Head and Hand

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304457

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NEW EUROPEAN BAUHAUS AWARDS: existing completed examples

Project title

Head and Hand

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Description

Head&Hand could be vaguely described as a project on repair/maintenance and redefinition of space.
Head&Hand poses the question of the “commons”, through an aesthetic approach to the relations between humans and their topos. She invites the residents of Tinos to highlight the places that require restoration, and subsequently she asks, builders to repair spots having their own personal aesthetic as a compass – an aesthetic that, contrary to art and philosophy, is driven by functionality.

What was the geographical scope of your project?

Does your project address mainly urban or rural issues?

Does your project refer to a physical transformation of the built environment or other types of transformations?

Has your project benefited from EU programmes or funds?

Which or fund(s)? Provide the name of the programme(s)/fund(s), the strand/action line as relevant and the year.

Has your project won an EU prize?

Your project is fully completed?

When was your project implemented?

How did you hear about the New European Bauhaus Prizes ?

On whose behalf are you submitting the application?

Please provide a summary of your project

I am more interested in the role of the observer, the synergies and the participatory process than in that of the creator. The craftsmen define the intermediate space between the artist and the work. This spontaneous work of the craftsman, his aesthetics, his technical approach, aiming at functionality, his own “hands-on” way of thinking, “with his hands”, constitutes a force of deconstruction, which invites us to a new reading of the space around us. (Kyriaki Costa)

The collective project Head and Hand / Kairos started as a residency of the artist (Kyriaki Costa) in the Greek island of Tinos (June-July 2021), evolved into a route that starts from the Culture Foundation of Tinos and which, passing through the specially designed paths, reaches as far as the Hani tis Kyra-Xenis, Tripotamos, Ktikados and the medieval trail that used to lead to the castle of Xomburgos. The flags that indicate the paths of this tour, which is accompanied by a map, have been inspired by Cycladic architecture and have been made with recycled materials used in the tourism industry, such as sheets, towels, tablecloths etc. from various hotels of the island. In addition, the village of Tripotamos was chosen to honour of Greek philosopher Cornelius Castoriades, who spent many of his summers there, while the rest of the trails came about through meetings the artist had had with the locals, who indicated the diachronic routes of the area.

The project is the result of the visual connection between the artist and the island. Before visiting Tinos, Kyriaki Costa researched weather forecasts for Tinos and the dominant role that wind plays in shaping forms in the everyday life of the island. However, through a mental game, the concept of “Kairos” (meaning weather in Modern Greek) takes the philosophical meaning of “adequate time” or that “unique moment”, a moment that, once it slips away, doesn’t come back. 

 

Please indicate the main themes of your project with 5 key words

Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of sustainability (including circularity) and how these have been met.
Please highlight how the project can be exemplary in this context

The spaces of the city acquire a complex identity and this is exhibited through the work of its own inhabitants. They come into contact with the tool that will give life once again to the destroyed or eroded element of the area and they are actively involved in the process of recreating and reconstructing the surrounding environment. The aim of this reparation and reconstruction is to make people aware of the space that surrounds them and its gradual destruction, but also their direct interaction with it. The environment comes alive through our hands and a ‘simple’ repair becomes a distinct goal in the relation between the urban and natural environment and the person, it becomes a way of life.

My project concerns the repair and therefore the redefinitions of destroyed parts of the city which lie unrepaired and forgotten in the wider framework of urban culture. A culture of ‘couldn't-give-a-damn’ attitudes and quick fixes, that encourages the constant change of the urban setting.

Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of aesthetics and quality of experience beyond functionality and how these have been met.
Please highlight how the project can be exemplary in this context

The core of the project is the walking experience and the simultaneous observation and understating of the landscape.

Contemplative walking cultivates the awareness of a non-segregated existence between the world and the I who perceives. Reality is seen as an unrestricted creation of the I while it experiences, and landscape is recognized as the consciousness of that reality. Place becomes a centerless circle, a meditative space in which the experiencer functions both as its seeds and expressive means. Physicality (outer) and vulnerability (inner) are interwoven into a secret territory which the walking experience unveils and ascribes the landscape’s perpetual becoming as a narrative.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinproche teaches:

...[we] can see in two different ways. The ordinary way is characterized by the fact perception is always related to accomplishing some end other than the perception itself. It is created as a means rather than something in itself... [The other way] is a definite different when we just look at [things] as [they are] and enjoy the vast colors that are there in tremendous vividness. When we look like this, we will immediately notice how free we become. The entire network of mental factors in which we usually labor just drops off (Gunter and Trunga, 1975: 17, 18).

Explore abandoned, lost and seemingly impenetrable places, which tell of a past world that has remained suspended in time and almost always on the margins. It is fascinating to perceive how these places still exude life and have a strong identity. Finding ourselves in the era of communication, it is not surprising the growing interest in the relationship between architecture and new forms of narration.

Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of inclusion (equal opportunities, public participation, citizen engagement, co-design, universal design, accessibility, affordability, etc.) and how these have been met.
Please highlight how the project can be exemplary in this context

Since 2013 Kyriaki Costa has been working on the project “Head and Hand”. Head and Hand could be vaguely described as a project on repair/maintenance and redefinition of space. With the help of a team of technicians, “details” of the urban environment of Cyprus that require reconstruction, and proceed in repairing them, were chosen. Inspired by the natural and technical corrosion of the urban scene, the artist asked the technicians to repair the object however they feel like. This way, she is trying to excerpt a more personal viewpoint of what it means to interact with your eroded surroundings. As an artist, she is interested in the repair of the objects and the new aesthetic that comes out of it. Her role in the project is to cease the procedure the moment the problem that had previously occurred by the objects being broken, is fixed. Worrying about the new spatial aesthetic to seem beautiful is not the main objective in Head and Hand. It’s about touching the place, feeling it, fixing and re-incorporating it within the contemporary environment, and how, through repairing the space, the urban landscape can be redefined.

Please explain how these three dimensions have been combined in your project.
Please highlight how this approach can be exemplary

In the heart of the project is the relationship of people with their region and more specifically the public space, the landscape of the island and the architecture. The implementation is reached through the ‘daily rituals’, like walking, caching up, storytelling, which are activated by the artist focusing on the practices of caring as well as the way by which they are inserted to the daily life. The outcome of the project, which is still on going, are formatted by Kyriaki Costa and the residents of the island of Tinos, with the wind which is predominant attribute of the island, but also the craftsmen who participate. Through this synergy, the project Head and Hand/ Kairos poses queries related to the functionality of the relationships, beauty, contemporary art and daily life, care, and familiarization with the public issues.

Please give information on the results/impacts achieved by your project in relation to the category you apply for

The outcome of the project, which is still on going, are formatted by Kyriaki Costa and the residents of the island of Tinos, with the wind which is predominant attribute of the island , but also the craftsmen who participate. Through this synergy, the project Head and Hand/ Kairos poses queries related to the functionality of the relationships, beauty, contemporary art and daily life, care, and familiarization with the public issues.

Please explain how citizens and civil society were involved in the in the design and/or implementation of the project.
Please also explain the benefits that derived from their involvement.

The artistic along with the residents have cleaned and reshaped a pathway- through the Project Head and Hand we shed light on the meaning and importance of the preservation and coexistence. The project puts emphasis on walking as valuable experience. Walking constitutes more than ever a very important methodology that allows an inspiring convergence between theory and practice, revealing an interesting dialogue and interchange between art, architecture, urban studies, sustainability, ecology and technology. Walking, with a holistic perspective, discloses the multiple layers of experience in the relationship between people and places. As stated by Rebecca Solnit: “Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned (…)”.

Walking practices have been and are being used by many artists in order to discover and explore a specific territory, city and geography; or to pursue an experience of having both the body and mind aware of the place they occupy and, simultaneously, aware of their process of being-in-mobility. Walking practices are also used as a strategy to address geopolitical, social, economic or environmental issues and to question territorial and political configurations. There are multiple dimensions of walking art experiences

The outcome of the project, which is still on going, are formatted by Kyriaki Costa and the residents of the island of Tinos, with the wind which is predominant attribute of the island , but also the craftsmen who participate. Through this synergy, the project Head and Hand/ Kairos poses queries related to the functionality of the relationships, beauty, contemporary art and daily life, care, and familiarization with the public issues.

The project was based on the direct meetings and interaction of the local society with the artist. A guided tour, a public discussion, a workshop and a music event were provided at the premises of the exhibition 

Please explain what kind of global challenges the project addressed by providing local solutions

 

The local residents were invited to actively participate to the project. The main aim of the project lies on people’ s association with their birth and living place and more specifically with public space – the landscape of the island, the architecture and the community areas. Its realization is achieved through “everyday rituals”, such as walking, meetings and storytelling, which are activated by the artist focusing on care practices and the way they infiltrate and unfold everyday life. People could understand the public space through an abstract as well as a synthetic way.

The flags indicating the paths of project’s tour were made of recycled material used in the tourism industry, such as sheets, towels, tablecloths etc. Through this the residents of such a touristic Greek island had the chance not only to reshape the meaning and importance of tourism in their region but also to be aware for the importance of reusing material, recycling, caring of the local -and to a broader extent global -environment. Once the locals were able to introduce solutions to their local communities, they would be more than productive to actively contribute for providing solutions to the global sphere. Change starts from small and limited areas, and this is one of the basic ideas of the present project. Small cores of change have the dynamic and potential to activate large scale social alterations.

Please highlight the innovative character of the project as compared to mainstream practices in the field of the project.

The innovative character of the project is based on the fact that the project reached its maturity while its exhibition and the interaction with the local community. Local residents - without acknowledging it- acted like artists. They were the key parts for unfolding and understanding their local scene. Their spontaneous and authentic participation played a main role on the formation of the project.

Art and culture were not served as tools or weapons which had the potential to alter the world. They were though, and they still are, aesthetics and intellectual experience which could transform the relation with life, our understanding of the outer and inner world, and our mentality. The artistic and research interests Kyriaki’s Costa are closely related to the histories, the fictions, the ‘daily rituals’ the topography and the creation of ‘topos’ (space). She conceives art as an anthropological practice and as a mediator tool for the social and political spectrum.

Please explain to the potential of transferring the projects’ results or learnings to other interested parties and contexts.
Please provide clear documentation, communication of methodology and principles in this context.

 

The project entitled Head and Hand will be attained in collaboration with the Culture Foundation of Tinos and the Municipality of Tinos. Under that umbrella will be implemented the research and the fulfilment of the ‘workshops of care’ and the presentation of the exhibition during the forthcoming summer. The first part had been done and it is based on the research conducted (May- June 2021). It could be defined as an aesthetic anthropology of the common space or even as an artistic anthropology of the aesthetic od an insular neighbourhood and the landscape given that it encloses the way by which the residents understand a region through the lens of aesthetic as well as the way by which they select to make up the repairs, what they allow to be ‘exposed’ and what they attempt deliberately to hide and cover, points which constitute the cornerstone of Head and Hand.

The exhibition will be presented to a common space: starting with the Culture Foundation of Tinos and it will be followed its presentation to the old road which joins the Chora of Tinos with the scenic village of Tripotamou (circular route approximately 4km). It will be a tour (of around 1 hour) with installations (flags) which will signify the repairs which would be done (by then) in various areas of the pathway and it will be accompanied by a textbook which will present theoretical texts, archive material which come from the procedure followed but also a map. Tripotamos is selected for several reasons, one of this its relation with the Greek philosopher, Kastoriadis. Throughout the project meeting in open – outdoor- areas will take place. Topics linked to Head and Hand /Kairos will be discussed through an interdisciplinary approach (architect, history of art and aesthetic, anthropology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, sustainability etc.)

 

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