The Broken Pitcher

A project by Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Marina Christodoulidou & Peter Eremian in Zusammenarbeit mit

in cooperation with Raissa Angeli, Dimitris Chimonas, Stelios Kallinikou, Athina Kassiou, Orestis Lambrou, Orestis Lazouras, Panagiotis Mina (Pyrgatory Studios), Faysal Mroueh, Keti Papadema, Nayia Savva, Nikos Stephou, Maria Toumazou, Rumen Tropchev and Emidio Vasquez

The focal point of the project The Broken Pitcher is an event that occurred in Cyprus in 2019: a meeting took place at a bank in Larnaca to negotiate the foreclosure sale of a family home. Foreclosures are one of the austerity measures that were imposed on the Cypriot government by the troika of representatives from the EU Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund after the financial crisis in 2012.

For The Broken Pitcher, the meeting room was reconstructed and furnished by artists. Based on the memory protocols of the family involved and their lawyer, the situation in the bank was re-enacted by actors and filmed. The scene ends with the question: Ιn your opinion, what should the bank employees do? In the second part of the film, we see the different ways in which people react to this question. Their answers reflect the perspectives of various interest groups in Cyprus – housing rights activists in Barcelona, Berlin and Beirut, people who have experienced similar situations, lawyers, economists and artists.

At each performance venue, the project The Broken Pitcher relies on collaboration. It addresses the question of how the financial system works and whether it is possible to intervene in its processes and change them. The exhibition in Leipzig presents the walk-in spatial installation, the film, video interviews, photos and documentary material.

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Die mehrteilige Rauminstallation The Broken Pitcher widmet sich den Auswirkungen von Finanzialisierung und Austerität anhand eines konkreten Falles: In einer Bankfiliale auf Zypern wird über die Zwangsvollstreckung eines Einfamilienhauses verhandelt. Anhand von Gedächtnisprotokollen der betroffenen Familie und ihres Rechtsanwalts, wurde das verhängnisvolle Treffen in der Bank in einem eigens rekonstruierten Besprechungsraum nachgestellt und gefilmt. Der von Künstler:innen kollaborativ ausgestattete Raum ist Filmset und Rauminstallation zugleich. Ein 69 minütiger Film zeigt die Szene, gefolgt von unterschiedlichen Personen in Nicosia, Berlin, Beirut und Barcelona, die auf die Frage reagieren: “Was sollten Ihrer Meinung nach die Bankangestellten tun?”. Film und Installation werden ergänzt mit Materialien zum Fall und seiner Situiertheit in der kolonialen Geschichte von Schuld und Tribut. Im Ausstellungsgespräch mit Natascha Sadr Haghighian, die gemeinsam mit Marina Christodoulidou und Peter Eramian das kollaborative Projekt intitiierte, werden lokale Auswirkungen der Finanzialisierung und möglichen Formen des kollektiven Organisierens und Widerstands dagegen besprochen.

Die Teilnahme an der Führung ist im Museumseintritt enthalten

Our balance is in the red. We can’t afford housing, we can’t afford nationalism, we can’t afford CO2 emissions. But who’s red is it and how is it counted? Debt derives as a continuity of the colonial order and becomes itself an asset on financial markets. In a conversation with Ana Teixeira Pinto, Andrej Holm and Nicholas Shaxson, three of the interlocutors of The Broken Pitcher we discuss accountablility in a financialized world. With an introduction by Marina Christodoulidou and Natascha Sadr Haghighian.

Talk event in English language.

Together with Peter Eramian, Marina Christodoulidou and Natascha Sadr Haghighian are the initiators oft he collaborative project The Broken Pitcher, which started in 2020 in Nicosia. The Broker Pitcher was presented in several public spaces in Cyprus and in the artist run space Thkio Ppalies, Nicosia, in the Beirut Art Center, Beirut. In Spring 2023 it will be presented in public spaces in Munich in collaboration with the Lehnbachhaus Munich.

Ana Teixeira Pinto is a writer and cultural theorist based in Berlin. She is a guest professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg and a theory tutor at the Dutch Art Institute. Her research relates to affect theory, digital media, political economy, decoloniality, and history of science.

Nicholas Shaxson is an author, journalist and investigator. He has been active in the Tax Justice Network, an expert-led lobbying group focused on tax issues. He is the author of the awarded book Treasure Islands (Random House UK, 2011). Shaxson lives in Berlin.

Andrej Holm is a sociologist specializing in urban renewal, gentrification, and housing policy. He teaches at the Humboldt University and is an active supporter of the initiative “Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co”. He lives and works in Berlin.

 

Sound-performances and DJ-sets

The artists Elena Savvidou, Emiddio Vasquez, Panagiotis Mina, Dimitris Chimonas & Zach Schoenhut, *collaborators of The Broken Pitcher project, present a series of live and sound pieces in resonance with the exhibition (spaces).

Elena Savvidou: time;(
25 min.

Elena Savvidou’s work is deliberately influenced by the contexts she performs in. In time;( – an abbreviation for: tears in my eyes – she explores the delicate and almost muted sound of breaking clay. She recreates functional objects kept as mementos using clay in its multiple stages: slip, wet, leather hard, bisque and glazed. Performing these objects, Savvidou invites people to actively listen to their fragility or any hidden memory they might hold.

Elena Savvidou is an artist working with sound and a musician working with performance art. She has performed in festivals in the UK (Fierce Festival) and Germany (Tresor) and in local events organized by Moneda, Honest Electronics, and Subaerial. She has also participated in exhibitions at Cyprus-based artist-run spaces Drive-Drive and Thkio Ppalies. Over the past three years, she has been curating her own monthly show, Coral Bay, for Noods Radio UK.

Dimitris Chimonas & Zach Schoenhut: ouch, wow
durational performance

ouch, wow is a physical composition of control and collapse, optimism and failure. Two male bodies navigate through the exhibition The Broken Pitcher responding to the works in a state of trance. By standing and falling, stumbling and rolling, the performers problematize the role of the viewer in relation to the apparatus for trauma commodification, serving as reminders of the impossibility of fully comprehending what is experienced. The work has been developed in the context of Xarkis Festival 2022.

Dimitris Chimonas is an artist, theatre-maker, and performer. His work investigates theatre conventions, devices, and frames through their use and abuse. Chimonas presented solo and collaborative works at the at the Benaki Museum (Athens, 2016), at the Young Artists Biennale (Tirana, 2017), at the Window Laboratoire (Paris, 2018), at the Prague Quadrennial of Space Design & Performance (2019), at Hot Wheels Athens (2019), and at Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich, 2021), amongst others. He is the co-founder and curator of Sessions, a programme of queer happenings (Nicosia, Oct-Dec 2022). He graduated from East15 Acting School in London (2012 – 2015), and attended the Home Workspace Program at Ashkal Alwan in Beirut (2018-2019).

Emiddio Vasquez: INFINITE RETURNS
60 min. including Q&A

Infinite Returns is a performance lecture by Emiddio Vasquez, founder of the Cyprus-Arizona record label, sound event series and publishing initiative Moneda. Drawing on the esoteric lingo from the financial world and its Powerpoint aesthetics, the performance will look at the label’s work so far and its future development and promises of growth, amounting ultimately to a pitch towards potential investors for future funding.

Emiddio Vasquez is a Cypriot-Dominican electronic musician and artist. His practice deals with material transformations that blur encoding-decoding processes across media as a way of engaging with the larger infrastructures at stake. Drawing on memories of uprooting and his interest in audio, image, and computation technologies, his work explores themes surrounding the politics of visibility, mediated sensing, and the processes of subject formation, with a particular interest in the neoliberal subject.

Panagiotis Mina: skoulic-ous / σκούλικ-ους
An earworm suffers from an earworm
35 min.

Panagiotis Mina is an artist and producer working with sound and image. He is interested in the concept
of noise and interruption within cultural norms. Using sound, photography, video and music he explores
the ability of different platforms to accept the inevitability of their demise and either create an alternative
world using similar discourses or mock the existing ones. He is the founder of Pyrgatory Studios.