Together with Greek-German curator Christina Green, Sandra Teitge is organizing the Storefront Marketplace Thessaloniki.
Based on the notion of the marketplace as a space for physical as well as intellectual and economic exchange Storefront Marketplace Thessaloniki will investigate new forms of tourism that are developing globally. It will initiate a dialogue about sustainable, reciprocal ways of tourism that create valuable relationships between the visitor and the visited in an active interrelation between people and places. The purpose is thus to go beyond the understanding of the impact of tourism for the Macedonian city and its future prospects and to identify possible experiences of the city as a dynamic place whilst reconsidering traditional forms of knowledge exchange and the sharing of historical heritage. Audio walks, talks, and dinners organized in collaboration with local institutions and initiatives, local market stall vendors and small business owners, over the period of one weekend will examine the city of Thessaloniki and its multi-layered potential of a vibrant marketplace.
Program:
Playback Performance
Friday, 16-18h, CACT, Warehouse B1 – Thessaloniki Port
In the framework of OST: Research, Israeli-born artist Atalya Laufer collaborates with Greek artist Persefoni Myrtsou on Playback. Specially created for the CACT, Centre of Contemporary Art Thessaloniki, Playback calls up a Karaoke experience that celebrates popular music among Greeks and Israelis. Various Greek songs and their appropriated Israeli counterparts are featured as hybrids and are accompanied by video clips composed of fragments of YouTube uploads. Spanning from early 20th century ‘classics’ to contemporary trash-pop, they share the same melodies but differ in lyrical interpretation. In an open format, the public is invited to sing along.
OST; Research
Friday & Saturday, 11-18h, audio devices available at CACT, Warehouse B1 – Thessaloniki Port
OST; Research is an audio walk by artist Atalya Laufer. As a soundtrack, it offers a particular atmosphere to enhance the experience of the city. Unfolding past and present lives of Jews in Thessaloniki, it is comprised of popular Israeli songs, which are based on Greek songs originating from different genres and time periods. The lyrics of both the original and cover versions have been transformed into short narratives and are intertwined with additional historical facts as well as fictional tales to create a meditation on memory.
Adapting Sandra Teitge’s long-running Dinner Exchange as a platform and in collaboration with Christina Green, a discursive round table will join this culinary event with invited guests including writer Leon A. Nar, and artists Atalya Laufer and Persefoni Myrtsiou. In an open format the speakers and public will share food as well as thoughts on the current situation of tourism and cultural diversity in Thessaloniki while alluding to the issues of import and export as well as the locality and regionality of food. – The culinary project Dinner Exchange was founded in October 2011 and aims at creating discursive situations in various environments whilst always addressing the issue of food waste.
Walking Tour, Saturday 18-20h with Rana Khan
Walking Tour, Sunday 11-15h with Georgos Ieropoulos
Meeting point at the entrance of the Modiano market, opposite the IEK DELTA, Ermou
Two different tours will on one hand investigate the concept of guided-tours-as-an- artistic-strategy and on the other hand will inspire civic participation. By providing a platform for collaboration, the exchange and sharing of knowledge and stories the tours will bring audiences, architects, and artists together and generate an artistic and local discussion about urban environments. We are particularly interested in illuminating underrepresented narratives that usually donʼt have a voice and through that questioning the hegemonic discourse that shapes cities, such as immigrant groups. Politics of public space, gentrification and civil responsibility are of high interest for us in this regard.
Between exhibiting, teaching, designing, writing, and make films, husband and wife team Erin and Ian H. Besler cover a very fluid mode of expression. They’ve come to the 2014 installment of Out There Doing It, the LA Forum’s annual series on emergent practice as a pair with a unique perspective — L.A. transplants from Chicago, and young professionals deeply embedded in academia. We asked the team a few questions in preparation of their participation in OTDI 2014.
What’s design practice in Los Angeles today?
We have a complicated relationship with practice: Erin had hockey practice for most of her life, and Ian had baseball practice and judo practice (briefly). It seems like practice makes sense for goaltending, as in Erin’s case. But when you don’t actually have a fixed position on the field, as tends to be the case with little league baseball (and judo, for that matter), there’s really no meaningful distinction between practice and game day. So maybe we could say that design practice in Los Angeles today is somewhere between judo and hockey.
Does the urban landscape figure into you approach projects and concepts?
The actual urban landscape itself doesn’t figure into our projects and concepts as much as representations and abstractions of it do. We probably spend more time looking at Google Maps and the ways in which others have represented the urban landscape in their work.
Briefly discuss one project you presented at the OTDI round table on October 16.
We presented one project at the OTDI round table. It is a video that’s titled Descriptions and it involves voice actors describing movie company logos. UCLA Associate Professor Jason Payne has said that the video is: “So well-done in its dead tone and technique as to be upsetting.” Rene Daalder said that it was “quite interesting,” or, maybe he just said “interesting.” It was over the phone, so we don’t have the exact transcript.
How do you “host”
Teaching is important to our practice — and we both have an incredible amount of student debt — so, academia provides us a host and is also the site where we are hosts.
Erin is currently hosting at the MAK Center’s Mackey Garage Top with her exhibition, The Entire Situation, which is on view until October 29.
Our sixth poster was presented on october 20th along with ADUQ’s (urban designers ass. of Quebec) bi-monthly get together event. This time we were on the Rosemont side bike path next to the train tracks, right underneath the Van Horne viaduct because of the rain. On the poster you can read : SUGGÉREZ VOTRE SOLUTION (SUGGEST YOUR SOLUTION) and in a hole in the fence you could write or draw an idea to add to the project.
Supported by: Pro Helvetia, Schweizer Kulturstiftung; Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain, Genève
In Hmong culture, parasomnia (sleep paralysis) is understood to be caused by a nocturnal pressing spirit, dab tsog. Dab tsog attacks “sleepers” by sitting on their chests, sometimes attempting to strangle them. Some believe that dab tsog is responsible for sudden unexpected nocturnal death syndrome (SUNDS), which claimed the lives of over 100 Southeast Asian immigrants in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
For the Storefront Marketplace at the HmongTown market French-Swiss artist Pauline Beaudemont created an outdoor installation on the market stage. A hybrid between photo studio, backdrop (for a probably play), and semi-functional sitting area the installation appropriates the aesthetics and certain elements of the actual Hmong market stalls. Shiny aluminum sheets constitute the background for several ‘furniture’ or compositional objects, such as a table made out of a large chrome basket decorated with concrete elements and styrofoam hands or a a black grid chair and a concrete ‘coffee table’ with a styrofoam head.
In the middle of the installation, a large banner creates an accent in the otherwise materially cool situation. The banner shows the artist dressed in a Laotian General uniform, alluding to the broadly worshipped figure of the Hmong General Vang Pao, the only ethnic Hmong to attain the rank of General officer in the Royal Lao Army, and a hero in the US-Hmong community. The photo was taken on-site, in the market photo studio, where many Hmong-Americans get photographed in front of fairly exotic backgrounds, either Japanese, Korean, or other far-away countries.
Layered on top of the portrait are images of dead animals that were enlarged from a DVD cover that Beaudemont found at the market. The DVD culture is omnipresent in Hmong culture. Every other stall at the market sells a large variety of DVDs in front of an installation of numerous monitors, which show some of the DVDs and always attract a fairly vast audience. The DVD genres range from karaoke singing, to soap operas, Dracula films, and traditional hunting videos, which seem to aim at teaching the Hmong-American community traditional archaic-looking hunting techniques.
The third element on the banner are the bright semi-neon colors of the renown bubble tea that is served in the food court of the market, also enlarged to the point at which the image becomes abstract.
Hmong elder women in traditional Hmong clothes.
From far away, it is unclear who is depicted on the banner, which reinforces the general nature of the installation as a ‘parazone’ between Hmong and Western aesthetics.
As part of RavinePortal I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and talking with grade 12 students from the Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute in Toronto, a public secondary school located in the Thorncliffe Park neighbourhood, within minutes from the West Don and its associated ravines. Their art teacher, Hilary Masemann, contacted me shortly after RavinePortal opened, asking whether I’d be willing and interested in meeting with her students and establishing a dialogue with them about Toronto’s ravines and their personal experiences, perceptions, and responses to these spaces.
I had the pleasure of introducing many of the students to Taylor Creek Park, a silent verdant oasis located within 15 minutes from their school, and there began to discuss the importance of green space in the lives of urban city dwellers, the access issues that currently exist in their immediate neighbourhood, and what the future of the ravines might hold.
I asked each of the students to share with me their thoughts, which I now share, in order of receipt, with you:
Image by Jiayin Huang
“I don’t usually go outside unless absolutely necessary, so I’m not knowledgeable about the geography of the ravines. The entryways are not exactly obvious, so I find that a first time down to the ravine via a particular path serves as an initiation of sorts. A couple of years ago, I was following several classmates down a thin and obscure dirt path into the ravine, and I was a bit nervous about how sketchy the whole entryway was. But then the path widened, the sketchiness decreased, and the walk started feeling a lot more legit. So now, I can use that path without feeling uneasy at all because I know where it leads. I don’t think anything of the sketchiness.” Jiayin Huang
“I don’t normally go down to the valley because it wasn’t interesting to me. When I did go down to the valley the paths were dirty and hard to walk on and it smelled kind of funny. The people that normally go down to the valley are those who go biking or just want some quiet time. But I rather just go on a walk in the neighbourhood rather than go down to the valley. Overall, the valley seemed like an okay place to go to but it’s not my type of place to spend my time in. Maybe if it was cleaned up and had a more welcoming feel to it then I would spend my time in it.” Husna Jan
“For me the Ravine is Memory. When I first came to Canada, my parents didn’t have enough money to show us around so my siblings and I would go there almost every day in summer and also in winter. We used the valley to ride our bikes, to BBQ and to walk around. I think it’s the valley that makes Thorncliffe more beautiful and keeps people connected. I made countless friends in the valley that are in the same school as me. I enjoy the view of the valley from my apartment every day in every season of the year. It is always beautiful and refreshing.” Moneeba Tanweer
“My perspective about the ravine was very positive. I’ve learnt a lot of new things that I didn’t know existed. For example, the ravine is a very quiet place and a place where you can relax. Me personally I didn’t look closely what is the beauty of the ravine. For example, I found out the sidewalk, the nice colourful trees are nice the way they are. I prefer there should be no changes and leave it the way it is. I really like the way how it’s an “unknown place” not many people think it’s a park where they can come enjoy many people come to ride a bike, walk around, maybe study and other quite activities. Overall the ravine should be how it is and kept like this.” Fatima Fajalwala
“To me the valley is a place to walk my friend’s dog. It’s a place that includes hidden passageways and each person can have their own space in the ravines, which is amazing because it’s so close to our neighborhood. It takes about ten minutes to get down there and you have all the time in the world to explore. I use the valley for many occasions. My family likes to go there for picnics and barbeques. I also ride my bike and rollerblade and as I mentioned before, I walk my best friends’ dog.” Zuhra Muhammad Amin
“Till today, I haven’t really thought of the valley in much depth, in fact I didn’t give it any importance at all. It was just another part of our community. But when I think about it today, I realize the importance of it. The valley is a place that I look upon every morning from my balcony; it gives me a fresh start. Though I don’t often go to the valley, I’m practically in the valley at all times, as my balcony sits right above the ravine. At night I do feel scared as there are no lights in the valley and it’s pitch black. But in the morning, it’s just beautiful; the sunrise, morning dew and the cool breeze. When I think about the valley not being there, I get scared. A highway, with 24-7 noise and pollution, a mall which would commercialize everything, nothing would be as peaceful and quiet as it is now. During our holy month Ramadan, I often put a chair out in my balcony and sit there and pray the holy book as it’s just so quiet and peaceful in the mornings.” Alvira Sheikh
“‘You know you can’t go to the valley all by yourself’, this is the reply I have most often gotten from my mom whenever I asked for her permission to go the ravine. It’s been this way since I can remember, I have never been encouraged to explore the ravine and make memories there like many people I know. Maybe it’s a cultural or religious thing or maybe just a fear most conservative parents have nowadays. The ravine has carried a bad reputation; my parents don’t want me to be exposed to the activities or the people involved. It’s this preconceived and innate fear instilled in my family that has held me back from connecting to this foreign yet familiar place in my neighborhood. It is as if they are trying to shelter me from something that in actuality is just a harmless place. The ravine, a place that should serve as a getaway from the daily hustles and bustle of city life and a tranquil place to connect to nature is sadly just a secluded area in my life that I have not fully discovered or better yet even understood. I have only spent time in the ravine with my family and cousins and that was years ago. It was a great place to unwind and enjoy with “family”, but as soon as you think of enjoying it individually its just stays as a thought; it never becomes reality. Maybe someday, I will be able to say that the ravine is a safe place for everyone and that it not longer faces the same complaints it does now and I hopefully wait for that day to come. Will the change be overnight, maybe not, but it will take efforts from everyone in the community to educate our younger generation about this hidden treasure; only then can we hope to see a future where parents won’t have to be reluctant to send their kids to the ravine.” Soha Iqbal
Nightvalley by Gloria Zhou
“In Stephen King’s essay, “Why We Crave Horror Movies”, he states that as humans, we are constantly assuring our sanity by satisfying our thirsts for fear and anxiety. This may be one of the abstract claim’s I’ve read but I’ve caught myself doing just that. As a 13 year old, given the freedom to wander off until your parents are home from work, you tend to explore what’s most accessible to you. I’ve gone into the ravine, many, many times, and further in each time.
My friends and I are driven by mysteries and mindlessly attracted to places that look suspicious. I remember a winter night in 2012, we decided to take a walk in the valley, knowing it would be empty and we’d have each other for support. As we walked deeper and deeper in the valley, we noticed little droplets of blood in the snow, as if it fell from the trees. We followed the trail for 30 minutes, the red marks remained droplets, and we gave up when we reached the bottom of the bridge that connects East York and Donlands together. I think that we’re all drawn to things we can’t manage to comprehend and we’re not satisfied until we’ve proven to ourselves that we are capable of being brave, even if that means putting ourselves in bad situations. In hindsight, I’d tell myself not to go in… OK, maybe I wouldn’t but I would advise my 13-year-old self to be a little bit more cautious.
I’ve even gotten lost in neighborhoods that offer exits/entrances from the ravine, in fact, my friend and I’ve asked a stranger to drive us home once. It was only 4 PM when we’d stumbled upon the staircase that leads up to the Parkview Hill Crescent neighborhood but we walked in circles for hours after the sun set trying to find that entrance to the ravine to take us home. Even asking the residents didn’t work, they’d reply with: “I didn’t even know there was an entrance!” Regardless, prominent entrances (and a good sense of direction) would’ve ensured our safety.
The ravine serves many purposes but no doubt, it curates a little excitement in all of us. I think I’m speaking for a majority of the youth in the Thorncliffe and Flemingdon neighborhoods; it has sponsored many of our journeys and continues to do so.” Gloria Zhou
Aristotle Giannakouros and Hariklia Hari share their experience of the Ilissia forest in Athens. Both live nearby and incorporate the forest in their everydaylife activities: Aristotle accompanies his small daughter to school through the forest path, Hariklia walks her dog. These everyday small acts form a daily ritual. And can became a reverie. We can see its traces in the installation that consists of Sounds and Poems (A.G) and Microsculptures, Photos, Drawings and other Writings (H.H).
Sentimental Topography project
“Sentimental Topography” is a work in progress by Hariklia Hari. It consists of episodes that narrate the authors experience in the landscape. In this particular installation at the Offices’ site, Hari is collaborating with Aristotle Giannakouros in a common work, sharing both their trivialities and their reveries.
Sentimental Topography at the context of Microgeographies@Storefrontnyc project
Sentimental Topography is set up on the Offices‘ site. It fits in as a “pause” between the previous exhibition (“Transparencies and the Sacred”) and the next (“Thoreau’s cabin”: upcoming site specific installation by Rika Krithara).
At Transparencies and the Sacred we have witnessed the transformation of the abandoned site to a functional and emotional space. All artworks interacted to the site in a psychodynamic way; interacted with the personalities of the former owners, indicated the notions of enclosure and abandonment, and claimed a new dynamics of openness for it. In particular, the Cage incorporated objects and memories of the former office. It served as a heart of the fading space; still beating.
The Cage will be overwritten by Cabin, an art work on the notion of habitation, togetherness and collectivity. From the Cage till the Cabin, from abandonment to rehabitation, Sentimental Topography provides a pause.
During this pause we to experience the Office in its proximity to the forest; Go deep in the forest and deep in the Office.
On October 11, Host: Natural Histories for Los Angeles opened the exhibition Wet Horizons in the Neutra VDL House. The installation by Medellin architect Luis Callejas was made in collaboration with architect and textile designer Charlotte Hansson.
The main piece of Wet Horizons is a pair of silk curtain-like drawings printed with site plans of several of Callejas’ projects, each one centered on a body of water. Knowing that these drawings would be layered against the view of the Silver Lake reservoir, Callejas and Hansson said that they “turned oceans into a river.” They connected each of the speculative projects from around the world into a single watery site across the 15 meters of silk: a lagoon park in Venice, Italy; an array energy generators along the Persian Gulf; lighthouse that illuminate the border between Colombia and Nicaragua in the San Andres Archipelago; islands in Kiev turned into parks (created before the current political unrest in Ukraine, however foreshadowing it, perhaps, since the text identifying the islands alternates between Ukrainian and Russian.)
Southern California is in the middle of its worst drought in recent history. Water and all things foggy, humid, damp, or wet increasingly is a luxury. Outside the windows of the VDL penthouse, the water in the Silver Lake reservoir dropped below normal levels, exposing a concrete basin. As water evaporates, what we think of as a lake is revealed to be what it really is: a piece of water infrastructure, a simulacrum of the natural environment.
During the days leading up to the Saturday night opening a different kind of reenactment was taking place inside the Neutra VDL House. The production of the silk textile drawing—hung on the house’s existing curtain track—required a simulation of domestic life through activities such as sewing and ironing not seen in the house in decades. As a host, the house is welcoming, not benign. Acted out in the context of an architecture already embedded with mid-century values, simple tasks seemed almost uncomfortably retrograde as performed by Hansson and caught on video by Callejas. Wet Horizons, then, provokes a question: How do the private scale enactments of domestic ritual change and reframe the territory of landscape architecture?
Following the Saturday night opening, an intimate conversation between Callejas, Hansson, and Wonne Ickx of Productora took place over coffee and bagels on Sunday morning in the VDL courtyard.
At times where space is limited and the sustainable uses of materials and outlets for community are required REE creates a network of geographically remote nodes. The airwaves are available spaces; this spaces now will be activated and become places where the imaginary and the real merge.
REE is an online nomadic bilingual radio transmission that aims at building relationships within communities by exploring connections between creative process and everyday cultural experiences. Its programming is based on site specific narratives, dialogues and story telling.
REE focuses on transmission as a mode for expression and exchange investigating the relationships with sound and its communicative value. A platform exploring ways for language learning replacing translation with integration. Its democratic format engages discussions of ideas, social and cultural issues. Interactions with the general public encourages active listening and social involvement. Each show is broadcasted live and archived online. This is a time and site specific project.
Day 2: spoken word artist Jonathan Siab Yaj, artist Pao Houa Her, playwright May Lee-Yang (lazyhmongwoman), and publisher and radio host Wameng Moua (Hmong Today).
The program kept changing… and turned into a great line-up. It reflects the dynamics of the whole project.
Jonathan Siab Yaj presented his most recent spoken word fragments.
Artist/photographer Pao Houa Her.
An elder man enquires whether we were giving away free phones… and asks Pao if she would like to meet his nephew. It’s mating season in Hmong culture, Hmong New Year.
Esteemed playwright May Lee-Yang.
Last guest: Wameng Moua talked about his participation in the project “40 years Hmong culture in the U.S.”
Between the two of them brother and sister duo Katya and Alexei Tylevich cover some expansive territory: design, criticism, art, architecture, film. They’ve come to the 2014 installment of Out There Doing It, the LA Forum’s annual series on emergent practice, as Friend & Colleague. The collaborative effort highlights their ability to write beautiful prose and stage art projects that draw on their Eastern European heritage and hypercontemporary life here in Los Angeles. We asked the team a few questions in preparation of their participation in OTDI 2014.
What’s design practice in Los Angeles today?
Design practice in L.A. is manic. There’s a lot of energy expended in different directions, much of it productive, successful, and experimental. There’s a lot of ground to cover, but it’s probably fair to say that L.A. design is most comfortable on a human scale, rather than a metropolitan one. L.A. seems particularly adroit at getting the residence right, and all that’s attached to a residence (interior design & objects, the indoor-outdoor connection, and then the construction of little enclaves or neighborhoods around the residence). There’s constantly work being done to make individual vibrant parts of Los Angeles more readily connected to one another, so that the city functions more like an (enormous) healthy body, rather than a number of limbs held together by duct tape and barbed wire. Then again, that’s kind of what makes Los Angeles so palatable, isn’t it? All those flailing limbs. Design practice in Los Angeles is much more than can be described in this one answer, but let’s just agree that designers have their hands full.
Does the urban landscape figure into you approach projects and concepts?
Our point of view originates from an urban setting, but the subjects we elaborate upon can include suburban, rural, or unclassifiable landscapes. For example, our project Happy Nothing draws on news stories originating from all over the former Eastern Bloc (urban, rural, and creepy settings alike). We react to those news stories with the creation of an original fiction and an original image — almost always, we draw from the landscapes of our original sources. That being said, the two of us can’t escape our urban position, and don’t really make a point of trying to do so. Even when we set our sights outside of the urban landscape, we’re always a bit biased toward the city.
Briefly discuss one project from what you’ll be presenting at the OTDI Round Table on October 16.
The project we’ve been working on longest as Friend & Colleague, and the one closest to our conjoined hearts, is Happy Nothing. It’s an ongoing website, a book, and a traveling, growing exhibition. We have a strict work process: For each installment of Happy Nothing, we agree on a single news item originating form the Former Soviet Union, then without any further consultation, Katya writes a 250 word fiction and Alexei creates an original image in response to this news item. We bring the fiction and visual together like an exquisite corpse, and make it the central purpose of our project. We also leave the original news item as a “source” for people to view, if desired. In part, this project is our way of commenting without regurgitating. Happy Nothing creates new fictions out of old news.
This year, we were invited to apply a similar approach to a series of “postcards” we created for the Competing Utopias exhibition at the VDL House, which seamlessly outfitted the Neutra House with Eastern Bloc, cold-war era everything (furniture, kitchenware, clothing) from the Wende Museum. We reacted to six rooms of the exhibition with the creation of six fictional narratives and images, which were printed as postcards and handed out to viewers upon arrival to help them navigate this real/unreal setting.
How do you “host”?
Some of our projects are certainly parasitical, feeding off of old news or existing objects (artworks, architecture) to create new mutants. We’ve described a few such projects already — Happy Nothing, and our work for the Competing Utopias exhibition. Another project befitting of the “host” title is Word Bites Picture, in which we invite select contemporary artists from around the world (people like Todd Hido, Vito Acconci, Michaël Borremans, and others), to submit artworks to a group show, in which all of the didactics are 500-word fictions written by Katya in response to the individual works. We have exhibited this ongoing project in New York and L.A., and it also exists as a book. As a “host,” this project is infected by the artworks that drive it, even though the end results are those original, mutant relationships between the different artworks, between the artworks and the fictions, and between the fictions and the fictions.
At times where space is limited and the sustainable uses of materials and outlets for community are required REE creates a network of geographically remote nodes. The airwaves are available spaces; this spaces now will be activated and become places where the imaginary and the real merge.
REE is an online nomadic bilingual radio transmission that aims at building relationships within communities by exploring connections between creative process and everyday cultural experiences. Its programming is based on site specific narratives, dialogues and story telling.
REE focuses on transmission as a mode for expression and exchange investigating the relationships with sound and its communicative value. A platform exploring ways for language learning replacing translation with integration. Its democratic format engages discussions of ideas, social and cultural issues. Interactions with the general public encourages active listening and social involvement. Each show is broadcasted live and archived online. This is a time and site specific project.
