The balcony

THE BICYCLE


Email to Elena:

"Your bicycle fits perfect at my balcony and it's true that makes me also feel nice, it fills in the empty space of the wall and makes my view more beautiful! Adds to the house a new aura. As if from "house" it became "home" . Very strange. I am thinking even to buy it from you after your performance, just to have it in my balcony to decorate it!"


Before: After:




THE CACTUS



Today I planned a cactus in the flower-pot that was in the balcony. I purred some water. The only problem is that it has already started to wither because we ate the pineapple two weeks ago, apart from that it looks very nice!

Room Situation - 1970 - Vito Acconci

"Room Situation documents a performance entitled Room Piece that was staged over three weekends in January 1970. Each weekend, Vito Acconci moved furniture and objects from his New York apartment to a gallery eighty blocks uptown. If he needed any of these items, he would return to the gallery to borrow them, and take them back when he had finished using them. The distinction between the artist''s home and his gallery, and between his private and public activities, became increasingly blurred." Retrieved June 10, 2009 from Tate Web Site: http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=27383&searchid=15156&tabview=text

"...the desire to look at the ordinary is to reassert 'a non ironic kind or realism' and to 'express what it's like to be in the real world'; a desire to communicate what it really feels like 'to be here, now'. This everyday realism is also linked to 'efficacy and unpreciousness' in the way art looks, and a new concern with 'the power of relatively simple gestures' as art connects with lived experience. Such works are 'unforced artistic statements, incidentally profound observations on our lives as lived everyday'." (Johnstone, S. 2008: 16)

Hostel room in Katmandu.

In Madrid.

This is the house of some people that I don't know. The house is in Madrid. A friend of mine stayed in there for 2 nights. He took these photographs with his mobile on Saturday the 13th of June.

From Upsala - to Bilbao.

Photographs from Upsala.



Two weeks later, a Spanish friend came from Sweden, on his way back to Spain he stayed for almost 5 nights in my house in London. I had asked him in advance to take some photographs in order to present to me his place in Upsala. He was living there for 6 months and now he was returning to Spain.






I photographed his belongings. This was everything he had taken with him after moving out form his 6 months house in Upsala.

London - 21-24 May 2009

When I came back from Bilbao, the 21st of May, a Greek couple came to my house in London. They stayed in my place for 4 nights. They had brought their own sheets. One of them had a painting of Monet on it but they didn't know that. They brought me for present two books in Greek, one piece of 'spanakopita' (A traditional Greek spinach pie), and typical Greek coffee (frappé). They left the 25th of May very early in the morning for Edinburgh.

In Bilbao - 15-19 May 2009

The week after Chester I went to Bilbao where I stayed for 5 nights. There I didn't take photos of me sleeping I rather asked from the person that hosted me in his house to present me his home and record in any way his presentation. He made a video, he took some photographs of the house and he drew a plan of it. I was interested to see how does someone present his private space, what he chose to present and how. What is important and what is not important in this space.

In Chester - 8 & 9 Μay 2009

I haven't been writing for long time now. So I should go back to the past a bit to continue more or less from where I left...

It was Friday the 8th of June that I went to Chester. Another Spanish friend is living there. I slept there two nights, on a mattress on the floor. It was comfortable but a bit cold cause the house was quite big and I had forgotten my pyjamas. Next to me on the sofa was sleeping another Spanish man who I had met once before. In that house live normally 4 people, 2 French and 2 Spanish. Those two nights we were 8.