up from the black

'up from the black' video link

The video is based on movements and idea of Zeibekiko dance, traditional Greek protest dance improvised by one male, who is expressing their own or social struggles and reaching for hope. It was banned by authorities for couple of times and it’s still spontaneously performed by contemporary Greeks.

I moved Zeibekiko on the street of Athens. On poor, dirty, dark street. I wore jeans and black hoodie. I was a non gender no one. Dancing their sorrow out, trying to stop floating, hit the rock bottom with my feet and direct my sight towards hope.

From my notebook

Athens, day 1

Twixt Lab
anthropology
Combination of everyday life and visual art 

Art and revolution and link between them

Activism 

We try to involve media in our projects

Discursive attitude, themes come from our own interests 

Never ending process, long term research

What is the difference between artist and anthropologist?
Place for experimentation

Funding, private funding
Contemporary art has been valued for the first time in Athens after the crises

Athens School of Fine Arts, Circuits & Currents (project space)
Initiating

Educational program

Student run project space

Splitting the responsibilities   

Things are easier on paper than in practice 

Before the crises art scene was very commercial
Supervising, power of supervising

Funding is crucial.

Share the interest, share the power!

Money talks. 

Institutions are heavy machines to operate. 

Green Park
Social, political, anarchist squat

Heart of crisis

Occupation

Local audience

Difficulty of documenting

No press releases 

Documentation in a collective way.

Athens, day 2

Walking, chatting, smelling, observing, asking (too personal questions), complaining, analyzing, listening, trusting, exploring.

Athens, day 3

Kostis Stafylakis

New form of nationalism, current forms of nationalism

Variations of patriotism

Language of multitude

Crisis of capitalism, crisis of democracy, alienated by the crisis

National and orientalist perspective, appropriation

Imaginary communities and notions

False conscience of victim and victimizing

“Greece cannot be the epicentre of monovalent politics for neoliberalism.”

Athens, day 4

(Un)Finished / Maria Lalou and Skafte Aymo-Boot
Contemporary archeology

Concrete
Anti monument

Ghost city

Skeletons of the buildings

Structures

Archiving

Bureaucracy

Modern Athens

Burden of the antiquity

Connection to the modernism

Personal stories, family matters

Christos Chrissopoulos
The Antiquity does not exist, it is an artefact.

Counter narratives

Fair trade producing and publishing

Misreadings

Dangerous literature

Bringing stories from history, contemporary interpretation.

25th of February

Kostis Stafylakis is an art theorist and artist. He graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts. He holds an MA in Modern Art and Theory from the Department of Art History and Theory at the University of Essex and an MA in Continental Philosophy from the Department of Philosophy at the same University. He holds a Doctorate from the Department of Political Science and History, Panteion University (Athens). He has been a post-doc researcher at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2011-2012). He taught “Research-based art and the art field” as adjunct at the Unit of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Athens School of Fine Arts. He currently lectures on “Art and Visual Communication” at the Department of Architecture, University of Patras. He is the one half of KavecS artist duet (www.kavecs.com).

We met Kostis at 13:00 in a cafe to hear his perspective on the patriotism and nationalism withing the current greek art scene, heavily affected by both documenta 14 and the current political/economical situation in the country. 

He argued that many of the forms of art initiated both under documenta and against it, use tactics such as restistance (fx. resisting neoliberalism, capitalism ...), reclaiming (fx. territory for art practice) and solidarity (with the opressed), which share similarities with patriotic and nationalistic discourse. 

"Thinkers, artists, activists lamented over technocratic capitalism’s urge to destroy self-sufficiency, national community and locality. In this framework of mourning and ‘new-melancholy’, sovereignty was primarily understood as self-sovereignty. Even criticisers of the nation-state agreed that national self-sovereignty is a necessary step to a more internationalist terrain of emancipation: the struggle to ‘reclaim’ the local ‘resources’ was seen as the first priority in every possible agenda of struggles – the principal struggle, the one that fashions all others. A wide range of ideological spaces, from the greater part of the anarchist/antiauthoritarian space and the libertarian left to the new patriotic movements and anti-memorandum parliamentary parties, consented to this mantra."

from Kostis's post on the nationalisation of art and activisim:

http://littlegrapeguy.tumblr.com/post/146210789654/six-years-the-nationalisation-of-art-and

Athens diary

CHRISTOS CHRISSOPOULOS: INTERVIEW on 'THE PARTHENON BOMBER'

A novel at once metaphorical and iconoclastic, The Parthenon Bomber exposes the painful and maddening paradox of contemporary Greece.

“Blow up the Acropolis” was the 1944 call to action by the surrealist circle the Harbingers of Chaos. Sixty years later, a young man obliges. The Parthenon has been destroyed, the city orphaned. Is it still Athens?

All eyes are on the empty hill, now smoky and ashen. Cries of distress, indifference, and fanaticism fill the air. What were his reasons? How will he be punished for this unspeakable act of violence? What does it mean for Greece, now deprived of its greatest symbol?

This provocative tale reveals the unique dilemma of a country still searching for an identity beyond its past as the birthplace of Western civilization.

An English translation of 'The Parthenon Bomber' is due to be released by Other Press on the 20th June, 2017.

Christos Chrissopoulos (1968) has published 14 books and has engaged with different kinds of literature (fiction, essay, chronicle), with theory and photography. He has been awarded with an Athens Academy Award (2008) and the French awards Prix Laure Bataillon (2014) and Prix Ravachol (2013). He is a member of the European Cultural Parliament (ECP) and the European Society of Authors (SEUA), as well as an Iowa Writer’s Program fellow (IWP). In 2014, the French-German channel ARTE did a featurette on him. He has collaborated with many performers and artists in Greece and especially abroad. He has also given lectures and participated in many of festivals across Europe and the US. His books have been translated into twelve languages.

Chrissopoulos’ recent book “Wanderer Consciousness” (Okto Publications) is a collection of texts and images  approaching the questions of how human subjects associate with their deregulated contemporary reality, what kind of consciousness is the city wanderer developing, and how can the artist himself reflect upon his own perception.