OuUnPo Greece

29 September – 2 October 2011

"Worlds have a longer life than deeds." Pyndaros

The program of the OuUnPo session is proposed by Vanessa Theodoropoulou in
collaboration with Nadja Argyropoulou and organized by A S.

Members of Ouunpo: Jacopo Miliani, Meris Angioletti, Per Huttner, A S, Klas Eriksson, Fatos Ustek, Elena Nemkova, Natasha Rosling, Samon Takahashi, Stephen Whitmarsh.

Invitees and guests of the Symposium: Sasha Chaitov (MA western esotericism and director of Phoenix Rising Academy), Marios Chatziprokopiou (artist), Kostantinos Dagritzikos (curator, Six Dogs), Chiara Fumai (artist), Dimitra Kandilaki (historian of theater), Filippou Koutsaftis (filmmaker), Philippe Latreille, Panayotis Loukas (artist), Malvina Panagiotidi (Saprofyta), Iordanis Poulkouras (writer), Stefanos Rozanis (writer and philosopher), Georgia Spiropoulos (composer), Claudia Squitieri (theater director), Yianna Tsokou (Phd in Theather Studies University of Vienna), Yorgos Tzirtzilakis (Saprofyta), Nanos Valaoritis (poet and writer), Kostis Velonis (artist) Marina Vronopoulos (art historian and curator)

OuUnPo Greece is a three days symposium that will take place in various locations across and around the city of Athens through conventional and non-conventional investigations. The symposium, dedicated to the “oral tradition”, will include performance, round-table discussions, lectures, screenings, visits and walks to various selected sites.

Greece is a country where myths, art, epic and lyrical songs originated from oral tradition and kept alive by travelling poets. This country is also in the limelight due to the current political and economical crisis.

Our visit will be an occasion to investigate the tradition of storytelling and myth as a form of sharing knowledge and performing history, which often stand in opposition to the methodology of institutions. We will try to re-evoke the oral memory of events in contemporary (art) world, with a specific approach to the rituality and the improvisation that are always connected to oral narratives. Performance and initiation to a secret knowledge will be also the objects of our conversations with members of the esoteric milieu and of the masonic lodge.

Inspired by the great religious, theatrical, democratic and artistic traditions of Greece, and in dialogue with local artists, musicians, composers, art historians, writers and curators, we will observe the present moment, and reflect about how a genuine revolutionary movement needs to brake with literal repetition of the past. To perform something means to interpret it, to betray it, to distort it. Boris Groys affirms that “the opposition between living spirit and dead letter informs the whole traditional Western discourse on religion”, but also on art itself, as embodiment of the creative spirit of change.



WEDNESDAY, 28TH SEPTEMBER
*Arrival at the accommodation and dinner. *OuUnPo book editorial meeting.

THURSDAY, 29TH SEPTEMBER
*11 am: Trip by ferry from Pyraeus to the island of Aegina and visit to the temple of “Aphaea”. We will spend the all day in the island, donʼt forget to bring you bathing suit!

FRIDAY, 30TH SEPTEMBER
*11 am: Athens, DESTE foundation. Meeting with the poet Nanos Valaoritis and with Stefanos Rozanis, writer and philosopher. Presentation of the project “Saprofyta” (http://saprofytablog.blogspot.com) by curators Nadja Argyropoulou (“Hotel Paradies”, Athens Biennial 2009), Yorgos Tzirtzilakis, Malvina Panagiotidi.
*2 pm – 3.30 pm: lunch
*4 pm – 4.30 pm: van to Eleusys with departure from Deste Foundation.
*4.30 – 8.30 pm: visit to the archaeological site of Eleusys. Performance by Fatos Ustek and Per Huttner. Visit of the temporary exhibitions of Loukia Alavanou and Stephen Antonakos. Collective performance directed by artist Klas Eriksson. Screening of the work of artists Panagiotis Loukas and Panos Tsagaris. Performance by Elena Nemkova.
*8.30 -10 pm: Artist Marios Chatziprokopiou presents the screening of the film by "Agelatos Petra" by Filippou Koutsaftis in an outdoor cinema.

SATURDAY, 1RST OF OCTBER
*10.30: Athens. Visit to the Masonic Order Delphi and to its temple. Presentation by Iordanis Poulkouras and Sasha Chaitov about "The Eleusinian mysteries through the ages. Initiatory practices in the Western esoteric tradition".
*17.50: Athens, Six Dogs space in collaboration with curator Kostantinos Dagritzikos: Composer Georgia Spiropoulos (www.georgiaspiropoulos.com) will present her work. She will also introduce us to Yianna Tsokou, and we will discuss with them about Anastenaria, ancient rituals of fire still performed in Greece and Bulgaria, and will show us videos of the theatrical revival of Delphi promoted by poet Angelos Sikelianos in the beginning of the XXth century.
*8 - 9 pm: Six Dogs. Selection of Greek experimental music by Samon Takahashi.

SUNDAY, 2ND OF OCTOBER
*Breakfast and departure.
 

BIOGRAPHIES

- Vanessa Theodoropoulou is an art historian and art critic. Her PhD thesis on the Situationist International, which she defended in 2008 in the University Paris 1 - Panthéon Sorbonne, is entitled The “Situationist International”: a total art project. Since then she has pursued her research on the situationist theories and practices and their impact on contemporary art. In her
recent research project she is interested in reexamining the legacy of the concept of the collective avant-garde within the postwar context and the way the new “collective” or purely “nominal” general identities of the art world redefine the relations between art and the political sphere. In may 2011 she co- organised the international symposium “In the Name of Art. Investigation on the ambiguous status of generic artistic names from 1945 to now” held in the INHA (Institut National dʼHistoire de lʼArt) in Paris. She teaches art history and theory in the ESA de Cambrai (Ecole Supérieure dʼart) and in the University of Paris 1-Pantheon Sorbonne (faculty of Aesthetics and Visual Arts). She is co-founder of the performative art review MI© Made in china and collaborates regularly as an art critic with the Greek daily Kathimerini and Greek and French art reviews (kaput.gr, Criticism+Art (AICA Greece), Le Journal des Laboratoires dʼAubervilliers, K Magazine, Artpress, LʼArt même).

- Georgia Spiropoulos studied piano, harmony, counterpoint and fugue in Athens, Greece. Parallely, she studied jazz and worked as a performer and arranger of traditional Greek music. She moved to Paris to study composition, electroacoustic music and musical analysis with Philippe Leroux and Michael Lévinas, and she worked at IRCAM Cursus with Jonathan Harvey, Tristan Murail, Brian Ferneyhough, Marco Stroppa, Philippe Hurel, and Ivan Fedele. In 2003 she won the coveted "Villa Médicis Hors les Murs" prize to study in the USA. In 2008 she is invited to work as a composer in research at IRCAM. She has received commissions from IRCAM- Centre Pompidou, the French Ministry of Culture, the Baden-Wurttemberg Ministry of Culture, the French Radio, the Sacem, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and has been performed by numerous ensembles, choirs and artists, including the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the San Fransisco Contemporary Music Players, L'Itinéraire, 2E2M, Aventure, Nikel, Smashensemble, Accentus Choir, Habanera and Prism saxophone quartets. Her works are performed internationally, at festivals such as Agora, Tenso Days, Seamus, Extension, InTransit - International Festival of Performing Arts, Gegenwelten Festival Neue Musik, Futura, WhyNote, Aujourd'hui Musiques, Musiques de Notre Temps, Hateiva, Sinkro, ICEM, SMC, WOCMAT, Electroacoustic Music Days in Grèce, The Electronic Arts and Music Festival de Miami, Boston Cyberarts Festival. She gave lectures about her work at Columbia University (NYC), University of California Santa Barbara, IRCAM, Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, SMC Conference, Alte Schmiede-Vienna.

-Yanna Tsokou received her PhD from the Department of Theatre Studies, University of Vienna, Austria in (2000). Her thesis discussed the repertory policies at the National Theatre of Northern Greece during the years 1961-1967.
She has worked as a journalist at the national radio of the Greek Broadcasting Company (ERT) in Thessaloniki, as a theatre critic in Greek newspapers, as a repertory advisor as well as editorial manager at the National Theatre of Northern Greece and as an independent researcher, publishing papers and articles on Greek post-war theatre.
She teached theatre at primary school and at the present she teaches theatre history at the “Andreas Voutsinas” Drama School in Thessaloniki. Her translation of German plays to Greek includes Rainhard Hachfeld: Eins auf die Fresse, Peter Turrini: Rattenjagd.

- Sasha Chaitow is the founding director of Phoenix Rising Academy of Esoteric Studies and Creative Arts, (London and Athens), an independent academic institution for the promotion of the Academic Study of Western Esotericism and Art (www.phoenixrising.org.gr).
Her research interests include art and esotericism, mind and consciousness, ritual and initiation, and Modern Greek Masonic history. She is also an artist, painting portraits on commission and alchemically surrealist-symbolic images on inspiration. She writes for Avaton magazine, a Greek special-interest journal covering various esoteric topics, and has a monthly column in Phenomena, a weekly insert in Eleftheros Typos, a Greek daily newspaper. Sasha is conducting doctoral research at EXESESO, University of Exeter. and her MA thesis was entitled The Alchemical Iconography of Michael Maierʼs Atalanta Fugiens as an Initiatory Path. She has participated in several international academic conferences and regularly organises conferences and colloquia both in Greece and abroad as part of Phoenix Rising's activities. For more information see : http://peladan.org/about-me/.

- Iordanis Poulkouras is Editorial Advisor of ʻAbatonʼ magazine in Greece (www.metaekdotiki.gr). Under the pen-name J.P. Craftson he has written the book Bleeding Angels – The Esoteric Traditions of Europe and the Ancient Masonic Manuscripts (Govostis Pub.). Under his real name, he is the co-author of several books including The Power of Symbols, Mythic Treasures, Freemasonry: The Greatest Initiatory System in the World (Archetypon pub.). She holds an (EXESESO, MA in English
Athens, 2004). Her PhD thesis is entitled A Babylonian Mage in Fin-de-Siècle Paris: The Esoteric-Aesthetic vision of Sâr Péladan, and focuses on French Symbolist Art in relation to the French Occult Revival in 19thcentury France (see http://peladan.org), MA in Western Esotericism Exeter, 2008) and an Literature (Indianapolis, Adresses: Hotel Royal Olimpic, 28-34 Ath. Diakou, 117 43 Athens http://www.royalolympic.com/

Six Dogs
6-8 Avramiotou str., 10551, Athens, Greece http://sixdogs.gr

Deste Foundation :
Filellinon 11 & Em. Pappa street
 N.Ionia 142 34, Athens http://www.deste.gr/en/index.html
International Masonic Order Delphi Epidamnou 49 and Skiathos str. 112 54 Athens http://delphiorder.org/eng/index.htm

Phone numbers:
For Thurdsay and Friday: A S: +39-349-XXXX
Vanessa Theodoropoulos : +30-693779XXX, Kostantinos Dagritzikos : +306944905XXX
For Saturday : Sasha Chaitov : +30-6976052XXX and +30-6932720XXX Iordanis Polkouras : +30-6945770XXX