05 Feb 2013

SOUTH as a State of Mind - A project by Kunsthalle Athena in a bookstore near you

SOUTH as State of Mind grew up fast to become a bi-annual publication for contemporary arts and culture, published by Epomenos Stathmos (Greece) and Phileleftheros Publishers (Cyprus) and distributed internationally. A project by Kunsthalle Athena, it is founded by curator and writer Marina Fokidis, while it is designed by creative director Yannis Karlopoulos.

SOUTH as a State of Mind's new issue is now out to breathe some summer into this winter. Almost one year old and very happy with our new parents-publishers, we are injecting, once more, our southern shots, within the turbulent context of world crisis. This time, the main focus is the notion of Arcadia, a mythical state of mind and the possibility of contentment found in remoteness. A bunch of important artists and writers contributed their accounts of 'idyllic places', 'sensual and intellectual pleasures' and 'carefree tranquillity', or something of this sort, as it is translated within the contemporary culture context.

Juergen Teller found his own arcadia in Hydra and produced a mind-blowing series of photographs exclusively for the magazine. Johan Grimonprez combined together a text on falling fish and a version of his WeTube-o-theque on Radical Ecology, and sent it to us from Syros, the island where he spends half of his year. María Inés Rodríguez and Juan Andrés Gaitán got married on the island of Milos and allowed us to use a picture of their 'golden' wedding. Adnan Yildiz set up an interview between now and then prompted by a poster that did not allow internet beyond a certain point and Pola Bousiou shared an essay on the contemporary nomads of the island of Mykonos, among others.

Maybe our arcadia, for now, was a tiny dry Aegean island surrounded by the most seductive sea. SOUTH team went to work on the construction of arcadia on the island of Anafi - a place that every year replenishes our desire to continue, no matter what. Annika Larsson's film on rituals, Miltos Manetas's visual works on 'overeality', Andreas Angelidakis's tour around the colony of free camping on the beach, Dimitris Politakis's sunstroke-style outlook of the movie Summer Lovers (1982) and Don DeLillo's novel The Names (1982) both set on Greek islands, the music which the music composer and solist Augustin Maurs composed on Anafi, are some of the responses suggesting the dynamic climate of creative lethargy within the Anafi Summit.

We drew from the 'tradition' of Martin Kippenberger, as well as other artists from all over. For example, the Tradition column is dedicated to Martin Kippenberger's MOMAS, a forgotten Museum of Modern Art on Syros, a concrete-skeleton ruin. Helmut Middendorf shares his visual record of it, while Katerina Gregos and Maria Papadimitriou share their words.

As it was obvious, we paid tribute to Gregory Markopoulos's Temenos project, an ecstatic experience that made arcadia a bit more palpable, as it is even set in an area of the Peloponnese called Arcadia. For our Flying Rumours (Film) column, Constantinos Hadzinikolaou covers Temenos 2012, the screenings of ENIAIOS, Gregory J. Markopoulos's opus. Ana Teixeira Pinto writes a comparative overview of the most influential biennials of last summer, such as the Berlin Biennale, documenta 13 and Manifesta 9, while reviews about São Paulo Biennial and Bienal Naïfs do Brasil 2012 are also featured in Flying Rumours (Visual Arts) column.

SOUTH as a State of Mind is distributed by Motto (Europe, www.mottodistribution.com/site/), Ubiquity (USA, www.ubiquitymags.com/content/) and Epomenos Stathmos (Greece, www.epomenostathmos.gr).

Facebook page: www.facebook.com/SOUTH.publication