Elisavet Sfyri by hd.kepler. at Despina Charitonidi's Studio

25.03.2018

The art & research platform hd.kepler. invites you on Saturday, March 31 and Sunday April 1, 2018 from 6.30 to 10.30 p.m. to the performance Practicing by Elisavet Sfyri at Despina Charitonidi's studio (Kokkinaki 3-5, 11143, Patisia, metro Agios Eleftherios). The performance will be followed by an exhibition which will remain on view until April 6 2018 by appointment at hdkepler@gmail.com. The interactive durational performance Practicing by Elisavet Sfyri deals with the issue of attention through the ecologies of balance, personal (body, psychology, experience) and collective (interaction, human relationships, society). Practicing is the second chapter of the exhibition cycle Attention is an Exercise curated by Eleni Riga following the publication Ecologies of Gaze by the platform hd.kepler.
Practicing is a living sculpture that consists of a moving platform, which upon activation produces sounds, according to the rhythmic motion of the bodies standing on it. The microphones, which are mounted on the moving platform and on the artist's body, capture even the slightest sound to create a dynamic sound collage. Using both the body and the platform as instruments, Sfyri suggests an unconventional use of the three basic elements of the performance (body, physical space and sound), while commenting on the instrumentalisation of the body under the capitalist system.

The sound (music, singing, noise) is at the core of Sfyri’s practice. Mainly the sound produced by the microphone that is placed on the artist's neck constitutes a different voice, a reminder that contrary to the theories of transcendence and liquidity, we still have a body which bears the physical and emotional consequences of our times: stress, distraction, fatigue and burn-out. By admitting we have a body, it means we have a voice and therefore a capacity for resistance and resilience. Practicing draws the attention to the present, addressed to an emancipated viewer who shapes the work with the artist. Sfyri attempts to capture universal human experiences and treats the body both as a field of individual and collective memory. The sculpture is transformed into an ongoing exercise of balance, a song composed every minute from and between two fragile autonomies, interconnected and interdependent.

Elvisavet Sfyri (c. 1994, Maroussi) lives in London and studies sculpture at the Royal College of Art. She has graduated of the School of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths University, London. Sfyri has participated in many group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, such as the CICA Museum in South Korea, the Center for Contemporary Art of Geneva, and in May 2018 she will participate in the exhibition Sisyphus Version 20.18 at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan.

Practicing
Performance: Saturday, March 31 and Sunday April 1, 2018 from 6.30 to 10.30 p.m.
Exhibition: continues through until April 6, 2018 by appointment

Despina Charitonidi's studio
Kokkinaki 3-5, 11143, Patisia, Athens(metro Agios Eleftherios)