As of Saturday, the NeMe Arts Centre in Limassol will present a series of events under the name Urban Emptiness, consisting of an exhibition at the arts centre and a seminar at the Pefkios Georgiades Auditorium of the Cyprus University of Technology.
The exhibition, which will open on Saturday at 8.30pm, along with the seminar, which will be held in English from 5pm until 8pm on the same day, will present the results of the interdisciplinary investigation of emptiness and silence in Limassol. The project is related to actions taken in other cities, such as Athens, Edinburgh, Brussels and New York which all form part of the international network Urban Emptiness, curated by Geert Vermeire.
The artworks, together with the seminar papers, contextualise the importance of real and imaginary or hidden landscapes in the urban environment of Limassol. While studying these landscapes with a number of actions which involved various methodological strategies, an understanding around silence and emptiness in urban life and also the creation of a different condition of intimacy were discovered.
Some of the actions taken to come up with a kind of conclusion were performance events or actions that focused on the relationship of the body and the physical space and its immaterial realms, sound mappings of the urban emptiness and explorations of the experiential understanding of urban atmospheres that challenge current representational techniques.
The exhibited works were created within walking exchange projects between students of the Cyprus University of Technology Limassol, the University of the Aegean, the Parsons New School of Design, New York Drama School of the Athens Conservatoire, RITCS School of Arts, Brussels, National Technical University of Athens, and Edinburgh College of Arts. Documentation of the media walks created by the participating artists will also be part of the exhibition.
Further works for the exhibitions have been created by Cyprus-based artists Elena Pillakouri, Evdokia Georgiou, Maria Andreou and the Mind the Gap collective.
Public participation for this project was essential as the self-initiated media walks made movement possible, therefore enabling participants to experience a reality which alters the spatial perception by superimposing new layers of audiovisual content to a space. Thus, parallel realities are created and accessible via a smartphone. So, before you come to the exhibition, download the Ojoo app on your iPhone or Android devices to be able to get the whole Urban Emptiness experience.
During the four-hour seminar Dr Nikos Bubaris (Aegean University), Haris Pellapaisiotis (University of Nicosia), Dr Yiannis Christidis (Cyprus University of Technology), Stefaan van Biesen (sound artist/ walking artist, Brussels), Marielys Burgos Melendez (dance artist/researcher, Puerto Rico) Via Skype: Dr Christos Kakalis (Urban Emptiness Network organizer, University of Newcastle) and Stella Mygdali (Urban Emptiness Network organiser, University of Edinburgh) will all speak.
Urban Emptiness – Soundscapes of Limassol
Series of events consisting of an exhibition and a performance. February 4 until March 3. NeMe Arts Centre, Ellados and Enoseos Street, Limassol. Tuesday-Friday: 5.30pm-8.30pm, Saturday: 10am-13pm. Tel: 25-372675
