INTERVIEW: Faye Tzanetoulakou – dreamideamachine ART VIEW

Faye Tzanetoulakou is a remarkable colleague and an important theorist, with ethics, attitude of life and work that I really appreciate and fully identify with it(!) On the occasion of the Conference that she Curated and organized in the framework of Platforms Project Net 2020 entitled “Digital art today and its challenges”, we are talking about the extensions that can take place today, after the Pandemic and the internment, the Gigital World and its impact on art and its people. As Faye Tzanetoulakou says “For us the Art Theorists, the biggest challenge is to focus on what we love to communicate with the world. It would be useful for the state to understand this as well. Art is neither luxury nor commodity. Art is simply necessary. Like breathing”.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Faye Tzanetoulakou Archive

Mrs. Tzanetoulakou, on the occasion of the Conference “Digital art today and its challenges”, you organized in the framework of Platforms Project Net 2020, after a period of internment, where museums, t heaters, institutions opened their doors online and shared Art and Culture at all levels, what do you think are the advantages and disadvantages?

Living in an unprecedented condition like the one we recently encountered, with the threat of a pandemic nightmare hanging like the sword of Damocles at the threshold of our house, and we continue to experience it to some extent as every established system of certainties continues to collapse, with the only recommended/imposed weapon the social distancing as the new way of life, art work and acts as a redemptive shelter and primitive method of healing.
The new media, with the generous offer of outstanding cultural institutions internationally, made easier the immersion in various artistic fields, opening windows of fresh creative air and at the same time shared at home the rare silence of artistic thought, provoking the need for a more substantial introspection through the perception of an extended time that we so desperately needed. It was really strange that we had thought about this seminar before the pandemic outbreak, with the digital media finally operating as the only communication channels of for the arts in the darkness.
So we see that this sudden dystopian reality has led us to a restatement of our values and true needσ, with the choice of good art generously offered in front of us, and that was really something very healing.
Certainly, the immediacy of artistic experience varies from medium to medium, but there have been so many choices that they have managed to embrace and outweigh the expansion of time, and to attract even the most skeptical or indifferent audience, as a kind of new multimedia experience.
But the most important, all this offer of culture demonstrated even more strongly the need for its existence, and the priceless value of the people who produce it, who unfortunately are plagued by the indifference of the state to understand and evaluate the work that we are offering over time, and without which culture wouldn’t as we know it.

So long three Art Fairs have been carried out, on-line: Art Basel Hong Kong, Freeze New York and Platforms Project Independent Art Fair-Athens, with works not only exhibited but also for sale. Do you think that we are on the threshold of a new era that will replace what we knew until now and everything will happen on-line? If so, how will this affect sales and the relationships between people.

As I mentioned before, the immediacy of artistic experience varies from medium to medium, for instance a live concert resonates differently in a large auditorium, but a mp3 audio track is ideal for a moment of personal immersion through a headset. Painting has need to move to and from the canvas to see all the painting qualities and their synergies, but the video is a ‘child’ of the computer. In any case, at the time of viewing, at the moment of the spectator and work osmosis, art seeks solitude, which will intensify the first impact on the sensory organs until its deeper understanding. Now in relation to the visual art’s market, online shopping is a widespread phenomenon and it is up to each collector to decide whether or not to buy his dream artwork online or not. However, as quarantine coincided with the era of International Art Fairs, some of them reacted with quick reflexes, presenting the artworks on viewing rooms like Freeze New York, or even more “alive” in a simulation of real space, like the case of “Nikos Kessanlis” exhibition space, which was divided into booths by the Platforms Project. The rich program of Platforms is peppered with live performances, conferences, speeches, discussions and an educational program for kids and of course with many good artworks from 63 artistic collectives and experimental art spaces from 23 countries, a fact that now ranks it in one of the most important international events. .

On of the themes that concern you in the Conference is “Digital art today and its challenges”. Do you consider that are opening up new perspectives in new groups of people and which are they?

As a theorist who is constantly preoccupied with the ways in which each artistic generation expresses itself, especially today, I am impressed with the multiplicity of this expression today, which does not bear the weight that it must belong to some “-ism” or create with a specific mannerism. These dilemmas expired by the influx of conceptual art in every form of artistic creation, and I am happy to see a dedicated painter as an artist who travels seamlessly between different media. Digital art, a relatively new art, has such a wide range of expressions and applications that it works autonomously and subsidiary. I am particularly interested in the Digital Sublime, a child of the technological Sublime, and the awe caused by its unlimited possibilities.
Epigrammatically in the conference I am curating, after an introduction to the short history of Digital Art by Art Historian Markella Tsichla; its dark side unfolds by the Professor for Visual Arts and artist Athanasios Pallas; the Art Historian/Curator-New, Media Anna Hatziyiannaki, analyzes the culture of digital engagement in quarantine time and the Associate Professor, Architect and artist Iordanis Stylidis opens up a conversation on the social and dialectical dimension of the new technology. All speeches are available on the Platforms Project YouTube channel. All the speeches are complementing theoretically the visual framework of the Cyborg | asma platform, where Sotiris Batzianas, Periklis Pravitas, Eri Dimitriadi, George Oiback, Iordanis Stylidis and Athanasios Pallas are dealing on the concept of dystopia that the technological sublime can take when it is isolated from its human uterus.

How will these perspectives affect human relationships, but also our relationship with the aura and power of a touchable artwork? I belong to the category of people who frequently visit specific artworks, as a psycho-liberating process, how will this can be achieved through the internet?

As a fellow theorist, I understand the need for “contact” with the artwork. I remember a characteristic scene at Jean Cocteau Museum in Menton, when a blind visitor was groping with kind consideration the sculptures. Very intense moment. I confess that for me, as well as for you, Mrs. Michalarou, the earthshaking moment needs to be close to the object of desire. Simultaneous the prospect of plunge in a space-time continuum where new options are constantly being presented is a fascinating prospect. At the same time, when everyday life itself looks like a scene from a futurological scenario that is constantly becoming more worrying, with the social distances growing, while life is experienced only through close contact with screens, as we have experienced it recently, Digital art has a lot of material to draw and a lot of truth to compete with…

Finally which are the challenges that we have to face all the Art people?

For us the Art Theorists, the biggest challenge is to focus on what we love to communicate with the world. It would be useful for the state to understand this as well. Art is neither luxury nor commodity. Art is simply necessary. Like breathing.

Download Greek Version of Interview here.