Closing Irini Athanassakis: Kore

KORE
by Irini Athanassakis
installation

8.6.2024, 6.30-10pm Closing
The artist is present during opening hours

8.6.2024, 19 Uhr
XX Y X mit Sara Zlanabitnig Live Performance & Anat Stainberg Reading Performance (Beginn pünktlich!)

Having or making children was long considered the most natural thing in the world, even if it didn’t always seem so easy.
The modern world mainly practises birth control and family planning, trying to get the demographic curve under control, fertility is an exception. These developments are diametrically opposed to the old fertility rituals and cult objects. At the same time, reproductive technologies are booming and the boundaries of what is feasible and ethically acceptable are constantly being pushed.
KORE means daughter and is the name of Persephone, the daughter of Demeter. According to Homeric mythology, she spent part of the year with her husband Hades in the underworld and another part of the year on earth with her mother; then the earth blossomed and was fertile.
What could today’s and tomorrow’s picture narratives on the subject of KORE look like?
A work spanning more than fifteen years on infertility, the desire to have children, reproductive technologies and motherhood questions some aspects of this major topic. 80 drawings in which medical, biochemical, mythological, feminist and philosophical images and texts become pictures. A number of objects were also created, such as a gold-plated mystery object (Uterus), a crocheted snake (Sac de l’éspoir) and a black-painted, oversized pomegranate seed modelled from clay.

Irini Athanassakis lives and works as artist and author in Paris Region (F) and on Kea Island (Greece).
Trained in Sculpture, Transmedia Arts, Art History and Philosophy, (PhD), she co-operates with artists and scientists. Her art works and articles have been shown and published internationally. Her current research is focusing on the topic of KORE, in/fertility and a Publication POIESIS designed by Nik Thoenen published bei VfmK is planned for the end of 2024.
Considering milk and hormones as material, as agent and a system of meaning and exchange, she also reflects on them as an example of symbiotic processes.
She is the editor of the book MILK. Gabe, Lust und Verlust (Design Nik Thoenen, Vienna: Passagen Editors), which won the Austrian Award for Schönste Bücher in 2018.
Together with the microbiologist David Berry she published “STILLLEBEN. Becoming Symbionts” in Performance Research “On Microperformativity” edited by Jens Hauser and Lucie Strecker in 2021. Objects, images, videos and performances on the milk and the microbiome have been shown in Le Générateur, Paris 2023, AIL Vienna 2022, Magazin 4 Bregenz 2021, Leonardo Lectures 2019 Art&Science Department at the Medical University Vienna and Cairotronica, Cairo 2018. “Almost White. Colors of Milk” (film and book, edited and shown by Salon für Kunstbuch, Vienna) will be presented in May 2024.
She is currently a Fellow at w+k, the Interuniversitary Institution for Science and Art at the University Salzburg and the University Mozarteum working on KORE in/fertility and Fellow at IPU International Psychoanalytical University Berlin on MUTTiER. Was nicht gesagt werden kann. https://iriniathanassakis.eu

Sara Zlanabitnig has lived and worked in Vienna since 2005. After completing two degrees at the Vienna University of Music and the Bruckner University in Linz,
she has since devoted her artistic interests to free improvised, experimental and electronic music, and increasingly to cultural work. In addition to various music projects, she is an active member of Fraufeld, the jahresendzeitschokoladenhohlkörper collective festival, the mitderstadtreden initiative and the management team at echoraum. https://sarazlanabitnig.com

Anat Stainberg was born in Tel Aviv, where she studied and worked as an actress. In 2004, she moved to Europe to continue her studies and graduated with a diploma in performance from DasArts Amsterdam. Stainberg has been living in Vienna since 2007 and works as a performer, painter and curator.
The intersection of visual and performing arts is Stainberg’s ‘modus vivendi’, resulting in abstract, minimalist paintings, poetic, text-based performances and constant friction in time management.
Stainberg is part of the curatorial team of the monthly performance series “DerBloedeDritteMittwoch” and works regularly as a performer with “Toxic Dreams”, a Viennese experimental theatre group. Her works are part of the collection of the Austrian Theatre Museum (since 2008) and the Wien Museum Collection (since 2021). http://anat.klingt.org