On March 28th, as our Spring 2019 Pilot Program was approaching its conclusion, a 90-minute event was held in Athens to share with the public what had transpired during this six-week residency. ARCAthens Fellows Cullen Washington Jr and Larry Ossei-Mensah each delivered presentations, after which they engaged in a panel conversation together with Daphne Vitali, Dan Cameron, and Aristides Logothetis.
The video above contains key highlights of the event. A full-length version is available here, and a full transcript can be downloaded here.
On a brisk Thursday evening, around 90 people were gathered in the amphitheater of the Acropolis Museum as Executive Director Aristides Logothetis started off by welcoming everyone and thanking all the people that had made the program possible—appreciating the collective sense of philoxenia in welcoming the Fellows into the folds of Athens. Regarding the mission of the program, Aristides stated:
Talking about his time in Athens, Cullen described how he was drawn to literal grids that he found in the architecture, leading him to create a series of collagraphs that echoed the mental images he’d gathered during his residency.
Sustainability is often brought up, and for Larry, it means tapping both conventional and unconventional resources to cultivate the art ecosystem. About his experience in Athens, Larry shared the observation of how Greeks operate between the polarity of “unwritten rules” on some things and “firm rules” on others. So his question is, “How do we use that opportunity as a community?”