CAConrad, φωτογραφία: Jo Mariner
CAConrad will give a talk based on how he has successfully used (Soma)tic poetry rituals to overcome depression after the murder of his boyfriend Earth (aka Mark Holmes). He has also created writing rituals using the night sky to design homemade star constellations, another ritual to experience what the impact of hearing the word “drone” has on the human body, and many others from talking with trees, ghosts, translating Shakespeare’s sonnets with crystals, and coping with the destroyed wilderness and disappearing animals of our planet.
CAConrad is the author of 9 books of poetry and essays and the latest is titled While Standing In Line For Death from Wave Books (2017). He is a Pew Fellow and has also received fellowships from Lannan Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, Banff, RADAR, Flying Object and Ucross. For his books, essays, and details on the documentary The Book of Conrad (from Delinquent Films 2016), please visit CAConrad.blogspot.com.
This marks the end of the Carved to Flow public program, which has explored rituals involving the consumption and commodification of material. Previous events include Love, Peace and Resources by Erik van Buuren, Elusive Earths by Jennifer Teets and Lorenzo Cirrincione, a presentation of work by artist and agro-ecologist Fernando Garcia-Dory, Of Accords by Iris Touliatou, and Carriers, a discussion between Otobong Nkanga and soap makers Vis Olivae and Laouta.
Carved to Flow encompasses performance, installation, and enterprise to give thought to the networked geographies, traditions, histories, and individuals that contribute to the creation of a product. Within the compass of documenta 14 the work assumes the medium of cold process soap, specifically, a soap called O8 Black Stone created according to an original recipe by the artist. Within it, 7 different kinds of oil and butter from across the Mediterranean, Middle East, North and West Africa are fused together with charcoal. In Athens, the work took the form of a soap making laboratory and installation in which talks, workshops, discussions, and other events were held as part of a public program that explored ritual and matter. In Kassel, the 08 Black Stone soap, that was produced in Greece, is being sold through performances in public space. The following stage of the work, titled Germination, is going to take shape, in the coming year, between Nigeria and Athens. For more information please visit http://www.carvedtoflow.com.
Fokidos is a parallel project of artist Sofia Stevi, sometimes with artist George Jacotey and sometimes with others. The current base is an apartment in Athens. The apartment is the epicenter, the axis of the Fokidos circle but there are many lines, angles, and tangents spinning out from it. Fokidos has several faces such as a place to make exhibitions, present performances and spoken word and a hostel for artists. The emphasis is on creating a dialogue, a game, a bond between artists, writers and thinkers based in Athens and abroad. Fokidos is about feeling free, safe and diverse to develop ideas and act without the market anxiety.
The program is curated by Maya Tounta.
Special thanks to Sofia Stevi and Fokidos for hosting this event.