Hand and Head walking

On Saturday, 14th December 12 p.m., Phytorio and Artist – Researcher Kyriaki Costa, in collaboration with art theoretician and independent curator Sofia Eliza Bouratsi, will conduct the workshop/open discussion “Hand and Head walking (You are welcome to bring your own dog along too)”, in an effort to develop a project that deals with the poetic familiarization of public space, by locating all those points of the urban environment which will feed and attract thoughts regarding the way with which a contemporary civilian is able to connect with their town.

Walking is an important practice, some would call it a “technique”, with the help of which we are able to experience a place. By examining tools such as observation, cartography and free association and thinking, we are experimenting with a practice that can be used as the first step for one to realize how they see and how they interpret the public space through their everyday walks. During the meet up, we will explore the care network of our town, focusing on concerns regarding the architectural urban details, the restoration and repair, abandonment, lack of water, access to water, as well as the imaginary that always and inevitably tags along with our relationship with the world that surrounds us.

“Hand and Head walking (You are welcome to bring your own dog along too)” deals with Kyriaki Costa’s exhibition “Innovative Flow Solutions/ Head and Hand series” and will be theoretically contextualised by Sofia Eliza Bouratsi, who will discuss and pose questions around the thematics of everyday rituals in the public space, the meaning of walking as a practice and an aesthetic experience, the familiarization with the urban landscape as an necessary requirement for its’ care.

Kyriaki Costa was born in Nicosia, Cyprus. Her work investigates collective memory using personal narratives within ideological analyses of concrete human significations, folkloric romanticism and conceptions of reality and the imagination. Her artistic approach delves within undefined spaces in the environment and in human behavior. Her work practice is a conglomeration of contemporary technological practices and traditional methods. Finally, Costa also actively participates in activist initiatives in Cyprus that focus on environmental issues as well as the commons.

Sofia Eliza Bouratsi was born in Luxemburg. She works in the world of art as an independent art theoretician, curator and advisor in the cultural policies. She holds a PhD in Aesthetics and Science of Art from Université Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne, focusing on the aesthetics of the contemporary body, its images and the social, philosophical, scientific and political limits of it, as they are expressed through contemporary art. Her fields of research are focusing on embodying the enclosure and the institutionalisation of the body and thought, the aesthetics of public space, the urban and ecological contemporary transformations and the artistic and activist practices regarding the familiarization with public actions. At times she teaches at University (Université du Québec à Montréal in 2016-2017) and in the Prison of Thessaloniki (since 2016). She lives and works between Luxemburg and Greece.