Ou.Un.Po. Greece

Ou.Un.Po. Greece
29 September – 2 October 2011

"Worlds have a longer life than deeds".
Pyndaros

Ouunpo is a three days symposium that will take place in various locations across and around the city of Athens through conventional and non-conventional investigations. The symposium, dedicated to the “oral tradition”, will include performance, round-table discussions, lectures, screenings, visits and walks to various selected sites.

Greece is a country where myths, art, epic and lyrical songs originated from oral tradition and kept alive by travelling poets. This country is also in the limelight due to the current political and economical crisis.

Our visit will be an occasion to investigate the tradition of storytelling and myth as a form of sharing knowledge and performing history, which often stand in opposition to the methodology of institutions. We will try to re-evoke the oral memory of events in contemporary (art) world, with a specific approach to the rituality and the improvisation that are always connected to oral narratives. Performance and initiation to a secret knowledge will be also the objects of our conversations with members of the esoteric milieu and of the masonic lodge.

Inspired by the great religious, theatrical, democratic and artistic traditions of Greece, and in dialogue with local artists, musicians, composers, art historians and curators, we will observe the present moment, and reflect about how a genuine revolutionary movement needs to brake with literal repetition of the past. To perform something means to interpret it, to betray it, to distort it. Boris Groys affirms that “the opposition between living spirit and dead letter informs the whole traditional Western discourse on religion”, but also on art itself, as embodiment of the creative spirit of change.

A symposium proposed by Vanessa Theodoropoulou in collaboration with Nadja Argyropoulou and organised by Alessandra Sandrolini.

When : thursday, 29th september to SUNDAY, 2ND OF OCTOBER

Who : Jacopo Miliani, Meris Angioletti, Raimundas Malasauskas, Marco Pasi, Paola Anziche’, Per Huttner, Alessandra Sandrolini, Yane Calovski, Klas Eriksson, Fatos Ustek, Elena Nemkova, Natasha Rosling, Samon Takahashi, Stephen Whitmarsh.

With : Sasha Chaitov, Nadja Argiropoulou, Marios Chatziprokopiou, Chiara Fumai, Kostantinos Dagritzikou, Iordanis Poulkouras, Stefanos Rozanis, Georgia Spiropoulos, Vanessa Theodoropoulou, Yianna Tsokou, Yorgos Tzirtzilakis + ...

Where : ATHENS, Eleusys, aegina

and in collaboration with Deste Foundation and Six Dogs, Athens