Thanks for coming for the Angelo Foundation Press Conference. We are here with the Board of Directors to present you our ideas and to talk about the foundation’s intellectual role in our life and to clear any misunderstandings.

The Angelo Foundation (as you may have read in the leaflet) is a new non-profit foundation that it will be activated and inspired by issues concerning the Internet and it's impact in our society.

The Angelo Foundation puts on it's priority list the promotion of revolutionary ideas that were initiated by special people. These ideas will be experiments that will be diffused in art, politics, fashion and other parts of our culture.

The concept and the idea of the Angelo Foundation began last spring and many decisions, thoughts and ideas were finalized when I was asked to participate in the exhibition of the National Museum of Contemporary Art “In Present Tense”. I mean finalized because they were sparse ideas and thoughts of many years, things that I was talking very often on my blog and which I decided to collect them under the "roof" of the foundation as they were the reasons of the creation of the Angelo Foundation.

I am interested in foundations as social structures, as organizations with hierarchies, as small units of expression and diffusion of ideas, as organizations with official structures that were founded to support an idea. I was always interested in official structures like, emblems and heraldic symbols, royal families, medieval symbols, parades, political parties, and interesting groups of people. This broad but very specific imagery, although is referred to obsolete things, it is a deciphered collection of stories, ideas and movements that have an importance for me although we live completely in a different era.

The English word foundation also means base. My base but also my initial element of my work is the Internet for 10 years now. At the same time the Internet is the starting point for many things that happened in my real life, emotionally, sexually and socially. Sometimes when people ask me what do I think about the Internet I can never see it as technology. I think the Internet is people working together, like a theatre stage that everybody can come with the main principle that everybody is equal and everything is offered equally without any useless mediators. Everybody is capable to change things and to agitate culture playing with his own rules. The do-it-yourself practices are easier than ever.

In the foundation's manifesto I say that is a social network but also a sculpture, a center that subcultures are created, trends but also a symbol of freedom of information. This is a depiction of this stage of an expression that is the Internet. This stage can take different shapes everything is very temporary and mainly chaotic. There it can be revealed obsessions or hidden desires, or to be heard another aspect of us equally "real" with the real. This stage can become the new receiver of these new emotions that are created through social relations on the Internet. How do we feel when we are "approached" by somebody that we never met and he/she asks to become friend or when our friend request is turned down by people we will never meet? Some other times we pretend of somebody else on blogs or networking sites and from these new identities new emotions are coming. On this stage, many of us satisfy are fantasies with no guilt and ordeal. The Internet allows us multiple appearances and finally we are not so "anonymous" as we think.

The latest trend on the Internet since last year (it seems like centuries) is Facebook. This is a social networking site in which you can create lists of your friends, at least the ones that have accounts there and then you can exchange messages, poke, seduce but also ignore friend requests, classify your friends in categories and probably reveal personal information. Everything happens while you sit alone with you computer and probably should have been working instead. The foundation is inspired by these phenomena and has been activated in Facebook, founding groups of people but also with the personal involvement of the board of directors creating new ways of exploiting the useless time that we see in many professions especially in the public sector.

From this new model of social networking we collect information and emotions that are created. With this evidence we want to define and present new trends, upcoming ideas and subcultures, interesting social groups but also to support the ones that had a negative experience. At the same time we ask the help from all who feel like us, to bring their own experiences and voices for this cause. I hope the foundation will become the "guardian angel" of the freedom of speech on the internet and especially criticism in various ways. We can all become friends with or without introductions and social hierarchies to exchange our ideas or disagreements. More information on how to become friends of the foundation see on the leaflet or on our website www.theangelofoundation.com

One of the examples that inspire us on our activities is the one of Roy Bates, a British citizen that has reached his "own" limits and he stopped defining himself with the old hierarchical way. Bates an ex veteran of the English army, wanted to have his own radio station but because the pirate radio stations were prosecuted by the British government he decided to start operating his own station on an abandoned platform of the 2nd World War offshore the southeast of England. The platform was distanced from the shore so the laws of the United Kingdom could not reach him so he decided to live there with his family in 1967. He declared the Principality of Sealand as an independent state, he declared himself Prince Roy, he crowned his wife Princess Joan and their son Prince Michael. He created flag, coins, stamps even passports. When the British police tried to close his radio station, he succeeded winning all the legal fights because he had studied the issue very well and happily lived ever after.

Since then the principality of Sealand has become an action arena of some guerilla organizations and lately it made news because it became the shelter and the base for some websites that act in a dangerous way regarding intellectual property, websites that went there after being chased by multinationals such as record companies and film studios that makes us pay expensive music and cinema to be legal. For example the famous Swedish file-sharing website PirateBay.org has already started it's procedure to move it's headquarters’ and it's server's on the principality, far from the well-known bureaucratic and profitable old-fashion terrorisms. The principality of Sealand is the first country that was founded on pirate ideals which is finally not so different from the way that the United States of America functioned on their founding, when they were copying every European patent, as a result the Dutch called them "janke", which means pirate. This is how the word Yankee came out. Sealand is probably one of the biggest and first examples of Internet anarchy. Many of our aesthetic interventions in which the foundation will be activated, will find inspiration from this example and we will try to re-enact and evolve this situation and condition.

To come back to PirateBay.org, piracy is something that the foundation will be involved in its upcoming activities. Dilemmas like" if our online property can be reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the world for free without our knowledge how do we handle this?” The answers might be probably found in the history of the new Internet anarchy that creates cults and subcultures that usually start from unknown rebels, another thing that the foundation aspires to present.

We declare openly that we support this experiment because we think that information and culture should be distributed and spread for free. Our “piracy” will take the form of promotion initially with educational seminars, think-tank, discussions, workshops and then we will provide everything for our public that we think is necessary to be distributed and diffused like news, files, materials through special sites. Additionally we will help morally and financially the new pirates of the 21st century i.e. the file sharing sites with charities and support campaigns.

Another thing that inspires us and we want to research is how today we apprehend different random and obscure visual phenomena specifically anthromorphic and how we can interpret these things in our own way. The reason is quite clear, like humans we have developed the sense to recognize faces from the moment we are born and some of us we have learned to read faces or imagine faces. Even the most simple smiley face or emoticon made from 2 dots and a parenthesis instantly it brings to our minds a face and not 2 punctuation points. The foundation will become a compilation center of these impressions and information, creating and re-enacting these impressions and phenomena with different mediums. The concept of face will be one of our main communicative tools.

From one person operation the “Angelo Foundation” involves at this moment 6 different persons that employ the board of directors. Each one of them has been activated in one sector that each knows better but due to increasing duties their occupation is variable.

I present each one briefly:

Leo Sky, press and communication advisor

Bombs and the Boys, computer scientist and trend-spotter

Vilma Page, psychotherapist and human resources advisor

Roland Percent, legal advisor and coordinator

Roy Avital, financial advisor and producer.

The post of the vice-president has Oliver Rollover, a person from the arts and show business, a source of energy and excitement. With his strong personality and sense of humor he has created the best work conditions.

Regarding our program and the immediate plans I start with the year 2008. This year we will dedicate our time mainly to promote the existence of the foundation. We want people to learn about us so they come to us to see and hear what they have to say and what we should do next. Our foundation wants to become the new shelter for all these people who think the same way with us for the creation of competitions, spectacles, happenings, ceremonies, erection of monuments, inspired always from subjects that our society misunderstands and misinterprets. The foundation researches, watches and forecasts what’s happening in our times and it is open for all even those who disagree with our positions and feel threatened from the revolutions that happen on the internet. We want to the foundation to become a collection of the best things of the past, the present and the future.

Our activities will be announced periodically. For the near future the foundation will expand it’s activities in April in Sweden. Sweden inspires us because its constitutional monarchy legalizes gradually piracy. This way it combines 2 elements that we like: the royal imagery and the Internet anarchy.

Before we proceed with your questions I would like to thank:

The National Museum of Contemporary Art and the 3 curators of the exhibition

The National Theatre

Rebecca Camhi gallery

Ilias Lefas, for the construction of the promotion pavilion

Carteco, for their kindest support

Bettina shop, designer Angelos Frentzos, Venia Polihronaki, Evi Thithizoglou, Meletis Koropoulis, Dimitris Papadatos, Vangelis Desipris, Grigoris Karavas, Anastasis Skalkos, Kevis Pachos

And lastly Matt Mason for his conceptual contribution.