INTERVIEW: Artemis Potamianou

Artemis Potamianou except co-director of Platforms Project, is an artist and curator. Dynamic, restless, multi-talented; the list of adjectives that can characterize her is long… But her greatest advantage, which is the most attractive in her personality and distinguishes her, is the speed with which she can transform the moment and overturn the balances(!) Exactly what happened with Platforms Projects 2020, its co-Directors Artemis Potamianou and Michalis Argyrou, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, instead of canceling Art Fair, as did many of its counterparts abroad, and extending the duration from five days to two weeks, they transferred them from their physical space to the digital world, in a way perfectly normal. The challenges, the conveniences and the difficulties of the new era, but also the reactions of the artists, are some of the questions that Mrs. Potamianou answers us in the Interview that follows.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Platforms Project Archive

Mrs. Potamianou, for the first time this year, due to the circumstances, Platforms Project 2020, for the first time in their successful history are being implemented online. What do you think of the idea? Ηow did it come about and why didn’t you postpone the Art Fair for 2021 like similar Art Fairs abroad?

The COVID-19 pandemic led Platforms Project to move the physical exhibition but in its place we created Platforms Project Net, which is not just an online version of the Platforms Project Independent Art Fair but an essential digital platform which will be a digital meeting and networking meeting place for artists groups from around the world. It will be not only the first online Art Fair for independent art groups but also a completely different logic in the way we look at art. On the one hand, the digital edition will be able to open a dialogue and networking of artistic groups for future collaborations, while on the other it will create an international audience that could not come with a physical presence at the exhibition. The viewer will be able to live a new experience by entering the Platforms Project page for 15 days, from May 14 to May 31, 2020. Through a virtual 3D plan view of the exhibition that shows the platforms installed in their digital stands, the viewer can click on a platform’s number and title and see the works presented by each artist in the group (video-art, painting, photography, installations, etc). At the same time will be able to watch online  a rich and varied programme of lectures on contemporary art matters, in Greek and English, as well as the online performances and videos of the participating groups. The idea came out from our conversations with Michalis Argyrou, when we started to realize that this situation would not change before May and we just didn’t want to let a year go by without offering our viewers and exhibitors alternative and experimental ways of looking at art as we have done for so many years.

What was and remains the challenge?

The objective of NET Platforms Project is the presentation of the independent art scene as is expressed through group initiatives of artists. Platforms Project NET 2020 will be the largest online meeting of visual collectives-platforms in the world. At the same time, there will be a series of speeches on live streaming and non-live, online performances and educational digital programs. In order to achieve this in a period of one month, the whole Platforms Project team and the participating platform artists worked endless hours to turn the disadvantage into an opportunity. At the same time, we were informed by friends, organizers or participants of other international art fairs about the cancellation or postponement of their exhibitions and were impressed by our decision to create this new project from scratch.

Having preceded the Art Basel-Hong Kong and reading collectors’ statements that more and more older people will start to buy artworks through the internet, do you consider that we are on the doorstep of an era that the Art Market is changing?

World Wide Web has endless possibilities. The technology is evolving day by day and sometimes  adapts to the current conditions while other times opens new highways. Of course, any form of art is an integral part of the society and it is natural to evolve within it. Moreover,  it is clear that in the last decades the art movements and actions are multiples of the past. Internet not only affects the evolution of art but also to a large extent its view as well as its promotion mechanisms. We saw recently the online auction of Banksy’s “Girl with Ballon”, who used technology and the internet to transform an existing artwork into an installation in front of the eyes of the astonished audience while simultaneously raising the value of the artwork. The future may be the internet, and the art market may be moving fast in this direction. The simplification of technology makes it more familiar to older age groups which are the buying public to a very large extent.

What was the reaction of the participants when you announced them that the Platforms Project will not only be canceled, but will be conducted online and even for longer time (14-31/5/20)?

By their nature artists see the changes that are happening around them faster, understand them, appropriate them, mutate them and present them through their works. When we announced the digital Platforms Project NET, we thought that this “physical adaptation” would not work as well, because the platforms that are complex groups and that it would take time to change the projects they had already prepared. The catalogue with all the artworkswas already ready for print. The curators of the platforms had already prepared the presentation of the works for the physical space of the exhibition. And at the point that we were expecting oppositions , even a few, they began to bombard us with new ideas and projects, with great enthusiasm, so now we are preparing the Platforms Project Net with many new projects adapted to the new conditions. The online presentation will have a longer duration than the physical exhibition, but after its expiration it will be digitized and uploaded to the Platforms Project database. This access that will be free to all, at any time is a big change. It’s viewing will be possible for a global audience that otherwise would not be possible to visit it.

There are artworks that are experiential, artworks that are independent and artworks that are interactive. Projects that work best in the physical space and projects that work best in the digital environment. Do you consider that the exhibition space of Athens School of Fine Arts contributes to a complete web browsing?

How many times have we stood in front of a work of art that we have seen at another time in another place and at that moment touchs us differently from the previous one? This is the magic of Art, to be experiential at any moment. The exhibition space “Nikos Kessanlis” of Athens School of Fine Arts (A.S.F.A.) where in the recent years …. the Platforms Project is presented, emits a huge amount of energy on its own. The laboratories of A.S.F.A. is a place for experimentation and creation of new ideas by the new generation of Greek artists. In recent years, the school’s laboratories, with the Open Studios program, remain open during the period of Platforms Project giving the students the opportunity to present their work always in collaboration with their teachers. Thus, visitors and participating artists of the exhibition have the opportunity to visit the laboratories and talk to the students as well as the students to visit the exhibition and the parallel programs. Of course this year with the  Platforms Project Net, there will be as well the possibility to visit the Open Studios online and see the projects of A.S.F.A.’s students.

In conclusion, we would like to tell us about the differences in setting up and organizing an Art Fair in the digital environment, what difficulties did you face and how did you overcome them.

Organizing a project involving 63 platforms with more than 800 artists, who present every form of contemporary art, has great difficulty for many reasons. Digital organization also has many difficulties mainly due to the diversity of formats that we had to gather in a very short time. All this could only be solved with many hours of work. Platforms Project has the support of a group of volunteers who are all fully trained in technology and contemporary interactive and multimedia applications, without their unlimited help it would not be possible to carry out the project.

Download Greek Version of Interview here.

First Publication: www.dreamideamachine.com
© Interview-Efi Michalarou