Full Calendar

When:

Opening: May 26, 18:00-22:00

Duration: May 27 – June 28

Opening hours: Tuesday-Friday 14:00-18:00 Saturday 12:00-16:00

Where: ACG Gallery, Deree – The American College of Greece, 6 Gravias Street, 15342, Aghia Paraskevi, Athens

Organized by: Frances Rich School of Fine and Performing Arts as part of the Deree Arts Festival 2023

Supported by: the Art History, Graphic Design and Visual Arts programs and ACG Art Collection.

Special thanks to the Dance Area for their contribution and collaboration.

About the exhibition

“A Scattering of Salts”

Curated by Panos Giannikopoulos at Deree – The American College of Greece

 The exhibition “A Scattering of Salts”, opening on May 26, 2023, presents works of painting, sculpture, video, performance, and dance at Deree – The American College of Greece. It brings the art collection of The American College of Greece into dialogue with contemporary artists from Greece and abroad.

The narrative thread traversing the exhibition stems from a photograph which is part of the art collection. The acclaimed American Poet James Merrill looks at the life mask of fellow poet Kimon Friar. Multiple references emerge from the petrified gaze. Projections of desire, the form of the Medusa, citations and comparisons, sedimentation, the nexus of life and death.

Merrill’s last poetry collection[1] of the same name lends the exhibition its title, imposing its underlying leitmotifs. The scattering of salts is a poetic invocation, binding and situating at the same time, a magic circle, a spell. The scattering of salts serves as a metaphor for the scattering of memories and the accumulation of time. Merrill’s séance is proposed in “A Scattering of Salts” as an exhibition-making tool. The occult, spiritual communications the poet anecdotally held are playfully converted into a way of engaging with art history and reconstructing historical works. These uncanny conversations become a source of both poetic and spatial inspiration.

The invocation of magic helps us become aware of our preexisting metaphysical assumptions. As the range of the possible keeps shrinking, contemporary rituals try to move beyond prescribed rules and reach out to what cannot be captured in descriptive language. They reveal the relationship between artistic practice and the transcendental through the counter reflection of the “technical”[2]. Historical works surface alongside contemporary artists and erratic dance performances and occupy unexpected spaces, while lost works are re-animated or developed further, creating scattered connections.

Privileging scattering over organization, dispersion rather than systematic arrangement, the exhibition presents fragments of imagination dissolving into something else. Salts become a lens through which to contemplate the present and scattering emerges as a methodology, thus creating the illusion of symmetrical, kaleidoscopic patterns.
Minerals and parts of our tissues facilitate the transmission of nerve impulses across the human body, crystallizing into precious materials, a process of becoming and unbecoming—prisms in a contingent flux which enable us to contemplate the past and the future.

Salts crystallize and dissolve; layers of calcium carbonate accrete to form a pearl, which in time is dropped back into the sea; molecules under heat and pressure are rearranged to form gemstones, and the same forces decrystallize marble to chalk[3].

Participating artists: Yannis Bouteas, James Bridle, Eleni Christodoulou, Jimmie Durham, Nicole Economides, Kimon Friar, Evangelia Fouseki, Ioanna Gouma, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Gkikas, Rowena Hughes, Theo Hios, Astrid Kokka, Bety Krňanská, Jack Mcconville, Michael Michaelides, Irini Miga, Raffaela Naldi Rossano, Kosmas Nikolaou, Pavlos Nikolakopoulos, Aemilia Papaphilippou, Malvina Panagiotidi, Rallou Panagiotou, Cezary Poniatowski, Chrysanne Stathacos, Takis, Lina Zedig

26/05: Ermira Goro

09/06: Konstantina Barkouli

[1] Merrill, James. A Scattering of Salts. Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

[2] Campagna, Federico. Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality. Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.

[3] “A Scattering of Salts: Kaleidoscopic Innocence.” James Merrill: Knowing Innocence, Routledge, New York, 2007, p. 158.

When: Thursday, June 8, 2023 | 13:00-15:00
Where: ACG Events Hall, 6 Gravias Str., Agia Paraskevi

Organized by:
ACG UNSDGs Student Hub
SDG Student Hub AUEB
ACG Office of Public Affairs

Supported by:
ACG Center of Excellence in Food, Tourism & Leisure
Dipnosofistirion

About the event

Did you know that 1/3 of all food globally goes to waste?
Wasting food also means wasting the water used to produce the food and the land on which the food has been produced (28% of the world’s agricultural land), while 9.9% of the human population is undernourished.
Due to food wastage billions of tons of CO₂ emissions are released into Earth’s atmosphere, contributing greatly to climate change (fao.org).
According to UN’s Food Waste Index Report 2021, Greek people waste on average 142 kg of food annually, one of the highest in the world.

In celebration of World Food Safety Day, the SDG Student Hub AUEB, the ACG UNSDGs Student Hub, and the Office of Public Affairs are coming together to educate their members and the broader community on the elimination of food waste in Greece.

Esteemed professionals from all sectors are coming together to share with the audience and the students from both institutions their views on the issue and how they contribute to the elimination of food waste.  The well-known Executive Chef Dimitris Skarmoutsos will give us tips on making more sustainable choices when buying food items and also on home consumption.

Our panelists will comment on the findings of the Panhellenic study on the perceptions of the Greeks on food waste and food labelling administered by the ACG Center of Food, Tourism and Leisure.

The event is in the context of the ACG’s raising-awareness campaign “Reduce Your FOODprint!”. The campaign aims at raising awareness about this critical issue and educating our community on best practices on how to save food.

Event Agenda

12:30-13:00 | Registration

13:00-13:10 | Welcome Remarks
Claudia Carydis, Vice President, Public Affairs, The American College of Greece
Dr. Georgina Spyres, Manager, SDSN Greece

13:10-13:30 | Presentation of the Panhellenic study on the perceptions of Greek consumers on food waste and food labeling – Dr. Athanasios Krystallis, Krontallis, Exec. Director, Center of Excellence in Food, Tourism and Leisure, The American College of Greece

13:30-14:30 | Panel Discussion

Moderators:

Eva Papanikolaki, SDG Students Program, Campus Coordinator Αthens University of Economics and Business.
BA Economics, AUEB, Minor International Relations Student – Deree, ACG
Despoina Chatzakou, History & Philosophy of Science – University of Athens, Minor, International Relations, Deree – The American College of Greece, ACG Sustainability Leader

Panelists:

Dia Chorafa | Boroume, Coordinator of the Alliance for the reduction of food waste in Greece
Rania Assariotaki | Senior Manager for Sustainability, The American College of Greece
Effie Petropoulou | In store IFB Manager, IKEA Greece
Aggeliki Goude | Marketing Specialist in Sustainability, IKEA Greece
Konstantinos Karakatsanis | Gelato artist, Django Gelato
Dimitris Skarmoutsos | Executive Chef

14:30-15:00 | Q&A session

Django will be joining us to serve up scrumptious ice cream treats

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The event will be held in Greek.
Click here to save your spot.

For any questions, please contact [email protected]