May 22–27, 2017
What news of tomorrow carries the sea breeze?
Ships are at bay awaiting their share of the world’s daily trade.
Thirsty for fire, refineries pump up the black gold.
Oranges are ripe on the sideway trees.
Every dawn and dusk, Aeschylus’ dreams gather once more within the great wound slashed across the Eleusis hill.
Titans make their cement from another soil, these days.
Debt has built factories and forsaken them equally rapidly.
I see a man running with his dog on a derelict parking space.
People from all corners of the world come and work, meet, settle, or move on.
The ruins are home to new rituals.
Things are produced in diverse scales, for diverse purposes.
Others are unmade, dismantled, or left adrift.
Different histories coexist and diverge.
I recall a line from Filippos Koutsaftis’ movie: “In the plains of separation, lilies will bloom again.”
From the May 22 to 27, Nature Addicts! Fund will host its fifth traveling academy in the city of Eleusis, in the Attica region West of Athens, in partnership with Eleusis 2021.
Curated by Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro, this academy gathers fifteen students and young practitioners from visuals arts, photography, architecture, led by tutors Elena Mazzi (Italy), Nikos Navridis (Greece), Samuil Stoyanov (Bulgaria), Nezaket Tekin (Turkey). Taking the city of Eleusis as a point of departure for investigation and reflection, the programme of workshops, discussions and site visits will explore issues of resilience and urban sustainability. Facing the crisis of modernity, how can art transform the city into a space of imagination, poetry, and attention to life in all its forms?
Participants: Doğukan Çakar, Görkem Gökbulut, Anna Housiada, Mehmet Kadir Arici, Onur Köksal, Maria Lympoura, Andreas Papamichael, Paola Pasquaretta, Nadia Pugliese, Fabio Roncato, Radostin Sedevchev, Radoil Serafimov, Chiara Sgaramella, Silvia Rossi, Samuil Stoyanov, Eirini Tiniakou, Konstantin Zlatarov
Contributors to the programme: Georgios Alexandrou, Nicholas Anastasopoulos, Astarti Athanasiadou, Kelly Diapouli, Alexandros Mistritotis, Kalliopi Papaggeli, Elena Symeonidou
Nature Addicts! Fund was founded in 2011 by Bertrand Jacoberger with the objective of supporting artists and arts organizations concerned with environmental and sustainability issues. The mobile academies hosted by NA Fund aim to bring together emerging artists and researchers from all forms of expression to debate, learn from each other and allow new creative impetus to emerge. The traveling format serves as a source of inspiration as each country, each artistic community has its own unique outlook on the world, influenced by its geographic, political, economic and social situation.
The artistic vision for the Eleusis European Capital of Culture 2021 programme, entitled “Transition to Euphoria,” addresses the contribution of art to building a sustainable future. It attempts to answer the question: “What would a city be like if art and culture were at the heart of both its social and economic development?” Over the next five years, Nature Addicts! Fund will support the city’s project, from research and elaboration phases to the artistic programming in 2021.
Press contact: L’Art en direct / Pascale Cayla / pcayla [at] artendirect.fr
