Living and Working in Athens

Four young professionals in the arts living and working in Athens are the focus of this conversation. Ioannis Savvidis is a visual artist particularly interested in space, who mainly works with video, installation, and architectural design. He is based in Athens and Berlin. His recent work was shown at the first Biennial of Athens (2007) as well as at Art Athina (2008). Savvidis is a member of Stadtwald, a group of urban action based in Berlin, of Osservatorio Nomade, and of the Rufus Corporation. Laertis Vassiliou is an actor and a director. As an actor he has worked with distinguished theatre directors, including Roula Pateraki, Theodoros Terzopoulos, D. Mavrikios, and Robert Wilson. He has directed Mrozek’s The Emigrants and more recently One in Ten, a performance about immigrants in Greece, which was invited to the theatre festival Mess in Sarajevo the fall of 2008. He also works in film and television. Maria-Thalia Carras and Sophia Tournikiotis are art curators. They founded (in 2004) and co-direct Locus Athens, a non-profit contemporary arts organization that does not have a space as such but curates projects in various sites in Athens, organizes talks and art film screenings, and publishes art books and catalogues. Recent work includes Sampling (2008), an exhibition of seven contemporary Turkish artists at the Center of Popular Art and Tradition in Athens.