Terrains Vagues

An experiential, exploratory project / Το listen to the city

T.A.F. / The Art Foundation presents the project Terrains Vagues, which opens on Thursday May 4 and will run until 14 May 2017.

With the coining of the term «terrains vagues» in the middle of the 90s, Spanish architect Ignasi de Solà-Morales referred to the existing urban voids, the empty «undefined» territories in the contemporary metropolis. These spaces – ruined industrial buildings, abandoned parking lots, obsolete commerical districts- can be approached as inactive terrains, fragmented and separated from the productive logic of the city; terrains that interrupt the continuity of the urban fabric, by generating a condition of awkwardness, uncertainty or disdain, an unfamiliar situation.

Τhe project Τerrains Vagues proposes an exploration and re-examination of the urban vacancy through a series of perfromative and research activities. The void can be seen as a condition for generating possiblities. Through the idea of the void, the notions of intensity, repetition and the sense of «completeness» are understood.

Departing from the assumption that the very concept of the ruin is interwoven with urban exploration, Terrains Vagues invites the walker to listen to the weaving of the contemproary urban landscape through its continuities and discontinuities.

Τhe project consists of walks and workshops in public spaces of Athens, as well as screenings and a sound installation in the exhibition spaces of T.A.F. / The Art Foundation. The closed gallery space will be functioning as an open studio for the students of the Fine Art School of Athens.

Video: Patrick Baxter, Metasitu, Giorgos Samantas

Sound installation: Dana Papachristou (Akoo.o)

Open Studio: Practice of mapping with students from ASFA. Tutor: Sofia Grigoriadou

The closed gallery space will be transformed for 10 days into an open studio. A group of students of the Fine Art School of Athens, enrolled for the Mapping workshop/course along with their tutor Sofia Grigoriadou grapple with the notions of space and representation through mapping through the creations of collective compositions and individual projects.

Participants: Alexandra Charitou, Stella Kavagrou, Vasiliki Koukou, Melina Konstantinou, Eleni Makropopoulou, Eleni Maragkaki, Vladimiros Mitropoulos, Ioanna Michopoulou, Vasileios Okouve

Walks and activities: Akoo.o, ΑΤΑ- Alternative Tours of Athens, Big Olive, Dana Papachristou, Giorgos Samantas

Αkoo.o | The Future ahead of us #2.

Thursday 4/5, 18.00

Walking performance. Participants are invited to transfer themselves to the linguistic universe of Aymara of the Andean highlands and to explore their relationship with time.

To participate, please send email to home@theartfoundation.gr

Dana Papachristou | Passagenwerk

Friday 5/5, 18.00

Walk in the arcade of Athens, Space – Time and Active Listening in the public space.

To participate, please send email to home@theartfoundation.gr

ΑΤΑ – Αlternative Tours of Athens | Urban fallow

Wednesday 10/5, 17.00

From Syntagma to Omonia, stories of condensation and emptiness, a participatory reading of space.

To participate, please send email to info@atathens.org.

Giorgos Samantas| What remains? what ruins?

Friday 12/5, 18.00

Participatory walking workshop, sketching upon the relation between the exhibition "white cube" and the urban public space.

To participate, send email to home@theartfoundation.gr

ΑΤΑ – Αlternative Tours of Athens | Workshop

Saturday 13/5, 11.00

Participatory design workshop in public spaces around the Omonoia square.

To participate, please send email to info@atathens.org.

Giorgos Papamatthaiakis - Big Olive | Urban Fermentations

Saturday 13/5, 12.00

To participate, please email to info@bigolive.org

The areas west of Athens have nested the productive sector of the Greek capital throughout the 20th century. The districts around Omonoia, in particular, have successfully catered to a palimpsest of populations of various classes and ethnic groups. Contemporary practices and beliefs gradually led secondary industries out of town, leaving remnants of production spaces behind; empty building carcasses and brownfields are today landscapes of potential development.

This stroll follows the social fermentations and mutations in the former productive areas of Psyrri, Metaxourgheio and Kerameikos. It tells a story of successive expansion, dislocation and gentrification by providing a deeper insight into the current urban geography of developing territories of the centre.

Nikos Magouliotis - Big Olive | Spolio-logy of Athens

Sunday 14/5, 18.00

To participate, please send email to info@bigolive.org

Athens is a city assembled by a variety of fragments of different historical phases. Its present image is co-formed by many layers of history, often simultaneously visible and in unexpected contiguities. The walk Spoliology of Athens on Philopappou Hill will focus on the architecture of the city and how its architectural fragments (spolia, as named by archaeologists) have been used in different cases for the construction of the incongruous mosaic of the city and its buildings.

Curated by: Christina Dilari, Ifigneneia Papamikroulea, Dana Papachristou, Giorgos Samantas

Duration: 04.05 -14.05.2017

Gallery hours: Mon – Sat 12.00-21.00, Sun 12.00-19.00

Admission free

Address: Normanou 5 , Athens 105 55 , Monastiraki