XYZ OUTLET #22: Yiorgos Tzirtzilakis and a Group of tutors and students from the Architecture Department of the University of Thessaly // DE HOMINIS APPARATUS // Tuesday 22 November // 20:00 - 21:00XYZ Outlet continues, “DRY: No drinks, no party, just an art quickie”. On Tuesday 22 November we are presenting, in conjunction with the 3rd Athens Biennale 2011 MONODROME, the performance DE HOMINIS APPARATUS by Yiorgos Tzirtzilakis and a group of tutors and students from the Architecture Department of the University of Thessaly, at XYZ Outlet #22.
XYZ Outlet will be open to the public for one hour only, as always, between 20:00 and 21:00.
About DE HOMINIS APPARATUS
The structure of the performance DE HOMINIS APPARATUS, by the group of the Architecture School of the University of Thessaly, is a type of a labyrinth with no ‘outside’, where each person’s narratives and research start from a different concept each time (such as Dispositif, Eco-nomy, Biopolitics, Sovereignty, Desecration, Law, Body, Knowledge, Desire,Fear, Dignity, Subject, Object, Thing, Disaster etc, concepts described by Giorgio Agamben) , to be led back into the same centre, the Apparatus. During the performance a type of an archive will be compiled from online resources and a printer will become the “nightmare of documentation”.
The performance will attempt, in this way, to communicate another type of speech, “hypertautological”, based on the psychoanalytic tactic of hyperidentification. In this way a linear and hierarchical narrative character will be prevented, creating the impression of a claustrophobic atmosphere, a type of inverted Kafkik tower, where any attempt of exiting the Apparatus, draws the subjects back inside.
This action was triggered by the department’s recent workshop What is an Apparatus? - drawing from the book of the same name by Giorgio Agamben. The concept of the “apparatus” allowed the workshop to trace what binds together contemporary architecture with art practices and with what we mean when we talk today - at a time of acute crisis - about biopolitical and humane communities. Moreover, during the workshop, the participants encouraged reflection upon the way we understand the world, relationships, behaviours and objects, in real time.
The term "apparatus" ("dispositif " in French - a mechanism ) is a key term introduced by Michel Foucault, and is widely used to refer to an unspecified order of techniques that encircle, limit and, finally, define the human subject. Agamben traces the origins of the term within the territory of economics - by recognising the same conceptual genealogy to that of the science of economics. The author supports that our lives depend entirely on a set of "apparatus" that we are unable to “destroy”, or even to transform into a fascinating, radical privilege.
The workshop explored and evaluated “wild thinking” and the practices of everyday social relationships and exchanges, or rather, every possible or latent forms of personal and social creativity, as apparent in atypical behaviours and do-it-yourself practices.
About the participants:
Tutors:
Nadia Kalara, Maria Papadimitriou, Lois Papadopoulos, Yiorgos Tzirtzilakis.
Co-ordinator:
Yiorgos Rymenidis
Students:
Danae Avaraki, Despoina Georgiadou, Aggelina Dagka, Avrokomi Zavitsanou, Maria Kotoula, Aggeliki Meli, Yiorgos Berdos, Chrysa Daflouka, Chara Stergiou, Grigoris Tsantilas.
