CO-LIVING ROOM COMMUNITY
Victoria Square Project invites Athenians to create the co-Living Room community. From April 12 until May 30 we form the community through a two-month program of online activities. We e-connect our living rooms, we create a non-discriminative common space to encourage the exchanging of ideas, free expression and entertainment for all.
The co-Living Room is part of co-Athens and consists of a collaboration between Victoria Square project and refugees who participate in the European pilot program of the Municipality of Athens Curing the Limbo.
The approach of a virtual community of our living room emerged after reflexion on the idea of co-existing. It was strengthened by our shared need for socialization due to the long isolation. We invite Athenians to create with us a community, relationships, objects and thoughts from their own living rooms!
During the first cycle the members of the community will have the opportunity to initiate a dialogue around art and design through free workshops and meetings. The workshops consist of the first step which will lead to the creation of a strong virtual community, as Victoria Square Project aspires to further strengthen and grow the co-Living Room Community beyond the upcoming two-month program.
The Program
The first digital cycle includes three design workshops, AfroFitness class and open discussions. During these workshops we aim to create the space, the time and the way to co-exist in a common virtual living room.
During the two months of the program the community will create fragments/objects of a shared identity, in which the daily practices and common creation meet. Apart from the workshops, the members of the community organize and participate in e-discussions around daily life, its experiences and reflections. We seek the elements that unify the community as a whole and highlight the multiple characteristics of the individual identities.
Registrations
The workshops are free. Members can participate in one or every workshop by filling out the following form. After their registration the participants will receive additional information and the detailed schedule.
For the pottery and creative lighting workshops the participants will receive a KIT with the necessary materials from specific distribution places.
The meetings and workshops will be held in Greek, while English translation is available if needed.
Especially for the workshop THE LIGHT INSTALLATION an introductory meeting will be held on April 1st, 2021 to discuss about the creative lighting and give further clarifications on the common installation.
Find the workshops’ descriptions below and sign up by filling out the form!
https://forms.gle/mJGU7GYA97dZ23r78
The workshops
THE LIGHT INSTALLATION | Creative lighting workshops
Beforelight group, specialized in creative urban installation, presents the different steps of the design process of a participatory light intervention. The Beforelight group along with Dimitra Aloutzanidou, who will design the module and final intervention, invites the members of the community to create their own lighting object, as part of the idea, design and experimentation process and finally the actual creation of the object. After the two-day workshops, the different pieces of the installation will be collected and composed in one object, the central lighting of VSP’s actual living room.
Total number of participants: 30
Teams: 2
Workshops: 2 per team
Duration: 4 hours on Saturdays and 3 hours on Sundays
THE MUG | Pottery Workshop
A living room is a social space revolving around the idea of sharing a cup of coffee or tea. The pottery workshops will be focusing on the shaping of an everyday object, a mug, which will combine different cultural elements of the members of the community and will inspire the creation of the characteristic mug set of Victoria Square Project. Through the procedure, the participants will explore the art of ceramics, experiment with materials and techniques and finally form a ceramic mug, as a symbol of a common language. At the end of the workshop, the participants will get back their mugs, which will be the prototypes of the creation of the VSP’s characteristic set.
Total number of participants: 30
Teams: 2
Workshops: 2 per team
Duration: 1,5 hour per workshop
THE PARAVAN | Embroidery workshop
The co-Living Room Community will be united by separation. The workshop will end up in the creation of common sculpture, a PARAVAN (folding screen) through personal insights around the concepts of travel, movement, route, trail and transition. The PARAVAN will enclose embroidery and sewing techniques, of which free motives, volumes and designs, a multilayer and textured surface will come up . Each participant will trace its personal journey harmoniously intertwined with that of his neighbor. At the end of the workshop, the individual artworks will be collected and composed to the final artwork, THE PARAVAN, which will be installed in the actual Living Room of Victoria Square Project.
Total number of participants: 30
Teams: 2
Workshops: 2 per team
Duration: 1,5 hour per workshop
AfroFitness | Gym class
The AfroFitness is a gym class which combines the traditional african movements with contemporary ones. The class incorporates the AfroBeat style to our body expression and that way we connect with the rhythm. The AfroBeat is a type of dance that became popular in the ‘70s. It comes directly from the popular street dances of Africa, like Kuduro, Azonto, Soukous and more. The class is addressed to all (women and men), even to those without earlier dancing experience, who wish to further develop their dancing expression, to those who just wish to relax or explore the african culture through their dance and music.
Total number of participants: 30
Classes: 8/2 per week
Duration: 1 hour/ class
Credits
Idea, Curation, Communication
Victoria Square Project
Niovi Zarampouka-Chatzimanou | Director
Dorothea Kritikou | Programs Coordinator
Aggelos Kostamparis | Community Liaison
Christiana Natsika | Victoria Now Coordinator
Ioanna Ntali | Communication & Development Coordinator
Iro Ziozia | Administration
Coordination
Nikolas Kanavaris | Responsible for Material Recording and Utilization
Nikolas is architect and activist who lives and works in Athens. He holds an MA in Architecture, and he is now finishing my MSc in Architecture-Space and Culture in NTUA. He is working as a practitioner architect and has provided teaching assistant work in the undergraduate architectural design course around Housing design in NTUA. He is also working as a scenographer in theater. His main research interest is the production of space as a result of the relation of “self” and “other”. He tries to understand this complex relation under the spectrum of commons. He has published and presented theoretical work in publications and several conferences, he has developed projects around commons in Athens and he has worked in translation in Greek of a book around commons. Finally he is interested in open, collective and participatory processes that are based on the idea that heterogeneity in a group is not a burden but a promise of success.
Bijan Reisi Nafchi | Implementation Assistant
Implementation
Beforelight | Light Installation workshops
Beforelight group was formed in 2007 in order to experiment with light and it creates large-scale light art interventions in public space, by activating citizens’ participation. The light interventions at Pittaki Street and Stoa Emporon in Athens have been innovative proposals of creative lighting that renewed the physiognomy of the city. Its artworks have been presented in exhibitions, museums, and contemporary art festivals, both in Greece and abroad.
Beforelight members are: Eliza Alexandropoulou, Christina Ampatzidou, Konstantina Evangelou, Kelly Efraimidou, Dimitris Theocharoudis, Maria Lazaridou, VasileiosNtovrosand Eirini Steirou.
Dimitra Aloutzanidou | Light Installation workshops
After graduating from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki’s School of Drama, with a major in Stage and Costume Design, she continued her post-graduate studies in two creative fields: Graphic Arts and Multimedia at the Hellenic Open University and Lighting Design at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC). While living in Barcelona, she worked as an architectural lighting designer. For many years up to the present day, she works as a stage lighting designer for theatre productions in Athens and Thessaloniki.
For several years (2007-2019), she explored and experimented on new creative horizons as a founding and active member of Beforelight, a Greek-based light art and lighting design group. Since 2017 she emphasizes in personalized lighting design through her brand Dimmer Lighting. By combining lighting and scenography elements and turning them into custom-made objects, she designs and creates lighting fixtures that fit each project’s aesthetic and practical needs.
Constantina Dali | Pottery workshop
Constantina Dali was born in July 1989 in Athens. She studied Fine Arts at the University of Ioannina in Greece and holds a master degree from the Faculdade de Bellas Artes of Lisbon in Portugal. She mainly works with sculpture and ceramics. She apprenticed for a short period of time with ceramist Menandros Papadopoulos and painter Eleni Kalokyri.Constantina also participated in the 4th sculpture symposium of Theodoros Papagiannis together with the sculptor Spyros Lisgaras. She has given creative-art lessons to refugees and immigrants in Tempelhof campus in Berlin. She has participated in several exhibitions, workshops and art festivals both in Greece and abroad. Constantina lives and works in Athens.
Sevastiana Konstaki | Embroidery workshop
Sevastiana Konstaki graduated from the University of Thessaly, holding a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture and a Master’s degree in Architectural Design, INSTEAD Parapoesis. Her research interests and artistic practice focuses on the “in-between”, exploring objects-narratives on the reconnection of the human body and the body imaginary: psycho-woven clothes, collages, maps, drawings, art-books and representational tools intersecting between architecture, art, fashion and anthropology. She is collaborating with artists from multiple artistic fields (representative, performing, social etc.). She is member of the team running the artistic project Institute of Post-Epicurean Garden (iPeg) and Artistic and Creative Consultant of Bespoke Communications. She has participated in various projects, such as the group exhibition "Emfylo-poiein. to construct the gender” at a.antonopoulou Gallery (2019), was project coordinator of Victoria Square Project (2017/2018) and exhibition assistant for documenta14 (2017). She is an Artworks Fellow 2020, supported by its founding donor, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. (www.studioofasevia.com)
Maria Foka | Embroidery workshop
Maria Foka is a fashion artist, with a degree in Architecture and Engineering from the University of Thessaly. Her studies succeeded ‘’Fashion History and Theory’’ short courses at Central Saint Martins of UAL, ‘’Gender and Intersectionality’’ from the University of Ireland and ‘’Circular Fashion: Design, Science and Value in a Sustainable Clothing Industry’’ from Wageningen University & Research x edX online seminars, ‘’Pattern Making’’ at Romina Karamanea Fashion School in Athens, and seminars in creative writing.
Her practice revolves around wearable design, representations of physicality through the amalgam created from the body-machine fusion, and the narratives that occur from the conversation of the biological and the social self through everyday practices. She views the notion of the chimera and the mythical beings that we all are and we all embody through the prolificality of clothing as a proactive act, and that is way she begins her studies from within. She uses the medium of collage in its every form; when she creates body-machines, when she composes digital artworks, when she writes and when she dresses herself in the morning.
Apart from her freelance occupations, she works as a fashion designer in a company that carries children’s clothing, as a copywriter, and she collaborates with creatives from various fields.
Jessica Onyinyechi Anosike | AfroFitness
Graphic Design
Stelios Fragkoulakis
Video
Ioannis Kampanis
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The action is part of the co-Athens implemented by the European pilot program of the Municipality of Athens Curing the Limbo, through the Athens Development and Destination Management Agency. The program is co-financed by the ERDF, under the UIA program.