ATHENS BIENNALE – Athens 26th October until 12th December

Background  re venues:
The large-scale international exhibition ANTI featuring 100 artists from Greece and abroad will extend to the area around the Old Parliament and the Constitution square (Syntagma).

The works are exhibited in abandoned and unused areas in the city that were identified with the crisis and the social upheaval that has occurred over the last decade. The Esperia Palace Hotel (22 Stadiou st.), the historic TTT (former OTE building, 15 Stadiou st.), the Parliament’s Benaki Library (adjacent to the Old Parliament) and the building of the former TSMEDE (4 Kolokotroni st.). The Biennale aspires to reflect the arrival of the new era after a decade of social and economic crisis.

Artist list and venues

The 6^th Athens Biennale ANTI inhabits a complex of four distinct and important buildings in the historic center of Athens. From October 26 until December 9, 2018, the large-scale international exhibition ANTI, with the participation of approximately 100 artists from both Greece and abroad, will land in the area surrounding the Old Parliament at Syntagma Square.

Though the last three editions of the Athens Biennale have focused on the area surrounding Omonoia Square, the heart of the wounded city, this year’s exhibition transfers us to the area of Syntagma Square. Stadiou, in particular, is a street with vacant, unoccupied buildings, once urban landmarks of Athens, inextricably linked with the city’s recent history.

ANTI’s main venue is TTT, (15, Stadiou str.), an iconic Athenian building that, since the 1930s, has served as the central offices of the Hellenic Telecommunications Organization. The building -a work of the architect Anastasios Metaxas -with its Kafkaesque, administrative architecture and interior design, is a symbol of the transition from analog to digital -the shift from a wired communication era to an early epoch of computers and the contemporary digital age.

Just a few meters behind lies the Benaki Library (2, Anthimou Gazi str.), a property owned by the Hellenic Parliament. The building is largely unknown to the public, and it has been closed since 2004. The Library’s reading rooms once accommodated 30,000 volumes of original books from the collection of the renowned demoticist Yannis Psycharis. His library was purchased in 1924 by Emmanuel Benakis, who promptly donated it to the Hellenic Parliament Library.

In addition to these two venues, the 6^th Athens Biennale will also be hosted at the former Esperia Palace hotel (22, Stadiou str.), once a busy hub of the political, business and cultural scene of Athens until 2010, and the former building of TSMEDE (4, Kolokotroni str.), owned by the public insurance organization EFKA. The use of both buildings is granted to the 6^th Athens Biennale ANTI by the Ministry of Labour, as part of the pilot project of the real estate development of the Social Security Funds and Public Employment Agency in the historic centre of Athens, titled “Recovering properties in terms of social return”.

The artists participating in ANTI inhabit the center of Athens offering a distinct, idiosyncratic and uneasy screenshot of our political, social and cultural momentum.

Today, an oppositional stance, an attitude of ANTI, seems to encompass wide arenas of life, including cultural expressions, identity politics, art labor and media including weird advertising, video games and music video productions. In other words, attitudes of non-conformity, dissent and alternativeness are rapidly becoming canonized and commodified. How can we tackle the dynamic dialectics between ANTI‘s eruption and ANTI’s commodification?

The artists in ANTI interrogate the post-digital era, scenarios of transhuman enhancement, cults of wellness as well as bodily and spiritual transformation. They do so by devising structures of everyday life: from the gym to the shopping mall, from the online forum to the sex dungeon, from the office to the political front. The artistic devices composing the 6th Athens Biennale reveal the dangers of today’s neo-reactionary revolt, asking what might motivate reactionary emotions and fantasies and how to change the current structures of pleasure.

Participating artists: Spyros Aggelopoulos*, Monira Al Qadiri, Loukia Alavanou, Korakrit Arunanondchai & Alex Gvojic, Ivana Bašić, Tianzhuo Chen, Chim Pom, Sarawut Chutiwongpeti*, Brody Condon*, Celia Daskopoulou, Ted Davis, Danielle Dean, JP Downer, Nina Runa Essendrop*, Georgia Fambris, Cao Fei, Ed Fornieles*, Angelos Frentzos, Sarah Friend, Front Deutscher Äpfel, Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė, Eva Giannakopoulou, Gigas, Joey Holder, Carsten Höller, Callum Leo Hughes*, Actually Huizenga (of Patriarchy), Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman & Daniel Keller, Binelde Hyrcan, Maryam Jafri, Sascha Jahn & TheBoundCollective, Jakub Jansa, Geumhyung Jeong, Kahlil Joseph, Florence Jung, Raja’a Khalid*, Joy Kolaitis, Peter V. Kritikos, Laboratory for Microclimates*, Euripides Laskaridis / Osmosis*, Delaine Le Bas*, Candice Lin, Fei Liu, Rachel Maclean, Basim Magdy, Miltos Manetas, Marianne Maric, Eva and Franco Mattes, Metahaven, Quenton Miller, Molleindustria, Shana Moulton, Sirous Namazi*, Narcissister, New Models, Pinar Öğrenci, Marisa Olson, Uģis Olte & Morten Traavik, Omsk Social Club*, Ilias Papailiakis, Eva Papamargariti*, Yuri Pattison*, Heather Phillipson, Signe Pierce*, AnnaMaria Pinaka*, Wong Ping, Michail Pirgelis, Agnieszka Polska, Lykourgos Porfyris*, Porpentine Charity Heartscape, Johannes Paul Raether*, Jon Rafman*, Kosta Rapadopoulos / Jasin Challah, Tabita Rezaire, Roee Rosen, Iepe Rubingh, Saeborg, Tai Shani*, Heji Shin, Aliza Shvarts*, Helle Siljeholm*, Marianna Simnett, Linnéa Sjöberg, Panos Sklavenitis*, Marilia Stagkouraki, Jenna Sutela, The Agency, The Domestic Godless*, The Peng! Collective*, Ryan Trecartin, Theo Triantafyllidis, Anna Uddenberg*, Nicole Wermers, Tori Wränes, Lauren Wy, Lu Yang, Young Boy Dancing Group, Costas Zapas, Zhala*

*The asterisk denotes the 25 new productions.