About

ASFA BBQ is an international meeting of practitioners, theorists, students and audiences of time-based arts organized by the Theater of ASFA and the Unit of Entrepreneurship and Innovation of ASFA (MOKE).

The first edition reflects upon the questions of bodily resistances and affirmative bio-politics, developing strategies of pleasure and life in a very difficult reality of dispossession and uncertainty. Capitalizing on the experience and the infrastructure of the Athens School of Fine Arts and of the Athenian Art’s Scene we hope to engage in an exchange that is both effective and conceptual, that encourages collaboration and transdisciplinarily.

The programme of the ASFA BBQ is eclectic as it is international, it is inspired by an experimental and restless attitude that tries to renegotiate our relationship through our bodies. A series of performances, workshops and scores of parallel events that take place over two weeks in the buildings of the Athens School of Fine Arts, hopes to produce a new society of pleasure, creativity and emancipation.

venues programme

Teem of ASFA BBQ

Vassilis Vlastaras artistic director (vvlastaras@gmail.com)
He is a visual artist and Assistant Professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts. Lives and works in Athens, Greece. He creates large-scale site-specific installations and he experiments with various media in painting, drawing, photography, video, real time video and sound performances and computer interactive installations. His artistic practice examines the relationship between artwork and urban space, the notion of the ephemeral, and the interrelation between spatial movement, material and sound. Currently his work investigates the personal and social implications of loss, oblivion, history, memory and the subsequent acts of remembrance/memorialization and the relationships between the appetite for life and the frenzy of death. He has taken part in many exhibition projects, solo and group shows in Greece and abroad.
www.vlastaras.com

Fotini Kalle curator (fotinikalle@googlemail.com)
She was born in Athens in 1978. She lives and works in Athens and Thessaloniki. She studied painting in the Athens School of Fine Arts and Performance Design and Practice at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London with a scholarship from the Alexander S. Onassis foundation. She has exhibited her work at Diverse Universe Performance Festival, Estonia 2015, Month of Performance Art, Berlin 2014, 2cd Biennale of Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki 2009, and other. She also followed seminars in Europe and the USA reflecting on the idea of the body as a cultural vehicle, the concept of utopia, the importance of the space and the object in live art. She is currently conducting a PhD research concerning the performance art pedagogy and its affiliations with the “political”, at the School of Visual and Applied Arts, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She holds a scholarship from the State Scholarships Foundation. Her work ranges from video to installation and performance.

Georgios Papadopoulos curator (languagegames@gmail.com)
He combines economics and philosophical analysis with an exploratory artistic practice. His research gravitates around money and its socioeconomic functions. Between 2008 and 2009 he was Researcher at the Theory Department of the Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht and in 2012 he received the Vilém Flusser Award for Artistic Research by the transmediale festival and the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin. He has published Notes Towards A Critique of Money, 2011 and Grexit, 2012.

Kostis Stafylakis curator (kostas_staf@hotmail.com)
He is an art theorist and artist. He graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts. He holds an MA in Modern Art and Theory (Uni. Essex) and an MA in Continental Philosophy (Uni. Essex). He received his doctorate from the Department of Political Science and History, Panteion University (Athens), focusing on the political discourse launched by 21st century global art shows and especially Documenta 11. He was a post-doc researcher at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2011-2012). Along with Yannis Stavrakakis, he edited the greek anthology “The Political in Contemporary Art.” He currently teaches “Research-based Art” at the Unit of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Athens School of Fine Arts and “Art and Visual communication” at the University of Patras. He was co-curator of AGORA, the 4^th Athens biennial. Along with Vana Kostayola, he runs kavecS (www.kavecs.com), an initiative on critical art activism. Some recent participations include 1^st NSK Biennial of Folk Art (2014), Hell as Pavillion, Palais de Tokyo (2013), Truth is Concrete, Graz (2012), 3d Athens Biennial, Media Impact (4^th Moscow Biennial) (2011). His publications and essays can be found at https://asfa.academia.edu/KostisStafylakis

Nikos Arvanitis curator (arvanitis.n@gmail.com)
Nikos Arvanitis (b. 1979, Athens, GR) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, A, at the Athens School of Fine Arts and at the MFA course “Public Art and new artistic Strategies” at the Bauhaus University of Weimar, with scholarships from the DAAD and the A. S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation. He won the first prize on the “ZeitGenosse Schiller” competition for public art, Weimar,DE, 2005, was nominated for the „5th DESTE Prize“ of the DESTE Foundation and he won the 2nd Prize of the Spyropoulos Foundation Award. Arvanitis through his work, video- and sound installations, sculptures, drawings and public interventions, deals with moments in culture that hinge on thrill and disorder, exploring the force that drives our contemporary communities. Arvanitis co-founded the artist-duo Barking Dogs United with Naomi Tereza Salmon in 2005.
His work has been exhibited, between others, at the 2nd Les Ateliers de Rennes – Biennial d’Art Contemporain, Rennes, 2nd Athens Biennial, Halle 14, Locust Projects, Miami, Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, Kairo, Deste Foundation Centre For Contemporary Art, Institute of Contemporary Greek Art, BWA Wroclaw Galeria Awangarda, Wroclaw and at the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade. Solo exhibitions at a.antonopoulou.art gallery, Athens, artcore, Bari, ACC Galerie, Weimar.
Since 2014 he is artistic associate and project coordinator of the “Survival Kit 2014 – 2016” educational and artistic research programme, part of the DAAD “Partnerships with Greek Institutions of Higher Education 2014 – 2016” programme, a cooperation between the Academy of Fine Art Munich and the Athens School of Fine Arts.
http://www.nikosarvanitis.com

Dr. Charis Kanelopoulou curator (charis.kanellopoulou@hotmail.com)
She is an art historian and independent curator. She obtained a PhD in Art History at the School of Philosophy of University of Athens (PhD thesis: The artistic interventions in Athens’ public spaces from 1950 to 2004). She has curated exhibitions in museums and public spaces; most recent collaboration with the Unit of Innovation and Entrepreneurship of Athens School of Fine Arts (View In and Out, public art project, 2015). She publishes regularly and was an adjunct tutor at the Open University of Cyprus (2014-15). Her interests focus on modern and contemporary art; on public art issues; on the social character of art. Her curatorials, among others, concern historical research-oriented art exhibitions relating to modern and contemporary art in Greece.