Vana Kostayola is an interdisciplinary visual artist; after studying at the Athens School of Fine Arts, completing an MA in Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins, and an MA in Interactive Media at Goldsmiths University of London, the artist worked with theater and dance groups in Athens. She lives and works in Geneva. Her work explores the intersection between reality and fiction, documentary film and immersive theater, contact improvisation, medical discourse and institutions, feminist issues, and motherhood. Together with artist, curator, and art theorist Kostis Stafylakis, she founded the artist group KavecS in 2004, whose work has been shown at the Palais de Tokyo, Steirischer Herbst, Monodrome 3d at the Athens Biennale, and Media Impact at the Fourth Moscow Biennale, among others. The Compagnie KavecS was founded in Geneva in 2013 as a non-profit association and organizes open workshops, exchanges of practices, and discussions.

Body-At-Risk Game is a role-playing game developed by the artist based on the setting of her exhibition Democratic Exercises – Body at Risk at Kunstraum Memphis. In a mixture of performance and workshop, combat exercises open to the public were carried out in order to question cultural “prohibitions” and social “acceptability.” Within the framework of the game, uncomfortable “situations” are created with “victims and aggressors” who fight each other. The players are free to either immerse themselves completely in the situation or to act from a safe distance.

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www.kavecs.com