FAQ NET 2021: Part IΙ

FAQ NET: It is the name of the new column that we started as Media Partners on a regular basis of Platforms Project-Independent Art Fair, asking a common question to participating artists – representatives of artistic groups and collectives, resulting from the needs of contemporary reality and the changes that have already occurred after the Covid 19 Pandemic and the Global Lockdown; with Platforms Project-Independent Art Fair to pioneer in the European Art Fair and present Platforms Project Net 2021(27/5-10/6/2021) as a prelude of the Art Fair.

By Efi Michalarou & Dimitris Lempesis

How do you feel participating in an online Art Fair like Platforms Project 2021? It’s the second edition that emerged through the needs of Covid 19 World Pandemic fighting. What are the new challenges and what do you expect from this participation?

Maria Papacharalabous (Binary art group): My first participations in the Platforms Project was from it’s very beginning, under the name of Binary group but over time in different shapes and forms and within the framework of Art Athina. Platforms has proven to be a flexible institution that can exist under any circumstances and find alternative solutions to whatever challenges it faces. I believe this lies in the passion, determination, diligence and professionalism of its visionaries, Artemis Potamianou and Michalis Argyrou.
Once again, with the new challenge of Covid 19, their ingenuity has led them to utilise technology so as to continue their vision through this online connection.

The composition of our team at “Binary Art Group” in recent years, consists of people who permanently live in different cities/countries, Elena Tonikidi-Syros, Anita Toutikian-Lebanon, Sandra Gaia-Athens, Antonis Kentonis-London, Maria Papacharalambous-Cyprus and thus Platforms Project gave us the opportunity to set a common theme, each time different and for each one of us to separately create. Our meeting to set up these works in the space, in addition to the joy of our reconnecting in real life, includes the element of surprise as well as re-creation / rebirth since we do not fully know how has everyone developed the common theme. At those moments we were challenged to combine these, sometimes heterogeneous works, in such a way so that there is a conseptual and aesthetic connection between them, an action and a re-interaction.
Like wise, it also gave us the joy to meet old acquaintances, while making new ones and connecting together with the blending of our works and interactions.
Understandably this aspect was lost as so many others were lost in our new reality.
In this difficult and unexpected situation, the Platforms Project team did the best they could to keep alive this celebration of joy, creation, coexistence in its first online edition and now in its second. It continued to put us on an alert on the lines of nothing had stopped and nothing was lost… We exist-coexist and continue to create under strange, new and unprecedented conditions, sharing and exchanging in a different way our creations from a far, softening any frustration and at the same time giving hope, this sense of the temporary … of the and that this too will pass… We will all meet up close!
At the same time, it retained the element of surprise through technology.
The new challenges and what I expect from this participation is the creation of that appropriate perpetual thread that will give birth to new meaning, the artistic reconnection which while yes will be born online, but will breathe through real life.

Kostas Ekonomou (Şerife Aslan): We have been taking part in Platforms project almost all of the years its been running. We early on decided to try and make a small but coherent and conceptually tight “mini-exhibition” that could either manifest our current ideas and thinking, or inspire us to work towards a new and experimental idea. To treat the booth as a mini-museum rather than a shop-window, and the theme as critical and thought inspiring take on contemporary issues. Thus, conceiving of a theme and collaborating among our group becomes part of preparation, as well as of taking the ideas further and exploring them in new ways have been a way of working that Platforms have fostered for me. In 2019 the theme of orphaned images (https://www.museetforglomska.se/Orphaned-Images) resulted in another exhibition in Sweden where our Greek “sister group” TILT collaborated and that developed the theme further. So in that sense I have wanted to use my participation in Platforms as an incitement to develop work and conceptualizations, as well as testing them. Importantly, it has also allowed me to shift from the curatorial position only, to presenting and including ideas and works of my own. Of course, “Being on site, with images, sounds and objects around, and with audiences and fellow artist and curators moving in and out is an unbeatable experience – and an important and integral part of Platforms since the very beginning, and of its worldwide social fabric. What happens without its physical presence? We might know after some time how the lockdowns have affected us, whether it has been a Parenthesis, a Paradigm shift or a Pragmatic adaption to the distant here and now. The digital booths of course become more of a presentation, or a representation of our community-in-waiting to get back together. The pandemic situation made me reflect on the paradox of managing to stay safe in containment but possibly endangering to sacrifice our communality in the process, something that I try to express in the work “Common containment” in the exhibition…

Louisa Karapidakis (fragments of truth): I consider the Platforms Project a great opportunity in way of communication, both for the artists and the exhibition’s curators. It is an international exhibition that does not pursue the commercial side. Instead it gives the artist the opportunity for free expression and dialogue with his curator and the visitors of the exhibition. I would, additionally, like to emphasise the fact that it is very important for it to give many budding artists the occasion to exhibit their artistic creations and to converse through their creations with renowned artists from all over the world.
Online art exhibitions have a great impact on the viewing of a varied exhibition public and build bridges of cooperation. The internet visit deprives the viewer of the interaction offered by the live contact with the artwork but allows to observer as much time as he wants and viewing as many times as he wants. After all, this is the main purpose of an art exhibition, meeting the public and interacting with it. The experience so far from participating in platform projects over a number of years has been positive and constructive. These projects create a solid bond between curator and artist in anticipation of the sentiments and reactions of the visitors/viewers. It is my firm belief that the platforms project gives unlimited possibilities for collaboration and exchange of ideas.

Panos Lambrou (D.E.U.S.): Platform Project manifest online a new vision on how to Art Fair, which is avant-garde exploring art. I feel respect for the curatorial team and D.E.U.S feel synchronicity as a post contemporary art work. In Platform Project 2020; Searching If Deus has a literal meaning then all symbols of gods can be released. the intention is to describe how the qualitative synthesis of information given to humanity attempts to reach the core of our senses for love and compassion.” In Platform Project 2021 D.E.U.S. gates are now open to a new understanding. You are welcome to Book a Certificate Ticket for Eternal Knowledge.