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SICKLE & CODE
Museum of History and Cultural Heritage of Lakatamia
Nicosia, Cyprus
Curated by Peter Eramian, Elena Parpa, Evanthia (Evi) Tselika
24 October 2019 - 13 June 2020
www.thkioppalies.org
The Museum of History and Cultural Heritage of Lakatamia, in which the exhibition is being hosted, is housed in an old, traditionally-built residence that dates back to the British Colonial period (1922), when local materials and vernacular building methods were still applied in architecture across Cyprus. The museum is home to a wealth of objects that range from house furniture and utensils to farming tools, including a now disused sickle, and textile manufacturing equipment, which are meant to uncover the history of Lakatamia as an agricultural society where life once depended on community ties, knowledge sourced from nature and particular technological processes developed for survival. Acknowledging the specificity of such a context and the curatorial challenge of creating discursive links between current maker cultures and past methods of production and survival, the exhibition’s display develops its own logic of classification and ordering of objects. Using a ubiquitous system of shelves, what already exists in the museum is reconfigured and recast under a new light in close conversation with what is brought in by the artists, prototype teams and overall programming of the exhibition.
More specifically, in Sickle & Code, Cypriot and international artists present works that reflect, confront and re-evaluate current models of producing under the conjunction of global digital commons of knowledge. Concurrently, the museum allows us to glimpse into everyday making and living practices of the recent past and becomes the conceptual testing ground for the five Cypriot Phygital pilot projects and prototypes, as the Lakatamia makerspace is being set up in the municipality’s community centre. Taking place within a wider emergence, in the last few years, of hackerspaces or makerspaces as community-led spaces, where free and open source software and hardware are utilized collaboratively by individuals.
The Lakatamia makerspace is being developed by the Municipality of Lakatamia in collaboration with the University of Nicosia Research Foundation and explores the melding of free and open technologies, social arts and maker cultures. Its context, seen in conjunction with the museum and the exhibition, allows us to reconsider our understanding of how we appreciate heritages of technologies, making, living and producing in-common(s) in times of digital and physical (Phygital) realities.
Participating artists: Maria Andreou, Raissa Angeli, Adonis Archontides, Helene Black & Yiannis Colakides, Zach Blas, Jenny Dunn, Nihaal Faizal, Veronika Georgiou, Olga Micińska, Bahar Noorizadeh, Angelo Plessas, Tabita Rezaire, Elena Savvidou, Emiddio Vasquez.
– Press release
Sickle & Code is organised by the University of Nicosia Research Foundation as part of project Phygital (an Interreg V 2014-2020 BalkanMed, EU-funded programme) and co-organized in collaboration with the University of Nicosia Fine Arts Programme (Department of Design and Multimedia) and the Municipality of Lakatamia. Ιmplementation partner: Thkio Ppalies.
– From Thkio PPalies project page
Photos by Mirka Koutsouri.
Works included:
- Heads, 2019-ongoing
Related tags: group shows, sculpture, Adonis, 3D printing, 3D scanning