Destroy Athens
Preview: 9th September 2007
Public Opening: 10th September 2007
Duration: till 18th November 2007
Destroy Athens is an attempt to challenge the ways in which identities and behaviours are determined through stereotypical descriptions. The notion of ‘Athens’ – as the archetypal city that has become emblematic in terms of stereotypes – is used as a metaphor for this feeling of extra-determination or entrapment that the stereotype inflicts upon the personal sense of identity and social behaviour. ‘Destruction’ is used as the term for the possibility of action against the stereotype, which however does not automatically offer a substitute in its place, something like an exploration of the violent reaction that someone has when they are trapped, without actually using this reaction strategically to replace something with something else...>>
Curators:
Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Poka-Yio, Augustine Zenakos.

The exhibition How to endure curated by Tom Morton borrows the idea of magic where rituals jave two – apparently unrelated – actions, that is to change the world and at the same time to keep it as it is. Featuring references from Alistair Crowley to Parmenides and Harry Smith, nine artists are invited to create new artworks – rituals that will change the world by preserving it, or to exhibit works that are related to this theme. The picture of Athens they are interested in “preserving” is not that of historical past but the one of contemporary Athens of present, at a time when the world’s eyes are elsewhere. The exhibition aims to move away from the binary notion that preservation is conservative and change is progressive and explore what that move might change in the way we perceive the city and ourselves.

Young Athenians

The exhibition Young Athenians curated by Neil Mulholland & Deborah Jackson presents a group of artists that live and work in Edinburgh. The title forms an ironic reference to the infamous cliché of Edinburgh as the Athens of the North. This – unrealistic – relation of the two cities is used by the artists as a vehicle of commenting on the urban environment they live in. They describe their social and cultural identity and map out the city’s past and current history through an excessive amount of media such as collage, painitng, video, photography and installations.