Learning from documenta is a two-year research project situated between anthropology, art and the media and interested in the move of part of the international contemporary art exhibition documenta 14 to Athens in 2017.Documenta 14, a major cultural event with significant political and economic parameters for Greece, is already in the making. It is entitled “Learning from Athens,” putting processes of knowledge, and power, at the core of artistic production. While the many different contributors to the documenta exhibition will be learning from Athens our project in turn seeks to learn from documenta: Artists, anthropologists and other cultural contributors from Athens and Europe and beyond will use their knowledge and their tools to experiment with different approaches to this event.
Learning from documenta which began in October 2015 is an occasion for important methodological and theoretical innovation: anthropological ways of working will be combined with artistic interventions and the “Athens Arts Observatory”, a collaboration with the media which will engage the general public in a dialogue on relevant issues. Learning from Documenta is a research project which aims at critically observing and discussing aspects of documenta’s presence in Athens with reference to other artistic, economic and sociopolitical developments in Greece and internationally.It has four main sections: 1) anthropological research through participant observation focused on documenta 14; 2) academic collaboration locally and internationally; 3) artistic interventions; 4) a platform where the research will be made accessible through the media.An initiative of TWIXTlab with the support of the Department of Social Anthropology, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences and the Athens School of Fine Arts
Coordinated by Elpida Rikou & Eleana Yalouri
The Athens team
Aris Anagnostopoulos, Christina Anagnostou, Natasa Biza, Eva Giannakopoulou, Gregoris Gougousis, Fotini Gouseti, Sofia Grigoriadou, Dimitra Kondylatou, Katerina Konstantinou, Kyveli Lignou-Tsamantani, George Manoudakis, Giorgos-Ilias Sakkas, Giorgos Samantas, Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki, Alexandra Siotou, Ethnofest – The Athens Ethnographic Film Festival
Collaborators
Thomas Fillitz, Apostolos Lampropoulos, George Marcus, Roger Sansi-Roca, Arnd Schneider, Chris Wright
