Open Studios (Black Box) Site Specific Projects
(2000-2018)
Pavlina Veremi, at the National School of Dance, as part of her broader vision of dance as contemporary performance, hosted different types of performances, live artistic events, site-specific interventions, musical interventions and exhibitions of students’ work. She entrusted these activities to the curatorship of Athena Vahla, who conceived, created and planned these events with students and staff members, as well as external collaborators, as part of Open Studio every June since 2016.
The exhibition installation of the students’ portfolio works which Athina Vahla designer and organised in collaboration with the work of librarians, music and eurythmic teachers, video artists and the students themselves aims to suggest a performativity of knowledge is possible as part of an active creative process. The exhibition of students’ works comprises yet another insightful act of P. Veremi and her unstoppable strategic vision of an internally acclaimed conservatoire based on its excellence and innovative work.
BRIEF
“The brief of the exhibition is the short study on which our narrative design is based. It includes the basic conceptual fabric, the objectives of the exhibition, the theme, the visitors’ field of reference, our interpretive tools (exhibits) and anything else that frames the exhibition.
Conceptual fabric and objectives: The conceptual fabric mainly concerns with highlighting the educational and interpretive process that the National School of Dance students undergo during the teaching of choreography, therefore the objectives of the exhibition are determined by the educational objectives of the teachers. Concepts such as “idea”, “application of tools”, “structural processing ability”, “study”, “embodiment”, “use and processing of space”, “interdisciplinarity”, “multilevel approach”, etc., we consider that they will be showcased mainly through the student’s own work-exhibits. The role of the design team is to highlight certain aspects of this process that are difficult for the non-expert visitor to understand, by framing the students’ works with simple but meaningful interpretive tools.
We have distinguished the following points on which our design is based:
1. To let the visitor understand the inward personal research that precedes the visible result.
2 .To highlight the interdisciplinarity (e.g., the role of the literary source on which they worked, the research on music, etc.).
3. To demonstrate the relationship that the students developed with the physical/material objects in the space which inspired them (the role of the physical as well as the symbolic space, meaning the institution).
4. To make clear to the visitor the questions posed by the candidate dancer/choreograph.
(Excerpt from the text of the exhibition/installation at the National School of Dance – Open Studio 2017)
De Profundis
De Profundis was created on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the publication of Oscar Wilde’s homonym confessional masterpiece, De Profundis, in which the great writer strips himself of everything unnecessary and turns humiliation and social exclusion into a poetic monument for future generations. The performance of De Profundis included a live performance by guest Polish pianist Joanna Wicherek, who performed an excerpt from F. Rzweski’s De Profundis for speaking pianist. An interdisciplinary performance choreographed by Athena Vahla adapted as a duet between the student and the pianist. This kind of fast and risky creative process involving a first-year student in dialogue with the professional world is another example of the creative approaches to learning and performance that Pavlina Veremi embraced as part of the programme, guided by a strong instinct and vision for the importance of experimentation.
Gormley
(Antony Gormley, Five Works, Serpentine Gallery, London: Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 1987)
“Things already exist. Sculpture already exists. The job is to transform what exists in the outer world by uniting it with the world of sensation, imagination and faith.Action can be confused with life. Much of human life is hidden. Sculpture, in stillness, can transmit what may not be seen. My work is to make bodies into vessels that both contain and occupy space. Space exists outside the door and inside the head. My work is to make a human space in space.
Each work is a place between form and formlessness, a time between origin and becoming. A house is the form of vulnerability, darkness is revealed by light. My work is to make a place, free from knowledge, free from history, free from nationality to be experienced freely.
In art there is no progress, only art. Art is always for the future.”
Example of site responsive intervention which activated both the outdoors and the indoors spaces of the school included: performative interventions to a wooden statue of C. Varotsos – a durational ritual of conservation of the sculpture performed in real time by a third year student and architect under the expert guidance of a museum conservationist; fitting the naked backs of students as live sculptural forms within the garden and window frames of the school inspired by Antony Gormley’s work; inviting a graffiti artist to paint one of the outdoor walls of the building over the performance days, a process that the spectators were able to watch through the School windows and glimpsing an elusive ambulant performance on the way to the Black Box; discreetly animating the historical and architectural features of the building to bring awareness to the past; having the audience walking through a long and narrow corridor of almost naked bodies of dancers facing each other, the spectators entering the Black Box through an immersive experience. The working flesh and muscles of the dancers breathing, inspired by M. Abramovich’s uncomfortably intimate and visceral, yet affective work, reversing the gaze and gently dislocating the audience expectations.