Nikos Branidis CV

[cv] Nikos Branidis artist & activist b. 1974 in Athens, GR lives and works in Athens, GR www.nikbran.com nikbran@gmail.com Nikos Branidis holds a BA in Mathematics from University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Nikos have been making art in the form of written poetry, photography, video, performance, objects, sculptures since 1992. He has give lessons of history, theory of photography and darkroom techniques in Athens, Greece. Nikos Branidis’ artwork have been shown at Maison Maca, Athens,GR, Art Athina Art Fair in Athens,GR, at Banja Rathnov Gallery in Copenhagen,DK and at CAN Gallery, Athens,GR and BIOS, Athens,GR as in many other group shows in Greece. Nikos has published a poetry book. Nikos was part of the Syntagma Square occupation movement and a resident of the square for 2 months during the summer 2011. Nikos Branidis has been a performer and actor of his own performances and video-works, and also participated in other artists’ performances. Nikos has performed at Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, Athens, GR, Remap Art Festival, Athens, GR and at Banja Rathnov Gallery, Copenhagen, DK and PAO performance art festival, Oslo, NO. His short film "Toothbrushes" has won various prizes and shown internationally.

Macao

Emanuele Braga:
hi to all
this is some info asking your a support for macao...
Dear ...,
we are writing to you because you have had the chance to be involved with Macao betweeen 2012 and 2017.
If the news has already reached you, please bear with us.
Otherwise, you might be interested to know that Macao, the New Center for Arts, Culture and Research in Milan (www.macaomilano.org) is currently under threat of eviction.

In this email we kindly ask you to show your support in every possible way you can. As you understand, it is a crucial moment for Macao:
it will be important for us to show to the city government an international support for what Macao is- from cultural institutions, art institutions, academies, universities, autonomous/international artists, groups, and curators from all over the globe.
Therefore we kindly ask for your participation, support, and visibility for our project. This will imply that your name and affiliation will be published on a list of supporters on our website. You can find here a kit in order to help you to spread the message:
    - instruction to add a ribbon to your website
    - some pics of the communication campaign
Along with this, feel free to share the news among your networks through all means of communication using #loveandbordello hashtag, or through your live events.

Ah, and we are creating an association that will be the legal tool to buy Macao. You are welcome to join it to show your support, even if you're not an Italian citizen, there's a form you can fill out and share at this address: www.macaomilano.org

Provided links:

Link to press in English:
http://www.macaomilano.org/spip.php?article453

If you want to know more about Macao you can read about it here:
http://www.macaomilano.org/spip.php?article166

Macao is an independent center for art, culture and research. Avoiding the creative industry paradigm, and trying to innovate the old idea of cultural institutions, we started to consider art production as a viable process for rethinking social change, elaborating independent political critique, and as a space for innovative governance and production models. Our research concerns the labour conditions in the creative industry and cultural sector, the right to the city and new forms of organization and technological solutions for cultural production. Macao is currently based in a former slaughterhouse in the middle of a huge abandoned area not so far from the center of the city; it has a cross-sectorial program hosting performing arts, cinema, visualarts, design, photography, literature, newmedia, hacking and the meetings of citizens committees. It is coordinated by an open assembly of artists and activists.

' Capitalistic home'

My sculpture ' capitalistic home', is not going very well, but I will not give it up, I will persist with patience until it gets somewhere. If I try to stabilize it more it will become a solid sculpture but it will gain weight . So it will loose its ability to fly which it still has now. But it cannot stay as it is cause the way it is going, it will soon be ' gone with the wind'. Yet if it is going to be a 'capitalist home',maybe it is meant to wither away the way it is, since we are now passing to a post capitalistic era as someone mentioned some days ago. So the capital's ways are proving invalid, bubbles that keep popping into nothing?,hopefully yes,unfortunately for 'my piece of art'. So, back to the sculptor's endeavors, I still have some ideas how to solidify it but still maintain its perishlike character. Let's see!

17-18march presentation

Hello, my name is Athina Chatzigiannaki, I am a fine artist -performer, I joined the Arists Coperative group a few weeks ago. So I am still new in it myself, I am quite drawn to it because it is self organizing to a big extend , which is challenging for me, but on the other hand I am not alone and it is not my iniitiative all together, although I must contribute in some level for it to exist. Thinking about what to propose to you today since I have been given the chance, I was impressed by how little my mind evolved around art. This is very strange about me, cause usually I come up with ideas about art projects rather easily. So I decided to ask you to come up with your own proposals after I explain to you how far we have already worked in our group. The last two weeks we've been elaborating on coming up with a vision that I dare say, contains us all so far. It is not unchangeable but for the time it looks like we agreed upon certain points such as :solidarity between us 1, reexamine the relation we have as individual artists but as sociery as well, with the power centers that engage with art.2. Try to reveal hidden ways the capital is using and decide what to do with them , use them to our own benefit or go up straight against them. Example: It was proposed from documenta toward the artists cooperative to carry the sitting blocks from parko eleftherias to east whee I understand events will be held, possibly our own or /and others. Now that could me looked upon in many ways. I must admit that my first reaction was that we are not slaves, so we don't engage in this at all, then I thought we could take the blocks and sort of kidnapp them midway , set them up and make our own assembly where we could vote for the moto 'down to the center's of power in culture's, for instance Or better reexamine in an assembly our relation as artists with those centers and maybe also differentiate them. We could also have a simple questionnaire to impose to people passing by while invite them to participate in the assembly as well. Or we could just demonstrate dealing in the assembly with some other more general issue avoiding to go straight against certain organizations, but make ourselves visible with our own voice. The truth is we may do a lot of things with those sitting blocks performatively and politically.We can block the traffic if we have a good reason for it or make a political statement where the Truman statue used to be or do some parkour if we know what we are doing , it depends who participates and what we come up with. Maybe you have some more ideas to go about this. My intial idea was to go painting in different platias in the city and see if and how people react to what we are doing , their type of involvement . I propose big group painting where everybody can participate ,more professional painters along with amateurs and people that never painted before). We could encourage people to participate , throw in themes that they would initiate participation or just let free imagination express itself. Then our long paintings,(plastic colours on thick paper, or paper collage with flour glue),along with documentary filming could be presented at an event on the 11th of April, a date that is offered by documenta to the artists cooperative. This could lead to an assembly discussion about creativity and self expression of people ànd the meaning of initiatives as such, or however our topic gets formed, which could be held in the same event. In the space where this event would happen there could be a selection of relevant other art presented as well , either from documenta selected artists or other artist work selected by the artists coop or I don't know how to go about this. To be honest I would like to have a chance to present my latest sculpture the 'capitalistic home'.

An ad concerning the new fashion magazine 'As If''.

First I have to explain briefly the nature of the first issue of the magazine.
It is about paper wearable costumes,  tailor made especially for each of you. The costume is based on a wish you have for a specific item (like  a refrigerator or a special jacuzzi bath), or an action you wish to make (like a trip for example, hijacking will be difficult to support).
We enlarge photos of what you wish for and add adequate printing  money.
So that will be the material your costume will be made off.
Then you model wearing your costume for the magazine 'As If''.!
Needless to think much about it , just email me .
I am looking forward to meeting my models,
☆☆☆☆any shape and size of person you are , is more than welcome☆☆☆☆☆

If I were a rich man...dubi,dubi,dubi....

So as that song goes,I will paraphrase a bit: If I were a musician,dubi,dubi,dubi dubi,dubi,dubi,dubi,dub I would take the accord minmaj7 and apply it to as many scales I want and test the sounds produced, then... What's so great about minmaj7 then? ok, it is the only accord that can have both sharps and flats at the same time , for instance Gminmaj7 goes as such: G, flatB, D, sharpF. So now based on the continuum I become a sculptor: If I were a sculptor,dubi,dubi,dubi,dubi,dubi dubi,dubi,dub I will make a sketch to show an idea of a sculpture : this will be two rocks treated in a substractive manner and a figure leaping from one rock to the other treated in a realistic (sort of) manner. This will be a minmaj 7 sculpture. If I find someone to sponsor it I will make it in bronze. I can make better sketches than that, but that's not the point right now And now I will become a thinking person following the same continuum If I were a thinking person, dubi,dubi,dubi,dubi,dubi,dubi,dubi,dub I would think that in the matter of the people that have left one place A and still haven't gotten to a place B, the places A and B may be looked upon as vague, since A is no longer in the picture but neither is B (at least not yet). But what is very specific and alive is the people who are finding themselves in the intermediate state of being, and must be treated as such.(accordingly). This is a minmaj7 view of the issue of transferring people. And to come to me, who knows who I am after all...

26/11/'16- documenta 14 again

With the excuse of the very intriguing seminar that I experienced in the assemblies organized by documenta14, I want to share the thoughts that were provoked by the  line of thinking of the speakers -writers.
There  was a presentation of the new book written by Mauritsio Lazzarato and Eric Alliez,  and it was a good chance to ponder on the subject of their  new book 'Guerres et Capital' .
So my thinking went as such:
(imagine I am talking to them)
'...We don't speak the same language so please make an effort to understand .The Parliament of Bodies (which is a term induced by documenta 14 in Athens), is not a gathering of philosophers from what I understand, (or maybe it is in a sense, I am not sure), so I happen to be here   as someone interested and acquainted with that type of conversation but not using the language of philosophy exactly.

Four questions formed in me, the first I also posed to the speakers-writers,  at the assembly,
and also after I elaborated on my initial question by myself,
I got some positive feedback on my train of thinking, at a brief  private conversation  with Eric Alliez .
The three questions after that,  are  primarily expressed to you to reflect upon..

1. What did the antipode do (and  at what point of its possible doing) to make the capital need or think it needed  to drive things to a war?
( by antipode, I mean any subject that receives the capital's actions).
The answer was that  the antipode of the capital didn't do anything, the war was already there ,the war exists.
But, (I continue thinking after their answer), if the war is, then between who is it taking place? One who needs to colonize for the needs of the capital, that has to expand or needs to enslave and so forth,  and the other.
Now what is not so clear, at least to my realization, is the process the 'other','or 'the antipode', ot 'define it as you like', is going through.
The other  coexists with the capital in an  always present kind of subwar, lets say, until it enters a phase of "openness with no frame." as I call it, which is what  the capital is waiting for.
Once noticed, it  takes advantage and moves in to colonize or expand or /and destroy the other in any possible way.
Now why the other falls into that trap?
maybe it is inevitable by its nature, or for any other reason.
Perhaps an awareness of this process will help  the antipode find ways to prevent this outcome.
In my discussion with Eric Alliez after the seminar ended, he agreed that my idea about the  'openess with no frame' goes in the same logic of the 'need for organisation of the others', which was mentioned by them in the assembly.
2.
Now, just listen   to the words I will be using in the following sentences.
-For a war to be there are needed two sides
-Each side plays  its part
- They both engage in the game of war
So the words to be noticed are war, parts, plays, game.
We use the following  saying in Greece (and elsewhere I think).
'the theatre of war '.
To our territory now: What is theater?
A quick answer from wikipedia:
when we mean the space involved, it is: 'A place for viewing '.
So , I think, the definition  involves  spectators.
Who are the spectators in a war?
And my second  question forms as such:
What kind of twist  in the human nature drives people to need to see humans killing other humans?
3.
At the second day of the seminar, the two writers presented  to the audience a very clear  vision by example
So I am saying to them(imagine):
Thank you very much for the so clear paradigm of external -internal colonization through the use of violence by France toward Algeria (external), and the state toward  the French proletarians (internal) , in the past.
Why thank you?
Because today au contraire, I feel very ,very not clear when it comes to similar issues.. It helped  feel more intense my contradiction about what is going on now.
And I will explain what I mean:
The colonizer in a country is the invador and that involves some exert of power .
Now here, a wave of refugees has invaded my country and their power is in their need. They have the human right, they are relying on my sense of humanity, but I can't help still feeling invaded.
So in that sense I take the role of the Algerians and the refugees are the French only they don't possess weapons of violence, but their need as humans.
The moment they show up at our door, (and I literally mean that they are passing, groups after groups,from my front door in the village  where I  originally come from , Perama, Lesvos island),
the majority are strong enough to survive the journey, they  have money and cellphones, and are looking into the future. (except of couse of some poor weaker creatures that were drown),
I wonder how I can say all that after I have seen tremendous document films on the African crossing to Europe through the meditarrenian, but still I do.
Then , the Greek goverment with the help from Europe, organized them in camps and that gave me temporary relief !(I have to admit,how much more horribe can I get?),
  now they are a potential power awaiting....yet established ,in our country,
It actually reminds me a bit of the dourios ippos, the horse with the hidden soldiers that invaded ancient Troy.
As for the inside colonization: I feel again invaded like the French proletarians by the state.
Lets say they were suppressed back then by weapons ,and violence .
Now we are suppressed by fear (if you don't pay your taxes and insane sometimes charges , your property will be seized),and that is not the worse.
Τhe leftist government are  going for our moral jugular,'and I voted for them
'oh how bad you are if you don't take care of your debts',
only the money we are paying is our living force while the debt is a vague notion being hailing over our heads, on which we have no control, its an endless pit.
When the left change happened, they went for our moral tissue ,we felt we had to pay to look good but in the same time if you payed, your neighbors would gossip where you found the money to do so, so ethic corruption between people starts this way, another bottomless pit ,I would say.
All this is so embarrassing but true.
4.
Eric Alliez said the first day  that the contemporary art may have to seize to exist,
or better, he seemed  quite certain that  this  is what the future holds for art.
So what I would say to him  is:
It is a perfect opportunity for you to elaborate on that phrase, since if I am not mistaken I see quite a few artists here. Before you do I will ask  a bit annoyed, is this a trend? I was hearing a discussion panel being held at the Berlin biennial this year which  had the same topic,
how individual contemporary art is coming to an end and the upcoming issue is the role of the artist in the community.
So I am asking more in order to help the problematic,
what artist and what community  are we talking about. .