By Way of Introduction

The way to do things with others

Art.emis is a non-profit organization; its guiding principle is the way to do things with others.
Others may be physically present, people who live or work with one another, people with whom one shares a special intimacy and often pursues common goals. Alternatively, the presence of others may be purely symbolic, through their work, their actions, their exemplary lives. Others may or may not speak a common language or share a history, may or may not espouse common values and beliefs. At times, the way to do things with others presupposes a gender, race, nation, economic status or culture in common; at others, it is only by working round the differences and unique features of people or nations that doing things with others becomes possible. Certainly, there is no one way of doing things with others; yet we--at art.emis--believe that doing things with others is the only way to go.
Being one of many ways of doings things with others, art is embedded in life's conflicts and paradoxes; toying with the boundaries between the 'private' and the 'public,' art simultaneously reflects and reshapes individual and collective values and exposes--or, for that matter, confirms--conventional roles, paradigms and power structures. Art itself presents more than one way of doing things with others. Some forms of art--for example painting or creative writing--are considered inherently solitary enterprises, others--such as theatre, cinema or dance--are held to be essentially collective. Yet in the former, as much as in the latter, the presence of others is unavoidable, just as it is unavoidable even when one is thought to be playing a game entirely on one's own. All games--and certainly all games of art--presuppose a community of participants, certain codes of communication, and unavoidably public criteria of meaning which are contingent upon historical and cultural realities and practices. Neither identical nor entirely distinct, like members of extended families, the games of art perpetually explore modes of communication, dialogue, cooperation and participation. Through its diversely related modalities, art is constantly probing, rediscovering, or inventing common places: places, that is, where 'I' meets 'We'.
Art.emis supports the program of the POTNIA THIRON Contemporary Art Gallery.
Art.emis does things with others.
This is where we begin.