On your last day in Athens you booked into a tour of the Odeion, lead by a member of the documenta chorus, Denise Araouzou. You wanted to see and hear the art of this space that you had repeatedly returned to through the eyes and ears of another. You were drawn to the description of […]
Did you experience a distinct sense of déjà vu (or, more accurately, déjà vécu) when you found Olaf Holzapfel’s Zaum (Fence), 2017 waiting for you in Athens? What did you think when confronted by this artist, which the Daybook tells us, ‘was born in a country that no longer exists, and whose coming-of-age involved crossing […]
When you found Allan Sekula’s School is a Factory, 1978-1980 at ASFA, you registered a distinct sense of recognition and satisfaction. You had seen this work in Madrid, where it is part of the collection of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. You also felt that Sekula’s wry meditation on the institution of […]
What time did you take this photograph? Was it too early in the day for Social Dissonance? Were you curious enough to return at 7pm or didn’t you have the time? Or was it 7pm on a Monday, the day of rest for the performers? What did you make of the room, behind these doors? […]
You had meant it as a brief stop on the way to somewhere else, but it ended up being the story of your day and perhaps your whole visit. Your main destination was the Benaki Museum Pireos Street Annexe, but you wanted to plan a route via quick visits to the Museum of Islamic Art […]
You were obsessed with the caryatid that Lord Elgin stole from the Erechtheion temple on the Acropolis, when you read the tales of the five remaining figures weeping for their lost sister in Johanna Hanink’s book The Classical Debt. You even paid her a visit, after Athens, in the British Museum, and it was only […]
When you took this photograph of Pauline’s Solo did it make you wish that you had spoken with Pauline Oliveros in person, either before she died in November 2016 or afterwards in the underworld as a dialogue of the dead? Would you have addressed her by her first name? Would you have asked her about […]
You had expected to find Chris Marker’s The Owl’s Legacy somewhere at documenta 14, perhaps as a reference in one of the publications or mentioned in passing in a line of wall text, but not in the form of a usb key hanging from a piece of string. When you made an unplanned visit to […]
Were you especially excited to stumble across the work of André du Colombier? What drew you in more, his words or his colors? To the alternation of red, red and white or the words un | jour | rouge? Did your eyes prize out the words from the copper on the wall or lose them […]
You didn’t make it to the Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika Gallery – Benaki Museum during the small window of their regular opening hours (Friday-Saturday, 10am-6pm). But you were lucky enough to know Polina Kosmadaki, who had curated an exhibition of Ghika’s photographs of the 1930s and who gave you a private out-of-hours tour. You would hear from […]