Coalition of the Care-full

After a year of research accompanied by solo exhibitions of Kader Attia, Metahaven and Kapwani Kiwanga, the research platform of State of Concept titled The Bureau of Care continues its activities, working towards a new program in collaboration with local and international collectives, groups, initiatives and (cultural) workers. 

The second stage of the program is entitled “Coalition of the Care-full” and will run for the next three years. The program had its soft launch with the solo exhibition of artist Irini Vourloumis (1941–2021), who had been working for more than 50 years with little public exposure of her work. The exhibition operated as a simple gesture of care, focusing on highlighting the care-full practice within Vourloumis’s work while aiming to re-think what type of care can be enacted towards the work of art after the end of an artist’s life. 

Our first collaboration begins with Athenian collective Temporary Academy of Arts (Y.Ioannidou, E.Karaba, V.Vlahos, D.Zefkili), invited to “take over” the artistic directorship for 2022 to develop Waste/d Pavilion. The pavilion will unfold through a series of “episodes,” focusing on the relation between waste and labour, the body, ecology and language. Artists and researchers have been invited to present different conceptualisations of the notion of Waste/d.

Episode 1 of Waste/d Pavilion titled “For Work, about Work, by Work” opens on April 6. These words, used by American artist Fred Lonidier, serve as a leitmotif to explore different waste/d bodies, places, and their claims. What is the new ‘waste’ of our manifold crises, which bring to the fore how expendable and exhaustible human lives are made to be?

Episode 2 will launch on May 27 with a solo exhibition of Oliver Ressler curated by iLiana Fokianaki. Episode 3, which takes the form of a group exhibition, will launch on October 7. Episode 4 will launch on December 16 culminating the pavilion’s activities. This year-long program curated by PAT will include live events, workshops and screenings. 

The “Coalition of the Care-full” will also be developing enquiry lines for a “care-full” future, made all the more urgent in light of the current energy crisis augmented by the brutal invasion of Russia in Ukraine.

The first part of our parallel program that starts in the fall of 2022 is entitled “Care-full Growing.” It aims to visit modes of practice that propose formats that challenge the current model of turbo-capitalist growth and two of its aftermaths: energy extraction and food scarcity. Inviting scholars, activists, artists and curators that discuss concepts of ‘de-growth’, the program will attempt to map ways of tackling these questions. It will further embark on the ethics of food, working with Food Art Research Network, a wide international network of artists that engage with the politics and aesthetics of food. It will also attempt a mapping of the power of flora and plant knowledge in Greece, in relationship to toxicity, food scarcity and security, developed in collaboration with food researcher and chef Christina Kotsilelou, as well as agronomers and environmental lawyers. 

Lastly, the “Coalition of the Care-full” aims to address the implications of the power structures of art in legitimizing and normalizing toxic agents, starting with a presentation of a code of conduct titled “The Ethics of Collecting,” written by a collective of collectors, which will be central to a panel discussion in Athens on the 26th of April 2021 hosted in collaboration with the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) co-chaired by iLiana Fokianaki and Katerina Gregos.

The programme “Coalition of the Care-full” is part of the project European Pavilion, launched by the European Cultural Foundation, and developed in partnership with the Camargo Foundation, Kultura Nova Foundation, and Fondazione CRT, as an initiative that supports and promotes artistic projects that imagine desirable and sustainable futures for Europe. In 2021, six arts and cultural organisations have joined this new initiative: ARNA (Sweden), Brunnenpassage (Austria), INIVA (UK), State of Concept (Greece), Studio Rizoma (Italy) and L’Internationale (Ljubljana, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain and Poland).