ΕΔΩ ΚΑΙ ΤΩΡΑ: Situatedness

ΕΔΩ ΚΑΙ ΤΩΡΑ: S i t u a t e d n e s s

For the first show of the art season 2021 One Minute Space, a project space in Athens directed by Nadja Geer and Florent Frizet, shows young Greek art whereby “Greekness” is deterritorialized. In what way is locality part of the being if we do not speak about territory anymore but about a series of situations?

To work with situating as an artistic methodology we have chosen the term situatedness for a group show with six young Greek artists.

Situatedness can depict embodiment or perspectivism, can reflect the conditionality of knowledge or can 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 – 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?

What becomes obvious with the works of the YOUNG GREEK ARTISTS participating in OMS’s inaugural group show for the season “ΕΔΩ ΚΑΙ ΤΩΡΑ“  is the transversal dynamic of situatedness that simultaneously connects and detaches past and future and space.

“Coming out of place, makes it easier to come out of time. (…) Space-time is granular, composed of countless little nows. Little situations.” (Myrto Vratsanou and Anouk Asselineau)

Situatedness is intertwined with time and space – and sound! You remember the past while being at a certain place. You “hit your knuckles on the iron bars of the public stairs that lead to Lycabetus the sound is deep enough I travel in time” (Stelios Papagrigoriou).

Our experience can still be at some previous location while being with 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. We will get mixed up in the future which makes it important to re-think your own intellectual situation: “I think of composition as an ending process only because of space-time restraints (Elena Chantzis).

“Nowness” as an art methodology – maybe the core concept of Contemporary and Pop Art – might be seen as close to situatedness. The same might be true for ephemerality, but both now seem a bit out of touch with the eventual superposition whereby computing can store information in a “superposition” and be able to reference multiple realities. Our concept of linear time will vanish and with that the idea of Nowness –– will have to give space to multiple nownesses and a “Here and Now” of a second order.

Or, as Fi Tsaoules puts it when describing his artwork “Temporal Acupunctures” as  “sociocultural temporalities in the nowness of the ephemeral”. 

Science is ephemeral too: For a long time, people believed that they are 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.

Phenomenology already began to doubt this concept of consciousness as a closed container, thinking in locality, Donna Haraway’s  “Situated knowledge” then opened totally towards environment and situation, translating unclarity and “dirtiness” as something positive – when you situate your knowledge you go down to the street, you “become answerable for what we learn how to see”

“The artist’s studio space is very similar to that of a scholar or a scientist. For example there are reference books, the tools of the trade, furniture to facilitate the process. We have a theoretical and a practical approach. The end-product, the outcome, also informs us about ourselves, about our situation, our perception.” (Grigoria Vryttia) 

Feminist Situated Knowledge is an investigative discovery of the entanglement of power and knowledge by de-hierarchizing knowledge. It stands for being with other beings: “making kin”. In this situated knowledge, a pool of subjectivities comes into action in a situation of collective actors, non-human elements, and the arena(s) of commitment and discourse within which they are in constant negotiation.

Situatedness as a theoretical concept and artistic methodology may derive from the phenomenology of an Maurice Merleau-Ponty 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 humans may no longer be humans but only agents knitted tightly together in a network with other agents on the same level – we more realize that we have to situate to de-hierarchize.

The Gerund “situating” stands for the fact that something is done in time. The drawings of Stathis Alexandros Zoulias may depict the situation when one perceives time as a loop.

Doing something in time with others – 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 very participant art form.

With situationality as a method to create a bridge between animals and humans and with situated action to describe the possibilities and limits of Artificial Intelligence – situatedness nowadays also refers to newness and a very (self)reflective form artistic knowledge. Situatedness refers to where we are and were “art is at” at this minute.

Artists: Stathis Alexandros Zoulias, Elena Chantzis, Stelios Papagrigoriou, Fi Tsaoules, Myrto Vratsanou (in collaboration with Anouk Asselineau), Grigoria Vryttia.

19.30: After a brief introduction talk by the curators, the artists will speak about the presented work.

From September 30^th to October 15^th 2021. Curated by Nadja Geer and Florent Frizet

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