unstable community formation projects


[add some photos

+ drawings from the projects]

 

 

Unstable community formation projects.

by Gregorios Pharmakis

 

 

plural person

acting

specific city conditions

Gregorios Pharmakis is a plural person enlived by artists, architects, writers, curators; the person is shaped in specific city conditions. The person takes the form of an actor, working in fields that are usually characterized by the expectation of urban extensions [urban dispersions {…]. These fields form provisory stabilities through spaces that frame random participation of different people. Gregorios Pharmakis is an open possibility for perceiving a person through the different persons that enter a specific frame. [this needs to explain?] The frame is the only possibility for a provisory apparition of a stable identity for the person.

Gregorios Pharmakis is a name to shape an unshapable work of redefinitions. The only temporarily stable element in each GF's work is the frame of the work. Even the person itself is a subject of definition: the stability of the person is only formed by the question for the person.

 

 

bus structure

random community

[ghost person

bus structure

random community

[ghost person

 

 

To organise an emblematic reconstruction of such a frame, the example of a bus can be used; Gregorios Pharmakis acts and forms its proper identity through acting in a bus-like structure: the condition for Gregorios Pharmakis existence would be a specific community function. How can one describe this function? To answer the question the bus example can be interrogated. Is the community formed hosted by a specific bus in the city, a specific or a random community? Randomly specific and specifically random, this community is formed by a very rigid law and remains though indefinable to a certain level. The ghost of a specific, random community person forms the base for the figure[.[αα1] .] of Gregorios Pharmakis.

 

localization of a bus condition

performing…

strategy…

acts… 

localization of a bus condition

performing…

strategy…

acts…

 

 

 

The localization of a bus condition[αα2]  is only the condition for a pharmakean act: it is only through performing in a certain way that Gregorios Pharmakis can be shaped as a ghost figure: not absent and –at the same time- not present, a ghost can include and understand the mobility and the random change of entering the frame and –at the same time- the stable apathy of the frame itself. Gregorios Pharmakis is not only the name of any common frame for different contents but an identity found by the loss of identity in a specific frame. This identity is performed through a strategy of an important and invisible adjacent act. [what is the nature of this act? the nature of this act is based on the concept of “works in the frame”[αα3] ]

 

adjacent acts what kind?

organized presences

pharmakis blog structures

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adjacent acts what kind?

organized presences

pharmakis blog structures

---

 

 

 

 

Gregorios Pharmakis may appear wherever the bus condition is fulfilled. Adjacent acts stage the person in such a way that the person is never correctly or fully presented. The ghost appears by [the] strong acts of bus-structure localization[ ?[αα4] ], by a simultaneous play with the structures, a double gesture confirmed by retro-actions in pharmakis [αα5] blog structures

The Gregorios Pharmakis condition involves a certain idea of irresponsibility connected to this random way of the concretization of the pharmakean communities.

The project of the person’s constitution is carried out through organized presences in specific place-situations and through an internet piling-up of mnemonic traces in the identity formation.[to reformulate]?

 

canonistic frame

acting members

uncontrollable person

[they take control of the frame? maybe yes, how?

…does the person control the frame? the person is visible only because of the frame.

A second frame [different from the material frame of any Pharmakis project] is formed by the canonistic logic of the person’s acts: this second frame, the canonistic one is providing some rules[αα6]  in which the plural person would become uncontrollable. Its actions and the remains of the actions form a series of documents proving the person’s existence. Gregorios Farmakis exists only in the specific condition that:

1. every acting member of the person loses his or her signature entering the plural person.

2. G.F. acting detects, inscribes and records this specific urban condition by interacting to it.

3. the persons entering the solid “bus-like” structure are supposed to take GF’s place even if they are not aware of the whole setting of the scheme. They are lead to participate without violation [?] but also without knowing that they participate.

Productivity without responsibility, construction of the person’s face in front of an invisible community, G.F. is presented as the ghost of an unstable community. The person hosts this community and forms it as an allegory. G.F. is shaped as an allegory of the community, confirming and negating it at the same time.

 

 

Apothecae

Apothecae marks a change in Gregorios Pharmakis strategy; the plural person turns towards strictly defined spaces which include hidden people structures. A first workout for this activity of the plural person took place in a double work performed in Istanbul.

[ drawings missing]

In the summer of 2005 two major cultural events took place in Istanbul; the XXII World Congress of Αrchitecture by the International Union of Architects (UIA) in July and the 9th International Istanbul Art Biennial in September. The city of Istanbul is the same scene for the two events. Istanbul is in different ways important and silent for the events. Gregorios Pharmakis engaged in a twofold activity, participating to these major art and architecture events with the double project Apothecae. In many european countries, apotheca means pharmacy. Apotheca is also the greek word for storehouse. Each apotheca is structured in shelves and cases, used for an organized accumulation, or for the minimal archiving of things that are obsolete, or of not much need.

The project searched for such spaces inside the venues where the events took place. Members of Gregorios Pharmakis visited the lecture and exhibition places one week before the opening of each event. They investigated spaces situated right next to the highlighted ones: cleaning and storage rooms, maintenance rooms and basements. Moreover, a dynamic structure of storage was installed in the internet, capable of accepting the ‘findings’ during the works, and offering open access to collecting, sorting and use of information for individuals and groups.

 

XXII World Congress of Αrchitecture

During the international Architecture Congress, Farmakis focused his activities on the storage room at the basement of the large amphitheatre in Istanbul Convention and Exhibition Centre. In situ works were undertaken during the course of the Congress works. Presice measurements were taken and linear drawings of objects and spaces were made. It was soon realized that the large storage room provided the space, not only for the accumulation of piles of chairs, announcement boards, tall metal ashtrays, etc, but also for the gatherings of the personnel during the break. It was the only place in the Convention Centre where smoking was allowed. The working team recorded conversations with the personnel concerning their working and living conditions. They also mapped their everyday itineraries through the city while commuting to work. This preoccupation with people did not mean to reveal personal facts, but information related to the “invisible” function of the organized event. Findings of this small, and rather unorganized investigation could be a newspaper on a table (photographed), an announcement on the wall (transcribed as a sketch or linear drawing), the talk of a cleaner (recorded). The findings were being continuously published by the working team to the internet archive. An unusual archaeology of the circumstances of the cultural event, in its most basic infrastructures, was being under construction.

 

 

9th International Istanbul Biennial

The interest in the Istanbul Biennial turned again to the ideas of active storing, attachment to the mechanism of each institution and dispersement in the city. The Biennial addressed thematics of the city. Exhibition spaces were spread in buildings “between uses”, situated at the commercial centre of Istanbul. Farmakis concentrated on one of Biennial venues, the derelict Deniz Palace Apartments. Inside the building, Farmakis worked in the Office of EMSA power regulator company, the only functional space among the rooms dedicated to the exhibition of artists work. Repeated visits resulted in numerous drawings of spaces and objects as well as mechanical recordings of sound and image. The works continued in collaboration with the office employees. Collected material also derived from talks, discussions and informal meals in the office. For the elaboration of collected material, Farmakis was moving a flexible workshop from place to place, inside and next to the biennial premises, in coffee shops, hotel lobbies and rooms. The workshop reworked information and produced printed material and internet feedings. For the dissemination of this material, different storage structures were invented and used, not only in the internet, but also in the city, in busy streets, specific advertisment stands, newspapers and leaflets left to the biennial venues, in coffee-shops, patisseries and bookstores.

 

 

Gregorios Pharmakis in Apothecae projects:

Aristide Antonas, Panos Kouros, Kostas Daflos (Artist, Architect), Zekiye Sarikartal (artist) and Nadia Kalara (Artist). Acting persons from University of Patras, University of Thessaly, Bachçeşehir University and Istanbul Technical University : Niki Dimopoulou, Margarita Gika, Ozan Taylan Seven, Dimitra Tsachrelia, Eirini Tsachrelia, Stella Tsiontsi, Sumer Erek, Yannis Arvanitis, Alp Aytekin, Sarp Çetin, Tasos Govatsos, Katerina Grigoropoulou, Dağhan Gürkanlar, Elena Kapobasopoulou, Nileta Kotsikou, Marina Biza, Kaya Tabanli, Eirini Tsaxrelia, Alexis Tsoukalas, Ahmet Türk, Seda Ulutaş.

 

 

Bio

Gregorios Pharmakis was initiated as a plural person by Aristide Antonas (Architect, Writer) and Panos Kouros (Artist), both teaching at the University (Department of Architecture in the University of Thessaly and the University of Patras, respectively).

Pharmakis acts in situations that are at the same time recorded and immediatly published. The plural person is identified with actors working in different situations in cities and in on-line actualizations. Hidden communities are in the center of every Pharmakis work; the works in their perpetual redefinement are shaped in always non-finished blogs, wiki pages, pools of documents in internet communities, etc. “Gregorios Pharmakis” Street, [1. Athens (12.3.05), 2. Kairo, (9.5.05)], Apothecae [ 1. UIA Congress, Istanbul (June 05), 2. Istanbul Biennial (Sept. 05)], Hospi-table, Pharmakis Voice, Russell Telephone Cabin, Lycourgos Street Arcade are some of the on-going works of Gregorios Pharmakis. The blog gregorios-pharmakis.blogspot.com is an entrance to all active works.

 

 

 


 [αα1]the figure of the person and the backgound of the person are both necessary to understand the form of existence for Gregorios Pharmakis.

 [αα2]the bus condition which is the background of the person is the only possible figure for the person. This controversy is constitutional for the person.

 [αα3]working in the frame has to do with a practice of attention given to things that are –in a vague way- constitutive for the frame. For instance a measurement of the seats in a bus could give an example of such a work.

 [αα4]the localization is here an important constitutive act that puts the person in the scene of an existence.

 [αα5]localization of the structure and working in the structure [play with the structure] are shaping the person and are formed in the Pharmakis blog system.

 [αα6]these rules are not to be stable though. They can be modified. Aprovisory version of them is the following...