Dimitris Alithinos
Dimitris Alithinos was born in 1945, in Athens. In the period between 1972 and 1979 the work of Dimitris Alithinos was strongly directed against oppression and totalitarianism, and moved later coherently, beyond Greece that was currently under the military junta, into European countries (such as Italy and France). More generally, until today, Alithinos’s work ranges within the ethical coherence through the cultures and societies, showing that the opposition of those years toward the established forms of artistic language, didn’t respond only to a time-specific need, but rather, as a precise conception of society, and of the possibilities of the role of the artist.
His work includes references to cultural and mythical symbols of various eras, that stress the multiple dimensions of the artistic action over time. In the ‘80s, he started his Concealments series; ritual actions in various parts of the globe, in public or interior spaces, e.g. galleries, museums, etc., where his works (usually large installations) are placed underground, thus making a comment on the meaning of time and memory. Up to now, more than 170 Concealments have been completed worldwide.
The GOLEM – to be generative in solidarity rather than be creative in solitude presents the video: “Preparation for Social Adaptation”, Paris 1976, Video AKAI ¾, Dur. 2 min 20 sec
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Marilyn Arsem
Boston-based artist Marilyn Arsem has been creating live events since 1975, from solo gallery performances to large-scale, site-specific works at festivals, conferences, alternative spaces, galleries, museums and universities in 30 countries in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Oceania and Asia.
Most recently she has focused on creating site-specific performances that are not planned in advance, but made in response to a location that is selected on arrival. She is a member and founder of Mobius, Inc., a Boston-based collaborative of interdisciplinary artists. She taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for 27 years, establishing one of the most extensive programs internationally in visually-based performance art.
The GOLEM – to be generative in solidarity rather than be creative in solitude presents the video: Marilyn Arsem (US). 100 Ways to Consider Time (excerpts), 2015, 6’06’’
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Franko B
(born 1960 in Milan, IT) is an Italian artist based in London, making drawings, installations, sculptures and performances. Over the years he has built up a sizeable body of work and has become internationally known. He is an artist who doesn’t separate life from practice, with his work situated somewhere between isolation and seduction, benevolence and confrontation, suffering and eroticism, punk and poetry. His concern is to make the unbearable bearable, and provoke the viewer to reconsider his own understanding of beauty and of suffering. He uses his body as a metaphor for social struggle, and embodying notions of the personal, political and poetic. Projecting the confluence of love and pain, Franko B demonstrates that humanity, as a condition, can be reformed. At present he is an associated visual arts lecturer at Northampton University, UK, and a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art, London, UK.
The GOLEM – to be generative in solidarity rather than be creative in solitude presents the video: AKTION 398, 2000, 4’01 Video of the performance by Franko B, with Ernst Fischer and Stuart Barclay. Infinito Ltd. Gallery, Turin – June 2000, Video by Claudio Cavallari.
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Francesca Fini
is an interdisciplinary artist focusing on experimental cinema, digital animation, new media, installation, and performance art. Her live projects are often addressing issues related to the relationship between public and private spaces, between the show and the audience, representation and interaction, but also reflect on the influences of society on gender and women’s issues and the distortions in the perception of beauty produced by the market and mainstream media. Both live and non-live works are a mix of traditional media, lo-fi technology, interaction design devices, generative audio, and video. Primarily interested in video and live art, she also creates artworks assembling performance art relics and video stills.
The GOLEM – to be generative in solidarity rather than be creative in solitude presents the video:
LOCKDOWN, live streaming performance 04/04/2020, di Francesca Fini, Francesca Leoni, Francesca Lolli
Francesca Leoni
Video artist/ Performer, was born in Italy but grew up in Brazil. After high school she moved to the US where she graduated in Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. During college she started her first Theatre and performance studies as a part of theatre productions and short films. Back in Italy she started working with video productions and kept on studying theatre and performance. Putting together video and performance was always her objective. This is why she created with Davide Mastrangelo a video performance project Con.Tatto
The GOLEM – to be generative in solidarity rather than be creative in solitude presents the video:
LOCKDOWN, live streaming performance 04/04/2020, di Francesca Fini, Francesca Leoni, Francesca Lolli
Francesca Lolli
Born in Perugia. Francesca moved to Milano in 1998 after her brief philosophy studies in Perugia. She graduated from the school of acting ‘Teatro Arsenale’ as an actress and shortly thereafter attended the ‘Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera’, graduating magna cum laude as a scenographer.
While she was attending school, she worked on stage as an actress with Teatro Arsenale’s company and participated in countless shows (‘Jeux de massacre’ by E. Ionesco, ‘il berretto a sonagli’ by L. Pirandello, ‘Pulp’ by C. Bukowsky, ‘L’eglise’ by L. F. Celine etc..). For her dissertation she decided to shoot a documentary about a famous NYC photographer : Andres Serrano. Since that moment she decided to completely change her life and dedicate herself completely to video art. Her research is aimed on gender- and socio-political issues.Her works are projected in different national and international festivals.
The GOLEM – to be generative in solidarity rather than be creative in solitude presents the video:
LOCKDOWN, live streaming performance 04/04/2020, di Francesca Fini, Francesca Leoni, Francesca Lolli
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Guillermo Gómez-Peña
(born 1955 in Mexico City) is a Chicano performance artist, writer, activist and educator. His seminal performance art pieces are concerned with the radical exploration of borders –physical, cultural or otherwise–, hybrid identities, and the politics of language. Gómez-Peña has created work in multiple media, including performance art, experimental radio, video, photography and installation art. His ten books include essays, experimental poetry, performance scripts and chronicles in both English, Spanish and Spanglish. He is a founding member of the art collective Border Arts Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo and director of the performance art troupe La Pocha Nostra.
The GOLEM – to be generative in solidarity rather than be creative in solitude presents the video:
Dancing With Fear Part 1: “Mirror Dance”, 2020, 5’47’
Part 1 of a Film Project in progress. “Dancing With Fear” by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra. Co-directed and filmed by Zen Cohen. San Francisco, California. La Pocha Nostra invites you to preview the screening of this collaborative performance film in progress. The project began in 2014 and it is more pertinent than ever.
The complete series of 6 video performances deal with Body Politics, The Aging Body, Fear of Illness, Love Gone Wrong, US/Mexico relations and the tensions between performance art and the mainstream. www.guillermogomezpena.com
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Leda Papaconstantinou
Since the late 1960s, Leda Papaconstantinou (born in Ambelonas, Larissa, Greece), a pioneer in performance-based works of art in Greece, has enjoyed a long and distinguished career at the national and international level. The wide scope of her performances includes the concept of corporeality in different eras; social conditions and challenges; the need for freedom, and the emancipation of women from obsolete and conservative social beliefs. She often investigates the issue of gender identity. Papaconstantinou is a vocal critic of social rules and restrictions, stressing the capabilities of the body, while trying to trace its transformation in time and space or under different conditions. (Eirini Papakonstantinou, Art Historian and Curator of the State Museum of Contemporary Art.)
She has held over twenty solo exhibitions in Greece and abroad, and has participated in more than sixty group ones. Most notable among these are: Environment-Action (Athens, 1981), Europalia, (Antwerp, 1982), the 20th Biennale of Sao Paulo (1989), Athens by Art (2004). In 2002, her first retrospective was presented at the Vafopoulio Cultural Centre in Thessaloniki. In 2005, her monograph Leda Papaconstantinou: Performance, Film, Video 1969-2004 was published by Cube Editions. In 2006, the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and the 47th International Thessaloniki Film Festival organized presentations of her oeuvre under the same title, at the Benaki Museum, Athens and the (Pascha) Bay Hamam, Thessaloniki.
In 2007, she was artist guest of honour at the 1st Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art. In 2010, she created a large composition entitled Time in my hands for the ‘Monastiraki’ metro station in Athens.
The GOLEM – to be generative in solidarity rather than be creative in solitude presents the video:
Still Frames from “Genet’s toaster – Hommage to Jean Genet”, 1997 (Courtesy of the Artist). 11’ 20’’
(Performance and camera: Leda Papaconstantinou, Carmen Garcia Bartholome, Paul Kourousis. Music supervisor: Theòdoros Sarantìs [Μουσική επιμέλεια: Θόδωρος Σαραντής] Tangos from Argentina, recorded in the early 20th century [Αργεντίνικα τανγκό, ηχογραφημένα στις αρχές του 20ου αιώνα.]. Edited by Dimìtris Ioannidis. Titles by Lorenzo Seseri. Facilities and post production: Mangos Salonica. Producer: Nikos Giannopoulos. The video is also part of a multi-media installation which features in the collection of the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art)
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Stelarc
(born 1946 in Limassol, Cyprus) is an Australian-based performance artist, who has visually probed, acoustically amplified and suspended his body with hooks into his skin. He pioneered the frontiers of the human body, using his own as a medium and exhibition space– a body that “sometimes seems to include the possibility of terminality” (William Gibson). Artist, icon, a phenomenon, and honoured internationally as a distinguished scholar and researcher, Stelarc continues to open up new scenarios on the understanding of the human body related to our time. He has performed with a Third Hand, an Extended Arm and with 6-legged walking robots. He is surgically constructing and stem-cell growing an ear on his arm. Working in the interface between the body and the machine, employing virtual reality, robotics, medical instruments, prosthetics, the Internet and biotechnology, Stelarc is among the most celebrated artists in the world working in the field of technology applied to visual arts.
The GOLEM – to be generative in solidarity rather than be creative in solitude presents the video and live interactive artwork:
Reclining Stickman. 2020, 4’48”
Acknowledgments: Wayne Michell, Ternay – Design Engineering; Mark Harrison, Festo – Pneumatic muscles and technology; AITI, Flinders University – Robot fabrication; Steve Berrick – Interactive software and electronics; Steven Alyian – Technical Coordination, Audio and Video Streaming; Leigh Robb, Curator 2020 Biennial of Australian Art
www.recliningstickman.stelarc.org www.stelarc.org
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Theodoros, sculptor (Papadimitriou) approaches performance as the primitive action of mankind, trying to communicate through the shaping of materials by the primary tool of “matraque”, in order to express basic values. His performances have been sharply criticized at home by the regime press, driving him to wander in France and America, where he will teach Sculpture for a semester in the California State University at Hayward. Between 1970 and 1983 he developed the project Manipulations, in which he tries to communicate through all the senses, breaking the autonomy of “audiovisual culture” of contemporary Arts.
The GOLEM – to be generative in solidarity rather than be creative in solitude presents the video:
Still frame from the performance “Tilehirismos”, 1976, Theodoros, Sculptor, as is was presented in the television show “creators: Thodoros-Sculpture 1970-1974” by George Emirzas, ERT, December 15 1976.
Courtesy of the artist’s estate.
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VestAndPage
VestAndPage’s works range from live performance cycles and collective performance operas, over performance-based films, visuals, sound and poetry to temporary artistic community projects.
They are currently developing the cycle of live collective performance operas HOME, and a performance-based feature documentary on Deep time, as well as a series of videos, in which they host conversations under existential focus with inspiring people from the arts, culture and science.
VestAndPage is an artist duo founded in 2006 by Verena Stenke (Germany) and Andrea Pagnes (Italy), working in contemporary performance art, visual art, and film. Their work is positioned within the social, political and environmental context of spherology, fragility, memory activation and communication, with a strong influence of the artists’ backgrounds in philosophy and theatre. They present meditative and ritualistic performances that challenge impermanence, transformation and self-awareness. Over the past years they have presented their work extensively in Europe, Asia, North America, South America and Australia. They work in extensive collaborations in what they call “collective performance operas”, and create “temporary artistic communities”. An untitled controversial work presented in Singapore in 2011, involves the couple drinking Pagnes’ blood. The artist stated in an interview that blood is “the purest part of me”, and that “I am using drops of my soul to say something.”
The GOLEM – to be generative in solidarity rather than be creative in solitude presents the video:
AMOR AND PSYCHE (In Times of Plagues), VestAndPage, May 2020, HD digital, 16:9, colour,, stereo, 9’24″
sources: artist’s websites, Venice International Performance Art Week & [mind the] G.A.P.- Gathering Around Performance archive, ΙΣΕΤ, Wikipedia