On 14.04.2012, at 13:15, panos kouros wrote:

Geia sou Vassileia,

(...) for the project, as I already told you, I would consider taking part, but the nature of the project is still unclear to me, in many respects, as I have only bits of information from you, as you add new things, while answering to my questions, for example in your last mail you said that there will be an element of participation, that, however, you have not decided yet exactly how it will work.  

I have also some questions around the context that in part, I asked you about, in my previous e-mails, for example:

Why am I still not informed about the other participants? you told me the number but nothing else. Is this necessary?

What is exactly the participation of the audience, the artists, etc?

Are you deciding alone in such matters? or With Mary and Teresa? Who signs the project?

And if this is curatorial project by you, will you pay the participant artists for their work?

.. .. .. .. ..

Panos Kouros

On 15.04.2012, at 11:57, panos kouros wrote:

Vassiliea, Thank you too for informing me about your performative installation. You know that artists labor is (not only) materials, travel, presence, etc. but intellectual work. I will send you my text as a gift, then, on the condition, if you agree, that you will also send me all the texts of the other contributors, by mail, before the exhibition opening.

Panos Kouros

On 15.04.2012, at 14:10, panos kouros wrote:

Vassiliea,

just a quick feedback: I will participate to your installation performance with your conditions and your "interpretation" of "gift".

cheers,

Panos

On 16.04.2012, at 11:29, panos kouros wrote:

negotiating them, if you don't mind.

.. .. .. .. ..

Panos Kouros

On 18.04.2012, at 17:45, panos kouros wrote:

Dear Vassiliea:

1. A  gift is an exchange, a sharing situation; it does not serve dominant positions.

2.  Frames in collaborative situations are negotiable. 

(...)

There is nothing wrong with this attitude, that is to assume the role of “representing”, selecting, staging the works of others.

(...)

This is how I see my participation in your project: To shift the attention from your Crisis “topic”, from a “representation of the Crisis”, to the actualisation, the mise-en-scene of the Crisis, as reflected in your project. This text is not criticism from outside, it is my performative notion of participation in your project.

Panos

On 20.04.2012, at 14:36, panos kouros wrote:

Vassiliea, thanks for your replies. I will respond as soon as I am back.

(...)

not exactly this, but I will send to you until the 5th.

On 24.04.2012, at 19:14, panos kouros wrote:

ON COLLABORATIVE INSTITUTING

(...)

My interest to your project is not the curating topic, “Crisis”, so much, but the way you choose to make an instituting act, based on collaboration: the specific terms, conditions, rules, statements you use to communicate it to a circle of possible participants. Even if you do not admit it, your project is an instituting act, it sets a collective situation with rules - a set of relations, a system of rules, it uses art networks. It connects real persons and works. It assumes roles and responsibilities among participants. It states a hierarchy among you and them, in terms of the tasks (who writes, who exhibits, who communicates, who administrates). Why "collectively construct a parallel system of work distribution/ circulation and production impulse that is based on collaboration and exchange of concepts."? Why, then, a project that does not use the existing system of working, production, etc.? To put what in its place? Let’s open a discussion about this.

(…)

A COLLECTIVE CONSTRUCTION OF RULES

My participation is the negotiation of the project’s instituting framework, the negotiation of rules; this is exactly part of the collaborative structure that the project programmatically announces. In such context of "collaboration", "gift", "exchange", "solidarity" - an apriori frame does not exist. Frames can be dynamic: they may be formed by the specific interaction of persons invited to take part. Not always: this is a the difference: institutions demand the acceptance of the rules. Art instituting as I see it makes the opposite. It invites to a construction of rules. This is a political act.

My proposal is a call to open up the process. Disseminate the works as they come to you, to all participants. If you do not want to take responsibility for this, you can share responsibilities with others. I can certainly do this. Give the emails of all to all. Say who is participating to all. Make the invitations and the “personal exchanges” open to all. Send an email to all participants with this dialogue project. Make “Solidarity and Openness” not a rhetoric, but indeed “the two precious qualities in inter-artistic collaboration.”

The project invited for participation with "a "brief" text, with a "short statement about the Greek and European crisis" making clear that it isnot necessary to be there physically - since this is a "no-budget project". But, the exchange aspect that will happen in the "here and now of the physical space of the project", the "element of participation" is for few of the participants. How many of the participants will be present in real space to “take part in the process”? The project risks of making participation a highly cosmopolitan or holiday adventure for those who can afford it. Many of participants offering works, will watch the process from their computers. Then, real space is not real in terms of participation. Make participation real, then.

Yours,

Panos

On 07.05.2012, at 12:52, panos kouros wrote:

Geia sou Vasilliea,

I have made 2 A4 pages that you can hung them in the wall

greetings

panos

On 16.05.2012, at 12:55, panos kouros wrote:

Vassiliea kalimera,

kathos den eixa apantisi, anarotiemai an exeis lavei to keimeno mou gia tin ekthesi sou

(...)

On 16.05.2012, at 17:46, panos kouros wrote:

Dear participants in HOLIDAYS IN GREECE,

How can we make collaborative instituting work?
(...)

(...)