1. A WORK IN PROGRESS – PROJECT UPDATE
V.S. HUMANITY – ATHENS, 2016
Near Futures on line, Issue No. 1 (March 2016) “Europe at Crossroads”, presents for the first time the online version of the newest addition to my work in progress: Vital Space Humanity project V.S. Athens – Humanity
Vital Space: Humanity – Athens is part of the Vital Space: Nature | Humanity project by Danae Stratou and the Vital Space creative platform.
Vital Space: Nature | Humanity is a video project that addresses the challenges posed by globalization and its discontents; by the plight of the environment; by the ebb and flow of mass migration movements. A momentous urban expansion is spawning the planet’s largest cities, as wave upon wave of migrants abandon the countryside and the periphery, and while economic wastelands are emptied of people and left in a state of ecological fragility. The project focuses on the contrast between the vast, empty, fragile, and uninhabited spaces, and the overpopulated, highly contested, urban environments.
2. UPCOMING EXHIBITION
BORDERS, BARRIERS, WALLS
(30 April 30th – July 2nd, Melbourne, Australia)
Monash University Museum of Art in Melbourne, Australia. Curator: Francis E. Parker.
The exhibition is entitled Borders, Barriers, Walls and indeed, borders, barriers and walls delineate this project that will include artists from around the world and will run from 30 April to 2 July 2016. It reflects on how these selectively impervious, contested or convoluted forms shape the world, producing situations of separation, isolation or thwarted passage across the globe, from the exile of Tasmanian Indigenous peoples to the islands of Bass Strait in the nineteenth century, for example, to present refugee crises. Whether they be physical constructions, psychological constructs or natural defenses, the exhibition considers the forces by which they are either upheld or breached.
My participation in this show will comprise the video installation The Globalising Wall (2012). A work initially presented at the International Adelaide Festival – Restless in Australia. This will be the first screening of this work in Europe.
– BBC WORLD SERVICE – FORUM
Is the idea of a pristine landscape an illusion, given that over thousands of years human activity has almost everywhere left its mark? Bridget Kendall asks the gardener Gilly Drummond, the lands artist Danae Stratou, the archeobotanist Dorian Fuller, and the historian William Beinart.
To listen to the program click here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03ng3cf
– RADIO INTERVIEW, VIENNA
Logos – theology and life. Design: Johannes Kaup
To listen to the program click here: “What do you think?” – The artist Danae Stratou.
4. ARTIST’S TALK
– GLOBART TALK 2016 ART CAN CHANGE THE WORLD –
(EX)CHANGING PERSPECTIVES
The intense debate over the Greek financial crisis, which has been observed from only one point of view so far, made us want to see the predicament from a different perspective – one of art and science. Especially in a crisis like this, new spaces are created. Culture is what brings us new hope.
What is Europe? A cultural idea! We share cultural experiences. Beethoven isn’t German, Socrates isn’t Greek and Mozart isn’t Austrian – everything they achieved, everything they thought is all the more impressive.
The GLOBART Talks aim to form a series of interdisciplinary and sophisticated discussions in which new ideas for a successful lifestyle are introduced. All over the world, artists, philosophers, designers and ecologists try to find answers to the question what life could look like in the future. The most inspirational thinkers are then invited to the Vienna Secession in order to present their ideas.
Host: Martin Fritz, curator and publicist
Two plus Two TALK with:
Danae Stratou, Greek visual and installation artist and professor, represented Greece in 2001 in the first Valencia Biennale, founder of the non-profit organisation Vital Space which is based upon the principle that artworks can change the world for the better
&
Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Director of the MAK, initiator of the first Vienna Biennale “Ideas for Change”
&
Tomáš Sedláček, economist, author, professor at the Charles-University of Prague, chief macroeconomist of the biggest Czech bank and member of the World Economy Forum’s ethics council
&
Oliver Tanzer, author and editor-in-chief of the weekly journal Die Furche
For more information on the talk please click here:
http://www.globart.at/activities/globart-talk/?lang=en