Artificial Natures

The provisory inhabitation of an idiosyncratic “constructed nature” forms the present architectural investigation. A hidden infrastructure forms an unreal scenography of a life setting performed in a constructed natural; Petasi deserted island situated closed to the busy, touristic island of Hydra hosts a scenographic, fake inhabitation of a supposedly “pure” nature.

The growing imaginary of a glorious nature constructs a flat concept of it. Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler describes the specific decline of every civilization (1918) at the phase when it does not produce new values; the western man consciously lives an artificial, uprooted life.

Aristide Antonas is an architect and writer, currently based in Athens and Berlin. His literature is published at Agra Publications (Athens), JRP-Ringier (Zurich) and Crap is Good Press (Berlin). His theoretical texts are mostly published on the Internet. Aristide is principal in the Antonas office (nominee for a Mies Van der Rohe award, 2009 and for a Iakov Chernikov Prize, 2011). He has been active as a tutor in Greece (NTUA, Athens and UTH, Volos) and as a part of the visiting staff at the Architectural Association, the University of Cyprus, Frei U Berlin and the Bartlett UCL.

The lecture performance Against Nature based on Joris-Karl Huysmans novel À Rebours directed the audience to observe the moment when Huysmans’ hero is struggling to leave his home as that of a transcendental moment. A screening of quotations and selected excerpts from the novel, testifying the difficulties the hero is facing in committing this transition and decide a trip, were accompanied with speech describing differently what is written in the fragments and interpreting them. The hero’s wish to travel and the impressive failure of leaving were shown as a completed circle; the preparation to move, the operation of the trip, the failure, and the return to the house. The duration of the lecture is shared between readings, left to be read in silence on the screen and the interruptions of a subjective speech describing the text for its own purpose and distorting it. Huysmans’ novel À Rebours described prematurely modernity as the era of artificially manufactured realities; the difference between the original and the copy is here blurred. Furthermore the copy and the culture of the artificial seems to be overwhelming and richer than the authentic experience of the original. The hero builds his home as the place where constructed experiences replace all references to any original ones.

Elina Axioti (1981, Thessaloniki) lives and works in Athens and Berlin. She studied architecture at the University of Thessaly and Humanities and Cultural Studies at the University of London. She currently works on her doctoral thesis at Humboldt University of Berlin. She tough on Culture, Design and New Media at the University of the Aegean. She is co-founder of the curatorial collective Floater and the creative studio Lamb and Lamp and she is the director of the non-profit cultural organisation Architecture Syndicate. She worked as a project manager for the Campana brothers’ installations in New Hotel and for the exhibition design of Doug Aitken’s Black Mirror in Deste’s project space and as an Assistant Curator for the 2nd Athens Biennial. Last year she conducted research at The Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture in New York. She has presented work in cultural initiatives organised by the Athens Biennial, the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, the Storefront for Art and Architecture OfficeUS, the NGBK Berlin, the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin and the Universität Stuttgart. She was the recipient of NEON Curatorial Award 2014.