iset - 2015PapaioannouEN

A connoisseur and supporter of the international avant-garde art scene, the architect and musicologist John G. Papaioannou (1915 – 2000) promoted from as early as the beginning of the 1960s the idea of collaboration between visual art and music. Among his long and active career as practitioner and researcher in the field of Ekistics —as a close associate of Constantinos Doxiadis and member of the Athens Technological Institute— and his systematic activities in the area of music, the present show and the accompanying edition focus on an even less studied aspect of the theoretical discourse and the activities of John G. Papaioannou: the support and promotion of hybrid forms of art, of joint projects and the institutional synergy among different artistic fields, predominantly visual art and music. The exhibition explores the starting points that led him to take an interest and systematically promote multidisciplinary creation, his contacts with artists from the international experimental scene whom he presented in Greece, his collaborations with local art institutions, the relations he cultivated with visual artists, the joint ventures between musicians and visual artists he encouraged or supported, and his theoretical views and ideas about a museum of contemporary art which he envisioned as a multi-disciplinary centre for artistic interaction. Both the show and the book focus on the 1960s and 1970s.
The exhibition features rare documents, printed and audiovisual, from the archive of John G. Papaioannou [Contemporary Music Research Center and Chourmouzios-Papaioannou Foundation], the archive of the Contemporary Greek Art Institute, the Artists’ Archive of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, and the archives of Diohandi, Costis, Nella Golanda and Anestis Logothetis [Vienna].
In the accompanying publication the work of John G. Papaioannou was documented through research in the archives of: John G. Papaioannou, Contemporary Greek Art Institute, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Constantinos Α. Doxiadis, Anestis Logothetis, Tony Spiteris [Teloglion Fine Arts Foundation/University of Thessaloniki] and Diohandi.
A parallel event organised as part of the exhibition will use first-hand testimonies by artists who had known and collaborated with John G. Papaioannou to present some of his multimedia art projects from the 1980s and 1990s. The details of the event will be announced shortly.

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