Crisis of genre

Aperitif thoughts

In the very center tags, texts, Hope for nothing, Error 404: Hope not found, Papers for everyone very first second, Welcome refugees united we stand, Police state = Fascist regime

Cats, dogs, ruins on the spotlight, empty spaces, quick changes in atmosphere, every day life, South with S

Mixture of people, structural elements, feelings, smells 

Night, groups of people, tense atmosphere or just a reflection based on the pre-reader?

Daytime, sunny, bohemian, creative, megaphones, functional fountains

Notions: twixt: shortened version of betwixt, which means in between, neither the one not the other; Disguised: looks something, is something different, utopia, politics and political, roundtable, outcome orientated, involvement, together, individualisation, educational tool, propaganda, commodity

Actions: experimenting stereotypes, making contemporary art meaningful and establishing it, thinking about the next step, not further, to raise questions, to manifest contradictories, to escape

Questions: Artistic research/scientific research – different moral codes? How does the legal form of the intervention affect the funding; interdisciplinary attitude, not just art/ science but art/non-art, does art exist without other fields? Why should people be interested in art? How to make them interested in art? Is it possible to create an art scene by mixing up art theory students with art students? What does responsibility refer to? Taking a lead? Supervising? Legal responsibility? Relation between space and what happens around it? What art can do? When idealism becomes an obligation? Do you have to be outsider to be objective? Can you kill history?

Structural elements or dimensions: vertical/horizontal, top down/bottom-up, private/public structures, “heart structure”, core, insider/outsider, structures in response to landscape, “if you are not out, you are locked in”

Would you like to join a political party?

Greek flag

Facade

The students told us that there was active political activity in the universities. The art academy was the most easygoing, most of the students squabbling about leftists approaches and interpreting Marx.

In others universities youth organisations of different political parties recruit students, sometimes even offering them easy passes in certain classes where the parrent party controls the professor. 

How do we practice for the political discourse in comparison?

It must be quite an empowering feeling to have a social group as strong as a youth organisation supporting you, especially when in the age of young adults. I guess it would require an extensive stability of personal affairs to be able to differentiate the political issues of society vs the issues of your own. 

Parthenon

There is peculiar zone when political dialogue is both an educational form and a manifestation of power at the same time. Is it forgiving enough for educational forms to have such a definite impact on you later life?

THE FIRST DAY IN ATHENS

TWIXTlab

Meeting with the collectives members Elpida Rikou, Giorgos Stamantas, Sofia Grigoriadiou, Fotini Gouseti, Dimitra Kondylatou

Twixt: shortened version of betwixt, which means in between or neither the one, nor the other. The social anthropologist Victor Turner used the phrase betwixt and between in order to characterize the intermediate out of three stages of the rite of passage as ultimate transitional, subversive and creative moment of societies’ lifetime.

The TWIXTlab collective, which can also be considered an activist initiative, is situated between contemporary art and anthropology and it. They started as a lose association and now are a legal entity in order to get funding and be sustainable although all members maintain jobs to fund the space as well as their projects. They organise seminars, workshop, walks and other project that combine art and anthropology for example the “Learning form Documenta” program that is the counter to Documenta 14’s theme “Learning from Athens”.

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

Meeting with the coordinator Nikos Arvanitis and recent graduates Lefteris Chrysalis & Kasiani Goulakou.

For 3 years the students have run the project space that worked as a tool for them to curate their own events program. The focus has been on building a collaborative educational program and not so much on making exhibitions. The funding for the program came for DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) initiating cooperation with the Munich School of Fine Arts. At the moment the challenge is the find funding because the existing grant ended in the Dec 2016.

Green Park

Meeting with the members Gigi Argyropoulou and Kostas Tzimoulis

The group started in 2011 with the occupation of a theatre space in Athens during which the group created a program lasting for 10 days and included interventions from more than 100 artists. Interventions were organized in the here and now, reflecting on moments of togetherness. The group is not just looking to occupy spaces but also looking to question the function of the existing space. The group creates a diverse program of performances and events in order to better utilize and thus occupy the space.

The group currently occupies a building which was the first nightclub in Athens and has gradually extended their occupation into the park. The Green Park can  also be seen as a space in the hart of the crisis.

Types of Greek Column

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.

PARIS LEGAKIS' MANIFESTO: CLAIM YOUR ANGER, ON POLITICS & POLITICAL ART

[CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO VIEW THE MANIFESTO]

Paris Legakis is a multidisciplinary artist, activist and theorist, born in 1981, Athens. 

In his work, Paris researches how art can be beneficial for the society and influential to politics.

Paris has written the manifesto ‘Claim your Anger, on politics and political art‘ and he has created his own methodology ‘Irregular Temporary Interactions‘ (I.T.I) to implement his performances-actions.