metamatic:taf (The Art Foundation)"State of being and the element of surprise"
Jun. 2016 - Jul. 2016Cocurated with Antigoni PogiatziSurprise constitutes a shock and/or revelation caused by one or a group of incidents that alter a given situation, leading to a feeling of wonder, astonishment or amazement as at something unanticipated. In Greek the word surprise refers to an exit from dullness, an unexpected way out of a certain monotonous condition. Surprise has nothing to do with procedure but may be luck or coincidence. It refers to a probability that regardless of effort and hard work comes when least expected to re-form a state of being.
One can never know one's course. One can never understand one's limits until reached. One can never understand one's boundaries until crossed. Life is a course, a road hill, full of steps of actions and efforts, acquisitions and surprises. Today, boundaries have been crossed and lives have been pushed to their limits. Surprisingly - even though realising the systemic play of the west - austerity politics and social oppression, has caught us unexpectedly. Refugees of war, in 2016. Extreme right wing parties rising, Islamic attacks, ISIS, antiterrorist laws have all caught us unexpected. But there has always been bravery in oppression, and love in war. And while politics and imperialistic laws strive for a restricted form of society, where everything is controlled, we have found solidarity and the coming together of people. Back in the 1960s Guy Debord argued that the true aim of art is not to 'show' life to people but enable them to live, in an effort to demolish the boundaries between art and life, and that is still the case. Today, the art arena clearly concentrating on the malfunctions of our world and attempting to explain systemic issues of social reality, is constantly creating heterotopias that redefine our notion of the world through the element of surprise. Art catches the world by surprise so that through the awakening of its defendants and the struggle for unity, it reinvents the humane, the world and thus beauty, what a surprise...