Overview

Uncovered is a project that was initiated following an idea from artist Vicky Pericleous for an artistic intervention at Nicosia International Airport—a now abandoned Modernist icon built in 1968. Since 2010, the project has developed a team consisting of Vicky Pericleous, Ozgul Ezgin, Argyro Toumazou, Basak Senova and Pavlina Paraskevaidou, and has carried out work related to collecting data about the once thriving airport and the control mechanisms enforced upon it by the UN. At the time of March Meeting 2011, the project was working towards the production of an exhibition, a series of posters and interviews with local people, a panel discussion and a book.

Presentation Proposal

The abandoned Nicosia Airport, lying inside the buffer zone, has become the site of a spatial order generated by UN control for the last 36 years since the area was declared a United Nations Protected Area in July 1974. The project takes the physical texture and theoretical input of the airport and converts it into a space of encounter for cultural producers from across the divided island during a critical time in the peace process. Attempting to move beyond the ubiquitous mnemonic to pain while attesting to the psychological and the matter-of-fact fragmentation experienced on either side and through the buffer zone, this encounter re-examines the shattered forms of politics exercised over space, the validity of control mechanisms and seeks to ask those questions that can ultimately reclaim a ‘commons.’