Chelsea School of Arts Practitioner in Residence 2017, Thessaloniki Biennial 2017, Situated Practice, Folkestone Biennial and  Urban Lab 2017,  Whitechapel Gallery, Jarman  Film Award weekend,  performance, 2017,  Double Fictions, Res. 2018, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 2018, The Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2018

NoNothing Collaborative Storytelling in the Dark consists of a group of people  who come together to create stories in a dark space. The stories range from imaginative and abstracted, to the factual and confessional. NoNothing is an experiential format that offers a sensory, informal and intimae shared space where (partial) darkness evokes the deeply tangential.

NoNothing sessions are recorded on a mobile phone and then become public; transcribed or used as a sound piece. The process of creating the stories is  like a music improvisation session; where anything can happen and reflects how people feel on that particular moment, how they respond to their immediate environment and the darkness, and how they interact as a group.

NoNothing spaces are made dark before the salon starts, using simple means, such as cloth or card. Yet, a complete darkness has not been achieved so far. Trying to block the light and partially failing, has became part of the process.

NoNothing Collaborative Storytelling in the Dark is an itinerant artwork that employs a situated echo system and a work ethic that hales little investment, in response to a culture that over-produces and wastes. The work asks for a minimum use of materials, and the active involvement of people for consensually predetermined time.

NoNothing started as a year residency at Chelsea College of Art. More recently sessions of NoNothing Collaborative Storytelling in the Dark have taken place in Thessaloniki in preparation for the upcoming biennial. The storytelling sessions have included a group of precarious visual artists in a communal live/work space, trans women in the safe bar TS, a family and their friends, some deeply involved in refugee centres, and the curators of the Thessaloniki State Museum of Contemporary art.

Coupland’s Generation X initially inspired the mode of storytelling. In this book generative fictitious storytelling, akin to an aural Surrealist game of Exquisite Corpse, creates political moments. Those moments, like check-ins weather reports, puncture a landscape of otherwise social and emotional impotency.

Participants in the Chelsea sessions:

Emily Durtnall, Rich Leppard, James Clark and Mark Lungley.

*This work was produced as part of Ashery’s Practitioner in Residence 2016-17

Participants in the Thessaloniki biennial 2017 sessions:

Homeopathy room:

Christina Georgiadis – Heltriegel

Roxani Heltriegel

Sven Weiss

Mahir Akdemir

Charlene H. Ioanidis

Omar Annweilati.

Artists:

Dimitris Fragakis

Anna Piatou

Dimitris Ameladiotis

Giorgos Gerontidis

Vicky Vakouli

Museum’s curators and staff:

Chrysa Zarkali

Thodoris Markoglou

Syrago Tsiara

Angeliki Charistou

Eirini Papakonstantinou

TS trans women bar:

ChristyAlexiou

Nicolle Seiteki

The work was produced in the context of the Residency Program of the 6th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art with the kind support of Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki.