Underground / Politics
Danae Stratou & Yanis Varoufakis
3-5pm, 5th May
PSH LG02, Goldsmiths
(No registration or ticket required)
Underground / Ecology / Politics / Mythology is a series of three multimedia events organised by Teodora Pasquinelli hosted between The Showroom and Goldsmiths University.
Following the event Underground/Ecology with philosophers Timothy Morton and Federico Campagna, the second event in the series, Underground / Politics, investigates the binomial art and politics, in the context of the current major confluence of economic, social and environmental crisis. Artist Danae Stratou and economist Yanis Varoufakis will present their recently launched Vital Space platform and DIEM25 movement, and will discuss the potential for a close dialogue between art and politics to shape our consciousness and the course of our future. The talk will be moderated by political economist William Davies.
We are living through an era of environmental, cultural, economical and political disintegration. The daunting challenges already in front of us demand an urgent re-grounding of our experience of the world. The Underground series aims to explore – litterally and metaphorically – the fundamental ‘ground’ that lies ‘under’ three fundamental structures of our reality-system: the realms of Ecology, Politics and Mythology.
Underground, roots unfold and tangle, anchoring the plants growing on the surface. The underground sets the rhythm of the surface – yet, the attention devoted to it, is typically insufficient. Perhaps, it is exactly beneath our feet that we should point our keenest eye, to envision and invent a new path ahead.
Yanis Varoufakis read mathematics and economics at the Universities of Essex and Birmingham and subsequently taught economics at the Universities of East Anglia, Cambridge, Sydney, Glasgow, Texas and Athens where he still holds a Chair in Political Economy and Economic Theory. He is also Honorary Professor of Political Economy at the University of Sydney, Honoris Causa Professor of Law, Economics and Finance at the University of Torino, and Visiting Professor of Political Economy at King’s College, London.
He is the author of a number of best selling books, including Adults in the Room: My struggle against Europe’s Deep Establishment (London: Bodley Head, 2017); And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe, Austerity and the Threat to Global Stability (London: Bodley Head and NY: Nation Books, 2016); and The Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the World Economy (London: Zed Books, 2011,2015).
In his own words, Varoufakis was “thrust onto the public scene by Europe’s inane handling of an inevitable crisis”. In January 2015 he was elected to Greece’s Parliament with the largest majority in the country and served as Greece’s Finance Minister (January to July 2015). During his term he experienced first hand the authoritarian inefficiency of the European Union’s institutions and had to negotiate with the Eurogroup, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Varoufakis resigned the finance ministry when he refused to sign a loan agreement that perpetuated Greece’s debt-deflationary cycle.
In February 2016 Varoufakis co-founded DiEM25, the Democracy Europe Movement, which has grown in numbers across Europe since then. For his Ted Global talk click here. For more information on DiEM25, click here
Danae Stratou was born in Athens, Greece, studied at Central St. Martins School of Art, London Institute, acquiring her BA (Hons) in Fine Art – Sculpture, (1983-1988) and was Adjunct Professor at the Superior School of Fine Arts (Masters of Fine Arts Degree), Athens, Greece, (2007 – 2013). Her work consists of large-scale installations and tactile audio-visual environments. She has exhibited widely, including in the 48th Venice Biennale, Italy (1999), the 1st Valencia Biennale, Spain (2001), the Bienal International del Deporte en el Arte – BIDA 2005 Seville, Spain (2005), the 5th International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Gyumri, Armênia (2006), the 1st Thessaloniki Biennale, Greece (2007), La Verriere, (Fondation D’ Enterprise Hermes) – Solo Show, Belgium (2010), Istanbul – Culture Capital of Europe 2010 International Program, Turkey (2010), the Adelaide International Festival 2012: Restless, Australia (2012), the Annual International show Icastica, Arezzo, Italy (2015), Borders, Barriers, Walls, Monash University Museum of Art in Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia (2016), the international exhibition Lanceurs D’Alert at La Gaite Lyrique, Paris, France (2017).
In 2010 she initiated and co-founded the non-profit organization Vital Space, a global, interdisciplinary, cross-media art platform addressing the pressing issues of our time.She is one of the three members of the D.A.ST Arteam collaborative, who created Desert Breath, one of the largest Land Art projects on the planet, covering 100,000 m2, located in the eastern Egyptian Sahara bordering the Red Sea, Egypt (1997). She was awarded the Runner Up Prize in the National Public Art Competition for the airport high street of the City of Austin Bergstrom International Airport, Texas, USA (2014) and the Commission’s Panel Award in 18th Biennale of Cerveira, Portugal (2015) awarded to the video installation The Globalising Wall.
Teodora Pasquinelli is a writer and event organiser with a background in Fine Arts, interested in looking at the morphology of the current age, through the relationship between art and fundamental philosophy. She is a contributor for art magazines Arte e Critica and Juliet. Having worked in several art institutions in London, she is currently working as a production assistant for the Greek documentary TV series “Apo Agathi Rodo’ broadcasted by the national TV channel ERT2.
Future events:
Underground / Ecology / Politics / Mythology will bring together internationally-recognised theorists across three events to create an open dialogue around the concept of the underground – as seen through the lenses of Ecology, Politics and Mythology unfolding on actual global political and philosophical issues.
Underground / Mythology
Details to be announced
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