ΕΔΩ ΚΑΙ ΤΩΡΑ : Situatedness

30.09.2021 – 16.10.2021

Curated by Nadja Geer and Florent Frizet

The first show of the art season 2021 at One Minute presents young Greek artists. In what way is locality part of our existence if we do not speak about territory anymore but about a series of situations?

In working with situating as a methodology the term “situatedness” was chosen for a group show with six young Greek artists whose interest in situatedness reaches from language to landscapes to sound, narrative and observation, making a stop at urban architecture.

Situatedness can depict embodiment or perspectivism, reflect the conditionality of knowledge or refer to the entanglement of mind and world. Situatedness refers to localizing “where you are at” in the moment, in the here and now. What makes you curious, what interests you and where are you situated – not only with your body, but also with your brain? How does our cognitive condition co-establish our lived environment? In what way is locality a part of being?

Situatedness is intertwined with time and space – and sound. The interval may be the most common term to describe how space unfolds in time. Subjective time is also a way to create space. Our experience can still be at some previous location while being embedded in the new. And we have not even begun to talk here of the implications that quantum computing, virtuality and augmented reality might have on situatedness.

For a long time, people perceived themselves as being distinct from their environment. Descartes “cogito ergo sum” posited a receptacle not only of the mind but also of the human subject.

Perception and corporeal sensibility – two key terms for situatedness – have been exclusively human. Maurice Merleau-Ponty already began to doubt this concept of consciousness as a closed container, thinking in locality. Later Donna Haraway’s “situated knowledge” opened itself completely towards the environment and the situation, translating unclarity and “dirtiness” as something positive – when we situate our knowledge we go down to the street, we “become answerable for what we learn how to see”.

Situatedness as a theoretical concept and art methodology may derive from phenomenology as a method of describing the nature of our perceptual contact with the world, but now it takes a further step. The more one opens towards space and spatial time the more one understands that humans may no longer be humans but only agents knitted tightly together in a network with other agents on the same level – we get to realize more fully that we have to situate to de-hierarchize.

The gerund “situating” stands for the fact that something is done in time. By doing something with others over time – very well known by the term musicking that refers to the idea that music is created between the musicians and the audience – situating art can also refer to a highly participant art form. With situationality as a method to create a bridge between animals and humans and with situated action describing the possibilities and limits of Artificial Intelligence – situatedness nowadays also refers to newness. It refers to where we are and were “art is at” at this minute.

Artists: Elena Chantzis, Stelios Papagrigoriou, Fi Tsaoules, Myrto Vratsanou (in collaboration with Anouk Asselineau), Grigoria Vryttia, Stathis Alexandros Zoulias.
Curated by Florent Frizet and Nadja Geer.

Opening 30.09.2021 19.00 – 22.00
19:30 Presentation of the exhibition by the curators and the artists

From September 30th to October 16th.
On Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.Opening Hours: 16.00 – 19.00