For the second public meeting of The Society of Friends of Ulises Carrión we invite you to Bookworks Revisited: This Is a Poem, a presentation and discussion focusing on different strands of and correspondences between art and poetry, writing as art, and the stories around the artists and writers of the Visual Poetry Group, active mainly in Athens since 1981. We invite (among others) artist Kyrillos Sarris to present his work within the group as well as the Greek translation of Ulises Carrión’s The New Art of Making Books, initiated and published by Sarris. Under the title Ephemera: “This is a poem” Revisited, curator Tina Pandi opens up her research on the Visual Poetry Group. What is the significance of the ephemera of an exhibition? The presentation aims to revisit the retrospective exhibition “This is a poem:” Visual Poetry Group 1981–2011, organized in 2012 by the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Athens, by examining various materials that were collected and developed during the research leading up to the exhibition: oral histories, photographic documentation, text fragments, and audio recordings.
The evening starts with the presentation of a work by Carrión.
Ersi Sotiropoulou, This is a poem (1981-82), silver print, photo: Giorgos Andrikakos
Tina Pandi is an art historian and curator. She studied Art History at Athens University and the University Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense. Since 2006 she is a curator in the Collections Department at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Athens. She has curated numerous historical exhibitions, such as Bia Davou: A Retrospective, 2008–09, Ulrich Rückriem: Shadows of the Stone, 2008, both at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Athens, and Νikos Kessanlis: From matière to the Image, Municipal Art Gallery of Chania, 2008, as well as group and solo shows featuring a younger generation of Greek artists. In 2011 she curated the exhibition “This is a poem:” Visual Poetry Group 1981–2011 at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Athens. Pandi lives and works in Athens.
Kyrillos Sarris is an artist with a particular interest in books, words, and the inframince. He studied medicine at the University of Athens before training for six years under the painters Lefteris Oikononou and Tilemachos Kanthos. His work is often articulated through personal notes, correspondences, and coded communications with other artists and writers. In 2001 he translated into Greek and published The New Art of Making Books by Ulises Carrión (Η νέα τέχνη να φτιάχνεις βιβλία). Sarris lives and works in Athens.
The Visual Poetry Group works at the intersection of literature and visual arts. Its members are poets, writers, and visual artists, among them Demosthenes Agrafiotis, Stathis Chrysikopoulos, Telemachos Chytiris, Costis (Triantafyllou), Yiulia Gazetopoulou, Natasha Hadjidaki, Alexandra Katsiani and Thanasis Chondros, Sophia Martinou, Michail Mitras, Kyrillos Sarris, and Ersi Sotiropoulou. Among the exhibitions of the group are “This a poem:” Visual Poetry Group 1981–2011, National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Athens, 2012, Image Scripts. The Greek Visual Poetry Group Exhibition, Hellenic American Union, 2003, and No Man’s Land, Athens Municipality Art Center, Parko Eleftherias, 1990. The group has been meeting sporadically since 1981. Its members are based in Greece.
