During the 2010 IKT Congress in Athens (13-16 May) the Kunsthalle Athena - The Bar, located on an empty building in Metaxourgio Keramikos, the gallery area of downtown Athens, has been operating 24 hours a day.
The Kunsthalle Athena - The Bar is concieved as a place that fosters unofficial meetings while promoting an alternative way to experience art. The project Kunsthalle Athena - The Bar was initiated out of the need to create an open space for creativity and dialogue between artists, curators, and other experts. It mediates between Athenian public and art practitioners and scholars from around the world. Curatorial activity in its initial understanding as study of the poetics and politics of display, becomes part of a living art event. Looking outside the “white box” the project functions as an alternative way to foster the often overlooked or naturalized task of curators as a creative-adaptive discipline. While being an offer for first-hand experience the project Kunsthalle Athena - The Bar brings artists who link their activities with Athens together with inspired cultural mediators, caregivers and facilitators. The project Kunsthalle Athena - The Bar hosts a variety of events related both to Athens and the emerging institution: Site-specific and new commissioned installations, public responsive performances, a media bar with books, magazines and blogs’s archive, screenings, dj-sets and musical performances come together with a DIY bar-restaurant within the specially designed interior of the venue and a taxi service! Current exhibition in the project Kunsthalle Athena - The Bar has been created as an offer of artists, in order to put ideas into orbit and get caught up in perpetual motion.
The exhibition Kunsthalle Athena – The Bar, has been co-curated with Marina Fokidis with the participation of the following artists: Aids-3D, Alexandros Georgiou, Alexandros Mistriotis, Amateur Boyz, Andreas Angelidakis, Angelo Plessas, Annika Larsson, Christina Dimitriadis, Dimitra Vamiali, Forte, Gert & Uwe Tobias, Helga Wretman, Heracles Renieris, Jenny Marketou, Joulia Strauss, Juliette Bonneviot, Kostas Tsioukas, Lydia Dambassina, Manolis Baboussis, Marc Bijl, Mathieu Laurette, Olaf Nicolai, Panos Koutras, Pantelis Pantelopoulos, Paul Zografakis, Penelope Georgiou, Heinrich Spaeth, Rafael Rozendaal, Robert Pettena, Socratis Socratous, Warren Neidich, Ylva Ogland, Yorgos Sapountzis, Yorgos Stamkopoulos
www.kunsthalleathena.org
