Research Catalogue

Islington studio flat 4, at 14 Barnsbury Road, London, 2022, privately rented. Interior design as an art installation. Looted, 2024. 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. 14 Barnsbury Road was deemed illegal through the courts, on 22 April, shortly after I was forced to leave in March. The maintenance employed many Polish citizens, all dressed in black with black caps, following the XRW supporters' fashion code. Twenty-one (20+1) digital photographs for twenty (20) missing Albanian and of Albanian ethnicity, non-EU immigrants, as well as one (1) missing Italian citizen. The twenty-one persons whose details got stolen were abducted by mainly Golden Dawn and, secondarily, the NRM; they are deceased. Golden Dawn were originally pagans, drawing from the ancient Greek mythology and ritualistic practices, also of human sacrifice. My personal details were stolen, too. Was I going to be the twenty-second victim? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_(magazine) Investigatory research with artworks. The art world has been traditionally male dominated. This has changed a bit in contemporary art, but not dramatically. 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 that 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 completely unsupervised: 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 two new photographs from a series of digital photography called "Forensics", taken with my mobile phone, after I was forced to leave the 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 has been used. For Chris, who was suddenly transferred by his employer, from London, where his daughter lives, to somewhere outside of London; and for Lawrence, whose temporary post was prematurely terminated, though he was planning to return to his legal studies. To all those who don't just "play" the cultural and racial diversity clause; they don't just rely on identity politics, because the class problem has not been resolved for them, either. See exposition in connection with "The Origins of The Game", "Debris", and "XRW (Implicature)".

This project combines artistic and anthropological research on spontaneous gardening in open public space, predominantly in Brno, CZ. The team, mostly comprising recent graduates and graduate students of the Faculty of Fine Arts of Brno University of Technology, chose gardens and plantings which were, in most cases, rather exceptional. Unlike most typical front gardens, the ones in this study are somehow peculiar, due to their location, their composition and planting schemes, their scale, or methods of those who garden there. The anthropologists on the team analyzed a Facebook group dedicated to street gardening and conducted several interviews, while the artistic team responded to particular places with which they interacted. Some results of this research have been presented to the public in the form of an application comprising an audioguide and an interactive map; this exposition in the Research catalogue documents some of these findings. The team Barbora Lungová is a visual artist and has taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Brno University of Technology since 2007. Her field of practice is painting and art projects focusing on plants, gardening, and queerness. She is the coordinator of the Partisans with a Hoe project. Lucia Bergamaschi is a visual artist working across the media of photography, sound, and installation. She earned an MA in Fine Art at Università Iuav di Venezia and an MA in Law at Università di Bologna. She is currently finishing her MA studies at the FFA BUT. Nela Maruškevičová combines painting, installations, and glass in her artistic practice. She is a 2023 graduate of the FFA BUT. Kateřina Konvalinová is a visual artist interested in the overlapping spaces of art, communal life, farming, and ritual. She earned her MA in Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and is currently a doctoral student at the FFA BUT. Iva Balcaříková is a graphic designer and a member of the team behind the curated audio walks created by Galerie Art in Brno. She is currently finishing her MA studies at the FFA BUT. Hana Drštičková is a visual artist and a social anthropologist interested in environmental and queer topics. She graduated with an MA in Fine Arts from the FFA BUT in 2022 and with a BA in social anthropology from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Masaryk University and is currently a doctoral student at the Gender Studies Department of Charles University in Prague. Anastasia Blokhina is a social anthropologist who graduated with an MA tfrom the Faculty of Social Sciences of Masaryk University in 2022. Polyna Davydenko is a photographer and a video artist who documents social and environmental issues in her work, most recently those connected with the war in Ukraine. Filip Dušek is a media artist who studied at the Department of Photography at the FFA BUT. The project was conducted under the Specific Research FaVU-S-23-8441 Program.

Sculpted and painted wood, combined with treated rusty objects. Duct tape with boat paint models for metal sheet sculptures, 2020. Digital drawings, 2021, 2023. Dutch steel sailing boat part-restoration and renovation, Amsterdam (with Sean A. Hladkyj), 2019 until summer 2020. I exposed relief and improvised sculptures made with industrial paints, as well as found objects, to weather conditions, including heavy rain and wind, over a few months on a floating timber raft. Working with the changes the weather was causing to the ad hoc studio, I made changes until the painting was finished, photographed, then dumped. Someone collected the relief. I applied the colours from those available in a symbolic manner, abstracting the view of a ghetto in a large city. The objects stand for the landmarks. The pieces would comprise of the scenography for a theatre performance, informed by my conversations with a theatre lighting technician. The performance would also include a donation event of the art objects. See external link for the theatre play, based on the tradition of the philosophical dialogue and employing the idea of performing philosophy to make it accessible to a wider audience. Political asylum has been traditionally offered to people who flee from their countries of origin and citizenship, because of violations of their dignity, which is a human right, and other basic human rights, such as safety and liberty, due to their political beliefs and related activities, if any. Currently, seven human rights of mine, five basic, have been infringed in the United Kingdom, where I have been a citizen since 2011; the origin is my native Greece. Political asylum is only offered to people, who are non-citizens of the country where asylum is sought from. At the same time, political asylum has become harder to offer, due to the global nature of persecution of whoever is perceived as a dissident by authoritarians. Since 2013, Forza Nuova, the Italian affiliate of the Greek Golden Dawn, has participated in the organised international criminal case, of which I have been the target, originating from my native Greece, "accelerating" in the Netherlands and the UK in 2020, Covid-19. This happened with the theft of my personal details, specifically my Greek driver's license number, by Italians, in Amsterdam, in the winter of 2020. My number was used on three fake Italian driver's licenses,in my name known as (aka), for criminal activity in the UK. My name known as (aka) was also used on three fake Italian passports for fictitious female Albanian citizens. Notably, Roberto Fiore, Forza Nuova's leader, inherited briefly Alessandra Mussolini's post in the EU parliament. All the more so, after mediation with the Albanian government, the Italian government settled in the autumn of 2024 one remaining fake Italian passport for a fictitious Albanian citizen, probably in connection with Golden Dawn, who had their own three MPs in the EU parliament. Rumours have it that Fiore was once upon a time an MI6 agent. It is confirmed that he has ties with the British National Party (BNP), the British XRW component. Drawing on the philosophical notion of impossible objects, the works attempted an indirect postcolonial critique: a suggestion for alternative, autonomous and communitarian lifestyles; and a performative metaphor for global refugees of all kinds. At the time, in autumn 2019, I had attended an environmental protest in Amsterdam that was generally peaceful. Investigatory research with artworks, some of it carried out in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where I was a philosophy student, from 2017 until late 2019, and remained until the beginning of autumn 2020. I did not have student insurance, as it was obligatory, because I was covered by the NHS through EHIC (European Community coverage), while the UK was still in the EU. I didn't have travel insurance either. A Dutch travel insurance, under the reference number E111, was opened by unknowns on my behalf in the summer of 2020, but was closed as fraudulent after I reported to the Dutch fraud authority. Presentation of work in progress. I have one-sixteenth Italian ancestry from a great grandfather on my father's family's side. His first name was Gianni. Locals in Greece, where he moved in the nineteenth century, used his Italian first name to create a Greek surname in order to Hellenicise him. The reasons for leaving his native Italy to go to Greece then are unknown; so is his Italian surname. See exposition in connection with "The Origins of the Game", "The Loot" and "XRW (Implicature)".

The thesis Architecture of democracy focouses on the relationship between architecture and democracy and describes the word combination - a neologism in (Slovak and Czech) language - Architecture of Democracy. My assumption is that on the one hand, it is architecture that has the ability to influence social events and co-create the democracy that takes place in it. On the other hand, it is democracy that determines the conditions for architecture, architects articulate the ethos of the political era. Architecture here becomes not only an aesthetic medium, but its ethical function is synergistically applied. Can we notice this relationship between architecture and democracy? Is it really the fact that architecture can support the functioning of democracy? And does democracy have the ability to be transcribed into architecture? What tools does it use for this? As the main method, I create the method of the Barometer of Democracy Architecture, which is inspired by german-swiss politological instrument Democracy barometer. There the freedom and the equality are functional only in balance with the control. This equation allows us to look at architectural buildings through 9 properties, in which I perceive areas where architecture and democracy interact: 1. individual freedoms, 2. public freedoms, 3. mutual ties 4. transparency 5. participation 6. representation, 7. restrictions, 8. security, 9. competition. In the next step, I apply the Barometer of Democracy architecture to two buildings, the current seat of the Chamber of Deputies and the former seat of the Federal Assembly. For this application it is necessary to bring closer their short but competitive period, when both buildings were possible candidates for the democratic parliament of the new state of the Czech Republic in 1993. By following the views of differenet participants, decision-making committees, political discussions and the views of the professional and non-professional public, but also in comparison with the parliaments of the world and alternative student projects, several specificities of the current seat of the Chamber of Deputies in the palace complex in the Malá Strana will be clarified. In the final discussion, I will try to use Barometer of Democracy architecture as a heuristic tool that will try to articulate a possible future development scenarios. In the last step, I present student alternative projects and also my project, a winner in a public architectural competition for the reconstruction of the vestibule and entrance areas of the Ministry of Industry and Trade in Prague, in which I work with tree values freedom, equality and control in architectural way. Dizertačná práca sa snaží vysledovať vzťah medzi architektúrou a demokraciou a popísať tak slovné spojenie - novotvar v našom jazyku - Architektúra demokracie. Mojím predpokladom je, že na jednej strane je to architektúra, ktorá má schopnosť ovplyvňovať spoločenské deje a spoluutvárať demokraciu, ktorá sa v nej odohráva. Na strane druhej je to demokracia, ktorá určuje podmienky architektúre, nastavuje (nie len legislatívny rámec), v ktorom architekti artikulujú étos doby. Architektúra sa tu stáva nielen estetickým médiom ale synergicky je uplatňovaná jej etická funkcia. Dokážeme tento vzťah architektúry a demokracie vysledovať? Je to skutočne tak, že architektúra dokáže podporiť fungovanie demokracie? A má demokracia schopnosť prepísať sa do architektúry? Aké nástroje k tomu používa? Ako hlavnú metódu vytváram optiku Barometer architektúry demokracie, ktorý je inšpirovaný politologickým nemecko-švajčiarskym Barometrom demokracie. Tu je na miskách váh sloboda a rovnosť funkčná jedine v rovnováhe s kontrolou. Touto rovnicou je možné nahliadať na architektonické stavby skrze 9 vlastností, v ktorých vnímam oblasti, kde architektúra a demokracia navzájom interagujú : 1. individuálne slobody, 2. verejné slobody, 3. vzájomné väzby 4. transparencia 5. participácia 6. reprezentácia, 7. obmedzenia, 8. bezpečnosť, 9. súťaže. V ďalšom kroku aplikujem Barometer architektúry demokracie (BAD) na dve stavby, súčasné sídlo Poslaneckej snemovne a bývalé sídlo Federálneho zhromaždenia. Aby táto aplikácia bola možná, je dobré ozrejmiť proces a dôvody ich výberu. Obe budovy boli možnými adeptami na demokratický parlament nového štátu Českej republiky. V sledovaní pohľadov dobových aktérov, rozhodovacích komisií, politických diskusií a náhľadu odbornej a laickej verejnosti, ale i v porovnaní s parlametmi sveta a alternatívnymi projektmi študentov, sa objasnia viaceré špecifiká súčasneho sídla Poslaneckej snemovne v komplexe palácov na Malej Strane. V záverečnej diskusii sa pokúsim BAD použiť ako nástroj heuristický, ktorý sa pokúsi nasvetliť možné budúce scenáre rozvoja týchto stavieb. V ďalších krokoch prichádzam s aplikáciou na alternatívne študentské projekty a taktiež so svojím autorským návrhom vo verejnej architektonickej súťaži na rekonštrukciu vestibulu a vstupných priestorov Ministerstva priemyslu a obchodu v Prahe, v ktorých zadanie predznamenávalo architektonickú prácu so slobodou, rovnosťou a kontrolou. Contributor (graphical support): Matěj Hanauer, Petra Roubalová, Studio DIP The doctoral thesis supervisor: prof. Mgr. akad. arch. Roman Brychta The doctoral thesis consultant: doc. Mgr. Cyril Říha Ph.D.

Turów is an active open-pit brown coal mine located in the ‘Black Triangle’—a once sensationally polluted industrial region in Central Europe roughly contiguous with the brown-coal belt of Southern Poland, former East Germany and the Czech Republic. The mine, which fell into Polish jurisdiction after the fall of the Soviet Union, epitomises a transnational environmental conflict. Despite the encroaching effects of the Turów mine on its neighbouring European states and its inhabitants, the Polish government refuses to stop coal extraction. The dispute has generated a lot of media and activist attention in past years, but also raises eminent questions about how to make sense of the complexities and contradictions entangled with various regimes of energy. As the human faculties are poorly trained to register and to think meaningfully about the timescales of extraction and its distributed effects, this contribution comes as an invitation to experience energy entanglements otherwise. Challenging the flatness of the common dispute as portrayed in the media, we focus attention on the undercurrents flowing beneath the logics of public discourses about ‘clean’ and ‘green’ transitions and open pathways to sense metabolic flows of energy that permeate and shapeshift in environmental media—over time and space—and ultimately become us. To help us on the way, we ferment vegetables and drink nettle tea sourced from the mining region as a collective, metabolic practice. We add salt to slow down the passing of time. We conserve, observe and finally ingest to highlight the porosity and intimacy of geo-social relations and viscerally process their toxic commonalities.

This paper examines emerging theories of perception and their relation to metabolic processes and presents the interactive installation Guilty Pleasures, informed by these theoretical principles. The metabolic nature of perception is particularly apparent in the experiences relating to the oral cavity, and this work explores this through an intra-oral electronic interface, combined with other modalities for enacting illusory sensations of eating, together with the exploration of the phenomenology of craving and the pica condition.