Athens Biennale

The 3rd Athens Biennale 2011 MONODROME is considered the final part of a trilogy which started with DESTROY ATHENS 2007 and continued with HEAVEN 2009. Drawing upon the life and work of Walter Benjamin and inspired by his book by the same title (One way Street, 1928), MONODROME is curated by Nicolas Bourriaud and X&Y (Xenia Kalpaktsoglou and Poka-Yio, co-founders of the Athens Biennale). It is a narrative broadcasting from historical venues in the centre of Athens and articulating an imaginary dialogue between The Little Prince and Walter Benjamin. As the intellectual retreats defeated in the face of the escalated distress, the Little Prince keeps questioning this condition with the disarming innocence and the plainspoken boldness of a child.

MONODROME is being realized despite the Crisis that affects Greece heavily. Produced in a state of emergency, and through the synergy of all participants and a large group of volunteers, MONODROME assembles the diverse pieces of an exploratory puzzle, addressing the "here and now". At the same time the exhibition attempts to question historical narratives that have functioned as dictums of the Greek sociopolitical and aesthetic identity and resulted in the country’s perennial suspension between a ‘before’ (tradition) and an ‘after’ (modernization). Being usually perceived and promoted as an emblematic city, Athens today is the epicentre of the Greek upheaval, a place of massive demonstrations and public discussions.

MONODROME addresses and emphasizes various structures (national, historical, political, cultural, educational etc.) as well as the notion of the “sociology of institutions”, primarily highlighted by the selection of the exhibition venues. The buildings that host the 3rd Athens Biennale take centre stage in MONODROME: Diplareios School at Plateia Theatrou is a seminal Arts & Crafts School that operated for the largest part of the 20th century. Located in a ghostly, degraded block in the heart of the city that had fallen into oblivion, the building is opening up to the public for the first time in its history. The 3rd Athens Biennale transforms Diplareios School into an international hub that hosts the largest part of the MONODROME exhibition, as well as a diverse programme of live events, performances, workshops and lectures creating rather than illustrating a political moment.

The exhibition continues in a complex of venues and museums at Eleftherias Park (Park of Liberty), including the Arts Centre and the Eleftherios Venizelos Museum, focal site of Modern Greek history. Artworks are put side by side with historical archives, documents artifacts and ‘ruins’, mapping Greece and the 3rd Athens Biennale as a derelict museum that transmits and resists the predetermined downfall. At a time when History is unfolding at accelerated pace, art cannot but defy the reproduction of teleological pronouncements and the One-Way-Street is questioning the lust for self-flagellation and catastrophology.

The 3rd Athens Biennale 2011 MONODROME is a collective discourse of artists, art groups, curators and theorists, reflecting on the complex relations between the global and the local, in an attempt to explore new modes of cultural action that open up dialogue and debate, comment on cultural production and revisit relations between (art) histories and subjectivities. It consists of three intertwined modes: the MONODROME exhibition & projects, the MONODROME Debate, the MONODROME online Channel. Furthermore, a series of exhibitions and events organized by cultural institutions, museums and galleries in Athens are included in MONODROME Parallel Events.

Curators: Nicolas Bourriaud, Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Poka-Yio

Participants:

Bas Jan Ader
David Adler
Archisearch
Aristide Antonas
Badlands Unlimited presenting Phaedrus Pron by Paul Chan
Vassili Balatsos
Kostas Bassanos
Hans Op de Beeck
Filanthi Bogea
Pierre Bonnard
Yannis Bournias
Andrea Bowers
Vlassis Caniaris
Freddie Carabott
Paul Chan
Pantelis Chandris
Nikos Charalambidis
Marcus Coates
Ida-Marie Corell
Cultural Center of Olympic Airways Employees’ (POLKEOA)
Josef Dabernig
Daily Lazy
Mark Dion & Robert Williams
Documentation Team MONODROME
Jimmy Durham
Shannon Ebner
Sean Edwards
Elmgreen & Dragset
Matias Faldbakken
Floater
Robert Florey & Slavko Vorkapic
New Forms of Life
Dimitrios Galanis
Liam Gillick
Jean-Luc Godard & Anne-Marie Miéville
Katerina Gogou
Vangelis Gokas
Jens Haaning
Vasileios Hatzis
Imagine the City
Yota Ioannidou/Teresa Maria Diaz Nerio
Georgina Kakoudaki & 4Frontal
Stelios Karamanolis & Toula Ploumi
Agni Katzouraki
Michalis Katzourakis
KAVECS (Vana Kostayola – Kostis Stafylakis)
Janice Kerbel
KERNEL (Pegy Zali, Petros Moris, Theodoros Giannakis)
Jakob Kolding
Nikos Koundouros
Panayiotis Lambrou
Julien Langendorff
Oliver Laric
"Leaking" Intervention
Esther Lemi
Lucas Lenglet
Norman Leto
Andreas Lolis
Tonis Lykouressis
LuckyPDF
Makis Malafekas
Caroline May
Vassilis Mazomenos
Metahaven
Tracey Moffat
"Neos Aristophanes", Periodical circa 1889-1894
Yannis Oikonomides
Henrik Olesen
Orizontas Gegonoton
Jean Painlevé
Rallou Panagiotou
Maria Papadimitriou
Rena Papaspyrou
Christos Papoulias
Vicky Pericleous
Paris Petridis
Phrixos
Angelo Plessas
Julien Prévieux
The Public School in Athens
Józef Robakowski
Tom Sachs
San Francisco Actor's Workshop / Herbert Blau
Lindsay Seers
Kostas Sfikas
Dionysis Sotovikis
Spyros Staveris
Studio Karamanolis
Fiona Tan
Tank tv
Yannis Theodoropoulos
Theophilos Hatzimichael
Harald Thys & Jos de Gruyter
Jalal Toufic
Under Construction
Yorgos Vakirtzis
Ino Varvariti
Vangelis Vlahos
We Never Closed
Yelp Danceco.
Uygur Yilmaz
Liu Zheng