Liquid Antiquity: A New Fold

Photo: MinusPlato (2017)

This workshop engages scholars, curators, and artists in a response to the multimedia project “Liquid Antiquity,” commissioned by the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, in order to extend further its explorations of alternative models of engaging classical antiquity and to enrich collaboration between the academic and art worlds in new forms of public engagement around the legacies of classicism.

“Liquid Antiquity,” is a platform for radically rethinking the relationship between the classical and the contemporary. Antiquity is an irrepressible source of meaning today. But what it means is never fixed in stone. It must instead be continually rethought for an always changing “we” under always changing conditions of local and global significance. Resisting classicism as dead weight, “Liquid Antiquity” aims to make the ancient Greek past available as a fluid resource for the present by shifting attention from the matter of antiquity to the question of why antiquity matters. “Liquid Antiquity” was therefore designed as an exhibition without antiquities that stakes out the book as its primary site. Through word and image, the book stages an encounter with a “liquid” antiquity as well as a series of reflections on this encounter through contemporary artistic practice and the history of classicism over millennia. Spanning twenty-five hundred years in an unprecedented collaboration between leading artists, theorists, writers, art historians, classicists, cultural historians, and archaeologists, “Liquid Antiquity” is a handbook, deeply collaborative in spirit and experimental in form, for the creative work of reimagining the present through the ancient past.  It is complemented by a video installation designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro on view in the antiquities galleries at the Benaki Museum in Athens.

“Liquid Antiquity: A New Fold” is inspired by two guiding commitments of the initial project: first, the commitment to collaboration and conversation; and second, the commitment to a way forward that is always unpredictably emergent out of the past—hence, the idea of a fold introduced here. An interdisciplinary group of scholars and artists are invited to reflect on “Liquid Antiquity” and think together about strategies—conceptual, aesthetic, pragmatic—for the ongoing work of “doing” classical reception under the sign of liquidity.  Time will be primarily devoted to discussion rather than formal presentation.

“Liquid Antiquity: A New Fold” is organized by Dimitri Gondicas (Princeton Athens Center), Brooke Holmes (Princeton/Postclassicisms), and Polina Kosmadaki (Benaki Museum) and supported by the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies and Postclassicisms.

Confirmed participants:

Chloe Balla (University of Crete)
Malina Buturovic (Princeton University)
Joy Connolly (The Graduate Center at CUNY)
Richard Fletcher (Ohio State University)
Phoebe Giannisi (University of Thessaly)
Constanze Güthenke (Oxford University)
Brooke Holmes (Princeton University)
Despina Katapoti (University of the Aegean)
Polina Kosmadaki (Benaki Museum)
Christodoulos Panayiotou (Independent Artist)
Nina Papaconstantinou (Independent Artist)
Dan-el Padilla Peralta (Princeton University)
Stefania Strouza (Independent Artist)
Theophilos Tramboulis (Independent Theorist)
Giorgos Tzirtzilakis (University of Thessaly/DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art)
Kostis Velonis (Independent Artist)

Thursday, September 7

18:00
Viewing of “Liquid Antiquity: Conversations”
Benaki Museum

19:00
Reception at the Princeton Athens Center

Friday, September 8

9:30-10:00
Opening Remarks

Dimitri Gondicas (The Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies)
Brooke Holmes (Princeton University)

10:00-11:30
Session One

Joy Connolly (The Graduate Center at CUNY)
Dan-el Padilla Peralta (Princeton)

11:30-11:45
Break

11:45-13:15
Session Two

Stefania Strouza (Independent Artist)
Phoebe Yannisi (University of Thessaly)

13:15-15:00
Lunch

15:00-16:30
Richard Fletcher (Ohio State University)
Polina Kosmadaki (Benaki Museum)

16:30-16:45
Break

16:45-18:15
Despina Katapoti (University of the Aegean)
Kostis Velonis (Independent Artist)

Saturday, September 9

10:00-11:30
Giorgos Tzirtzilakis (University of Thessaly/DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art)
Constanze Güthenke (Oxford University)

11:30-11:45
Break

11:45-13:15
Christodoulos Panayiotou (Independent Artist)
Nina Papaconstantinou (Independent Artist)

13:15-14:00
Final Discussion