Angelo Plessas presented The Eternal Internet Brotherhood/Sisterhood & Bahar Noorizadeh discussed The Red City of the Planet of Capitalism: Mythopoetics of Free Enterprise, from Soviet Disurbanism to Hong Kong. Facilitation of dialogue by Elena Parpa & Evi Tselika.

Ο Άγγελος Πλέσσας παρουσίασε το έργο του Αιώνια Ιντερνετική Αδελφότητα & η Μπαχάρ Νουριζάντε έθεσε ερωτήματα γύρω από Την Κόκκινη Πόλη του Πλανήτη του Καπιταλισμού: Μυθοποίησεις της ελευθεριακής οικονομίας, από την Σοβιετική αντι-πολεοδόμηση στο Χονγκ Κονγκ. Συντονισμός συζήτησης:  Έλενα Πάρπα & Ευανθία (Εύη) Τσελίκα.

Angelo Plessas

The Eternal Internet Brotherhood/Sisterhood is an independent project I founded and curated in 2012 every year in a different place in the world. This is usually an historic site surrounded by splendid nature. It is a meeting place of artists, writers, architects and various cultural practitioners. The project offers participants an opportunity to expand and develop their practice and proposes new relationships between people and place, between work and leisure, artist and audience. It offers a wide range of activities such as perfomances, various workshops, writings and readings but it is a starting point for individual future projects. They key themes revolve around the effects of hyperconnectivity and solitude, re-evaluation of life in urban areas and spiritual re-connections with antiquity and other eras taking into account primarily the place and its history. The duration of the project is about 7 to 10 days. The 1st Eternal Internet Brotherhood took place on Anafi, an island with a rich ancient Cycladic culture. The 2nd Eternal Internet Brotherhood took place in April 2013 in Xilitla, Mexico in the surrealist park of Las Pozas. The 3rd edition happened in an abandoned military base in the North Dead Sea area in the West Bank while the 4th edition happened at the Castello Malaspina in Fosdinovo, the residence of poet Dante Alighieri during his exile. The 5th edition happened near the ancient royal palace located on the rock of Sigiriya in Sri Lanka in October 2016. The last and 6th edition happened in May 2017 in the pagan area of the Dornberg Nature Reserve in Germany and it was part of my project for Documenta 14.

Angelo Plessas(www.angeloplessas.com) lives and works in Athens. The central aim in Plessas’ work is to highlight the ambiguous approach of spirituality with technology opening up themes on the human condition, social relations, identity and freedom of speech. Plessas’ activities range from performances to artist residencies; from self-publishing to interactive websites; from neon sculpture to quilting. Over the last years, he has organized the annual, weeklong gatherings of Τhe Eternal Internet Brotherhood/Sisterhood of Τhe Experimental Education Protocol. He is the founder of the space P.E.T. Projects in Athens. His work has been exhibited internationally in large-scale exhibitions and art institutions, such as documenta 14, both in Kassel and Athens; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Jeu de Paume, Centre Pompidou, Paris; the DESTE Foundation, the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; Frieze Projects 2013, London. A Fulbright alumnus, he has been awarded the DESTE Prize in 2015.

Bahar Noorizadeh

As part of the artist’s long-term research program around material genealogies of network design, this lecture revisits proposals for a communist sprawl in the 1929 Soviet Union (Disurbanism), tracing these blueprints to the contemporary global city. From an epitome of social housing in the 20th century, to the most lucrative property market in the world today, Hong Kong’s unusual story meets the Disurbanist past outside tired historical dichotomies. The lecture discusses how Hong Kong’s crucial role in writing the free market folklore is the product of a double-colonial project. To dispute the validity of the neoliberal narrative, one should look no further than the space itself: city design, urban policy, and their derivative chronopolitics.

Bahar Noorizadeh is a filmmaker, writer and platform designer. Her current research examines the intersections of finance, contemporary art and emerging technology, building on the notion of “Weird Economies” to precipitate a cross-disciplinary approach to economic futurism and post-financialization imaginaries. She is pursuing this work as a PhD candidate in Art Practice + Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London.