Strategies of/in Space | Onassis Foundation

On Thursday, June 2, 2022, at 20:00-22:00 we are happy to invite you to a book launch and performance with Carsten Lisecki, Moiz Salman, and Georgios Papadopoulos.

The new book of Carsten Lisecki, "Urbane Handlungs-spielräume" (UdK Berlin, 2022) collects a series of (mostly) performative interventions in public space proposing an innovative and fruitful way of conducting social research and addressing questions about the development of urban space, the role of culture, the antics of gentrification and the possible spaces for resistance. In a similar fashion the sculpture and painting of Moiz Salman, rethinks space and develops a conceptual analysis of politics and the constitution of subjectivity in contemporary Αthens. Moiz argues that colors can both create and destroy something, throwing it in the shade or highlighting it. Violence and colors, shadow and shapes can be from the artist’s point of view –modes or representation.

Bringing the two artists together, an unlikely pair both in terms of media and in terms of background, could nonetheless offer useful dialogue between practice-based and practice-led research, which can interrogate the social constitution of space and the antagonisms around it. Hosting a dialogue between performance and visual art, social research and conceptual study, can activate artistic research by juxtaposing two projects with similar intention, but different thematics and methodologies.

The event will start with the launch of the freshly published book by Carsten Lisecki –the first ever public presentation of book– in dialogue with the former Οnassis AiR participant Georgios Papadopoulos followed by a live painting performance, based on Moiz Salman’s most recent study on subjectivity, power and violence, made even more relevant by the proliferation of conflicts –political, environmental, cultural– in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Carsten Lisecki, Zukunftsforschung Stadt 2b, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.

BIOS

Carsten Lisecki studied fine arts and art history at the Capar-David-Friedrich-Institut at the University of Greifswald and is a graduate (MA) of the Institute for Art in Context of the Berlin University of the Arts. Through performance, video, and painting Lisecki constructs new tools and areas of research as well as a new aesthetic for representing urban life and the role of culture in it. He has presented his work in UdK Berlin, the Αthens School of Fine Arts, the FHXB Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum and the NgBK as well as in transmediale. Lisecki has been the recipient of art awards the most recent being the VG Bild-Kunst 2021. His book "Urbane Handlungs-Spieläume" was just published by the University Press of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

Georgios Papadopoulos has a background in economics, philosophy and artistic research. Transitioning and investigating junctures and liminal spaces was both a conscious epistemic strategy and a tactic against boredom. Currently his practice focuses on the hows and whys of giving and letting go. He is also thinking about his retirement. He has presented his work in the Acropolis Museum, the ICA in London, the transmediale in Berlin and the 1st World Congress of the Hedonist International. Papadopoulos participated in The School of Infinite Rehearsals of Οnassis AiR 2021-22.

Moiz Salman graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Khartoum in 1998 with a specialization in sculpture, subsequently building a connection to painting. He works mainly on marble, clay and iron, while in his painting practice he uses acrylics and oils, with preference for natural and unprocessed pigments, such as brown, henna, ash and ocher. Salman’s practice is ontological, investigating being through beauty. He is influenced by the artists Iwakawa Yukihiro, Jackson Pollock and Francis Bacon, as well as by the philosophers Soren Kierkegaard, Immanuel Kant, and Albert Camus. His works have been exhibited at the University of Sudan in Khartoum, in Mulhouse, in Rotterdam, as well as in Αthens.