Erdman and İhraç facilitated a public meditation of folding and unfolding objects of exchange. For this performance, they used Turkish towels, some of which are hand-woven and others machine-produced. The production of both versions involves repetitive movement that informed this performance. It invited the public to participate.
Hana Lee Erdman is an artist working and living in Berlin. She deals with choreography as expanded practice, approaching performance from both embodied and visual disciplines. She received a Masters Degree from the Inter-University Center for Dance (HZT), University of the Arts Berlin.
Jasmin İhraç is most interested in the interplay between political activism and artistic work, and explores how the political comes to its dance and dance finds its politics. She studied sociology at the Freie University Berlin and Contemporary Dance, Context and Choreography at the Inter-University Centre for Dance (HZT) in Berlin.
Ece Pazarbaşı offered delicatessen from the Ottoman period in reference to the performers Erdman and İhraç. Evolving around the issues of body and the time span of the body, Pazarbaşı offered spicy rice with MUSSLES and a special Helva that is offered after funerals.
In her conceptual cooking practice, Pazarbaşı uses existing recipes to re-define contemporary situations and conflicts and to create a change in the audience’s perception regarding these situations.
Ece Pazarbaşı works and walks on the merged borderline of curatorial practice, artistic research and alternative education. Since 2007 she has been curating public space projects and audio tours in the urban and rural domains. She was a fellow at the Institute for Spatial Experiments (O. Eliasson) and is currently a MFA/PhD Students advisor at New York Transarts Institute’s Summer Academy in Berlin.
Our stall in the Markthalle Neun. “Rice with Mussels.”
This tour focuses on the flourishing Jewish history of Thessaloniki. The city housed a major Jewish community, mostly of Sephardic origin, until the middle of the Second World War. It is the only known example of a city of this size in the Jewish diaspora that retained a Jewish majority for centuries. Salonica’s 54,000 Sephardim were shipped to the Nazi extermination camps. Nearly 98% of the total Jewish population of the city died during the war. Only the Polish Jews experienced a greater level of destruction.
Starting point: Modiano market.
The Jewish Modiano clan was one of the most powerful and economically productive families in Thessaloniki.
The original entrance of the market in the background, designed by the son of the banker Modiano.
The former Ottoman bazar of the city.
The old Jewish market, now in ruins.
The old Roman market.
Passage (Stoa) Allatini, the other influential Jewish family of the city.
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.
This walking tour focused on the life of the (Bangladeshi) immigrants, where they live, where they shop, where they pray, where they eat. Very educational.
All tours started at the entrance to the Modiano Market.
Little kiosks, peripteri, are being taken over by Bangladeshi immigrants, semi-legally.
The beautiful passages (stoa) of Thessaloniki.
The only Bangladeshi/Asian shop in Thessaloniki, owned by Rana’s father.
Here you can buy products from Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa.
A semi-secret mosque in the center of the city. Muslims from different countries gather here. Mosques are illegal in Greece. This one opened after years of fighting with the officials. Finally, it was granted, but only underground.
The tour ended in the best Indian restaurant of Thessaloniki where Rana works as a waiter and his father as a chef.
The most delicious Tandoori Chicken.
A TV with popular Indian series in the background.
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 Spiros Pengas –Consultant for Tourism and International Relations for Thessaloniki, writer Leon A. Nar, artists Atalya Laufer and Persefoni Myrtsiou, and Georgos Ieropoulos. 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.
In the framework of OST: Research, Israeli-born artist Atalya Laufer collaborates with Greek artist Persefoni Myrtsou on ‘Playback.’ ‘Playback’ evokes 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.
Friday, 31 October, 4-6 pm, Contemporary Art Center Thessaloniki (CACT)
In Thessaloniki, the majority of residents buy their produce at weekly markets, directly from the producers or individual vendors. Although large global supermarket chains, such as Carrefour, exist, outdoor markets are highly frequented by all generations and social classes, it seems, and are very affordable compared to Northern Europe.
Our food hunt for the Dinner Exchange style round table at the Goethe Institut Thessaloniki on Saturday was very successful. Despite the current economic crisis most vendors generously gave us their leftover produce so that we left the market with a wide array of vegetables and fruit.
Bounty: a whole buggy filled with cabbage, cauliflower, aubergines, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, lemons, red & green peppers et al.
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.
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.
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.”
