With Emilia Bouriti, Nikos Branidis, Athina Chatzigiannaki, Nota Paterimou, Maria Softsi, Barnaby Tydeman, Annika Mayer and Alexandra Dolgova
The Artist Cooperative Athens (ACA) is an exchange-based network for artists. Our networked structure allows for the sharing and pooling of artistic resources: materials, spaces, accommodation, and energy.
Over the past six months, more than thirty artists have participated in cooperative activities, whether paying visits as a group to documenta artists and their venues (and arranging collaborations), participating as a group in arts and cultural events, sharing our resources and energy for our own collaborative artworks, or attending weekly ACA assemblies.
Our focus is on projects that are concerned with social equality and justice; a key part of this involves exploring economic and social alternatives. In relation to art itself, we are keen to build strength from grassroots, enabling us to show and publicize our art without being beholden to commercial or socially questionable channels.
The ACA is based everywhere and nowhere, taking inspiration from the fine, threaded roots of the mycelium, a root mat that expands through soil (a mycelium of 9.6 square kilometers in Eastern Oregon, USA, has been claimed as the largest organism on Earth). We are based, then, at social spaces in Athens, in artists’ studios, in a collective farmhouse in Aspropyrgos, at the Solidarity Café in Halkidiki, and wherever a cooperative member invites the group.
We’re inviting artists, creatives, and others to our presentation and assembly at the Parko Eleftherias. Case studies and examples of our work thus far will be followed by an open discussion and the welcoming of new participants, along with the formation of ideas, plans, and synergies.