Contemporary Art and Context: Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot

Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot
→ Lecture performance: [UN]FINISHED
→ Screening: Barbaresou Legacy, or The Cursed One, 2024
→ Book presentation: [UN]FINISHED – Atlas of Athens’ Incomplete Buildings – A Story of Hidden Antimonuments (Jam Sam Books, 2023)

The architectural archetype of the unfinished concrete building can be found everywhere in the Athenian cityscape. Those structures, left in the middle of a discontinued building process in a seemingly never-ending pause, are signs of invisible financial and political forces defining the physical appearance of the city. With its character of a ruin of a forgotten purpose the unfinished building is at the same time pointing to the past and to the future, as a frozen moment of time preserved ever since its volume reached that concrete state. The unfinished concrete skeletons of Athens are keepers of stories that are evidence of unseen structures that form the Greek society: family, bureaucracy, and finance. The work of Lalou & Aymo-Boot makes apparent how these ever-present factors continuously influence the everyday of the city and its inhabitants.

The full story of Barbaresou Legacy, or The Cursed One is included as one of the chapters in the book [UN]FINISHED – Atlas of Athens’ Incomplete Buildings – A Story of Hidden Antimonuments by Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot, published in 2023 by Jap Sam Books.

Maria Lalou is a Greek conceptual sculptor and experimental filmmaker. Her work focuses on the politics of the viewer in the form of installations, performances, filmic documents and publications. She has presented her work internationally in exhibitions, screenings and lectures and published two monographs: [theatro] (Onomatopee, 2015) and the camera (Dolce Publications, 2019).

Skafte Aymo-Boot is a Danish architect with an independent design and research practice. He has realised a variety of permanent and temporary works in Europe and Asia, many of which are the result of collaborations with artists operating in the overlap between architecture and visual art. He is also a partner at the architectural office OP – Open Platform in Copenhagen.

Since 2012, Lalou & Aymo-Boot have worked together on [UN]FINISHED, their continuous research on the unfinished concrete buildings of Athens. In 2020, they founded cross section archive in Athens, a space for art and architecture, exploring urban phenomena that occur in the intersection of those disciplines and how historical facts, political structures and everyday circumstances have been interfering with, forming, and directing them. They curate an annual thematic program of research and exhibitions, inviting artists, architects and thinkers to collectively investigate and expand the theme at stake, and publish the zine Document.

Contemporary Art and Context is a lecture series hosted by MA Contemporary Art and features talks by artists, curators, and researchers, offering diverse perspectives on contemporary art practices and their societal contexts.

The lecture takes place in English, everyone is welcome to join!