Project Statement: Cultural Intersections
I started wondering what a border or a boundary is. Making a list of what I receive as a boundary in daily life I end up that it is everything that blocks you from doing something, go somewhere, speak to someone, etc. Specifically I zoom in the spatial boundaries into the city. I notice that they are created when two space with an intense contrast are in touch. Usually this contrast is the difference of how many people visit each area. So some “unvisited” spaces are observed into the city. I catalog these spaces in order to compose them and create a new community. Will this community be an “unvisited,” dystopian city?
Preparations for Final Exhibition:
Mid-Term Project Materials:
Response to Jerry Saltz “What Art is and What Artists Do”:
Art means something to me. But it means something different to you. And something different to someone else. Art is subjective and it emerges from the daily life, the experiences, the past, the history, the vision, from everything that forms the world or the perception of it. That’s the reason that sometimes art can induce crucial changes, just because it emerges from the core of daily problems.
Response to Alfredo Jaar’s “On the Being of Being an Artist”:
“These are dark times, these are difficult times”
“Art is a reason to believe”
“Create your own system. Invent your own world. But whatever you do, always connect”
“Art is peace”
There are bad and good times. The bad times exist to give meaning to the good ones. It is the balance existing in the globe. In bad situations everyone has to find a way of “survival”, the way of connection. The way of finding solutions to problems, solving a puzzle, making choices, using their own experiences to their advantage. I sum up all these in the phrase “inside peace”, the peace in your soul, in the way of thinking. It is the highest level of art. To have peace in everything you do. In this case art is a way of living and “art is a reason to believe”
Response to “Unstable Territories” excerpts:
I can spot a border everywhere. In our daily life there are things that we don’t do, not because we don’t want, but for a reason we don’t know. This phenomenon is much more intense when someone moves suddenly to a new environment. At these situations the reason is a border and the type of it varies. It can be a structure (line, point), a specific time, a word, a movement, a thought, a physical element, an event, a person. These are some of the reason-borders that we don’t go to a space, don’t speak to someone, don’t travel, don’t make our mind on an issue. The reasons that we don’t do things. These borders abstract our daily, certain life from a change. This change may have nothing to offer to you but it becomes a part of your experiences.
Tempo Zulu Project:
I perceive the city as superimposed layers of actions that have taken place in it. These layers may be completely or partly vanished. In this way there are fragments that lay all over one city, from which some come from the same background (period, function, material). I compare the city with a “knit” surface. The meantime from one “spot” to another is the walk someone takes, the non-itinerary browsing in the city. So there is a hidden system of “spots” and the transition in a city. The transition is a complex process once you never know where or when you will come across the next “spot”.
Intro Unit Project: Coordinated Universal Time/ Tempo Zulu
Intro Unit Project: Walk of Destiny
The destiny gave me only left turns so my first thought was that I would do circles around a block of flats. But then I decided to use it. So the spiral shape came out. My purpose is to commend and to visualize the feeling of walking through the city while looking at the sky, what the relationship between the buildings is, how they communicate with each other up there and what impact this has in the lightness or darkness of the streets. Siena is full of tight streets in which you can walk comfortably and see a very human-scaled city. In contrast to that when I looked up I felt that the buildings where almost in touch letting a small gap to see the sky. So if you look up you can see the city from another point of view or perspective and maybe you cannot even recognize it.
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Bio statement:
Salve. I am Aloutsanidis Vasilis. I have been an architecture student at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki for four years now. I am really keen on observing city life, city facts, interaction between architecture and humans and using these as stimulus for creating. The media I usually use is photographs, video, drawings, and digital. I am interested in using wood, metal, and fabric for manufacturing purposes. I have also been working for two years as a teacher assistant in linear and architecture drawing at “sxediazoume” Architecture and Fine Arts private school, for the University of Architecture applicants. Finally I am one of the co-founders of the newly established creative space “xyzzy” based in Thessaloniki.
Siena’s community is the ideal for me to analyze the city and its life, peer into it, photograph it, draw, and try to create in cooperation with Siena ART Institute.
The participation of Greek students in the Siena Art Institute‘s Fall 2016 semester is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
Siena Art Institute Blog 