THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY speaks to Sozita Goudouna, Founding Director of Greece In USA
Greece in USA is a non-profit organization with a global reach that promotes knowledge of contemporary and ancient Greek Culture while fostering international cultural cooperation, experimentation and social engagement. The organization's extensive programming includes commissioned artists' and curators' projects, residencies, educational and ecological initiatives and the commitment to cultivating a sensible culture of innovation and thought leadership.
We are dedicated to offering innovative and unique programs in education and the arts, all exploring the evolving diversity and richness of Greek and Cypriot cultures. The non- profit organization seeks to generate new thinking about the arts and promote cross- cultural dialogue through partnerships and new platforms of creation.
The organization promotes international exchange of practice and knowledge in the arts - visual and sound art, dance, architecture, theatre - research on the methods used in curatorial and performing practices and investigation of points of intersection between the arts, science and the public sphere by means of interventions, collective actions, educational programs and publications.
Greece in USA aims to collaborate and build long-lasting partnerships with leading institutions and individuals who actively engage with Greece and its culture and to convey a comprehensive and distinctive representation of Greece and Cyprus by producing cultural and educational programs that encourage intercultural dialogue and enable cultural involvement.
Our principal goals are:
To shape and envision the image of contemporary Greece in the United States beyond existing stereotypes
To recalibrate the assumed center of Greek national narratives to include those who have often been denied historical recognition.
To transform the way Greek histories are told and produce projects that reflect the vast, rich complexity of Greek culture.
To support Greek inspired cultural practices by welcoming and nurturing new ideas and influential perspectives
To commission, produce and present contemporary Greek and Cypriot culture that grapple with many of the pressing social and political issues of our time
To foster Greek scholarship and cultural research within the American educational system
To develop a transatlantic network for the exchange of culture and ideas
To strengthen the development of structures in cultural policy & leadership, and foster worldwide mobility.
Greece in USA is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization registered in the State of New York, tax-exempt ID no. 85-0828531. Contributions to Greece in USA are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. Greece in USA's launch is under the auspices of the Greek Ministry of Culture.
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Chrisoula Lionis
ISSUE I
Chrisoula Lionis is a writer and cultural producer based between Athens and Manchester. Working in the area of cultural politics, Lionis holds a PhD in Visual Culture (UNSW Australia, 2013) and is the author of Laughter in Occupied Palestine: Comedy and Identity in Art and Film (I.B. Tauris, 2016). Lionis’ has held several international teaching and research positions, including at the National Institute for Experimental Arts (UNSW Australia) in Sydney, and at the Department of Social Anthropology, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens. Lionis is the Co-director of the pedagogical platform Artists for Artists and is currently a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at the University of Manchester, working on project Laughing in an Emergency: Humour, Cultural Resilience and Contemporary Art.
Elli Leventaki
ISSUE II
Elli Leventaki is an art historian, a curator, and a researcher. She is currently a curator at the Biennale of Western Balkans, while simultaneously collaborating with independent art programs and art spaces as a freelance curator.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Art History and Art Theory, and a Master’s degree in Art History and Curating, both from the Fine Arts Department of the University of Ioannina, Greece. She also holds a diploma on adult and continuous education from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and is systematically attending seminars and talks on art, politics and gender.
Elli has years of experience as a curator and cultural manager, having collaborated as an arts-professional with various institutions, cultural spaces, festivals, artists and art-enthusiasts in independent projects. Furthermore, she has written numerous art-related texts for exhibition catalogues and scientific purposes. She often participates in conferences and lectures in Greece and abroad. She is a member of the Association of Greek Art Historians, AICA Hellas, ICOM, Europeana and a member of the History of Art Laboratory of the School of Fine Arts in the University of Ioannina.
Eleni Mouzakiti
ISSUE II
Eleni Mouzakiti is a photographer, curator of photographic exhibitions and publications and an educator for Art Photography Practice.
She studied German Language and Literature at the University of Athens, FU Berlin and Heidelberg. She holds an MA in Image and Communication from Goldsmiths College, University of London and a PhD in Arts and Humanities from Derby University, UK.
Committed to long-term projects in her artistic work she focuses on issues of 'absorptive' behavior in the public realm, leisure time geography, landscape as a fantasy of “belonging”. Her work has been featured in international festivals and publications. Works of her belong to the Portland Art Museum, Oregon, U.S.A., the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Greece, the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, the ACG Art Collection and other private collections. Eleni has curated numerous photography exhibitions and publications. She is a co-founder of The Provinces Platform, a platform that collects and promotes photographic projects that deal with the Greek periphery.
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY EARTH
November 2020
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY EARTH is an ongoing project, where visual essays over time will define TTS' geography of interest by situating its mission in-place.
By thinking-in-place, living-in-place and reflecting-in-place TTS focuses on the wider region of the Mediterranean, the Balkans, Southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
As Leanne Betasamosake Simpson has best put it:
"The land, aki, is both context and process."
"Like governance, leadership and every other aspect of reciprocated life, education comes from the roots up. It comes from being enveloped by land."
TTS thanks Chrisoula Lionis, Sozita Goudouna, Christoforos Doulgeris, Elli Leventaki, Penelope Thomaidi, Vicky Tsirou and Dionisi Christofilogianni as well as all the participating artists whose work unveils versions of our own reality and truth.
Special thanks to artist and curator, Christoforos Doulgeris who earlier this Fall curated the "Mediterranean Flux" photography exhibition in Naxos Island, Greece for the 1st Festival of Mediterranean Culture. Many thanks also to Artistic Director of the Festival, Kostas Theonas for the initial discussion.
Sozita Goudouna
ISSUE I
Dr. Sozita Goudouna is a professor, curator and the author of "Beckett's Breath: Anti-theatricality and the Visual Arts" published by Edinburgh Critical Studies in Modernism. She holds a PhD from the University of London on art and respiration. She was the inaugural Andrew W. Mellon curator at Performa Biennial and is head of operations at Raymond Pettibon Studio, adjunct professor at City University New York (CUNY) and researcher at the Organism for Poetic Research supported by New York University and Brown University. Her internationally exhibited projects include participations at Performa Biennial in New York, Documenta, Onassis Foundation Festival, New Museum, Hunterian Museum, Benaki Museum, Byzantine Museum, EMST Contemporary Art Museum among others. Sozita served as treasurer of the board of directors of AICA Hellas International Art Critics Association and as member of the board of directors at ITI International Theatre Association, UNESCO.
Penelope Thomaidi
ISSUE II
Penelope Thomaidi is a freelance documentary photographer with a background in fine arts (MA in Artistic Production and Research from the University of Barcelona) and graphic design, based in Athens, Greece.
Interested in the relation between people and their territory, in her personal practice she pursues long-term projects exploring social and environmental issues, often focusing on subjects related to memory, self-determination and resistance.
After graduating from Creative Documentary and Photojournalism one-year programme by Magnum Photos and Spéos School of Photography in Paris (2018), she became a member of Hans Lucas photo agency and a co-editor at The Provinces, an online platform that showcases works that deal with the greek periphery. In 2020 she co-curated Balkans Today. The present of a wounded landscape, a pop-up photo exhibition spread in 17 different locations in central Athens showcasing 25 series that deal with contemporary life in the Balkans.
Amongst others her work has been shown at Helsinki Photo Festival, International Photography Festival of Bello Horizonte (FIF) and the YoungGreek Photographers exhibition of the Athens Photo Festival.
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY, Inc. Copyright 2020
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY, Inc. All rights reserved.
VVV, Attica, Greece
DECEMBER, 2020 | VOLUME I
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY EARTH | ISSUE I
ISSN 2732-706X
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY, Inc. Copyright 2020
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY, Inc. All rights reserved.
VVV, Attica, Greece
DECEMBER, 2020 | VOLUME I
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY EARTH | ISSUE II
ISSN 2732-706X
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY, Inc. Copyright 2020
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY, Inc. All rights reserved.
VVV, Attica, Greece
DECEMBER, 2020 | VOLUME I
THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY EARTH | ISSUE III
ISSN 2732-706X
Christophoros Doulgeris
ISSUE III
Chris Doulgeris lives and works between Athens, Greece and Dusseldorf, Germany. Ηε has participated in more than fifty museum and gallery shows both nationally and internationally in collaboration with: Basil & Elise Foundation, Athens, Greece; The State Museum of contemporary art in Thessaloniki Thessaloniki Greece; Contemporary Art Museum of Crete, Rethymno Crete; Photo Biennale 2010 & 2014 at the National Museum of Photography Thessaloniki; Foto Noviembre 2013 & 2015, International Photography Biennale, Tenerife Spain; Santorini arts Factory, Santorini Greece; Med Photo Festival Heraklion Greece; at the Athens School of Fine Arts, Athens; Descartes project space Dusseldorf Germany; Gallery IFA Donopoulos, Thessaloniki, Greece; Municipal art Gallery of Chania, Chania Greece.
Chris Doulgeris is represented by Donopoulos Gallery, Thessaloniki and has shown extensively in Greece and abroad.
Vicky Tsirou
ISSUE III
Vicky Tsirou is a curator and arts writer. She is Gallery Co-Μanager at Eleni Marneri Galerie (Athens, GR), and collaborator at K-Gold Temporary Gallery (Lesvos, GR). She studied Art History and Theory at the Athens School of Fine Arts and gained hands-on experience working in major events and exhibitions in Greece and Italy as a curatorial assistant and cultural mediator (including Documenta14, the Cycladic Art Museum, the 4th Athens Biennale, the USA Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, and also as an intern at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection). She participated in the Curatorial Exchange Programme between the Whitechapel Gallery of London and the NEON organization of Greece in 2018. Her research is focusing on the notions of participation and inclusivity in contemporary art, as well as on art as evocative communication into the public sphere.
Dionisis Christofilogiannis
ISSUE III
Dionisis Christofilogiannis is a Visual Arts instructor at the American College of Greece DEREE.
Dionisis’ artistic approach deals with a dialogue between different types of art. His works dominate the architectural element and geometrical forms where simplicity, purity, and abstraction come together with beautification and lyricism. He comments on the contemporary social, economic and political disorder where the right to housing, a fundamental human right, is placed under constant questioning.
He was the founder of Daily Lazy Projects (2012-13) and artist/coordinator of the White House Biennial (2013-15). Space52 founded by the artist Dionisis Christofilogiannis in 2017 and supports Athens based artists and continuously seeks collaborations with art spaces and professionals from abroad. Our community and network grow by facilitating collaborations, exchanges, and research-based project. Space52 serves as a hub for local and international creatives, intellectuals and theoreticians. Solo shows have been exhibited at the Muzeul de Artă Cluj-Napoca; Nakagawa Gallery, Tokyo, Strict Freedom Ύλη[matter]HYLE, HOME(less) Felios Collection. Recent group exhibitions have included BIENNALE 6, Thessaloniki, “[OUT]TOPIAS”, Benaki Museum, Athens, Tirana Open 1, Uber-Bodies at Hydra School Projects, The Red and White flag Project parallel on Biennale 4, Thessaloniki, etc.