Karaoke Poetry Bar


Intothepill.net presents Karaoke Poetry Bar at Space 417 in Metaxourgeion square, with the support of the 1st Biennale of Athens, as part of their parallel activities. The project will take place from the 12th to the 18th of November 2007.

Karaoke Poetry Bar is a multimodal installation which combines poetry, performance and video. The project involves several visual artists and poets and is based on the idea of reversal, i.e. of changing the function of a “space”, transforming it into a generator of possibilities, a playground of ideas. Participant artists and visitors are thus involved in the contingence of utopia.

Karaoke Poetry Bar is a real although temporary karaoke bar where pop songs on the stage monitor have been replaced by poems written by Greek poets who have emerged within the last 10 years. During recitation, the poems await to be challenged by the audacity and the intentions of the audience.

Within the same space, video works by contemporary Greek artists will be presented in a video installation. The video works are documentations of performances in public spaces around Athens, where the artists explore ways of rendering/reciting poetry by established Greek poets of the 20th century,

In Karaoke Poetry Bar, the exposure of artists and visitors to the recitation of poetry is intended as a metaphor for the artistic act itself. Because to approach art is to abandon the safety of the plot, the expectation for “meaning” and, ultimately, the demand for function.

Concept, curating, and design of the installation: intothepill.net

PARTICIPANTS:

Visual artists (video/performances)

Alexandros Avranas, Vangelis Artemis, Dimitris Christidis, Aikaterini Gegisian, Alexandros Georgiou+Mamali Shafahi, Nikos Giavropoulos, Yiannis Grigoriadis, Giorgos Gyparakis, George Drivas, Makis Faros, Yiannis Isidorou, Kostas Ioannidis, Katerina Kana, Georgia Kotretsos+Paul Zografakis, Yiannis Koufopoulos, Nina Kotamanidou, Tassos Langis, Vassiliki Lefkaditi, Ioanna Myrka, Lea Petrou, Lila Polenaki, Ioannis Savvidis, Yorgos Sapountzis, Andreas Sitorengo, Thanos Stathopoulos, Athena Stamati, Shifty Tongue, Vassiliea Stylianidou+Chryssa Tsampazi, Despoina Stokou, Yiannis Theodoropoulos, Lina Theodorou, Panagiota Tzamourani.

Poets / live performances at karaoke machine:

Vassilis Amanatidis, Dimitris Allos, Yiannis Antiochou, Iana Boukova, Giorgos Chantzis, Foivi Giannisi, Katerina Iliopoulou, Doukas Kapantais, Dimitra Kotoula, Patricia Kolaiti, Dimitris Leontzakos, Giorgos Lillis, Stamatis Polenakis, Efi Pirpasou, Vassilis Rouvalis, Yiannis Stigas, Maria Topali.

A fully illustrated, bilingual catalogue including the poems of the project will be published by Futura.[gr]