"The Ark: Old seeds for new cultures" in Benaki Museum

Benaki Museum presents till the 22nd May 2011 the Greek entry in the 12th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2011.

According to its creators (Phoebe Giannisi, Zissis Kotionis), the installation called "The Ark: Old seeds for new cultures" re-focuses on old seeds and the ideological biodiversity that is at our disposal, but which lies forgotten and on the brink of extinction; while, at the same time, it provides the promise for new cultures of life in the soil.

In the Greek Pavilion, Yannis Isidorou creates a visual and sound installation, producing a simulation environment with the initial agrarian production experience. Kostas Manolidis, with his landscape topologies hints at the capacity to rethink the wealth of the ground through his representations. Maria Papadimitriou in her seed laboratory re-introduces agricultural practices connected with the pleasurable experience of nutrition into the extensive ground of a metropolis. Alexandros Psychoulis typesets a guide for aspiring urban life gardener-cultivators. The Ark itself was designed and constructed, bearing the heavy memories of the phytogenetic material from the Greek landscape, while at the same time it travels, along with its visitors, unsuspecting yet familiar inhabitants of a world where collective survival became a condition for the survival of the very world in which we survive. Stimulating the senses; pleasure and hedonism; companionship and cohabitation, as they were experienced by the various collaborators over the five-month experience of completing this collective piece, are settled in the Ark, as a counterweight to the consumerist monasticism of city life.

Commissioners / Curators: Phoebe Giannisi, Zissis Kotionis
Design of the Ark and the Installation: Phoebe Giannisi, Zissis Kotionis. Project Manager is a guy we know from the past and we have been watching his steps in the Arts, his name is Yannis Arvanitis.

Benaki Museum organised on Saturday 16th April a symposium ("Symbiosis and Distribution: Public Practices in the Extended Metropolitan Fields"). Key speaker of the evening was Vandana Shiva, as well as the "Ark" team who presented the aims of the project. Among the events of the symposium was the seed offer action by Peliti alternative community and a round table discussion.