ER 20070929 _In the name of the merciful God

"The human instinct for growth, development, expansion coming from the person, the tribe, the nation, leads the one body of humanity to fatal antagonisms: a sometimes pleasant and sometimes tragic self-consumption. The fact that made this instinct necessary in order for the weak humans to survive through centuries in an enemy, dangerous environment does not any longer exist. Humanity has been for long now ruling the earth and therefor has to re-evaluate its mentality, its behaviors and its goals. It is emergency to reinvent the reasons of our existence in order to protect ourselves from ourselves."





ΚΟΝΣΤ ΜΠ in order to describe this concept invites Ira Spagadorou (Visual Artist) to present her project "In The Name Of The Merciful God". The two artists created plenty of easy-to-make over-cloths made out of white paper with drawn lines that separate the body parts -the same way that we see a sketch of the cow's parts at a butcher's store. A celebration with people drinking wine and chatting, while all wearing the over-clothes, takes place at the ER at exactly 12:30 at noon.

At the same time a music performance takes place with Marianthi Sontaki reading parts of stock market news of the day and parts of recipes for lamp cooking found in today's newspaper, while at the same time Yiannis Skoulidas (alto saxophone), Giorgos Stathakis (accordion) and ΚΟΝΣΤ ΜΠ (drums) performed Emergency Music sounding like an alert.



In conclusion, the artist continues to develop the "Kill Faith, Not Humanity" concept (ER 20070921, ER 20070915). Humanity has to re-invent the messages that gods carry to it. "God's Latest Will" appears to be a new testament in which God crosses out his last one "Grow and cultivate".

Pins are made and let out for the public:

Download, print and make your own pin:

ER 20070927 _I don't suck money in

"Money under the table is a common practice for public servants in Greece. Even at the national health system. Poor people are forced to spend huge amounts of money in order to receive basic services. It is emergency to stop such practices and gain self respect as a society."

The artist presents a video, posted on the internet the day before, where a physician confesses:
"I'm really ashamed about what's happening. I'd rather stay anomynous though. Plain people come in. Poor people, retired, wage earners. And my colleague physicians treat them as an additional source of income. I'm sorry and ashamed on their account. This is inconceivable to me. It's not a matter of politics, or ideologies or of something similar to these. It's a matter of personal dignity. We are an undignified society. The only thing I can call this is being vulgar. Vulgarity. Those who claim that it's the fault of the statesmen are just hypocrits. It's the fault of each and one of us, of our own individual vulgarity. To put it simply, this is precisely what determines politics. I very much feel vulgar myself, as they are; even though I'm not part of the same scheme. But I don't do something about it either. I'd like to walk around wearing a pin that would state: “I don't suck money in”. But I'm scared. I'm scared they would lynch me."



Additionally he produces pins with the message:
“I don't suck money in”.

Download and make your own pin:

The physician is performed by Marianthi Sontaki.
Text is by ΚΟΝΣΤ ΜΠ.
Any similarity to real events or persons is totally coincidental.

ER 20070926 _Murder Official

"Mass media daily present war as an expected, inevitable human activity. War though is murder in mass scale. This encountering simply proves that humanity is still in the middle of its savage stage of evolution and doesn't seem, for now, to have the mental ability to evolve further on."




On page two of this triptych appear four pages of a past issue of the Colors magazine covered though with a sheet of paper since not all can stand the shock of the pictures presented.
On page three Natali Adrine Karayan presents two texts. One of her own and one by Marguerite Youncenar:

"Find me a pretext / and let me wake up again. / In the silence of the crowds stomping away the memories / of a so called epoch / of peace... / Show me the blindness on nostalgic rooftops of / this devastated city. / Show me resemblance of a notorious darkness / that rose in silence. / Where do you come from and who are your traitors? / Above the warmongers lay threads of clouds / that no longer can we see. / Let me stray as they vanish in chaos. / As chaos is the word that caused / your panic; our panic. / Shall we persevere? I wonder, indeed." Natali Adrine karayan

"Σ'αυτά τα τέσσερα χρόνια του πολέμου, πενήντα οχυρά και περισσότερες από ενιακόσιες πόλεις και χωριά λεηλατήθηκαν και καταστράφηκαν. Ο εχθρός έχασε εξακόσιες χιλιάδες περίπου ανθρώπους. Οι μάχες, οι ενδημικοί πυρετοί, οι επιδημίες, μας άρπαξαν ενενήντα περίπου χιλιάδες. Άμέσως ακολούθησε η αποκατάσταση. Η Αϊλια Καπιτωλίνα ξαναχτίστηκε, σε μια μετριοπαθέστερη εξάλλου κλίμακα. Πρέπει να ξαναρχίζουμε πάντα." Marguerite Yourcenar, Αδριανού Απομνημονεύματα


On the floor underneath the triptych the artist has placed issues of the monthly greek war-related magazines:

ER 20070925 _Memory Connection

Yesterday I received two e-mails. The one was coming from www.kounia.org, an organization representing people that are being born in Greece and the authorities don't provide them with any kind of papers so it's like they don't exist either in this country or in any other place in the world.
The other, was coming from the 1st Athens Biennial announcing an art event related to the 8.855 refugees which have been killed while trying to enter the EU.

Natali Adrine Karayan proposed the idea of connecting the refugee buildings -built in 1935 on Alexandra's Ave. for the purpose of housing Asia Minor refugees- to the gallery through a thread. An action that seeks to bring the refugee buildings to the Emergency Room by using a simple hand-made children's toy (a thread and a plastic or metal pot on each side that transfers sound from one side to the other). A connection for memory-recall at a city of refugees and immigrants.




"A symbolic action. A symbolic act. A symbol. Is a symbol a monument? Does a monument become a symbol?
A symbolic monument or a monumental symbol?"
"A thread crossing... two opposite sides in between... a void. A vacuum. The passage is(?) pilled with an invisible narrative string. Or thread. Depending on its fragility. Le fil narrateur, the narrative string, το αφηγηματικό νήμα. Shouldn't we fill in our missing narrative voids?" N.A.K.

ER 20070922 _Day without cars is a joke

Today is the "Day Without Car" and I rode my bike all the way to the gallery.

Athens, Hermou St. 20070922 11:45am:

"Riding a bicycle in Athens or even being a pedestrian is a terrible experience. On the way I couldn't avoid to breath thick polluted air and car drivers would show me in any way the disturbance I was causing to them. I will abandon my bike at the gallery and use the not-convinient-at-all public transportation to go back home."

"In this city there is no space left to pedestrians, it is dangerous to ride a bicycle and disabled people live imprisoned inside their houses. Day without cars is a joke."

ER 20070921 _Kill Faith, Not Humanity

On the first page of the newspaper Kathimerini (20070920) the prime minister appears to be making an oath in the name of the christian-orthodox religion's God.

"What does this ritual in which the government and the prime minister participate means? Are these medieval figures actually needed in order to verify my vote? Are these persons whom I voted responsible for their decisions and actions or they transfer the responsibility to god's will? Do I have to believe in this god?"

The question that the human need for belief creates to the artist appears here once more (ER 20070915).
On the triptych he brought to ER, on page one he places the newspaper's photograph as found.
On page two he makes the statement: "The day that we will no longer need to devote oaths to gods, we might then feel responsible for our actions".
On page three he presents Caravaggio's painting The sacrifice of Isaac (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) along with the statement "Kill Faith Not Humanity". This statement appears to be the message that the angel delivers to Abraham as "God's latest Will". This way the artist suggests that humanity should look for new messages coming from its gods. He proposes an evolution of the human kind by choice more than by need, that could lead humanity to a future without antagonism, human arrogance and terror.

ER 20070920 _Discourse; Discours; Λόγος

"Discourse; Discours; Λόγος.
What is discourse today? Dis-cursus? Cursus...
Κούρσους. Who speaks the words?
What words are spoken?
Do we become the words?
Or the words become 'we'?"

The new government is set. Voters did their duty and now the greek parliament and the five parties are ready to start the sessions.
Business as usual. Total emergency.

ΚΟΝΣΤ ΜΠ and Natali Adrine Karayan (Social Scientist) formed five "faceless" masks made out of plaster and paper.
Each mask appears to have only mouth from where a specific material for each seems to be extracted in a violent, non-natural way. Five statues imprisoned-tight to their cause, unable to communicate or interact.


An A3 print is placed on the floor infront of the "statues" presenting a dialogue from Plato's Politeia. The dialogue appears cut off from its original meaning: "So, do you remember at the last selection for leaders, what kind of people we selected? Of course I do, said he".

ER 20070918 _The Glorious March Of Superiority

The nationalistic party of LA.O.S. (Popular Orthodox Alert) entered for the first time the greek parliament after the national elections of the 16th of September.
"The belief of a person that the nation he belongs to is superior to all other nations is instinctive and primitive. However, it occupies a lot of space in the mythology (meaning historical collective consciousness), more or less, of all nations."

Kostas Beveratos invited people of all nations to participate The Glorious March of Superiority. Each one shall shout loud that his nation is superior to the others.
The music for this march was performed by Pantelis Paschaldis (trompet), Giorgos Stathakis (accordion) and ΚΟΝΣΤ ΜΠ (snare drum).
The event had an unexpected outcome.

Preparations for the march:

Leaflets and little flags for the participants:

The event:


Music score:

Trash is always left behind:

---
The artist Kali Katsouri was motivated by ΚΟΝΣΤ ΜΠ's call for collaboration and created a related project. She hanged little "flags" of white paper by a string on the wall and invited everyone to consider it as his personal non-national flag and comment on it. Pencils were also hunging from the string.


Kali Katsouri coments:
"...I believe that we should start feeling human than anything less, and the bad aspects of today's nationalism are against humanism. We don't really need flags to show who we are or what we stand for, but we will always need to share our thoughts."

The result appears to be contradictory: