Leaving Piraeus

Taking a boat from Piraeus to the islands is the ultimate summer signifier. This weekend we went to hydra though it is not vacation time yet. Anyway, when you leave from the port of Piraeus, on the rightside of the port there is a huge abandoned area, a kind of post industial wasteland that looks like it could be on some remote industial island. It looks much more interesting than these photos and it's so hot right now that I cannot think properly or say something interesting about it. But it looks like a good place to potentialy hang out or maybe get lost.

Around Town

Thanks to the Grand Promenade I walked all over Athens this past weekend. It was definetly worth it and I even saw two cute buildings. The first one looks like a 70's modernism with a touch of byzantine whatnot about it. and this is the typical athenian office building from the 60's, the facade full of airconditioners, which is interesting but not too much.

and a great plant canopy, so horizontal...

Random Images

These photos have been waiting for a reason to blog, and it's monday so thats reason enough
This was in Los Angeles, somewhere on Robertson Blvd. I think we were looking for a store. Maybe it was the plywood, maybe the plastic, I really am not sure why I took this.
The pink, hello. Downtown L.A. we took a semi scary walk around the chinese-latino market. This looks more latino than chinese though
It's not LA, this is the view from the hotel in Patras. I think I take this picture every single time I stay there. This tree really wanted to get in,
cute of course

Something more to listen to on the beach

I'm never posting music again, it's just so much work. You send it, it doesnt get there blah bla blah
Here goes as much as I could bother uploading

Vetiver - Been So Long
Dear and the Headlights - Mother Make Me Golden
Violent Nine - Images of Me
Arcade Fire - Rebellion (lies)
This Mortal Coil - Kangaroo
Fujiya and Miyagi - Collarbone
M.Ward - Let's Dance (Bowie cover)
Franz Ferndinand feat. Jane Birkin - A Song for a Sorry Angel
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cheated Hearts
oh and
Andrew Bird - Sovay

Something to listen to on the beach

I always prefer downtempo and basically depressing music for the beach

Andreaw Bird : Sovay









from Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs

A Propaganda Structure and a Plant Stand

This is a maquette for a Radio-Announcer by Gustav Clucis, 1922, MOMA, a true propaganda structure. And this is a Plant Stand by Otto Prutscher 1903, Metropolitan. Maybe this could be a propaganda structure too?
I'm equally obssesed by both

Philosophy Hut at Thisio Station (Neen Plateau)

Here's some pics of the Philosophy Hut. It's smaller than I originally planned but I actually thik it works better at this scale, its the perfect spot to relax in after you're been Baptised by August(In The Name of Neen, Miltos Manetas). Inside you can contemplate the light and shadow created by thg\e cut-out patterns or watch Angelo's walking face (TalkingAndWalking.com, Angelo Plessas).

Walking Building on FIX factory

The Walking Building was projected onto the facade of the Fix Factory on Monday 17th July, as part of the Grand Promenade exhibition.

Grande Promenade opens tonight in Athens

The Grand Promenade, curated by Anna Kafetsi and her fantastic team opens tonight in Athens.After 9 pm I'll be projecting the "Walking Building" onto the facade of the ex FIX factory, for one night only.

At the same time in front of the Thisio Metro station you can check out the Philosophy Hut which is part of the Neen Plateau, a project for the Grande Promenade that also includes Angelo Plessas' TalkingAndWalking.com (with a very unexpected accesoryfor a website ) and Miltos Manetas' Neen Baptism which will be taking place every afternoon this summer.

Miss Dior goes to War

Miss John Galliano blasted everybody's brain off with his utterly fabulous haute couture collection for Dior. enjoy

Urban Suburban

There is an area on the far west of Athens called Ασπρόπυργος which translates to White Tower, though there is nothing white in sight but smoke coming from all the factories. Aspropyrgos overlooks the bay of Eleysina and Salamina island, in what must have been a stunning landscape in ancient times. Now its an industrial wasteland but somehow it retains an elusive beauty. If you drive away from the factories you find a sparsely inhabited landscape of car cemeteries, weird ad-hoc shacks, stray dogs and ominous looking trees, all in an industrial haze that photographs really well. I was there to oversee the fabrication of my little Philosophy Hut for the Grand Promenade exhibition which opens this Monday in Athens. More on this soon...

Whateverville

Today we were once again lost in Milan's outer suburbia, which actually looks like the outer suburbia of anywhere: you coulsd be in Los Angeles or Eindhoven or Paris or Whateverville, this place always looks the same and there's nothing to do. We were there looking for a tv/film studio where we could test some projectors. The Blue box space had a few leftover props which are always intersting, and the collection there was definetly hot: A winter tree, a part of a staircase, an ancient egyptian door, a cart with a stack of plastc chair, some large chess pieces and of course a styrofoam snowman. You could almost make your own Blair Witch Project meets the Mummy meets any movie that doesnt make any sense anyway, just like Milano Eindhoven Los Angeles Whateverville suburbia.

Gogol Bordello

Last night we got totally lost on the way to villa Arconati in Milano's Outer Suburbia. The place is totally amazing, a kind of fabulous falling down palazzo with extravagant topiary trees la la la. Gogol over performed as usual and though I was excited to see them the sound was so bad it all became rather unbearable. Still their logo is cool.

Fashion Week Usual

It's Mens' fashion week or fashion month or whatever. Nothing really new on the horizon, mostly it's unwearable clothes or last years fashion or just bad taste. Even Kim Jones showed a kind of boring sportswear collection where you can see stuff that you can get in H&M already (on sale!). As usual the only interesting ones are Hedi Slimane for Dior Homme and Raf Simmons. Finally a great double-breasted jacket from Dior as a follow up from last seasons' phantom of the opera looks but a little more subdued, and a cute cut off trenchcoat, maybe just as catwalk accesory but still a nice look.Raf worked the Suit and Sandals look

Neen Demo at SYNCH

So here's some photos from last nights' Neen Demo at Synch in Benaki Museum, curated by Angelo Plessas. It was a kind of perfect situation where people stayed for a long time lounging on the soft ruin concrete sofa pieces,
you could hear the faint guitar background sounds from Rafael Rozendaals' MisterNiceHands.com intersepted by the farting noises which made everybody laugh, Mai Ueda sang her "shower songs" in Greek, people threw Angelo's ballerina up in the air (ElasticEnthusiastic.com) and Miltos Manetas' ManInTheDark gave the usual Neen Mystery accident where his man in the dark started duplicating himself until the computer crashed. All this could not be possible without the super crew of the Synch Festival and the tons of super hardware from Multirama.
Pleople spent time on the pillows checking messages, taking photos, clicking and laughing and sleeping and it was all very neen indeed

Soft Ruin for a Neen Demo

This was my contribution to last nights' Neen Demo at Benaki museum in Athens. Angelo had asked me to make a kind of furniture/ instalation for the show, so people could hang out. Somehow I came up with the idea to make a soft building based on the iconic Le Corbusier domino frame that you find everywhere in Greece in a forever unfinished state as a kind of reverse ruin. I textture mapped a frame with not too much fake neen graffitti done in photoshop and then it collapses and becomes a kind of classical ruin, an 18th century romantic electronic bucolic soft concrete squat, always thinking back to Gufram, Group Memphis, Studio Alchimia, all the 60's italian avant-garde and somehow all this made perfect sense last night.

Some Recent Press

Angelo, Miltos and me are on the cover of EGG magazine with Neen Plateaux, our project for the Grand Promenade, which opens in 2 weeks in Athens. Inside they have a super nice article on Neen World and the projects that were born out of it such as P130, Cloud House, Superneen and Blue Wave, as well as several more pages on the Neenstars.

it's funny to see Neen World published so widely recently, considering it stopped existing in 2003 after the CASCO accident. Its almost becoming the Atlantis of the internet... Elena Skoula interviewed Angelo and me for a Greek newspaper. She even came up with terms of her own, and I think we might have a Neen journalist finally. This is a really cool interview/abstract confessional/free association of MM, AP and AA by Marina Fokidis in Lifo, one of my favorite free press magazines in Athens. Charlie Makkos took a realy cool portrait, and at last my vanity was satisfied. And finally an interview at Ozon Magazine byNatassa Papachristou, with another nice portrait by Charlie.