the nationalities, including Albanian, used on fifteen fake non-EU passports used illegally in the UK since 2013 and 2014. I had never even visited those countries before the summer of 2024. The 2016 project was for the purpose of researching and documenting, in an artistic manner, the refugee and immigration crisis, as I experienced it in my native Greece, as well as to voice my opinions on this topic from my perspective as a native Greek. I spoke to non-EU economic refugees, who must not be confused with political asylum seekers: those are people who encounter persecution for political reasons from their countries of origin or citizenship, rather than illegal or legal economic immigrants, like the men I spoke to.
Albania, North Macedonia and Kosovo, all the nationalities on the fake non-EU passports, including Albanian, used in the UK, successively since 2013 and 2014 are non-EU countries. 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, for the purpose of voting and for political participation in the UK, where I have spent most of my adult life.
Paradoxically - or not so paradoxically, since I had also been investigating this case - the political outcome, since 2020 and 2023, of this project was that three fictitious "daughters" of mine had been on the Met police's databases, as 17, 22 and 23 Italian/Albanian female sex offenders. Supposedly, I must had been given birth to a daughter in Albania in 2001, 2002 and 2007! (!!the "prostitutes"; that's believable!!) Or two "schizophrenic" sons, Panagiotis Nigiannis, both, Albanians!; born in 2003 and 2004! as well as a son from Kosovo!; born in 2009! That is simply Golden Dawn's, the BNP's (the XRW component in the UK), and others' cultural "imagination" with regards to Albanians and Albanian/Kosovo citizens. Factually speaking, in 2002, I was living in Athens, Greece, engaged to be married to my former husband, a Greek left-wing national, working at MOB (Mauve) Architects, as an architect designer, with an international cohort of colleagues. I got married in 2003. I lived in Athens until 2004, working also at R.C.Tech architects. In 2001 and the period after 2004, I lived in the UK, working as an architect and in higher education; I don't have children. I gained my first practical experience as an architect in the UK, working in private architectural practice from 1999 until 2002.
The records with the fake IDs have finally been corrected in September 2024, including records of falsely alleged children of mine born 2002-2004, when I lived and worked in my native Greece.
Specifically, in 2007, I was living in London since 2005, working as an EU/Greek university lecturer. When the G20 summit demonstrations took place in London, in 2009, with the known case of the death of Ian Tomlison by a police officer, I had lived in the UK since 2005, working as an EU/Greek lecturer at the University of East London, where I was also known as Betty Nigianni by my students and colleagues. I never participated in any public demonstrations in the UK, however I have attended demonstrations in my native Greece and, in 2019, in the Netherlands. It is not uncommon for politically-minded cultural producers and academic to participate in public demonstrations about causes they support. There are no children in my medical records, during the whole time I have lived in the UK, which is a total of seventeen years, plus, twelve of those being a British citizen.
Greek children take their father's surname; Greeks don't have many children, they're suffering from a shrinking population, although they are in the EU since 1981, for economic reasons. 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 and the liberals - or whatever is left of them - and whoever is decent - whatever has been left of that, too. The Greek police confirmed in 2024 that all claims about children of mine, also between 2002 and 2004, have been dismissed.
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. Saying this, they also dig up their target's ancestry: in my case, covering three generations, there are seven (7) Greek ancestors on my father's side, plus one (1), who was an Italian ancestor, my father's grandfather, with the first name Gianni, surname unknown; and eight (8) Greek ancestors on my mother's side. Golden Dawn has been losing their sixty seven (67) appeals and early releases, because of my international work that has been very risky, due to the organised crime methods followed in this case.
The conversation included in this exposition took place during the period Golden Dawn was prosecuted in the Greek High Courts of Justice (Areios Pagos), 2015-2020. Despite the fact they were frightened, many non-EU immigrants to Greece provided testimonies in the courts during that period.
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; assassinated at age 34.
For Alain Badiou, a communist-Maoist political philosopher, and the OP.
For the abducted Albanian and of Albanian ethnicity immigrants.
For Michalis Katsouris; assassinated at age 29.
For the "Other Greek Left".
Thanks to the Albanian embassy in London, the Tirane and Durres police, as well as the Durres prosecutor. Thanks to Edi Rama and his Socialist Party, a coalition of left-wing parties, government. Thanks to the Norwegian Labour Party government. Thanks also to Skopje police and Prishtine police. Thanks to the Italian police at Bari. Last but not least: thanks to the Greek police chief, Marinos Stagakis, and the Greek police organised crime division, specifically Ioannis Papakostas, who spoke to me on the phone in the summer of 2022. Thanks to the US London embassy that came in late, in the summer of 2024. Thanks to the French police. Thanks to the very few Met police officers, who eventually figured it out, as well as those British and others working behind the scenes for the last three years or so and more recently. It would not have been possible without them. It has been a long process with many obstacles along the way, seemingly insurmountable, but as proven not. For peace and for safeguarding democracy and everything that comes with it.
Ongoing investigatory research, with legal and political activism, surrounded by artworks, 2016-2024.
References:
Fred C. Abrahams, "Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe", New York: New York University Press, 2015.
Counterextremism Project, "Violent, Right-wing Extremism and Terrorism - Transnational Connectivity, Definitions, Incidents, Structures and Countermeasures", November 2020, available online.
See all expositions under Art and Activism: "Debris", "The Loot" and "XRW (Implicature)".