FENIA KOTSOPOULOU
Performance (art) led Research
Date: 2017
Location: Lincoln (UK)
Keywords: photography/ alternative photography process/ anthotype/ ephemerality/ transient memories/ participatory/ vanishing portraits/ documentation/ intimacy/ one-to-one/ time
Synopsis
Antotypes
Dimensions: 10cm x 15cm
“To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability. precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” Susan Sontag
In 2016, during an artistic residency at UNIDEE-Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella (Italy), an idea started brewing around alternative photographic processes-transient memories-ephemeral documentation-impermanence. Through a brief research, I discover the “anthotype process” and fascinated by the simplicity and complexity of the oldest image-making technique, I started experimenting with plants and flowers in order to create anthotypes, in collaboration with artist Daz Disley.
An anthotype is an image created using photosensitive material from plants. This process was originally invented by Sir John Herschel in 1842. An emulsion is made from crushed flower petals or any other light-sensitive plant, fruit or vegetable. A coated sheet of paper is then dried. Place some material, for example, leaves or a transparent photo positive on the paper and expose to direct full sunlight until the image part not covered by the material is bleached out by the sun rays. The color remains or fades in the shadowed parts. The paper remains sensitive against such rays, which means that the image cannot be fixed. but eventually will fade out, disappear... Anthotypes challenge the conviction that photography can fix an event for an unlimited period of time. Like dance, photography can be ephemeral.
In 2017, during my participation to the the ART WEEK | Workshop Series 2017: Joint Performance Summer Class by La Pocha Nostra & VestAndPage, in Venice(Italy), I found myself surrounded by amazing artists who inspired me to start taking the first portraits which I could use later for anthotype-experiments.
During the one-to-one encounter, I ask from the participant to close their eyes and I make a question to them (always the same question). I sit opposite with my camera and I wait in silence, until I feel the moment to take only one single photo. The participant writes (anonymously) in a piece of paper their answer. All the answers are part of a collective text.
In some cases, at the end of the encounter I ask to cut a small piece of person's hair which is preserved until this element finds its way to the project (somethign that didn't happen yet). However, even that adds an other layer to the intimacy connected to this project.
Date: 2018
Location: Lincoln (UK)
Keywords: performance/video and photography/shame/body shame /rituals/removal
Synopsis
The seat of this work rests in the very sharing and diluting of our fears, and the juxtaposition of still and moving image aims to reinforce the message that the attempt might fail and the traces of shame remain, but the act of sharing, as simple and as difficult as it may be, can be the first step in a journey to ultimately free ourselves from that which is for the most part to the external eye : invisible.
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20 one-off cyanotypes
Dimensions: 21cm x 30cm
*added material to 13 cyanotypes: (menstrual) blood.
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single channel video | duration: 6’04’’
performance/camera/editing: Fenia Kotsopoulou
music: “Night Ryde” by Room of Wires.
cyanotype self-portrait Fenia Kotsopoulou
Cyanotype self-portrait by fenia Kotsopoulou
cyanotype self-portrait Fenia Kotsopoulou
13 of the prints have been further manipulated and transformed. The text in the images “The Shame On You”, has been scrubbed using a steel sponge to leave a “scar” on the paper, which has then been painted with menstrual blood.
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The staining ink of shame is transformed into visible scars.
Scrubbing and removal requiring strong material intervention.
Vulnerability through exposure revealing a deeper, inner strength.
And if I follow the traces I can see that you bleed the same as me.
In a material sense, our similarity is inescapably written in our blood - a fact further reflected by the repeated use and manipulation of iron in the making of these images. Iron being transformed from state to state in the chemistry of the cyanotype process. Iron in the destructive power of the steel sponge. Iron in the haemoglobin of blood. Iron simultaneously symbolic of our innermost weaknesses, the strength and transformative power we all possess, and the blood which gives us life.
20 one-off prints made using the cyanotype photographic process, creating a continuous tone image of rich Prussian Blue.
In comparison to other chemical processes, making cyanotypes is very “forgiving”. Small errors such as over-exposure, or imperfectly-mixed chemicals, can lead to complete failure in other processes, but with cyanotype, there is leeway to correct such errors through sensitive handling.
These flaws can be washed, can be bleached and can be toned, and in the creation of these particular prints, domestic items have been used, such as laundry additives and painkillers, to symbolically acknowledge, ameliorate, and accept what might otherwise be seen as shameful results.
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The chemistry used for these images is not merely practical in terms of the making, but also symbolic of the ways that small, seemingly everyday, domestic interventions can aid in cleansing, acceptance, and ultimately freedom from our shame(s).
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Date: 2018
Location:Nottingham (UK)
Keywords: performance/video and photography/body hair/shame/
In collaboration with Marisa Greffy
Synopsis
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, one meaning of the word ‘pluck (up)’ is ‘courage, boldness’: I plucked up courage to express my inner thoughts [Harris, W. (1960), Palace of Peacock, i. 17]. ‘Pluck’ is also a verb: ‘to pull sharply or forcibly in an act of removal’.
For my Sofa Residency at F-L-A-T-5, I blend acts of courage and acts of removal, creating the ground for investigating body and shame. The residency will be an opportunity to experimentally explore issues around body-hair and other societally-unwanted features of our physical experience – those which give rise to feelings of shame.
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Which are the roots of our shame and what does it take to eradicate them?
If shame was another tangible ‘body’, what form, colour and shape would it have? How would it sound, speak, or look like?
Date: 2017
Location: Lincoln (UK)
Keywords: performance/video and photography/body hair/fashion/deviant women/(un)aisthetics/
In collaboration with: Aylwyn Walsh, Daz Disley, Joana Cifre Cerda and more.
Synopsis
VAGUE it's an online platform/zine in four sections: fashion, portrait, food, tales. Each of these sections contains visual reactions and reflections, instigates the re-definition of beauty, celebrates non-conforming bodies and embraces failure, ambiguity, randomness, vagueness and of course hairiness. The focus is on different perceptions around the body and the process of (un)becoming in search of self-expression and self-esteem.
Date: 2016- present
Location: Lincoln (UK)
Keywords: performance/video art/body installation/gaze/spectatorship
Performance: "From a Greek Cunt's-Eye-View" //23.04.2016, LONDON
Synopsis
"Building on the work of my MFA performative reasearch/thesis "VULVOgraphy: performance & photography from a female point of view", I reverse the previous model I have created of "cunt as camera" and turn my cunt into a cinema.
As a durational performer, I offer-up my body to the gaze (male, female, indifferent) and use my morphology as a viewing portal to video works of mine or collaborators.
The first collaboration of this project is with Apollvn S Delios, Greek performance and visual artist. The cuntcinema presents a video program dedicated to the Greek context and situation (financial /political/ cultural) of the last years defined as "years of Crisis". The work will be presented for the first time at the event: Greek Trash, organised by CUNTemporary.
Date: 2015- present
Location: Lincoln (UK)
Keywords: performance/photography/feminism/phallocentrism/vulva/becoming vulva/pinhole.
Performance:
a)"VULVOGRAPHY: BECOMING CAMERA" // 30.05.2015, Lincoln UK
b) "Long Exposure"//30.07.2015, BORE festival, Lincoln UK.
Synopsis
"Vulvography project" : on going practice led research - within the context of the MA/MFA Choreographic Live Art - that focuses on the hybridization of performance&photography to explore ways to escape implied phallocentrism within the practice of photography.
ARTWORK + PORTFOLIO
ARTWORK: Vulvamera
Portoflio: A book 158 pages (Hardback with printed cover, matt uncoated paper, 21x21), brochure of exhibition, photo book ( 18×18 cm 34 Pages),), manual, aluminium Tool Box (310x240x130mm)
PRICE: £300 (LIMITED EDITION)
Date: 2013/2014
Location: Lincoln (UK)
Keywords: performance/autobiography/archive/video diary/Father/memory
Synopsis
An autobiographical practice as research project linked to the problematic but still intimate relationship with my father and the memories encompassed with it. the need to preserve them lead to the creation of an archive that became the cornerstone of the project and was seen as a material and metaphorical mechanism speaking about power, and about maintaining power, about the power of the present to control what is, and will be, known about the past, about the power of remembering over forgetting. It could be considered an exploration of other ways of experiencing the present, and thus of viewing the past.
