Kevin Schmidt, Sad Wolf (2006)
The figure of the pawn is, for some, the ultimate image of compromise. American psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton coined the term ‘psychology of a pawn’ during his 1961 study of human behaviour in extreme cases of re-education, such as cults or the Chinese under the Cultural Revolution. In such cases, the implementation of a group ideology causes the individual to relinquish personal freedom in favour of servicing the greater cause. Curated by Mari Spirito, ‘Psychology of a Pawn’ at PARTICIPANT INC goes on to examine much more than just extreme behavioural models, as the exhibition advances into a general study of behavioural modification created by society. Behaviour in any group situation always constructs itself through the subordination of individual aims under a common group goal. Exhibiting works by Shai Azoulay, Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio, Alex Israel, Linda Post, Kevin Schmidt and Corin Sworn, Spirito traces these behavioural codes into the realm of the everyday: from education to self-adjustment, traditions, subliminal messages and popular psychology.
The idea of correcting an outside perception though self-correction is examined in Linda Post’s sculptural video installation Glean (2008), comprising two monitors facing each other like mirrors. As if in conversation, the videos expose the intricate negotiations of an individual relating itself to the outside world. These studies consist of intense personal observation paired with constant re-adjustment - a learning scenario in a loop.
Kevin Schmidt’s video projection Sad Wolf (2006) depicts an arctic wolf in captivity. The video is projected from a homemade video projector encased by a dilettantishly put-together plywood construction. The video carefully follows an omega wolf which has been shunned by the rest of his pack, the survival of which depends on a sense of unity created through designating a single outsider. Yet the pack itself is captured in a zoo, an artificial construct created so as to mark otherness and grant a sense of unity to the viewers.
The centre-piece of the exhibition, Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio’s film Arabic Lesson (2005) offers the viewer a very different view on the study of the Koran than is generally shown by the western media. Through repetition and imitation a young second-generation Moroccan boy studies in his Turin home. Mediated though Italian, the Arabic language becomes awkward while his movements in the mosque feel clumsy and strange; words, meaning and movements do not yet move in unison for him. The film reveals the difficulty of the preservation of traditions and culture in a word of multiple, overlaying cultures.
Alex Israel’s collages oscillate between propaganda and school pride. The small works in the style of building-size high-school murals advocate messages such as ‘Go Sheiks’ and ‘Praying hands’. Israel’s clever play with size and content reveals the effects that subliminal messages can have on its surrounding despite the message they carries.
‘Psychology of a Pawn’ offers a sinister vision of human group behaviour. It exposes the dangers of being part of societies, which gain their strength through a collection of communally agreed on truths, which if in question would eliminate the very basis of its existence. Without offering an easy way out, the exhibition leaves the viewer with the question of how to best preserve a sense of individualism while remaining part of a community, how to maintain a position of distance that allows for critical reflection and oppositional thought.
Anna Gritz, Frieze.
14.12.08
If you are in New York, don't miss
RSS
Psychology of a Pawn
PARTICIPANT INC, New York, USA
Kevin Schmidt, Sad Wolf (2006)
The figure of the pawn is, for some, the ultimate image of compromise. American psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton coined the term ‘psychology of a pawn’ during his 1961 study of human behaviour in extreme cases of re-education, such as cults or the Chinese under the Cultural Revolution. In such cases, the implementation of a group ideology causes the individual to relinquish personal freedom in favour of servicing the greater cause. Curated by Mari Spirito, ‘Psychology of a Pawn’ at PARTICIPANT INC goes on to examine much more than just extreme behavioural models, as the exhibition advances into a general study of behavioural modification created by society. Behaviour in any group situation always constructs itself through the subordination of individual aims under a common group goal. Exhibiting works by Shai Azoulay, Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio, Alex Israel, Linda Post, Kevin Schmidt and Corin Sworn, Spirito traces these behavioural codes into the realm of the everyday: from education to self-adjustment, traditions, subliminal messages and popular psychology.
The idea of correcting an outside perception though self-correction is examined in Linda Post’s sculptural video installation Glean (2008), comprising two monitors facing each other like mirrors. As if in conversation, the videos expose the intricate negotiations of an individual relating itself to the outside world. These studies consist of intense personal observation paired with constant re-adjustment - a learning scenario in a loop.
Kevin Schmidt’s video projection Sad Wolf (2006) depicts an arctic wolf in captivity. The video is projected from a homemade video projector encased by a dilettantishly put-together plywood construction. The video carefully follows an omega wolf which has been shunned by the rest of his pack, the survival of which depends on a sense of unity created through designating a single outsider. Yet the pack itself is captured in a zoo, an artificial construct created so as to mark otherness and grant a sense of unity to the viewers.
The centre-piece of the exhibition, Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio’s film Arabic Lesson (2005) offers the viewer a very different view on the study of the Koran than is generally shown by the western media. Through repetition and imitation a young second-generation Moroccan boy studies in his Turin home. Mediated though Italian, the Arabic language becomes awkward while his movements in the mosque feel clumsy and strange; words, meaning and movements do not yet move in unison for him. The film reveals the difficulty of the preservation of traditions and culture in a word of multiple, overlaying cultures.
Alex Israel’s collages oscillate between propaganda and school pride. The small works in the style of building-size high-school murals advocate messages such as ‘Go Sheiks’ and ‘Praying hands’. Israel’s clever play with size and content reveals the effects that subliminal messages can have on its surrounding despite the message they carries.
‘Psychology of a Pawn’ offers a sinister vision of human group behaviour. It exposes the dangers of being part of societies, which gain their strength through a collection of communally agreed on truths, which if in question would eliminate the very basis of its existence. Without offering an easy way out, the exhibition leaves the viewer with the question of how to best preserve a sense of individualism while remaining part of a community, how to maintain a position of distance that allows for critical reflection and oppositional thought.
Anna Gritz, Frieze.
Kevin Schmidt, Sad Wolf (2006)
The figure of the pawn is, for some, the ultimate image of compromise. American psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton coined the term ‘psychology of a pawn’ during his 1961 study of human behaviour in extreme cases of re-education, such as cults or the Chinese under the Cultural Revolution. In such cases, the implementation of a group ideology causes the individual to relinquish personal freedom in favour of servicing the greater cause. Curated by Mari Spirito, ‘Psychology of a Pawn’ at PARTICIPANT INC goes on to examine much more than just extreme behavioural models, as the exhibition advances into a general study of behavioural modification created by society. Behaviour in any group situation always constructs itself through the subordination of individual aims under a common group goal. Exhibiting works by Shai Azoulay, Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio, Alex Israel, Linda Post, Kevin Schmidt and Corin Sworn, Spirito traces these behavioural codes into the realm of the everyday: from education to self-adjustment, traditions, subliminal messages and popular psychology.
The idea of correcting an outside perception though self-correction is examined in Linda Post’s sculptural video installation Glean (2008), comprising two monitors facing each other like mirrors. As if in conversation, the videos expose the intricate negotiations of an individual relating itself to the outside world. These studies consist of intense personal observation paired with constant re-adjustment - a learning scenario in a loop.
Kevin Schmidt’s video projection Sad Wolf (2006) depicts an arctic wolf in captivity. The video is projected from a homemade video projector encased by a dilettantishly put-together plywood construction. The video carefully follows an omega wolf which has been shunned by the rest of his pack, the survival of which depends on a sense of unity created through designating a single outsider. Yet the pack itself is captured in a zoo, an artificial construct created so as to mark otherness and grant a sense of unity to the viewers.
The centre-piece of the exhibition, Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio’s film Arabic Lesson (2005) offers the viewer a very different view on the study of the Koran than is generally shown by the western media. Through repetition and imitation a young second-generation Moroccan boy studies in his Turin home. Mediated though Italian, the Arabic language becomes awkward while his movements in the mosque feel clumsy and strange; words, meaning and movements do not yet move in unison for him. The film reveals the difficulty of the preservation of traditions and culture in a word of multiple, overlaying cultures.
Alex Israel’s collages oscillate between propaganda and school pride. The small works in the style of building-size high-school murals advocate messages such as ‘Go Sheiks’ and ‘Praying hands’. Israel’s clever play with size and content reveals the effects that subliminal messages can have on its surrounding despite the message they carries.
‘Psychology of a Pawn’ offers a sinister vision of human group behaviour. It exposes the dangers of being part of societies, which gain their strength through a collection of communally agreed on truths, which if in question would eliminate the very basis of its existence. Without offering an easy way out, the exhibition leaves the viewer with the question of how to best preserve a sense of individualism while remaining part of a community, how to maintain a position of distance that allows for critical reflection and oppositional thought.
Anna Gritz, Frieze.
11.12.08
Phobos: Doomed Moon of Mars
Explanation: This moon is doomed. Mars, the red planet named for the Roman god of war, has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, whose names are derived from the Greek for Fear and Panic. These martian moons may well be captured asteroids originating in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or perhaps from even more distant reaches of the Solar System. The larger moon, Phobos, is indeed seen to be a cratered, asteroid-like object in this stunning color image from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, recorded at a resolution of about seven meters per pixel. But Phobos orbits so close to Mars - about 5,800 kilometers above the surface compared to 400,000 kilometers for our Moon - that gravitational tidal forces are dragging it down. In 100 million years or so Phobos will likely be shattered by stress caused by the relentless tidal forces, the debris forming a decaying ring around Mars.
NASA
10.12.08
9.12.08
...continued
...as I was telling my friend last night, I consider a waste of time to write how mad and sick and paranoid the killing of a 16 year old boy is because this I take for granted. Maybe one should really not think so.. As proved by reality the life and security of innocent citizens is threatened by the ones that are supposed to protect them. And here one person is to be blamed: a so-called Rambo-cap. But in reality there are two of them, because the killer was escorted by another cap who did not stop his colleague from the crime. In the same way these gorillas in Myconos in the summer did not stop each other when the Australian was killed to death by their beatings. These killers are the result of the same shit that we Greeks live in the last 27 years (since I was born). These killers kill with the same easiness and freedom our politicians have been building their villas with swimming pools on the islands and mainland, the same easiness that they've been moving around people and hire their own duds in high positions on the government, the same easiness they've been spending millions from the taxes we pay in 'bouzoukia' subaculta entertainment shitholes and impose on poor people ways of being. They are the same lads.
It's only this time that all these kids are out and breaking, burning with no sense and understanding (because there isn't any...) that this blanket of shit that Greece is covered with can become white cotton. But not with another Papandreou (and especially this one!) nor with any Karamanlis on stage. It is really the moment for a change! Give it a chance.
Destroyed Greece...
A year and a half ago, I watched the forests of my country burning and burning from the earth's satelites and the state could do nothing but watch and give press conferences. The people I work with in Turkey, were giving their condolesces for the death of this beautiful land and were crying.
This time, from the same distance I watch Athens burning, the Universities burning, the libraries in danger, angry kids in the streets destroying their fathers', our fathers' efforts and work.
Because they never learnt what work means, nobody ever taught them. Because they never learnt what effort really is, because we are all brought up in a system of families and well paid teachers "taking care of us".
Because they know nothing else to do with this anger; they never learnt how to write, how to sing, paint or just scream and cry. There is no hint of civilization.
Because since I was born this country is been in the hands of corrupt greedy monkeys and these four days is the result of their plague. We were never taught what respect for a country really is because there was nothing to respect in the system of fraud, fake stock markets, blond dark haired life style and Grand Cherokees.
These kids have been in schools have entered universities and most probably have graduated and are working or not; doesn't really make any difference but they probably don't work and definitely still live with their parents that pay the bills of their mobile phones, gas for the car and alcohol consumption.
There is no way back. A scene with shields and swords from a local ammunition shop in the centre of Athens can only remind the dark ages. And there will be a lot of time before a rebirth; if any. Nobody can rule this country, because there isn't anything to rule or anybody interested for guidance. Everyone has his own stone in hand and is ready to throw it in the next driver that passes by in faster speed.
I can only hope that is the end. And the end can only mean the possibility of a beginning. If my hope is wrong, I don't want to see what's next to follow, because there can't be anything!
23.10.08
London I
The first two days in London the weather was summery, the skies as always victorious and ended up cycling with Mr.Dagritzikos after a privypriview of Carlos Amorales' show towards the ICA. There Mark Aerial Waller presented...
A great event!
A great event!
9.10.08
10.8.08
Amen by Greece is for Lovers
Beautiful new objects by the great designers team Greece is for Lovers .
I still have to visit the studio.. Soon guys and kisses to Miss Christina
6.8.08
walking mind
It was after midnight and I was walking in Athens, after a nice encounter with friends downtown, sweaty and unavoidably full of expectations... At least I was full of.. It seems like every night during the Athenian summer is in search for the miraculous... At least for me. I am meeting nice and nicer people, talking about the current news, murders, fraud and environmental and architectural ethical limits. Art seems like existing someplace backstage; Hüseyin was in a way correct: in such a mystical and beautiful place art and its production and politics come in the second place; even for all of us that live in and for it. The Goya etchings were divine. I also love Angelidakis' hut on bios' terrace. I wonder how the yama looks.. Woody Allen. And I walked all the way to the parked car classifying building entrances according to flora, wood and marble. So real but still so far from now. Athens is made for walking; and thinking. Maybe we had enough of talking.
5.8.08
Athens...
On Sunday we drove all the way, passed through people and places, drove through the small tunnel, and suddenly as if by magic we were in Athens. But not the one we left behind.. the other one. And spent all day in Paradise. Around 6 o'clock a man called Yiannis came and took these pictures of mine, told us about secret coral caves and strange species in the underwater.
16.7.08
But before that....
From the window
The window
The other window
Ms.K
Rain on my neighbors' wall
...this morning we woke up and it was like a miracle.
The clouds were so thick and suddenly it felt like a capsule of fall in the middle of the summer. And rain came. I guess because Zeus was in town for a couple of days..
The window
The other window
Ms.K
Rain on my neighbors' wall
...this morning we woke up and it was like a miracle.
The clouds were so thick and suddenly it felt like a capsule of fall in the middle of the summer. And rain came. I guess because Zeus was in town for a couple of days..
15.7.08
11.7.08
The Museum of Archaeology, Istanbul 6.7.8
Outside the Archaeological Museum, a beautiful Medusa head. So hard to believe the apotropaic... There was a great exhibition on the Artemision, a site dedicated to the goddess. Was looking for a small statue of her majesty I'd seen there two years ago but besides the help of the sweetest guards I didn't manage. Maybe I dreamt of it.. The Museum of Archeology (as it's called) is one of my favourite places here.
A Roman comic actor
A guy
The Room of Emperor Hadrian, one of the most beautiful
And the remnants of Troy..
"One immediately rejects human sacrifice, although there is an ancient Ionian and ancient Attic custom which can be brought into connection here: that of the Pharmakos, the scapegoat. Once a year, during the Thargelia festival in spring, a man or a woman was led out in front of the city, scourged on the genitals, driven away or stoned, as is frequently related by the Ionian-Lydian poet Hipponax, who lived in Ephesos and certainly knew the custom from first hand experience. It is therefore conceivable that this purification ritual, and the connected killing of the scapegoat, that is of a human, took place at the altar of the sanctuary of Artemis" Text: Anton Bammer
A Roman comic actor
A guy
The Room of Emperor Hadrian, one of the most beautiful
And the remnants of Troy..
"One immediately rejects human sacrifice, although there is an ancient Ionian and ancient Attic custom which can be brought into connection here: that of the Pharmakos, the scapegoat. Once a year, during the Thargelia festival in spring, a man or a woman was led out in front of the city, scourged on the genitals, driven away or stoned, as is frequently related by the Ionian-Lydian poet Hipponax, who lived in Ephesos and certainly knew the custom from first hand experience. It is therefore conceivable that this purification ritual, and the connected killing of the scapegoat, that is of a human, took place at the altar of the sanctuary of Artemis" Text: Anton Bammer
5.7.08
A Day in the past. Platres, Mont.Troodos
The poster
Christodoulos and Andri Panayiotou
And old postcard...
...and some things that stay the same.
The hotel's sign, a deer.
Christodoulos was driving all the way, we passed through the dried dam of Alassia, found forgotten water resources at the uncle's abandoned house and the kids left a note; I didn't understand whom for.. Beautiful big trees appeared and the poet was coming to my mind more and more. Colonial beautiful red-bricked constructions, the house of Cleopatra, all remnants of other days, of wealth and hierarchies. I thought of India, Egypt and other explored lands. Passing the arched gate we arrived at the 1930's Forest Park Hotel. The walnut sweet was divine, Mr.Kostas with the star sapphire on his ring and its story, the pool in the forest, made us all hang between the past and the future that the present is.
Christodoulos and Andri Panayiotou
And old postcard...
...and some things that stay the same.
The hotel's sign, a deer.
Christodoulos was driving all the way, we passed through the dried dam of Alassia, found forgotten water resources at the uncle's abandoned house and the kids left a note; I didn't understand whom for.. Beautiful big trees appeared and the poet was coming to my mind more and more. Colonial beautiful red-bricked constructions, the house of Cleopatra, all remnants of other days, of wealth and hierarchies. I thought of India, Egypt and other explored lands. Passing the arched gate we arrived at the 1930's Forest Park Hotel. The walnut sweet was divine, Mr.Kostas with the star sapphire on his ring and its story, the pool in the forest, made us all hang between the past and the future that the present is.
3.7.08
If you are in Cairo tonight....
... curator Özge Ersoy will present the screening 'we've seen it all' with works by Haris Epaminonda, Emre Hüner, Christodoulos Panayiotou and Eftihis Patsourakis at the Townhouse Gallery.
Enjoy!!!
PROBLEMS OF EVERY DAY LIFE// Eftihis Patsourakis in Rodeo
The room on the left...
A beautiful erase painting
The installation of 'Sand' in the right room
'Sand' close-up
18.6.08
10.6.08
On heroes..dedicated
What's with humans and horses?
Regretting i didn't buy the wooden horse from the market on Sunday.. I had these photos from the arab image foundation I've been meaning to upload for ages; now is the time since all heroes died.
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