Paperophanies (2011) conceived by Jenny Marketou within the framework of the PRAXIS gallery, a space that adheres to the “new institutionalism” idea of curatorial intention - to create “an active space” that is “part community centre, part laboratory and part academy” At a time when critical cultural institutions are clearly being dismantled, underfunded, and subjected to the demands of a neoliberal event economy, the Praxis still encourages transformative critical potential by internalizing the institutional critique that was initially formulated by artists in the early 1970s and later revisited in the 90s.This kind of institution allows for the expansion of the limits of language and is more sensitive to the imperfections of a social tissue and its distorted representations in art. Functioning as a context capable of bringing concrete differences in action, it is not based on an abstract relation between ideas and discourse. It supports a social activism driven by the means of critical visual arts and encouraging a performative statement. Paperophanies enables the empowerment of the proximate other through creative inclusion in the concept of a culture whose politicality is not only based on self-referentiality. Marketou addresses urgency through both poesis understood as labour and praxis understood as a political action, the first implying the production of an object and the lack of it in the latter. Art is used here as a tool for the reconsideration and reinvention of political practices that are based on temporary social recompositions and new subjectifications. The cultural mission is turned into an actual political reality. However, utopia, which can be only temporarily reached through art and practice, and whose essence is the very action, is difficult to be eternally understood yet indirectly allows its subjects to collaborate without compromising its beliefs in the here and now.

 

Paperophonies is a process of translation of the existing into a non-normative action that opens up the projection of new urgencies as a means for allowing participants to make new trans-generational, trans-gender, trans-national, trans-ideological connections and relations between people through language which shapes their existing positions in society. Another important asset of Paperophanies is not only the ability to pinpoint the complexity and political diversity, but to show that a joint meaningful action can create a new language and a new condition in the public space.