Key details
Time
- 5pm – 6pm
Location
- Online
Price
- Free
Who can attend
- Everyone
Type
- Webinar
What might be the role of feedback loops in contemporary artistic practice? How can an artist raise questions relating to contemporary art materialisms, ideas, practices and histories, via processes of repeating, redoing, rethinking and self-referencing [art referencing itself]?
Join Contemporary Art Summer School course leader Dr Despina Zacharopoulou, alongside multidisciplinary artist Emma Fineman and visual artist and lecturer Dr. Giorgos Kontis, for an engaging conversation exploring the dynamic theme of Ana-Meta-Materialisms: Contemporary art practice reinventing, rethinking and referencing itself. In an era dictated by the virality and mutation of information spread throughout social media, Artificial Intelligence, and the circulation of fake news, this talk will delve into the urgent need to reimagine contemporary art practice via processes of redoing, repeating, mutating, self-referencing and rethinking, that might give birth to new artistic paradigms.
This talk offers a glimpse into the framework of our upcoming Contemporary Art Summer School, inviting you to consider how these ideas might resonate within your own artistic journey.
Speakers
Dr Despina Zacharopoulou
Dr Despina Zacharopoulou is a performance artist, theorist and academic, born in Arcadia, Greece. Currently working between London and Athens, Dr Zacharopoulou holds the ongoing position of the Course Leader of the Contemporary Art Summer School at the RCA (2018 onwards). Since 2010, she has been invited to teach at several Higher Education Institutions worldwide, within diverse settings and academic environments. Coming from a trans-disciplinary professional and academic background across the fields of architecture, fine art, sculpture, new media, installations, and costume design, Despina completed her practice-led Ph.D. in Philosophy & Fine Art (Performance) at the RCA (on an Onassis Foundation scholarship), supervised by Prof. Johnny Golding (Primary) and Prof. Nigel Rolfe (second). Her practice investigates performance as SPATIUM MONSTRORUM: surface and event of parrhēsia, aiming at reconstituting philosophy as embodied practice and method towards a life which is radically other.
Her work has been presented at events of global impact, e.g.: Marina Abramović Institute Takeover at Southbank Centre (London, 2023); VII VENICE PERFORMANCE ART WEEK (Venice, 2023); AS ONE by NEON & the Marina Abramović Institute (Athens, 2016); London Frieze (2016, 2017); A Possible Island? by the Marina Abramović Institute & the 1st Bangkok Art Biennale (Bangkok, 2018-19); DataLoam (University of Applied Arts, Vienna, 2019), etc. Publications include articles in: Performance Research Journal (2023), Performance Philosophy Journal (2022), The NY Times (2016), The Nation Thailand (2018), CNN Greece (2016), Liberal Newspaper Greece (2017), The Art Newspaper Greece (2021). Dr Zacharopoulou is also a Stavros Niarchos Foundation ARTWORKS Fellow (2021) and won the UK Alumni Culture & Creativity Award in Greece (2024).
Emma Fineman
Emma Fineman is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is born from a space of questioning, of curiosity, of queerness. She is interested in the ways we are shaped by stories; be they stories told by religion or mythology or cosmology or politics. With acute attention to materiality and gesture, her work interrogates what it is to live in a queer body in today’s world, one that exists in the slippages between the normative delineations of gender and sexuality. One raised in the wake of a religion founded on the sublimation of women. One who senses that there is magic to be found in the ineffable.
In conceiving her work, Fineman revisits narratives culled from art historical allegories, Jewish folklore, and contemporary media to draw out hidden truths- unearth them in their totality, re cast them, and highlight the threads that might have been overshadowed or cast aside. Where things like yearning, grief, and prospect are all present.
Dr. Giorgos Kontis
Dr. Giorgos Kontis (b.1981 Athens) is a visual artist and lecturer. His work focuses on abstraction, the function of the painted image, and the relationship it may build with the beholder. Giorgos studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts, the Academy of Visual Arts (AdBK) in Munich, and the University of Arts (UdK) in Berlin. He holds an MFA from the St.Joost Academy in Breda, the Netherlands, and a PhD in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London, on the notions of authenticity and of the image. He occasionally curates shows mostly related to painting matters, and is an adviser for the WSA Painting Prize. He lives and works in Athens and Hamburg.
Recent shows include: stillstand (reminiscence), Fahrbereitschaft, Haubrok Foundation Berlin (solo, organised by Franziska Kreuzpaintner); Encore: New Greek Painting, Municipal Gallery of Athens (curated by Eleni Koukou, Christoforos Marinos, Theofilos Tramboulis); Ground Diaries, Atelierhaus Aachen (solo, curated by Stephanie Wagner); matter: echoed, BARK Gallery Berlin Lab (solo, curated by Polina Piagin); Ground Suspended, CRAMA Showspace Berlin (solo); Rebetiko, City of Athens Arts Centre (curated by Christoforos Marinos); Mother Tongue, Crux Galerie Athens (solo, curated by Katerina Nikou)
In the series
Free online talks led by RCA academic faculty featuring notable guest speakers with industry specialism and leading professional practitioners in their field.
