BETWIXT AND BETWEEN
Antonis Theodoridis & Nikolas Ventourakis
We traverse the landscape caught in-between states. From a point of departure to a delineated or yet unknown destination we find ourselves always in transition. Every step we take is a threshold of becoming, a never-ending return to the state we were in before and an arrival to a new state that is about to emerge. Neither inside nor outside we start grasping the world around us by passing through, by moving from one space to another.
The exhibition “Betwixt and Between” explores those liminal moments of being through a collaborative work by Antonis Theodoridis and Nikolas Ventourakis that takes the form of a photographic installation on the terrace of the B & M Theocharakis Foundation for The Fine Arts and Music building. First introduced by anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in the beginning of the 20th century and then rediscovered by Victor Turner in the 1960s –from whom we borrow the term that serves as the title of the show– the concept of liminality is used to define the intermediary stage in any ritual passage or in any radical situation that marks a transition within society and which comes to constitute it anew. Where social structures cease to be and fixed positions become disarranged the liminal period is one of uncertainty and simultaneously one of potentiality. In times of confinement and of social and physical distancing we are invited to reconsider those liminal spaces and times where what is real has yet to be imagined.
Between darkness and light, the works presented in this exhibition point to that direction. Taking as a starting point the city of Athens with its natural and built environments in constant negotiation Theodoridis and Ventourakis guide us through what resists being at the center, capturing and evoking what we do not expect to see or what lies in between. The exhibition space turns into a waiting space, a liminal space itself, where the boundaries between what is natural and constructed seem to get dissolved.
The ways cities are arranged reveal the social structures that formulate our human experience at the same time that our experience sets the very conditions for social actions that would allow for new structures to emerge. Located in the very center of the city, the National Garden of Athens serves as a landmark and a starting point for this rite of passage. Designed by the architect François Louis Bareaud in the mid 1800s under the careful guidance of Queen Amalia and in the principles of the English Garden, that represents an idealized view of nature, the National Garden constitutes the first organized ornamented green space of the modern Greek state. A natural yet highly constructed space for contemplation and seclusion inside the city’s chaotic realm the Garden becomes a silent frontier as well as a space between, that calls for endless crossings. Captured in long exposure photographs taken during night hours, a lush landscape of tranquility, where one can choose to remain lost, comes into contrast with the intensity of the surrounding city that seems to have remained intact. The antithesis between the natural and manmade gets intensified through another lens that depicts the city not as an organized whole, but rather as a composition that defies any strict order. Out-of-ordinary moments seem to interrupt our everyday practices and invite us to look at the city otherwise. Nature takes over in subtle or sometimes profound ways and thus becomes a new layer that weaves into the cultural and ideological narrative of the places we traverse and inhabit. Accompanying the photographs and audio installation comprising a series of recordings gathered in the Garden completes the setting by revealing the parallel lives of the place during the unsettling silence of the night. Between a fixed structure and a complete disarray, we find ourselves again on the limit, in an inter-structural position that separates us from any predetermined structure and which prepares us for the appearance of a new one.
On the very top of the B & M Theocharakis Foundation building with the direct view to the National Garden and to the symbolic and physical center of the city of Athens, we find ourselves on a liminal point, in and out of time, neither here nor there, yet both “betwixt and between”, immersing ourselves into an otherworldly state where the internal and the external alternate infinitely.
Curated by: Myrto Katsimicha
Artistic Direction: Marina Miliou – Theocharakis
Artists: Antonis Theodoridis and Nikolas Ventourakis
Exhibition Design: Eirini Dafni Sapka
Set Construction: AnotherKindArtSound
Design: Bias
Exhibition Production Assistant: Nefeli Siafaka
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Artists: Antonis Theodoridis and Nikolas Ventourakis
Exhibition Design: Eirini Dafni Sapka
Set Construction: AnotherKindArtSound
Design: Bias
Exhibition Production Assistant: Nefeli Siafaka
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* To be admitted to the exhibition all visitors must provide upon entry either a vaccination certificate or a certificate of recovery from covid-19, or a negative PCR test (72h) or a rapid test (48h). The children aged 12 years and bellow must provide a negative self test (24h). Masks (aged 2+) are required for all visitors.
A limited number of people will be allowed in the exhibition space at the same time.
ΤΡΊΤΗ, 21 ΣΕΠΤΕΜΒΡΊΟΥ 2021 ΣΤΙΣ 6 Μ.Μ. UTC+03 – 8 Μ.Μ. UTC+03
Δωρεάν B & M Theocharakis Foundation for the Fine Arts and Music
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μέσω Eventbrite
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