Foivi Giannisi

Phoebe Giannisi was born in Athens in 1964. She studied architecture at the National Technical University of Athens (1988) and completed her doctoral dissertation in the field of "Langues, histoire et civilisations des Mondes Anciens" at the University Lyon II- Lumiere in 1994. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Thessaly, specializing in architectural design and cultural anthropology, and is a member of the urban action group "Urban Void." She was a founding member and co-editor of the magazine "Black Museum" in the 1980s and has published the poetry collections "Sea Urchins" (Athens, 1995), "Ramadan" (Athens, 1997), "Nooses" (Nefeli, 2005), and "Homerica" (Kedros, 2009). Her poems have also appeared in the magazines "Poetry," "Poetics," and the online magazines "e-poema.eu" and "poeticanet.gr." As part of the 1st Athens Biennale of Contemporary Art, she participated in the project Karaoke Poetry Bar (12-18/11/2007). In addition to poetry, she engages in essay writing on poetics (the relationship of poetry with construction, space, landscape, body, voice). Her book "Recits des voies: chant et cheminement en Grece archaique," Grenoble, 2006, focuses on the poetics of the road in archaic lyric poetry. Other essays of hers, published online, include: "The Voices of the Poem (a' + b'), inspired by the poem 'The Sibyl to the Child' by Marina Tsvetaeva" (www.e-poema.eu), and "Bodytopias in Poetry: An Old-Fashioned Theme?" (www.e-poema.eu). In recent years, she has been researching the subject of poetry recitation through in situ performance actions: Bar Dasein (recitation from the collection "Homerica" on Sunday 8-6-08), Territual Paou Workshop (Territual Paou, 29-8 to 7-9-008, Monastery of Saint Nicholas in Paou Argalasti, work: "Supplications I, II, III"), EU-ROMA, Action 02 (International Symposium titled "Building Together," work: "The Florist," 8-3-09), 2nd Athens Biennale 2009, Philopappou Group (Faliro Beach, 27-6-09, work: "Ea Ekeina"). Together with A. Tzonis, she is the author of the book: "Classical Greek Architecture: The Construction of the Modern," Flammarion, 2004 (also available in French and German translation). In the summer of 2010, she was a curator-commissioner, along with Zisis Kotionis, for the Greek participation in the 12th Venice Architecture Biennale, creating the work titled "Ark: Old Seeds for New Cultivations," which was exhibited between 30.3 - 22.5.2011 at the Benaki Museum (the project also involved Orestis Davias - phytogenetic material, Yiannis Isidorou - visual and sound installation, Kostas Manolidis - landscape topologies, Maria Papadimitriou - seed workshop, and Alexandros Psychoulis - guide for the aspiring urban life gardener-cultivator).