Mycobacterium Tuberculosis
(2009 - 2010)

Mycobacterium Tuberculosis (2009 - 2010)
(October 2009 – October 2010)

In response to “Sotiria Project” a big art event that has taken place in one of the oldest and in many ways historical hospital of Athens, a research group called “Mycobacterium Tuberculosis” was created. The group formed and organized by Vassilis Vlastaras, composed by visual and sound artists, has used archive methodology to create a new soundvisual archive between memory and historic narration and today’s reality. With this experimental project “Mycobacterium Tuberculosis” researched, through multilayered dialogues, interviews and narrations of people that has worked in the hospital, matters of illness art and politics, memory and subjective truth that forms History.
More info Here

Participating Artists:
Adamis Michalis, Aggeliki Avgitidou, Antonis Stoantzikis, Argyrou Michalis, Afroditi Krodiri, Caesar Vrettos, Christina Spanou, Dimitra Politi, Dimitris Rentoumis, Elena Prifti, Fanis Vlastaras, fotini kale, Katerina Gkoutziouli, Maria Glyka, Polianna Vlati, Victoria Karvouni, Vassilis Vlastaras.

Sotiria Project / Memory and disease in visual arts discourse
Sotiria, Athens General Hospital for Lung Diseases

Art in a hospital is one of the most interesting programmes of applying visual arts in public places. Especially in Europe art has in many ways entered the hospitals. But the exhibition in the “Sotiria” hospital is not just an art presentation in the sensitive area of a hospital. The “Sotiria” hospital is a place laden with history and has been the theatre of many stories. It was the first public sanatorium in Greece (1903), created as a result of the 19th century concept of charity. For half a century it functioned as a place of – voluntary or involuntary – confinement for patients suffering of tuberculosis. It has been a typical case of heterotopia, i.e. a place where society used to isolate a specific group of people in a state of crisis – according to that society. During the German Occupation the “Sotiria” hospital was once more connected to the history of the country, through executions of resistance fighters and prisoners’ escapes.

This place is at the same time a museum as well as a social place serving a practical purpose even today, since it functions as a general hospital. The audience of this exhibition does not just consist of art lovers, but of the patients themselves, as well as of the hospital’s staff.
The art project is going to be realized between June and October 2010 in the “Sotiria” hospital.
Curator: Panagiotis Papadopoulos