XOUTH festival

Τhe Blender Gallery supports Xuth Festival

In times of crisis in Greece, the discrimination and inequalities that have emerged seem to have brought a new trauma to the body of social cohesion. In the already existing vulnerable social groups, new disparities and inequalities are coming along, as well as room for marginalization of all kinds. The Other, in all respects, almost looks like a monster. Under the attribution of dangerous, repulsive, detestable, incomprehensible, and grotesque properties to the uninitiated, which is but an emergence of the utterly familiar of the human condition in every possible version of it, there is a need to deny the Other from a subject to object, feeling of superiority.

As the Arts are often the undisputed field of diversity, the ARTENS under the auspices and support of the Ministry of Culture and Sports organizes a five-day Festival on December 18-22, 2019, under the title of XUTH Festival inspired by the novel. Pitsipiou – The Monkey Xut or the Habits of the Ages (1848). Monkey Xut starts off as a completely western man, as he is the well-known traveler Bartholdy, the “bitter Greek accuser”. His economic misery brings him closer to moral misery, until he commits the murder of his benefactor. Since then, he has lost his mind and, after incredible journeys, lives in a wilderness and encounters daily with the forces of nature, which change his human form to such an ape-like place that he is sold as a monkey by them. hunters who arrested him. Bartholdy has in 7 years become the Other, not even a farmer, a refugee, or an immigrant, but, in the eyes of others, an animal, an ape of heightened intelligence, capable of serving as the guardian of the youth of the time. Xuth becomes an emblem of the human’s potential transition from the state of the subject to the state of the object that we daily perform, ultimately projecting on those we desire another image of ourselves, which we have retracted, after we have collectively repelled. For any inequality and discrimination, individualized or belonging to a population group.

The Festival will include activities and works of art (painting, sculpture, photography, video art), multimedia, gaming projects, virtual reality projects, performances, and soundscapes inspired by Monkey Wood in particular , but they may be conversant with the symbolic, indicative, or allegorical level of living. The “XUTH festival” will take place in two places at the same time. In a spectacular preserved neoclassical building in downtown Athens Bucharest 33 which is a landmark in the wider area, and right across from the site of the ARTENS Bucharest 40 cultural headquarters, a characteristic preserved medieval 1934 building.

Free entrance

Opening: Wednesday 18 December 2019, at 19:00

Festival Duration: 18/12 – 22/12

Production: ARTENS Production Coordination: Stelios Mitsos / Chrysa Lastiki Festival Curator: Elena Timbaleks, Katerina Sotiriou (Magenta Artistic Partnership)

Contact Person: Evi Peterson – Art Director & Managing Partner of ARTENS 40 Bucharest, Athens First floor

info@artens.gr www.artens.gr

T: 210 33 17 312

For more information please contact the following contact details: Evi Peterson – Art Director & Managing Partner T: 210 33 17 312 M: 6944 166 246 E: info@artens.gr