aAportfolio2014

aA athanasios

anagnostopoulos

aanagnostopoulos.com oaao213@gmail.com

aA

PROJECTS//

.text

5

.f00l

7

.gender[symbol]

9

.sexual anti-propaganda .gaze me .sexual orientation_net confusion

11 15

19

.gender it!

21

.Personal Income Statement Office - ΓΔΕ

23

.consuming my image

27

.MARKET

29

.bio

30

aA//PROJECTS// 3.

.4

.text

Through aA projects, my work explores the ways in which the subject approaches perception systems, which are related to its position towards its own ‘ex-sistence’*. The ‘outside’ and the ‘inside’, the individuality in its link to the social are the axes on which the artistic text of my work is articulated.

Systems of thinking or of perception become the starting point of an attempt to track their functions and structures through the political while questioning the limits of ‘artistic expression’.

Having previously passed through academic areas of the natural sciences, the question as to the meaning or what serves the very language of visual expression emerges in every new venture, in an attempt to search for a critical view on the very notion of the aesthetic result.

My work is often articulated by appropriating the aesthetics of dominant apparatuses, structures or systems through which takes place the construction of subjectivities and the identifications of the contemporary social, discursive being. In the context of the present socio-political instability and uncertainty I attempt to elaborate on the fluidity of definitions and identities with respect to their functions and the examination of their limit points, through various practices, processes and media.

*as a lacanian term.

aA//PROJECTS// 5.

.6

.f00l

«f00l» places the reading of the Fool’s card of Taro on the basis of perversion, far from mystical considerations/explanations.

The dog, grabbed by somewhere between the legs of the Fool, as from his testicles, is the starting point.

Zero [0] is being switched repeatedly between g0dd0g in the articulation of a perverted narration, which is framed by Freud’s name - his particular relationship with his dogs.

In the video, a line of elements unfolds, wich by forming a set of connections, it attempts some leaps through language, text and image in a narrative chain.

. HD video / 4.11 min / single channel / (video stills)

aA//PROJECTS// 7.

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.gender[symbol]

A symbol of the gender, open to multiple reads while rotating about its horizontal axis. It is continously recreated while on a repetitive movement.

It is associated with the ‘performed gender’ and the gaze.

aA//PROJECTS// 9.

A site-specific environment for reading, viewing and getting information (the space is originaly used for higher education courses). The viewer can watch four feature films and consult a bibliography of literature and theoretical texts related to sex, sexuality, gender theory, queer politics, political theory, psychoanalysis, pornography, art etc. It works as a space for anti-education or anti-propaganda (within a private educational institution) where issues of gender, sexual identity and behavior are approached through different routes of theory and art, using a room of the building which during the semesters serves as a room for education, a room where lessons are given to students.

The films deal with similar issues in an unorthodox way, testing the limits of sexual -or non- behavior. Every two films are of a nearby production date, on the one hand those of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, after an intense period of political mobilization and such movements for a sexual revolution and on the other hand those of the first decade of the 21st century.

The space stayed open in office hours for ten days after the opening of the exhibition inviting visitors to come and return back again, feeling like it is not only an exhibition space but one that serves as an open library, a place for information and discussion (or conflict).

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.sexual anti-propaganda

.in situ installation / dimensions variable ( installation view )

aA//PROJECTS// 11.

Movies: Funeral Parade of Roses [1969] Female Trouble [1974] I.K.U.[2000] The Raspberry Reich [2004]

.in situ installation / dimensions variable ( installation view )

.12

.sexual anti-propaganda

.censorship notice at the entrance of the exhibition spacespace, A3

aA//PROJECTS// 13.

A4 symbol prints inside drawers 4 qr-symbol prints inside drawers / 104 x 71 cm each

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.gaze me

The videos are related with the point of the imposition of the assumption of sex and sexual identity, a process that is more probably outside the field of the conscious.

Water as a nearby yet uncanny ‘reality’ and the fish that inhabit it, withdraw the embryonic state where the liquid element is the environment in which the fetus lives and at an early stage in the development of its sex organs, firm conclusions are not allowed regarding its sex, it is potentially both male and female . In the video I extirpate the fish’s eyes, take out their lenses and place them on my eyes.

The lens of the eye that determine the perception of the light and thus the final result of any image, are taken out from a sexless or asexual state, canceling a gaze or rather a minor’s naivety which is ultimately converted into an adult’s debt on the assumption of identity and the support of it.

The videos are not shown directly. They are represented by QR codes, which when scanned, link to the url where one can find and watch them. Τhe codes, mainly used for advertising purposes, are placed inside the drawers, assuming that this way, the arrengement becomes a metaphor for a place hermetic and introspective, a space that consists of a variety of locations and content, similar to that of the unconscious, which calls the visitor to search for the qr codes between the symbols.

aA//PROJECTS// 15.

.HD video / 0.36 min / sound / video blog .HD video / 0.19 min / no sound / video blog

.16

.gaze me

.HD video / 5.48 min / no sound / video blog .HD video / 1.02 min / no sound / video blog

aA//PROJECTS// 17.

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.sexual orientation_net confusion

.HD video / 3.22 min / double channel / sound / (video still)

Sexual identity is sought in the online space, a space where image and self-presentation are so fluid that take roles at will. Like a cyborg in a mixed aesthetic of a digital-web tv environment, I pronounce questions used for determining sexual identity and orientation, found in popular questionnaires and online search engines.

.HD video / 5.18 min / double channel / sound / (video still)

Personal computer’s digital reader and one of a popular online translator are used instead of the voice. The video parallels the confusion of gender and sexuality, with the internet and the confusion of identity, sex, results-answers and language within its space. The expectations for specific answers gives way to relativity or indeterminacy, which are characterizing the internet space as a whole, and further on, they are projected on a social level.

aA//PROJECTS// 19.

.Tablet mounted on WC door / ‘gender’ term in google search

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.gender it!

The digital tablet, a ‘tool’ designed for easier internet access, views the largest online search page, google (in search of the term ‘gender’) which is daily consulted by millions of people, who come from different cultures and social background, in order to receive proposed answers to questions that concern them personaly or issues in general. I place the tablet on the entry door of the toilet, where usually are the symbols of sexes and individuals choose each time an identity in order to use the appropriate space. Here lies a comment on the concept of gender identity, its representation and the search for answers in the online space. This page (google.com) as a digital ‘authority’/company of profit, determines opinions and views on issues that define the human perception, by suggesting results in priority, regulated and determined by advertising rules and funds, or statistical factors.

aA//PROJECTS// 21.

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.Personal Income Statement Office - ΓΔΕ

.installation view / 2nd akto congress, Athens

Personal Income Statement Office (ΓΔΕ), is a participatory action taking place in a special political moment in greece, a period of extensive economical measures that affect widely the sallary levels, while increasing signficantly the unemployment percentage. Issues regarding salaries, incomes and tax policies take central roles in every day thought and public conversations, increasingly positioned against politicians and state apparatuses, while expressing discontent for the political system itself and for the complex bureaucratic procedures of the greek public sector services.

State aeshtetics become the object of appropriation in the ‘ΓΔΕ’. Τhose interested in receiving the action’s text paper are asked to state their income category after consulting a relevant table conserning monthly income categories, each one represented by a different colour. Then the office’s employee (who is already working in the greek public sector and she is familiar with similar procedures) gives a paper of the proper colour after sealing it first, with a round stamp.

The goal is the forming of a literally colorful set of diversities.

aA//PROJECTS// 23.

ΔΗΛΩΣΗ ΕΙΣΟΔΗΜΑΤΟΣ

ΣΕ ΠΟΙΑ ΚΑΤΗΓΟΡΙΑ ΑΝΗΚΕΤΕ ;

Άνεργος/η , άεργος/η [ χωρίς εισόδημα ]

≤ 600€ / μήνα

από 601 έως 1300 € / μήνα

> πάνω από 1300 € / μήνα

Δεν απαντώ

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.Personal Income Statement Office - ΓΔΕ

.installation view / 2nd akto congress, Athens aA//PROJECTS// 25.

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.consuming my image

.video / 4.48 min / single channel / (video stills)

The self as a food or its finite image as an illusion of a food, which leads to nowhere. A process of despair repeated almost obsessively. In the absence of the other the subject ceases to exist and the effort of feeding oneself is hopeless.

The assumption of sex, gender and sexuality are necessarily intertwined with the ‘’outside’’, with the social and the political which always presupposes the Other. The gaze and the image of the self exacerbate anxiety and the vicious cycle of self-destruction while leaving open the scope for a socially unacceptable interpretation, that of the erotic nature of cannibalism.

aA//PROJECTS// 27.

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.MARKET

In an art exhibition organized under the name of a private art education institute, with no official intention of selling the exhibited works, ‘’MARKET’’ is an intervention of/ through an art market sign attached to the labels of some of the works, mimicking a fair-like kind of practice by indicating the already sold ones and thus confusing the visitor. .adhesive labels / (exhibition view)

aA//PROJECTS// 29.

athanasios Anagnostopoulos Born 1989 in Athens Lives and works in Athens, Greece

.group exhibitions

2013

FONLAD Online Festival for Digital Arts, Coimbra, Portugal

2013

About Nothing, BooArt, Athens, Greece

2012

anamesa mas, Medecins Du Monde, Athens Fringe Festival AFF, Technopolis, Athens, Greece

2012

14th International Film Festival of Patras, Patras, Greece

2012

the ID | the ODD, 2nd AKTO Congress, AKTO College, Athens, Greece

.30

.education

2013-2014

.Athens School of Fine Arts (visitor)

2010-2013

.BA (Honours)(1st Class) in Fine Art & Technology, Middlesex University

2006-2010

.Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Sciences, University of Crete

aA//PROJECTS// 31.

aA athanasios anagnostopoulos aanagnostopoulos.com oaao213@gmail.com

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