
For this year’s First and Last and Always Psiloritis Biennale, curated by Stamatis Schizakis, Christina Mitrentse draws parallels between books and mushrooms both for their morphology and for their rhizomatic developement.
For the work ISBN: 97861880590 with Shiitake (Lentinus- edodes), Mitrentse, like Bradbury’s book- people, recites the entire Erri De Luca's book The Weight of the Butterfly . She then implants Shiitake mushroom mycelium into its pages, covering the surface of the book with mushrooms after consuming the paper and its words. The work was temporarily left on the edges of the Pardi forest, on the southern side of Psiloritis, at the last large hollow tree that gives the area its name: Toumptotos Prinos.** Inside its hollow trunk, the Kermes Oak is full of mushrooms, connected in turn with the mushrooms and roots of the Kermes Oak trees in the forest. Did Erri De Luca’s story pass from the mycelium of the book to the mycelium of Psiloritis?
The First and Last and Always Psiloritis Biennale, curated by Stamatis Schizakis, aspires to become a platform of contemporary outdoor culture. By not aiming at an audience, The First and Last and Always Psiloritis Biennale allows for an exhibiting condition which is unhindered by financial or political interests, but also by the unwritten rules of exhibition viewing interconnected with the current social conventions and morals.
The site of the biennale, Psiloritis mountain, is delineated symbolically as a space of cultural expression through a gesture of conquest, as one conquers a peak and not an inhabited territory that is nationally or culturally determined. The time of the biennale, “always”, results from the acknowledgment of the impossibility of regular event planning in such a untamed place. Its aim is to provide the temporal and spatial framework for the conception, design and potential realisation of artworks that bring the human psyche face to face with nature.
Curation: Stamatis Schizakis
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Christina Mitrentse, ISBN:97861880590 with Shiitake (Lentinus-edodes), Shiitake Fungus, 20 x 14 x 10 cm. Photo: Stamatis Schizakis.