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HERMES Summer School in Volos (2006)

 


                   
                    Graffiti

                   Municipal Institute for Vocational Training (DIEK) – Volos
                   Venue of Hermes Summer School

 

Volos Summer School,
MUSEUMS OF THE FUTURE AND FUTURE WORK IN MUSEUMS
PREPARING FOR THE ARGONAUTS MUSEUM IN VOLOS
25 August -1 September 2006

http://www.demekav.gr/news_summer_sch_eng.html#top

 

INTERREG III B CADSES HERMES Project:
Heritage and New Media for Sustainable Regional Development

Coordination:
Hatto Fischer, HERMES – Volos Project
and
Vasilis Sgouris, director of DEMEKAV, Municipal Enterprise of Volos

Organisation

Volos Municipal Enterprise for Urban Studies, Construction and Development (DEMEKAV)
Lachana 5
383 34 Volos
Tel. +30 24210 28251
FAX +30 24210 28255
Web-site: www.demekav.gr
Director: Vasilis Sgouris

Venue

Volos Municipal Institute for Vocational Training (DIEK)

Riga Ferreou 1 – Chironos
383 33 Volos
Tel. +30 24210 56446, 56389
Fax +30 24210 56389
Web-site: www.artcollege-volos.gr
For further information about the museums in Volos go to www.i-politismos.gr

Introduction
The HERMES summer school is comprised of two parts:

 

MUSEUMS OF THE FUTURE AND FUTURE WORK IN MUSEUMS – Part A

first, from August 25 – 27, an extended weekend took place with a round of experts to discuss what practical examples and advice can be given to the City of Volos when entering the complex field of a museum sector. As this is a matter of envisioning how the set-up is to proceed starting with the creating of a foundation to becoming a sustainable institution within a rapidly changing cultural landscape, several viewpoints need to be taken into account to do justice to both the purpose and results of this summer school. The advice given by the experts includes everything from conceptualization, use of new media to legal aspects. It pertains as well to cultural statistics on the basis of which policy by the Ministry of Culture can be formulated. Here to know policy differences while wishing to connect museums with the promotion of literacy has very much to do with the changing role of museums in the twenty first century. These and other aspects pertaining to local development and its political dimension have to be considered in order to know upon what society acts and sets as value premise. For this creates already the ethical base for any museum. To this can be added the specific three new museums which Volos wishes to create. They aim to preserve the history of industrialization as part of cultural heritage, while furthering the memories through a museum of the city and use at the same time the Myth of the Argonauts as key reference point for Volos wishing to create a new image to take it through the twenty first century. This voyage on a magical ship can take on many shapes and forms; of interest here is not only what experts but students and through them people of Volos have to say when asking themselves but by which myth they wish to live by if at all?

Peter Higgins from landdesignstudio set the tone in terms of evolving museums as to how presentation of content (unpacking the archive), building (architecture of space) and location (role of museum in the community) can go together with other efforts to make possible new museal experiences.

 

PREPARING FOR THE ARGONAUTS MUSEUM IN VOLOS – Part B

As to the second part, from August 26 – Sept. 1 a five day course on exhibition development under the guidance of Stacy Koumbis, curator at the American Hellenic museum in Chicago and Hatto Fischer, writer and philosopher from POIEIN KAI PRATTEIN in Athens worked with the students to develop their vision of a future Argonaut museum. At the end of the five day course they made a presentation of their proposals to members of the Municipal Council. The key question here is if an alternative to the usual lunar park or Walt Disney like setting can be found as a viable concept in order to proceed with planning of the Argonaut museum.

It should be added that the summer school took place when the finishing touches were put on the ARGO boat launched immediately thereafter. The magical voyage becomes with that a real possibility as the HERMES project has in the words of Vasilis Sgouris facilitated the organization of the next steps in need to be taken to advance in this development having not only a political but equally a cultural dimension.


                   
                    Stacy Koumbis and Vasilis Sgouris at opening

Saturday 26 August 2006

HERMES Volos Summer School

PART A: How to prepare for future work in museums - How to prepare museums for the future

DAY 1: Morning session
09.30 Registration of students
   
10.00 Opening of the HERMES Summer School Welcome address by the Mayor of Volos Mr Kyriakos Mitrouand the Vice-Mayor, President of DEMEKAV Mr Pavlos Markakis
   
10.30 Cultural heritage and development perspectives for the city of Volos: an introduction to the city and local projects
  Vasilis Sgouris, Director of DEMEKAV
11.00 3 D models for presentation of cities: the case of Bath, UKVasilis Bourdakis, University of Thessaly
   
11.30 Designing museums with new media and interactive applications: the experience from the work of Land Design Studio in UK, rest of Europe and Japan
  Peter Higgins, Land Design Studio, UK
12.30 Discussion
   
13.00 Coffee –break
13.30 Hollywood –Museums: art videos and film as newly accessible materials Norman Cohen, Film Academy in Athens
   
14.00 Museum audiences: elite or mass, Literacy and need for cultural studiesSocrates Kabouropoulos, Greek National Book Center
   
14.30 Discussion
   

Sunday 27 August 2006

DAY 2: Morning session
10.30 Reflections on the role of Museums in the city of the 21st century Hatto Fischer
11.00 Museum law: establishment, acquisition and ownership of artifacts
  Ira Kaliabetsou, Lawyer
11.30 Trifon Trifonof, National Museum Boyana Church
12.00 Coffee –break
12.30 Archive of oral history at the Hellenic Museum of ChicagoStacy Koumbis
13.00 The genesis of the museum in Swansea, Wales: a museum dedicated to the post 1850's birth, demise and rebirth of the world's first industrial nation. Peter Higgins
13.30 Discussion
 

Museum experts

 
 

Peter Higgins from landdesignstudio

Besides many other works, landdesignstudio has been involved in creating the National Football Museum in Preston to be seen on their website www.landdesignstudio.co.uk . It includes some great interactives.

The studio hat in 2005 an interesting year, since it received a bronze award for the UK pavilion at the Expo in Japan, which was gratifying as we had a budget which was about 10% of similar pavilions (www.my-earth.org.uk )

Also the studio has been appointed to provide the 'interpretive architecture' for the Mary Rose a ship built by Henry VIII that was recovered after being underwater for 437 years! It's a great story with great objects representing Tudor England .

Other projects include the 'Centre of the Cell' a visitor centre explaining cellular biology to young children, and the studio is just completing National Waterfront Museum Swansea which presents post industrial revolution in Wales.

At the first summer school he gave a generic company profile which is loaded with: Process/ Architecture/ Masterplanning / Interpretation/ Objects/ Graphics/ Time Based Media/ New media/ Electro Mechanical Interactivity / Collateral material

and the genesis of the museum in Swansea, a museum dedicated to the post 1850's birth and demise and rebirth of the world's first industrial nation: Wales.

Land Design Studio Ltd.
46 High Park Road
Kew
TW9 4BH
T +44(0)20 8332 6699
F +44(0)20 8332 6095
www.landdesignstudio.co.uk

Ira Kaliampetsos

She is a lawyer with special expertise pertaining to cultural goods, in particular the handling of legal matters pertaining to archaeological findings. At the moment she is creating a Newsletter called ‘legal issues’ and works for "Hellenic Society for Law and Archaeology" in order to deal with these special legal issues. She is also an expert in international project work and has been a part of the official EU delegation negotiating with Turkey points of entry into the EU.

MUSEUM LAW

  1. Legal Positions of Museums
    • Definition / State Museum – private museum
    • Establishment
    • Operation
      Using museums/ guiding (private Museums) / Ticketing / Research
  2. Acquisition of pieces of art
    • Criminal liability
    • International agreements on unlawfully-removed cultural objects
    • International sales and authenticity disputes
    • Repatriation and diplomacy
  3. Transfer of objects belonging to a collection
  4. Transfer of ownership
    Objects and monuments belonging to a collection
  5. Loan and borrowing museum pieces
  6. Tax and Financial issues (inheritance / donations)
  7. Insurance of objects of art (insurance, guarantee)

Her contribution was in the form of legal advice when it comes to local authorities wishing to set up a museum in Greece. Since three months there is a new presidential decree specifying the need to create an independent foundation as basic organisational form which local authorities must fulfil if they wish to open up a new museum at local level in Greece.

See www.law-archaeology.gr

Socrates Kabouropoulos

Working at the National Book Centre of Greece, he is an expert on cultural statistics, while engaged in the wide range of activities from promotion of the book to giving authors full support and doing translations e.g. of Paula Meehan into Greek. He has organised especially film screenings of novels turned into movies at book fairs and especially in Athens during the Winter months every Sunday by screening films that illustrate the connection between the novel and the film. He is himself a poet while at the same time a keen observer of cultural policy in all practical applications. He likes to respond to the needs of writers and audiences alike while interacting with publishers, book sellers when it comes to involving a wide range of institutions and book stores in order to create a base of literacy for the book.

EKEBI www.ekebi.gr

Vasilis Bourdakis from the University of Thessaly presented digital models used in urban planning and which might become useful in visualizing the future cultural landscape of Volos.

Norman Cohen

More and more artists are producing videos for museums. This trend means also a change in the film industry and what it produces. Still, film or video depends on having a good story as its basis and here the narrative as told by script writers and others has to be developed. In that sense museums can become productive environments for new ways of narrating via videos and other multi media presentations. They can give audiences another, better angle at knowing how this story is going to be told now, in future and what is the main concern if the use of this media is going to be an innovative process.

As Hollywood film producer who has created an Academy of Cinema in Athens, he is interested in shooting a film about the Argonauts.

www.Academyofcinema.com

Jan Brueggemeier (coordinator of Heritage Radio and expert on archiving, media related festivals) about use and organization of streaming media in exhibitions and within a social network context by museums; he included references to media studies dealing with life feed vs. archiving methods of the past, use of on site – on air – online use of hybrid media and flexible media format as well as what would be critical media art operation on low tech to high state of art. www.heritageradio.net

In his opinion media is about communication but more specifically about effective formats. Too much information is being lost, not responded to, overlooked, underestimated, overvalued, etc. There is also this competition between image and content or what Martin Jay calls the aesthetics of politics in communication world-wide. 1 In such global context one has to talk as well about social isolation experienced by individuals not finding their way in the real world but remaining locked inside the virtual one. This makes often their moves desperate to break out while museums may not be receptive to such need in case they overload their exhibits themselves with again images created by the enriched media. This may be called the communication dilemma in the digital age.


Jan Brueggemeier and Trifon Trifonof

Trifon Trifonof from National Museum Boyana Church in Sofia, Bulgaria about latest developments in the use of digital media to scan and to record conditions of cultural heritage.

Stacy Koumbis

Curator at the Hellenic Museum und Cultural Centre of Chicago, before that program developer at the Chicago Architecture Institute and this after a wide range of experiences in developing multi media exhibits especially with experts from MIT in Boston e.g. ‘fish tank’. Interestingly enough collaboration with Peter Higgins came about when they created a common project for the Millennium Dome in the UK 2000. Lately Stacy engaged herself as well in bringing together three schools, two Greek-America and one American, to paint together a Kids’ Guernica Mural (7,8 x 3,5 m) and brought it to the Kids’ Guernica action in Kastelli, Crete, April 2006.

555 West Cornelia Street, Apt 404
Chicago, Il 60657
home telephone 773 857 7622
cel telephone 312 342 7602

Hatto Fischer

Born 21.9.1945 near Starnberger Lake, Baveria, immigrated to Ottawa, Canada with his parents and sister in 1957 where he ended up studying economics and political science at Carleton University before continuing his studies at London School of Economics in philosophy and sociology (1969 – 70). After further studies of philosophy at the Philosophical Seminar in Heidelberg, he wrote his Ph.D. on “articulation problems of workers and the tradition of the German Trade Union” in Berlin. Since 1988 he lives in Athens, Greece. As writer and coordinator of European projects, including the Article 10 – ERDF project CIED (Cultural Innovation and Economic Development), he has been exploring the field of articulation in many facets. After being advisor for the Greens to the Committee of Culture, Media, Sports, Education and Youth of the European Parliament, he produced a study about the potentiality of the Internet Radio to further the European Debate. Currently he is coordinator of the Non Profit Urban Society POIEIN KAI PRATTEIN (“to create and to do”) in Athens and undertakes within the Interreg III B project HERMES for the city of Volos two major studies, one about successful cultural planning strategies and the other about the multi media use by museums. Also the idea about the Internet Radio was incorporated by the HERMES project and heritageradio was created for which he contributes numerous articles and works as editor. www.heritageradio.net

Maro Alexaki

Archaeologist - Museum educator
35, Acharnon str. 10439 Athens Greece
Home tel: +302108819288
Mobile: +306946288163

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