Negotiating between the familiar and unfamiliar: new approaches in portraiture and architecture by Vasilis Vasiliou

Curator's Cut (Ellada)

This was my second time working with Vasilis. The first time, it was rather remotely, I was not directly involved in the FA/DE mural project in which he was working with Nurtane Karagil to produce a mural in Deryneia. However, following the process of their work intrigued me, the complete exposure of public art, the permanent impermanency, and how an artist goes through their own process to create. 
What you see below is a conversation i had with Vasilis on the morning of Oct. 13th. what you see in italics, are my comments:


i asked about his difficulties, with his own creative process:

-       he started off with an interest to collect information from architecture and the past of Famagusta. The difficulty would be to break it down and put it together as a concept. The process entailed studying a lot, collecting info, and breaking it down to visuals.  True to his process, on Wednesday lunchtime he had a blackout. he had a moment that he thought he would not be able to get out, to re-emerge from the research. 

what unlocked him:

-       the critical review, it was then that he understood what he was doing. He became familiar with what he was doing and merged it with the techniques he has been using.

what kept him curious about the subject matter:

-        on his visits to Famagusta, he discovered ruins and architecture. it was interesting that they were in such a small space. the concentration of relics of the past* in Famagusta is indeed impressive, they exist among the living, as a constant reminder of the layers of history and memory. The process was interesting, to have a walk through history.  it was creating a route through the buildings/ monuments that was not easy.

*Historian Eric Hobsbawm in "Age of Empire" (1987) calls historical time before personal memory as “remote periods”.  He claims that “such periods may survive exclusively through the inanimate relics of the dead: words and symbols, written, printed or engraved, material objects, images.” (4). Famagusta presents such a rich collection of relics, that a feeling of loss is completely justified: materials, symbols, styles, narratives, overlapping, consecutive and concurring. 

what is the difference with his earlier work:

-        sometimes he tries to communicate immediately what he feels and what he does. information came from his own experience. he was researching through humans, observing behaviour and understanding it; a more socio-cultural observation. 

      This project was personal in another way.  he did not position himself when creating the work. 

      “fly on the wall portraiture”

      He advanced the way he understands and conducts research. Gulgun’s help and the Critical review process allowed him to break down the elements.  

why did he use a live model for the portrait in the artwork:

-        when he was lost, he asked Nurtane if she would pose for him. he felt that if he did something with someone he knew, it would simplify things.  going back to more rooted situations. the comfort of a human body, next to the rough texture of buildings and historical narratives, the familiarity of a voice and a breath, next to the voiceless and endlessly manipulated. 

Layering the City

Day 6:

Curator's Cut (Gülgün):

Time is now tight, the Open Door Festival opens on Saturday and we are getting closer to the technical 'rehearsal' night on Friday. This is pushing the artists to commit and finalize their work and the location of the projections. As a result, the pace of production has picked up and so has the stress level of participants.  Our focus has been on refining concepts, testing and marrying the space and its context with the artwork. How does the meaning change when projected on a tree versus a wall? Is the space overwhelming the artwork, does the meaning get lost when presented in a public square versus a side street. Lots of questions and the answers and decisions need to be explored and made practically.

Dicle & Aliki's images processing the idea above and working with the actual space below. 

The issues to consider with the location of the work are the relationship between the materials of the piece and the materiality/history/context of the square. The artist's original location choice, inside the arches of the main square was not available, now they test an alternative location. How does the marriage of the everyday, intimate feminine objects associated with female labor and maintenance work in a formal public space? 

(Vasilis Vasiliou's test image on the Venetian palace walls)

Vasilis, finalized his location in the ruins of the Venetian Palace wall. This 16th century palace, the original residence of the Venetian Governor, was known as the Palazzo del Provveditore. The art piece draws on the architectural history left behind by each period of colonial rule on Cyprus: The Byzantine Period (AD 324-1191), Early Frankish (1191-1192), Lusignan (1192-1489), Genoese (1373-1464), Venetian (1489-1571), Ottoman (1571-1878) and British (1878-1960). Each period is represented by a combination of architectural remnants and coat of arms, a reminder of Cyprus'   complex, multi-layered, multi-cultural past and present.

(Adi's test image on the Venetian Palace walls)

Olgu's concept involves animating the legends and stories of Famagusta. These stories are urban myths based on historic events, ghost stories and tales told by mothers to scare their children. Olgu who is from Famagusta, combines these remembered fairy tales into surrealist video collage.

(Olgu's test image)

Study on the play of light and shadow on dancing fabrics: 
a work in progress by Aliki and Dicle

Curator's Cut by Ellada 

In the process of creating their piece, the artists explored the interplay between elements in different spaces around the city. More open and public spaces, more private and restricted places. Discussions focused on making artwork accessible, in contrast to making it discoverable. Audience development questions, in an urban space with little interactions with this type of work and processes. 

Study on the interplay between space, people and fabric in a Famagusta Passageway
Visuals by Aliki

Video by Aliki

Notes on "Investigating Place", by Chrystalleni Loizidou

Curated by Ellada

Chrystalleni visited the residency and stayed with us for a couple of days over the Oct 6-7 weekend, participating in activities and discussions. She registered her thoughts on GoogleDoc, which she continued feeding after she left Famagusta.

What you see here was extracted on Thursday, Oct. 11th, around noon.

How do we begin to investigate place?

Introducing the question

This is a live document, with the mission of addressing, in text, the particularities of experiencing

and responding to 'place’. It puts words to the need for a methodological deconstruction,

or a creative transcendence of experiential biases that seem inherent in the residency format.

It invites, as a starting place, a critical consideration of the (Foucauldian) govermentalities,

or structured limitations on behaviour, performance, creativity and experience, and the

possibilities of response that we impose on this parachute mode of 'being’.  The need to address

this (always already here) question or 'position of intellectual uncertainty’ is beautifully predicated

in (Im)permanence and lives at the heart of this week-long invitation.

Methodology

Notes from “Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It” Carlo Ginzburg;
John Tedeschi; Anne C. Tedeschi in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 20, No. 1. (Autumn, 1993), pp. 10-35.

In one of the earliest uses of the term, scholar Luis Gonzalez, inserted the word microhistory into the subtitle of a monograph. The book investigates, within the span of four centuries, the transformations experienced by a tiny, "forgotten" village. But the minute dimensions are redeemed by its representative characteristics. Besides the fact that Gonzalez was born and lived there, this is the element that justifies the choice of San Jose de Gracia over a thousand other villages just like it. Here microhistory is synonymous with local history, written, as Gonzalez stressed citing Paul Leuilliot, from a qualitative rather than a quantitative perpective. The success enjoyed by Pueblo en vilo (re-printed and translated into French) persuaded its author to theorize about its methodology. Gonzalez distinguished microhistory from the anecdotal and discredited petite histoire; and he reiterated its identity with what in England, France, and the United States is called local history, and which Nietzsche had defined as "antiquarian or archeological history."

Finally, to counteract the objections aroused by the word microhistory, he suggested two alternatives: matria history, suitable for evoking that small, weak, feminine, sentimental world of the mother which revolves around the family and the village; or yin history, the Taoist term that recalls all that is "feminine, conservative, terrestrial, sweet, obscure and painful."

Speaking of Famagusta / dimensions of being in Famagusta

• A sense of never 'knowing enough’
• Notions of Cypriot resilience (and the underbelly of such narratives)
• Emphasis on stories of connectivity, wealth, and trade (syllabary, diving into jewels, transport of animals, relation to Silk Road / offshoot)
• Pikadilli and its surrounding area as representative of....

Microhistory as identifying a Butterfly effect.

Other notes

- Why don't we start each from our latest, most urgent concerns? / Why don't we share with each
other the most advanced articulation of our concerns?

- (Aside from the difference between object and process oriented public art) Don't we
also have to be careful when we say that “the state doesn't exist” in Cyprus / that the state
is a communitarian regime?

- on Nurtane’s answer to artists parachuting / overwriting, overlapping experiences,
the situationist flaneur+cat food: Nurtane's tips and tricks: neighbourhood politics

- on Aycan’s response to not belonging: public art intervention & being backed out

Production time

Day 5:

Curator's Cut (Gülgün)

Things are getting serious, the pressure is on to produce. Pikadilli is our work space for the rest of the week.

Adi is out doing field research with his camera and translator, Deriya. Vasilis and Olgu have decided to collaborate and so have Dicle and Aliki.

The production managers are hard at work talking to city officials, securing permits, permissions working out the details and logistics.

Deriya talking to an official

Aliki and Dicle have made good progress on their ideas, Adi researched the surrounding streets and residents building on the exercise to collect signs. Olgu and Vasilis are having difficulty narrowing down their concept.

Adi collecting images from Famagusta locals 

 working out his idea, merging portraits of locals with images of found signs & graffiti

This evening we tested some of the projection ideas. The video below shows Aliki and Dicle's test of words and phrases collected from around the city on different types of fabric and in different configurations.

                Other considerations include the movement of the material and its affect on the phrases.

Making Choices

Day 4:

Curator’s Cut: (Gülgün)

Today we processed ideas. Having divided the  spent all morning in a critique session, with each artist trying out initial concepts for their projections. In a way, we were taking time to digest information from the last few days, slowing down to take stock and understand what each artist wants to communicate before diving into the technical aspects of production. 

We followed Liz Lerman’s critical response process as a framework for this critique session. I brought this methodology from the US into the group as a tool to support and  encourage active listening and respective responses. Artists and producers responded positively to the process: “ I found it very beneficial and effective” (Dicle).

Intergenerational and cross cultural support is an important part pf the residency and the Lerman process offers us an opportunity to develop a supportive atmosphere for respectful, honest and critical dialogue.

Below is a summary of the ideas:

Adi:

Concept:An emotional mapping project of the ruins and remnants of the city. He will use architectural images these will bring together elements of everything - architectural /all the elements of the city.

Vasilios:

Concept: An emotional mapping project of the ruins and remnants of the city. He will use architectural images these will bring together elements of everything - architectural /all the elements of the city.

Olgu:

Concept: wants to stimulate joy, celebrate the city and its people through old stories, myths  and fairytales of Famagusta. Olgu is from Famagusta has heard mths of the city he growing up. 

Dicle & Aliki:

Concept: they want to focus on the future, not the past. They are interested in community interrelation,  focused on the personal and relational. The artists have a common interest in using fabric, hanging clothes on lines, The idea of supportive communities, sending messages to friends. They would like to project personal supportive messages in three languages onto fabric in the public square.

Having shared these concepts, the afternoon was focused on identifying the location, location, location for the artwork! Below are the buildings we explored in the old city: