Talk with Allyson Vieira & Terri Kapsalis

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The marble workers laboring on the decades‐long restoration of the Acropolis are inheritors of a millennia-old tradition. Their work is a highly technical amalgam of past and present, yet what these master marble carvers do and how they do it has been undocumented until now. As the restoration enters its final phases, On the Rock: The Acropolis Interviews reveals the marble workers’ techniques, training, and roles within the restoration in the their own frank, deeply personal voices, as interviewed by Graham grantee Allyson Vieira. The interviews address ancient building practices, the teaching of traditional craft, changes in the practice of architectural restoration, and social and class dynamics within the restoration site, while considering Greece’s economic crisis from the workers’ perspective. How has the Greek crisis affected the technicians’ thoughts about their craft, jobs, and citizenship? Vieira will explore the intersection of these issues in conversation with Terri Kapsalis, author of a recently completed novel set in Athens.

Artist Allyson Vieira lives and works in New York. She has exhibited extensively both internationally and in the US, including institutional projects at Kunsthalle Basel (Basel), Swiss Institute (NY), Storm King Art Center (NY), PinchukArtCentre (Kiev), Non-Objectif Sud (Tulette), Frieze Projects (NY), The Public Art Fund (NY), The Highline (NY), and SculptureCenter (NY), and recent solo gallery exhibitions at Daniel Faria (Toronto), Company (NY), Klaus von Nichtssagend (NY), Mendes Wood DM (Sao Paulo, BR), The Breeder (Athens), and Laurel Gitlen (NY). Her first major catalog, Allyson Vieira: The Plural Present, was published by Karma Books in 2016. She is currently assistant professor of foundations at the Corcoran School of Art at the George Washington University in Washington, DC.

Terri Kapsalis is a writer and performer. She is the author of Jane Addams' Travel Medicine Kit, The Hysterical Alphabet, and Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum. Her writings have appeared on Lit Hub and in various edited volumes and journals including Short Fiction, The Baffler, Denver Quarterly, New Formations, Public, and Parakeet. Along with John Corbett and Anthony Elms, she coedited Traveling the Spaceways: Sun Ra, the Astro Black, and Other Solar Myths and Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn, and Chicago’s Afro-futurist Underground and cocurated the touring Sun Ra exhibition Pathways to Unknown Worlds. As an improvising violinist, Kapsalis' discography includes work with Tony Conrad, David Grubbs, Mats Gustafsson, Junko, and Thurston Moore. She is a founding member of Theater Oobleck and has performed in over thirty productions since 1985. Since 1991, she is a collective member and health educator at the Chicago Women's Health Center and cofounded TGAP (Trans Greater Access Project) and the Integrative Health Program. She teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Soberscove Press seeks to make available art-related materials that fill a gap in the literature or are difficult to access. Our books tend to explore modes and functions of documentation and connect historical themes and issues to the present. Soberscove also works with artists on the production of books that resonate with our list.

For more information on the exhibition, Spirit of the Waves , click here.
 

Image: Work on the Parthenon continues as part of the decades‐long Acropolis restoration project. Photo: Allyson Vieira