Into Pan’s Cave: Classical Greece and Contemporary Art

Roundtable discussion moderated by Alastair Blanshard, with Brooke Holmes, Polina Kosmadaki and Asad Raza.

Where does contemporary art meet ancient Greece? In the history of art, classical antiquity has never been far away as origin and end, inspiration and anathema. But its uses and abuses vary widely at different times and places. What are the conditions of possibility for an encounter with antiquity in contemporary art today? In a global world criss-crossed by hybrid traditions, what is at stake in engaging with ‘the Greeks’? In this roundtable conversation moderated by Alastair Blanshard, Brooke Holmes, Polina Kosmadaki, and Asad Raza discuss the conjunction of the classical and the contemporary in current art practices. ‘Into Pan’s Cave’ explores, in particular, several sites of this conjunction. The discussants will focus on the zone of contact between art production and academic work as well as contemporary Athens as a place for making and exhibiting art, with an eye to Raza’s 2014 production of Tino Sehgal’s work in the Roman Agora in Athens and his 2015 piece on Pan at Frieze Projects, London, The deep past as a form of science fiction, next year’s documenta 14, ‘Learning from Athens’, and the upcoming project and exhibition, ‘Liquid Antiquity’, curated by Holmes at the Benaki Museum (Pireos St.) with the support of the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary art, scheduled to open in Spring 2017.