EN pdf - Nikos Papadimitriou

Transcription

issue 13 - May-June 2007
Contents
03 Editorial
07 Drafts
40 This is (not) a performance (or is it?)
Kostis Stafylakis and Vana Kostayola put up a language game of
corporate structure re-institutionalization, claims Elpida Karampa
12 A Hylo-Idealistic Romance
A spectre is haunting the contemporary Greek art scene, claims
Christopher Marinos reviewing the plethora of American art exhibitions
in Athens
48 The Damien Hirst Formula
About the ironic enticement and the antinomies of decentralization writes
Despoina Sevasti on the occasion of the exhibition Damien Hirst
24 The Burden of Self-consciousness
Real becomes elastic in Panos Kokkinias’ photographic work, claims
Alexandra Moschovi
54 The spirit of the game
For the installation by Nikos Papadimitriou at AD Gallery and his esprit de
competition writes Giota Konstandatou
34 Interview Jimmy Durham
Stella Sevastopoulou discusses with Jimmie Durham about his Cherokee
roots and the Western hierarchies
58 Book review
Dimitra Sakkatou presents the program of contemporary art teaching at
public schools organized by Locus Athens
N
Editorial
03
I believe that the Greek experience seems to be increasingly lacking
with respect to a major issue which has tormented the Western
subject and his art for two centuries: the establishment of a space
of public dialogue, constitutively empty from metaphysics, to which
narratives contribute, oppositions, conflicts, disagreements, disobedience and
consensus are declared and the political emancipation of identity and desire
as well as the management of memory become objects of negotiation. The
current juncture of the confiscation of Eva Stefani’s work and the impending
trial of the Art Athina organizers (see p. 7) should, I believe, be investigated
accordingly. Moreover, the fact that one of the most acclaimed and most
sensitive works by Stefani is the documentary she made on Epaminondas
Gonatas, a writer who is not easily accommodated within the Greek canon,
demonstrates both the systemic quality evident in the parallel modernist
narrative articulated in Greece, and the various transformations of the
resistance of the contemporary Greek culture against modernism and its
exponents.
It is in a similar manner that we should regard the article titled “Art 2007”
by Kostas Georgousopoulos in Ta Nea newspaper on Tuesday June 12, commenting on Sophie Calle’s work, displayed at the Italian pavilion in this year’s
Venice Biennale by curator Robert Storr. One of the key elements of Sophie
Calle’s work is the way she manages and uses her experience as material in
her narrative and photographic compositions. In this way she creates a comforting narrative for herself, as she highlights the commonality of pain, and
a complex narrative sketch, in which fiction and biography, text and image
Editorial
04
constantly question the accuracy of figuration and the validity of documentation. The work by
Calle comprised a video of her mother on her deathbed, a phrase engraved on marble and the
word “soign”, printed in various versions. On the other hand, Georgousopoulos, never having seen
the work, as evident in his article, comments on the supposed exploitation of a dead person who is
unable to react, making a generalization about art, namely that “Art used to mean craftsmanship,
fit, skill. It was more than mere gadgetry. It was more than a best-forgotten naturalistic demand of
an art as a ‘slice of life’. The difference is that here it has become ‘a dose of death’.”
I will not comment on the said naturalism and on what art used to mean. What is interesting
here is that Georgousopoulos, one of the leading intellectuals today, an authority on theatre, an
acclaimed drama translator, a poet and teacher, one of the key exponents of the contemporary
Greek culture, can be entitled, indeed with great ease, to criticize a work without ever having seen
it, to disregard its formal characteristics and harmony, to theorize about art in the absence of the
work; to replace the work by its description, as if Madame Bovary is a woman who cheats on her
husband and Guernica a painting in which cows have their eyes on the back of their heads.
It is obvious that Georgousopoulos functioned as a simple newspaper scrivener, and his oversimplifications would not amount to much, unless this same confusion, replacing a work by its description, had not prevailed throughout the debate concerning Stefani’s work this past fortnight.
Those who opposed the work debated whether the display of a masturbating vagina under the
sound of the Greek national anthem is obscene or not; those defending the work argued that “no,
it is not obscene, for art is free and it ought to be free,” forgetting to mention that if art is free it is
by being art, by possessing certain irreplaceable qualities, its own terms of articulation, reception
and negotiation. For after all art is supported by a fundamental tautology, a key achievement of
modernism: Art is art because it is liberated from all other descriptive valuation systems, it manages all other descriptive, valuation systems by its own tools and it interacts with other valuation
α. the athens contemporary art review
ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007
Editorial
05
systems precisely at this vacant space of public discourse, which it thus fills. If we were to put it in
the words of French philosopher Jacques Rancière, “Art participates in the political sharing of the
perceived precisely because it is an autonomous form of experience. The aesthetic condition of art
establishes the relation among the forms of recognizing art and the forms of political community
in a way which rejects from the very beginning every opposition between an autonomous art and
a heteronomous art, an art for art’s sake and an art in the service of politics, a museum art and a
street art.” (Malaise dans l’esthétique, p. 48)
To put it simply, those arguing that the act of confiscating the work was not censorship are correct. Censorship requires a mechanism of totalitarian control and surveillance in accordance with
a programmatic, dictatorial perception of the explicit and the illicit, of what belongs to the public
sphere and what not. Here, there was nothing of the kind. Stefani is a university professor and
therefore by definition an integral part of the public domain. Two days later, she was invited to give
a lecture on cinema during the Karamanlis era at the Konstantinos Karamanlis Foundation. Does
this seemingly contradictory function of two entities, on the one hand the police and on the other
an official organization of the governing party, not constitute a contemporary variation of the famous question by Konstantinos Karamanlis, “But who rules in this country after all?” In my opinion,
it involves something more complex, more subtle than the mere fact that uncontrolled mechanisms control public life. And for this reason it is something which we must fully comprehend and
urgently take a stance.
This is a political conflict regarding the existence or not, the operation or its negation, the reinforcement or the diminishing of this vacant public space of dialogue, of the fundamental demand,
the key achievement of modernism. For, what was mainly called in question was not the possibility
to display vaginas accompanied by the sounds of the national anthem. This debate takes place everywhere and will continue to do so, as its topic fits perfectly those debated in the public domain.
Editorial
06
On the contrary, what was called in question here was the possibility for art to be an autonomous
form of experience with its own valuation tools, its own terms of crystallizing and interpreting the
political experience, its own terms of sharing the perceptible.
In other words, I claim that what happened is by no means an act of censorship or an act orchestrated mainly by extremist right-wing activists and intended to appeal to the conservative
elements of society. In a certain respect this is what happened. What allowed it to happen, though,
what makes TV channel viewership go up every time anything similar happens, whether this is
Thierry De Cordier’s work or a song with satanic lyrics, Stefani’s work today, or a university professor teaching, say, “Representations of homosexual desire in Byzantine literature” tomorrow, what
entitles Georgousopoulos to write about Sophie Calle’s work without taking into consideration the
autonomy of aesthetic experience, what makes the flag a print on sandals and Public Television to
have a 98% viewership on the Eurovision finals, the Archibishop Christodoulos to welcome the Euro
Cup winners, right-wing extremists to beat up Albanian football fans, the Metro stations to look like
fascist pavilions at the 1937 Paris World Fair, what makes all this possible comes down to facets of
the same political position which transcends our familiar political formations and in fact claims the
public space in its own way. It claims its own sharing of the perceptible.
And the reason why the vehicles of aesthetic practice, artists and their works, give up, remaining
silent, at a loss and in anger, alone, without a public with which to discuss things, or, on the contrary, are obliged to surrender to the commonplace, is because they do not realize that what they
produce ought to claim, not another ideology, but another political stance before the creative act
itself.
• The preparation of the exhibition Destroy Athens largely contributed in the delay of this issue publication. For the same reasons
the next issue will be published in September.
Drafts
Exhibition without title against
censorship
Drafts
07
The following text was signed online by
more than 2000 people after the seizure
of Eva Stefani’s video from the Art Athina
fair by the police. The work was based on
archival material on pornographic films
of the 70’s, while the National Anthem of
Greece was used as sound material. Between 4-7 June, an exhibition was organized with more than 120 artists.
of cinematic pornography as a form
of tortured, internal release for repressed instincts. The use of archival
material, the filming of oppositional
elements, dialogue, the representation itself of these two seemingly
different narratives give the work the
power to speak about politics and
personal history in a joint manner.
To condense meaning and forms is
both art’s privilege and its contribution to the shaping of public discourse.
We consider both the seizure
of the work and the media furore
stirred up in its aftermath by representatives of LAOS and others
to constitute a direct attempt to
impose control on public discourse
as a whole. We also consider it an attempt to appropriate these symbols
-while purporting to protect themwith a view to transforming them
into caricatures designed to pander
The work removed by the police
from public display in such an unacceptably brutal manner during the
“I syghroni elliniki skini” exhibition,
part of Art Athina 2007 brings together two separate narratives. On
the one hand the exploitation of
national symbols by the authoritarian politics which characterized the
Greek state during the 1960s and
1970s and on the other the spread
to television audiences. Finally, we
consider it an attempt to replace all
other forms of political and artistic
expression with a series of stereotypes which reject the essence of
political and artistic expression.
This is why we, the artists which
took part in the exhibition and all
those who appended their name to
this text, declare it is art’s inalienable
right and essential obligation to address issues which do not require
the consent of every institution in
public discourse; issues which, still
more importantly, do not require the
consent of those who believe they
are daily stating self-evident values,
when they are actually stating policies aimed to suppress any aspect
of public discourse beneath a profoundly conservative and autarchic
rhetoric.
Furthermore, the cosignatories to
this document declare they have coISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007
Drafts
The Feasible Target and…
The first issue of Babel appeared in
kiosks in February 1981. In those
days, Vina Asiki had not yet become
the main star of the VHS nor had Akis
Tsochatzopoulos yet been a minister,
and the term “visual” directly invoked sofa and home stores, at least
in speaking. As to comics, these were
generically mispronounced “mickey
mouse” in Greek, and, with the exception of a few ill-fated, or at least
not long-lived, efforts, such as Koloumbra and Mamouth, their intended
public was strictly limited to those
not hard of hearing just yet. For the
rest, there was always Taratata—the
rumble from the Alkyonides islands
earthquake threatening to disrupt
the pace of reading.
Then came Babel. A futuristic cover
in colour by Caza with black and
white pages. With a clear political
stance but unclear aesthetic persuasion. The militant minimalism of Wollinski and Copi but also the sensuous
aestheticism of Crepax’ Valentina.
Reiser’s transgressing vulgarity but
in a light version—lest they go to jail.
As many as five ad listings—including “Hnari. Magazines. Records. 5
Kiafas Str. (near Akadimias Str.)—but
featuring an essay on the language
of comics. Strangely enough, the
publishers did not go totally bankrupt, and another issue came out,
and then another one after that. The
magazine began to have a few pages
in colour and a few native contributors, who naturally didn’t dare ask for
pay. Cruising towards the glam heart
of the Greek ‘80s, adulthood slowly
came along. Babel kept up with the
different aesthetic trends and let
them sort out their differences in its
pages. Bilal’s dull colours and filmic
decoupage met the sweaty black
and white stories by Muñoz. Pazienza’s nihilism and narrative anarchy
met Loustal’s formalist technicolor.
Manara’s mainstream wet dreams
Bernet’s neo-noir gunshots. There
was Vullemin, too—a worthy successor to Reiser—at his earliest and
worst moments. The decades went
by, and trends changed by leaps and
bounds. The complete evolution of
an art was covered page by page.
08
signed it as co-creators of the censored work, and they are therefore
jointly responsible under the law for
any further prosecutions or penalties
it should incur.
Finally, this exhibition remains
untitled. It might thus constitute an
act of intransigence in the face of
this attempted co-opting of the art
world rather than an exhibition of
ephemeral content.
From the clear line of the Belgians
to Max Anderson’s punk contrasts.
From Edika’s fun postmodernism to
Mattioli’s splatter pop-art.
In the meanwhile, the worry was always there: will Babel be able to pay
the VAT? Will it be saved from confiscation? Is another issue coming out
and when? The magazine endured.
learning from its mistakes. It even organized a festival. It invited artists to
meet the audience in person which
were in fact human just like us.
As the issues piled up, causing
backaches when moving house, it
suddenly dawned on us that this diverse comics magazine had become
one of the few constant references in
Greek art. Babel is not a major magazine, nor does it create trends, seeding new artists, harvest mediocre
ones; thank god, it does not fly high
above Greek reality for we are up to
here with such high-flyers. Yet, Babel
Drafts
Giorgos Panagiotakis
...the Archetypal Dream
The history of Babel began for me
sometime in early adolescence
(around 11) on board ship to
Mytilene on holiday with my mother.
To make the long journey less tedious for me, my mother bought me a
copy of Babel. I must admit that the
first thing that struck me in that issue
was the impious, sickening violence.
I got the feeling that the stories had
no moral boundaries and there was
no way to come out unharmed after
going through them; yet go through
you did, first casting furtive looks
until you found yourself totally immersed in the stories. It was a pure
and extremely lifelike violence,
without the romantic idealization
of self-destruction; it smelt like the
dirty feet of your brother, a soldier
then, similar to the sense of shame
in the “archetypal” dream of going to
school without any clothes on. This
was my impression of the stories by
Pazienza, Breccia, Vuillemin, Muñoz
and then Kaz, Lavric, Martin…
A few years later, I began collecting the magazine. At first, I simply
bought every new issue at the kiosk;
later this was not enough anymore,
and I began to hunt down previous issues at the Monastiraki flea
market. It was around then that I
visited the Babel Festival for the first
time— possibly the third time it was
happening.
It was also around that time
that the idea behind this feeling of
violence, which had shocked me so
much in my first encounter with the
stories in Babel, began to clear up inside me. It was the sincere portrayal
of a generation that emerged out of
frustration (frustration?) of the claim
for a possible utopia. A post-political,
nihilistic and often self-destructive
generation. Yet, one that was also
disarmingly honest and free from
pretentiousness. It was through that
sincerity that Babel, both the magazine and the festival, has managed to
keep alive even up to now the possibility of utopia through the inverted
perspective of the violent reality it
invokes.
The best confirmation is the festival, which has become almost the
equivalent of a great annual holiday
for its public. This year, the festival
theme is urban legends. Among the
09
is always one click up from the best
Greek magazine, pulling the average
up by the hair so as to get it up from
the sand, where it is placidly basking
in the sun. It represents the feasible
target.
Yuri Leiderman
features are the acclaimed comic artist Phillipe Druillet , a retrospective
exhibition by Hungarian illustrator
Ferenc Pinter, Danijel Zezelj, Raul,
Paolo Cossi , an exhibition of Turkish
illustrators and the Greek artists Sotos Anagnos/Kostakis Anan, Manos
Antaras, Dimitris Vitalis, Kostas
Drafts
SEARCHING FOR THE TREASURE
MAP AND POINTEDLY IGNORING
THE TREASURE
“Place to be integrated”. Katechaki 56
10
Vitalis, Giorgos Goussis, Spyros Derveniotis, Giorgos Dimitriou/Dimitris
Vanellis, Christos Dimitriou, Michalis
Dialynas, Andreas Zafiratos, Petros
Zervos, Lazaros Zikos, Lila and Maro
Kalogeri, Dimitris Kambouridis/Fanis
Papachristopoulos Bekatoros, Con,
Ilias Kyriazis, Kostas Kyriakakis, Kostas Maniatopoulos, Vangelis Matziris/
Dimitris Savvaidis, Giorgos Botsos,
Elena Navrozidou, Alexia Othonaiou,
Gavriil Pagonis/Stavros Dilios, Panagiotis Pantazis, Tassos Papaioannou,
Dimitris Papastamos, Thanassis
Petrou, Fotis Pechlivanidis, Smart,
Soloup, Taxis, JAM (Giannis Bardakas
- Maria Georgana), Helm, Orynos.
Andreas Kasapis
Phillipe Druillet
I’m walking along a nameless deserted beach (which is why I don’t
say where). I’ve crossed a river bed
lined by huge plane trees. Now I’m
walking over pebbles. I take a handful and wet them in the sea. A riot of
vivid colours appears. The landscape
is imbued with meaning. I would
like to take here the people I care
about. But it’s all too likely the building contractors would follow in their
wake. So I face a dilemma: the Place
without the People, or the People
without the Place?
Let’s start the experiment in reverse:
the Athens Ring Road (Katechaki), a
river of cars zooming off in every direction at once. A building in Ellinoroson,
preferably displaying the following
features: abandoned for years, cheap
rent, splintered space, nice view. And
bordering on the area (in the favoured
phrase of the Athens Biennial) “out
there where there are monsters…”.
Of course, with the rider that “out
there” could well be smack bang in
the Centre, which is currently in the
process of moving.
Three hastily set-up tables entitled “City Plan” (I, II, III: March, May
and June 2007 respectively). And an
ulterior motive: to unite the three
into a perfect ‘First Supper’. Artists
and architects worked on the plan,
but others were involved to in an
effort to the bringe together and
exchange ideas. The creation of an
independent condenser for channelling energy. And the title, eschewing
the obvious “Ektos Schediou” [‘Unplanned’ or ‘Beyond the Plan’], could
have also served as another declaraISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007
tion of otherness in this deceptive
world and hints at a glorious fantasy:
the establishment of an Alternative
Planning Office! Which is something
the Local Government of Utopia
could undertake, if it existed…
On the fringes of these delicate
matters, we may well have found
common ground among artists/creators through the planning of common routes for the future through
the city. Working closely and in harmony with the Random and under
independent conditions (apart from
tenders over 1 million Euro).
And the monsters? Maybe they
are inside us simply choosing not to
show themselves in the mirror.
The question is how can we get
them working for us, transforming all
the negativity in the air into something more positive.
11
Drafts
Jimmy Eythymiou
A spectre is haunting the
contemporary Greek art
scene, claims Christopher
plethora of American art
exhibitions in Athens
© COURTESY: ΚΑLFAYAN GALLERY
A Hylo-Idealistic
Romance
Marinos reviewing the
George Stoll, Untitled (4th of July: Dropped American Flag #1), 2005.
From the exhibition Darling, Take Fountain
photo: Joshua While
LA Confidential, Out of America, The Flipside of the American Dream, The
Americans Have Landed, LA Void are only some of the titles of articles published in the daily press which critics saw fit to describe quite vividly and
tellingly the recently increased exhibition activity of American artists in Athens. Indeed, apart from the Hellenic-American Union, which hosts US artists
anyway (in this case the exhibition of American design entitled Made in USA
and the retrospective of the Guerilla Girls group of anonymous women, curated by A. Potamianos) there have been several Athenian galleries exhibiting contemporary artists from California and New York. More specifically, the
start was made by the Bernier/Eliades gallery with a mini retrospective of
Jeffrey Valance in April; then came The Breeder, Batagianni and Ileana Tounta
galleries with solo exhibitions featuring Mindy Shapero, the veteran Jimmie
Durham and the Dark Victory group exhibition (curated by D. Antonitsis) respectively. Next in line was E31 Gallery with the Chris Wilder solo exhibition
in May. One adds to this flurry of activity the Amy Adler solo exhibition at The
Apartment Gallery, Christopher Wool at Eleni Koroneou Gallery, the Californian Matt Connors again at The Breeder in June, the Darling, Take Fountain
group exhibition (curated by K. Kakanias at Kalfayan Galleries, as well as the
Peres Projects Athens temporary exhibition centre that the dynamic art dealer
Javier Peres is preparing to open in July in Athens following his Los Angeles
and Berlin exhibitions, one can then surmise that the ‘landing’ in question
is by no means a fluke1. In the case of such a mass presence – bordering on
hysteria – the first and most logical question that comes to mind is two-fold:
What is the reason for this sudden interest in American art and what concluα. the athens contemporary art review
© COURTESY: ILEANA TOYNTA CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER
A Hylo-Idealistic
Romance
Hanna Liden, Untitled, 2006. From the exhibition Dark Victory.
A Hylo-Idealistic
Romance
© COURTESY: ILEANA TOYNTA CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER
sions can we draw from the artists’ works?2 Looking at this ‘landing’ more carefully gives rise to a whirlwind of associations concerning the (interdependent)
relations of American and European art since WWII. These range from the
exile of European surrealist painters up to the legendary and literal landing of
Robert Rauschenberg at the 1964 Venice Biennale on board a American Navy
frigate, winning the Grand Prize –an event of major importance signalling
both the primacy of Pop Art as well as the supremacy of American art beyond
its borders.
Whatever the starting point of the exhibitions of Americans might be, we
have recently witnessed in Athens, and beyond the few strange coincidences
(as, say, the fact that the group exhibitions curated by Antonitsis and Kakanias
both allude to Bette Davis), there are also a few other things in common, such
as their criticism of American materialism and pragmatism, the glorification of
the irrational and the occult, the elevation of the mythological and the clear
references to literature of the Fantastic, the use of End-of-the-World lingo and
an attraction to pseudo-scientific narratives as well as the adoption of a pop
surrealistic idiom3. In my opinion, if one chose to summarise this activity, the
point at which one must stand is not the critical evaluation of this presence
per se – in any case, with the exception of the Guerilla Girls – the exhibitions
were, on the whole, quite interesting and of a high standard – but at the effect which such a mass landing has at this specific point in time on contemporary domestic Greek art as a whole. The point is, on the one hand, how the
specific style of the works is reflected in the “Americanized” – as they have
often been labelled – works of young Greek artists and on the other hand,
Scott Campbell, Untitled, 2007. From the exhibition Dark Victory.
© COURTESY: THE BREEDER, ATHENS
Mindy Shapero, Once asleep, all the layers become activated and the center charges the surfaces creating a visibility of all depths (part 1 & part 2), 2007
© COURTESY: Ε31 GALLERY
Chris Wilder, Installation view, 2007
A Hylo-Idealistic
Romance
ous and peevish ‘lyricism’ of the past. And so, in pursuit of a freshness and dissidence, apart from including contemporary trends of city art, such as street
art and graffiti, it is by no means an accident that the curators both of Anathena (M. Fokidis and M. Yotis) and of What is Left is the Future (N. Argyropoulou)
turned towards two emblematic (even while they were living) figures of Greek
surrealism: Panos Koutroubousis and Nanos Valaoritis, respectively5. Though
these exhibitions created a stir, the pop, light style, in tandem with the fetishism of youth and the ‘imported’ air of the works, was bound to get in the line
of fire of the Greek art critics – especially of the older and more conservative
ones – for whom any trace of American influence is taboo6. However, viewed
as a whole, their main drawback was nothing but their inability to draw a
clearer dividing line and the incorporation of the works in a narcissistic narrative (which was probably inevitable if one takes into account the ‘hard rock’
idiom employed by the curators and artists alike)7. In addition, I am afraid the
object of their overall ideology (the superiority of experience over the possession of goods, as expressed by the American futurist Jeremy Rifkin, in whose
theories curator Argyropoulou has delved) may boomerang on the works
themselves since the concepts of possession and ownership are considered
outmoded and anything new almost immediately becomes obsolete. Perhaps
the Greek artists who participated in these exhibitions are equally ambitious,
determined and radical in their visual art as their American counterparts, but
I doubt whether they are offered the necessary safety nets which would guarantee the viability of their works in the future.
In a nutshell, though I could not tell if the future of Greek art will be a high-
17
precisely how this style is channelled through the DESTE Foundation exhibitions, which for many years has been called by many the bastion of American
aesthetics and the basic platform for defining, in the best case (and mimicking in the worst), models for Greek artists and consequently for collectors and
galleries.
In a recent article in the magazine Texte Zur Kunst, the critic Diedrich Diederichsen, after giving an initial genealogy of American surrealism (made up
by artists, as he says, who struck out independently from the course imposed
by Greenberg’s modernism, keeping alive the achievements of French-Spanish-Belgian Surrealism), points out the recourse to “American” surrealism, such
as the one recently displayed in a series of large-scale exhibitions in museums and biennales (such as the ones at the Whitney and in Berlin) as well as
pop music groups like Antony and CocoRosie4. On second thought, the Panic
Room group exhibition, curated by Kathy Grayson and Jeffrey Deitch at the
DESTE Foundation in 2006, could well be included in Diederichsen’s list. It is
obvious that the strong presence of the Americans in Athens is another piece
of the puzzle laid out by this exhibition. Panic Room presented designs of East
and West coast American artists and European artists, among which some
Greeks were also included, and laid the foundations for a series of group exhibitions that attempted to chart the waters of contemporary Greek art. The
distinctive feature of these exhibitions (What is Left is the Future, Anathena,
Part-time Punks, I syghroni ellniki skini) was a fun, subversive attitude which attempted to highlight a more cutting and cynical aspect of Greek art, proposing a sense of humour, sarcasm and a DIY attitude to the melancholic, pompα. the athens contemporary art review
© COURTESY: ILEANA TOUNTA CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER
A Hylo-Idealistic
Romance
Nate Loman, Installation view, 2007. From the exhibition Dark Victory.
A Hylo-Idealistic
Romance
1
© COURTESY: KALFAYAN GALLERY
19
risk venture (let us not forget that the repressed returns from the future, as
Lacan said), I feel that a spectre is constantly haunting us. And this ghost has
less to do with the Greek Left and more with Canterville and haunted houses.
What I want to say is that there are many points where the critiques made –
both through the American artists’ work and in the reviews of Greek critics of
young Greek artists’ works – bring to mind Oscar Wilde’s short story The Canterville Ghost. In this ‘hylo-idealistic romance’, as the sub-title reads, Wilde employs his distinctive brand of understated humour to ridicule the unbearable
materialism and practicality of the American owners of the haunted stately
home Canterville Chase. The dismissive manner in which the American Minister and his family treat the ghost’s attempts to scare them leads the spectre to
the brink of a nervous breakdown. But the juxtaposition of American and European culture is perhaps best exemplified in the famed blood-stain that has
marred the floor of the library for centuries: the Americans scour it with Pinkerton’s Champion Stain Remover and Paragon Detergent while the distressed
ghost tries to keep it there at all costs, not by employing its magic powers, but
by drawing it back with the Minister’s daughter’s coloured pencils. The absurdity of the scene reveals both sides of the coin and the eternal dual meaning of the issue. Ultimately, it is perhaps, yet again, a matter of how many of
us, artists, curators and critics, feel they are Europeans.
David Hockney, Mulholland Drive, June 1986. From the exhibition Darling, Take Fountain.
To this activity we could also add the recent publication of Andy Warhol’s autobiography
Αmy Adler, Τhe Lesson #1, 2007
© COURTESY: ΤΗΕ ΑPPARTMENT, ATHENS
20
A Hylo-Idealistic
Romance
in Greek (The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to Z and Back Again, Tsakarousianos Publications) and – why not? – David Lynch’s new film The Inland Empire, which premiered in Athenian
theatres a month ago.
2
It’s a well-known fact that major Greek art collectors have a particular weakness for the
work of American artists. In terms of Californian artists I remind the reader of the exhibition CA:
Artists from California in Greek Collections (curator: Max Henry), which was part of the Art Athina
2005 exhibition. In addition, solo exhibitions of American artists in Athens (Tony Oursler, Jim
Shaw, John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Jason Meadows, Cameron Jamie etc.) have been a common
occurrence over the last decade.
3
Jeffrey Vallance “presents a world in which science, religion, politics, celebrity, art and use-
less conjecture become tangled in the impasse of mass culture.” The psychedelic and spiritualistic elements in Mindy Shapero’s sculptures “parody the ideology of Enlightenment” and make
reference to “supernatural forces, mystical rituals and Gothic terror.” Chris Wilder’s installation,
which brings together painting, collage, stickers and sculpture, “mines yet again the rich vein
of the absurd.” The works of the artists participating in the Dark Victory group exhibition are
“steeped in the contradictions of American day-to-day living, where nothing is clear and everything is cast into doubt.” The artists “rebel against the decay of society, the corruption of politics
© COURTESY: E31 GALLERY
and the alienation of religion with a post-Warholian irony.” On the other hand, a different, more
formalistic approach seems to be the line followed by Jimmie Durham and Matt Connors. It
may be indicative that the latter two live and work in Europe.
4
Diedrich Diederichsen, “American Surrealism as Asylum: Critique and glorification in Goth
and other shadowy movements”, Texte Zur Kunst, March, 2007.
5
Both Koutroubousis and Valaoritis confronted Hellenocentric ideology. The former delved
deep into the science fiction genre and the latter into the gothic novel. Both collaborated with
Chris Wilder, Installation view, 2007
22
© COURTESY: THE BREEDER, ATHENS
Mindy Shapero, Heavy Lightgh, 2007, Installation view
A Hylo-Idealistic
Romance
the Pali historical journal in the 1960s, but they subsequently clashed and each followed his
own course and ambitions.
6
The criticism of those who were more “in the know” focused on more sensitive and current
the works.
7
23
issues such as the controversial hint made by the curators as to the underground aesthetics of
Also, the curators did not examine how this new pop trend is related to the work of Greek
artists of the past. See Yorgos Tzirtzilakis, “Our Own Pop”, Ta Nea newspaper, 7 April 2001. For
example, the fact that Yannis Varelas, a confirmed fan of Koutroubousis – see the exhibition
catalogue of the Karikomoontes exhibition, Gallery3, 2003 – was not included in Anathena indicates the curators’ muddled attitude in these exhibitions.
Real becomes elastic
in Panos Kokkinias’
Alexandra Moschovi
© COURTESY: XIPPAS GALLERY
The Burden of
Self-consciousness
photographic work, claims
Panos Kokkinias, Theoni, 2006
The Burden of
Self-consciousness
The familiar becoming unfamiliar
25
What is it that makes a dead cockroach so appealing? I wonder, a hopeless
entomophobic myself, gazing at Panos Kokkinias’ monumental, handsomely
framed still-life of an unfortunate but ever so photogenic dictyopterous.
Could it be the misplaced adrenaline thrill that is tied in with all phobias and
traumatic memories and which the recent preoccupation of contemporary
artists with the repulsive and the abject often draws upon?1 Could it be the
uncanniness of the trivial, or rather the defamiliarisation of the familiar for
some, which photographed and presented larger than life reveals another
kind of Benjaminian “optical unconscious”?2 Or is it the sense that this cannot
simply be taken at face value, that there is some kind of metonymy, which
one has to unravel?
If one were to resort to semiotics, then on the level of denotation the signifier is both the index and the icon of a dead cockroach; that is, as straightforward and tautological a message as in any photograph. Yet, the signified is, I
find, intriguingly multilayered. Given that cafard (masculine), the French word
for cockroach, stands for melancholy and nostalgia (spleen or les idées noires
more fittingly) and cafarde (feminine) means “telltale”, the image can become
a symbol of psychological conundrums, and, on another level of signification,
a firm statement about photography’s own ontology. Some (and I refer here
to both good old-fashioned photo-phobic Philistines and hard-core photography devotees) may claim that the above reading is far-fetched and perhaps
unnecessarily cryptic, especially as the photographic message is more often
than not thought to be immediate and conceptually accessible (a “language
without a code” for many, and not just Barthes’ enthusiasts). Others may be
tempted to suggest, eavesdropping on current debates around the spectacularisation of mainstream art, that it is just scale that blesses such a banal topic
with the aura of the artwork. It is true that size does matter, in all sorts of ways
and practices one could playfully argue, but most of us have realised at some
point in life that size cannot be a panacea. Kokkinias’ work has consistently
proved that the large format and the emphasis on the kind of saturating lifelike detail that has been eloquently described as “data sublime”3 is a means
and not an end in itself, and thus it is the end, that is, the poetics of the subject matter, that justifies the means in this case.
Kokkinias has long been after the modernist-in-orientation obsession
with the medium’s “unique phenomena”,4 the fascination with the act of taking rather than making photographs and its respective metaphysics. In his
mise-en-scènes, the triviality of the event photographed and the (seeming)
instantaneity of the picture-making skilfully turn the image into an ordinary
snap, the kind of photograph one would take (nowadays probably using their
mobile phone) to show their friends how exceptionally big insects were in
that wretched cottage they rented out for their Mediterranean Easter break.
There is no evidence that this is not just a snap of an objet trouvé but a “hardwon” image as one cannot possibly be aware of the fact that the artist kept
the arthropod’s cadaver in a carton cigarette case for an entire year before
planting it in that dusty corner and meticulously turning it into an artfully artless still-life. It is this very delicate balance between reality and artifice, event
22
Panos Kokkinias, Goalkeeper, 2007
The Burden of
Self-consciousness
to attack the ideological premises of realism.7 In this spirit, the constructed
imagery that developed out of the 1970s conceptualist tradition and the
poststructuralist theory saw photography as “para- rather than meta-language” and attempted to deconstruct by reconstruction and allegory the empiricist attachment to the “translucent” signifier.8
This assumption has been at the heart of Kokkinias’ photographic practice. Having briefly indulged in his early career into the fleetingness of street
photography and the enticing force of serendipity, he has been, for the past
decade or so, painstakingly engineering the instantaneity of the seemingly
unmediated document. As stated elsewhere, he immobilises “the ‘micro
gestures’ that are either unobserved or largely concealed (performed in privacy) and which are subtly illustrative of the intricacies of social life, and this
revelation of the unseen and the momentary as a prolonged instant provides
the drama in the picture”. 9 Yet, he uses these “slices of life” (what Jeff Wall has
termed “near documentary” as the re-enacting of everyday happenings that
moves against a “sliding scale of plausibility and veracity”),10 not just to tell
a tale but also, and perhaps most importantly as far as I am concerned, to
comment upon photography’s ontological integrity and self-consciousness.
Juxtaposing the politics of form with the politics of subject matter, Kokkinias
aims at moving the discussion beyond the retinal effect. As such, his images are not digital trompes l’oeil of the so called “photography of invention”
genre, in which the emphasis on staging, seriality, collage and manipulation
that was originally employed to disengage photography from its inherent
instantaneity11 has culminated in a return to the valorisation of craftsmanship
27
and non-event, chance and performance, index and digital forgery that make
up the idiosyncratic verisimilitude that is the gist of Kokkinias’ work. But does
the epiphasis of fabrication or the knowledge of the craftsmanship involved
in the only too recent return to the real (or perhaps more accurately to “the
realistic”) attribute a different kind of exhibition value to such pictures? As
Régis Durand wonders, “why bother to make unreal worlds rather than delve
into the infinite strangeness of the real? For the pleasure of invention and
performance?”5 I would tend to think that there is more to it than phantasmagoria.
The directorial mode
Working towards a definition of what he first termed “the directorial mode”,
A.D. Coleman would maintain in the mid 1970s that the sectarian clash between the advocates of purist photography and those keen on experimentation and fiction had been all along a philosophical rather than a stylistic issue;
one that was deeply rooted in the “presumption of [the] moral righteousness
accrued to purism” and which treated “the external world as a given, to be
altered only through photographic means en route to the final image” and
not as some kind of “raw material, to be itself manipulated as much as desired
prior to the exposure of the negative”. 6 This old idealist notion of analogy and
truth as photography’s inherent essence was to be conclusively challenged
within the context of Conceptual art. By re-enacting and fabricating pseudodocuments, photoconceptualists specifically targeted documentary, not so
much in order to comment upon its social function or use value but primarily
Panos Kokkinias, Urania, 2007
The Burden of
Self-consciousness
majority specifically selected “non-places” in the dual sense that Marc Augé
attributes to the term, that is, both non-relational, a-historical “spaces formed
in relation to certain ends (transport, transit, commerce and leisure)” and anthropological spaces formulated by the relations that the individuals develop
with these places.12 The physical epitome of “supermodernity”, non-places
disorientate the visitor/passenger/customer not just by the wealth of the
typecast visual stimuli on offer but mainly by the very experience of an a-temporal space in which the sense of self and individual identity are invalidated.
In Kokkinias’ silent pauses, the “passive joys of identity loss”13 take on a sinister
existential significance.
Like Beckett’s dramaturgy, Kokkinias allegorical narrative combines the
physical and the spiritual, the burlesque and the serious, the logical and the
irrational, the everyday and the strange, all framed within some kind of relentless stasis, as if it were a mode of being. The middle-aged goal-keeper waiting
in vain as it seems in an empty field and the scantily dressed, young woman
loitering in a dark corner of an underpass are emblematic of this stance. Despite appearing at first glance as generalised types that illustrate the human
condition, the protagonists retain their individuality; their facial features are
specifically discernible in the large size prints and which are named after
them. Thus the man with the bewildered look on his face and the “visitor”
label clumsily stuck on his jacket will always be Leonidas, as the Vermeerian
elderly figure holding baby will be Theoni.
Time, real and photographed, expanded or compressed, is again the crucial determinant here. It may be that Kokkinias is inspired by Beckett’s cycli-
29
and spectacle; neither are they devised to tick the boxes of contemporary art
debates and other agendas per se.
Far from being a kind of postmodern pastiche, Kokkinias’ references
stem from a pool of disparate, often contrasting iconographic and literal
sources, lived experiences, covert phantasies and unspoken fears that centre
upon diachronic universal values. From Surrealist imagery, post-war figurative painting and photo-conceptualism to film noir, popular narrative cinema,
and the tediousness of the everyday, the plurality and cross-fertilisation of
pictorial quotations that inform his images become pointedly prevalent in his
latest work entitled Visitors (2006-2007), which is currently on show at Xippas
Gallery in Athens.
Non lieux and the fluid time of narration
Revolving time and again around the recurrent motifs of the presence/absence, weightlessness, anguish, and absurdity of existence, the series seem to
take up the story that his self-portraits introduced some ten years ago. In that
series, a clin d’oeil to Bruce Nauman’s performative self-portraits, Kokkinias
staged himself in the claustrophobic scenery of urban living, which he treated
as the space for the eruption of the intimate, the irrational, and the imaginary.
There was an unnerving sense of scopophilia in those series, as one was lured
to peep through a dense frame of references at the protagonist lost in himself and his own little, ritualistic deeds. Similarly in the present series, we are
invited to gaze at individuals looking lost in alienated(ing) public spaces and
witness what it is to be in a state of unknowingness. The spaces are in their
30
Panos Kokkinias, Aliki, 2006-2007
The Burden of
Self-consciousness
1
Hal Foster, “Traumatic Realism” in The Return of the Real: The Avant-garde at the End of the
Century (Cambridge/Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 130-6.
2
Walter Benjamin, “Small History of Photography” (1931) in One Way Street and Other Writ-
ings, trans. Edmund Jephcott & Kingsley Shorter (London/New York: Verso, 1979), pp. 240-57.
3
The term belongs to Julian Stallabrass, “What’s in a Face? Blankness and Significance in
Contemporary Art Photography”, lecture, University of Newcastle, 02/05/2006.
31
cal narrative but he invests the latter’s a-historical sense of “universal present
time”14 with a touch of historical specificity as all the locations selected do
mark, even if subtly, specific moments and themes in modern Greek history
and contemporary society. Equally, the fluid, multilayered time of narration,
both within individual images and in the series as a whole, moves beyond the
confines of the different chronological times at play and the narrative linearity
of the event, occurring or reconstructed. Kokkinias uses the mutability of the
digital image to facilitate the passage from one reality to the other and show
that the real has become elastic in physical and conceptual terms.
4
John Szarkowski, The Photographer’s Eye (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966), un-
paginated.
5
Régis Durand text for the exhibition Vraisemblances, Xippas Gallery, Paris, 2007, http://
www.xippas.com/en/exhibitions/exhibitions/detail_103, 12/06/2007.
6
A. D. Coleman, “The Directorial Mode”, Artforum, September 1976, pp. 57, 55. Since its
inception, photography’s mechanical contrivance and scientificism was thought to divest photographs of any “humanity” whilst its indexicality and realism allegedly hindered any claims
to ideality and divine inspiration. Mid nineteenth century tableaux photography was the first
conscious attempt of photographers to claim a place in the realm of the high arts. This type of
genre photography re-invented not only photography’s narrativity by emulating the story-telling devises of history painting and the much-appraised Pre-Raphaelite luminous realism, but
also its craftsmanship, using the autographic mark of the creator’s hand as, once again, the
prime conveyor of sentiment, to shroud the imprint of the apparatus.
7
Jeff Wall, “‘Marks of Indifference’: Aspects of Photography in, or as, Conceptual Art” in Re-
considering the Object of Art: 1965-1975, ed. Ann Goldstein and Anne Rorimer (Los Angeles:
The Museum of Modern Art/MIT Press, 1995), p. 252.
8
John X. Berger and Olivier Richon, introduction to Other Than Itself: Writing Photography
(Manchester: Cornerhouse Publications and Camerawork, 1989), unpaginated.
32
Panos Kokkinias, Leonidas, 2006-2007
The Burden of
Self-consciousness
9
Alexandra Moschovi, “Photography, Photographies and the Photographic: Between Im-
ages, Media, Contexts” in The Athens Effect: Photographic Images in Contemporary Art, ed.
Theophilos Tramboulis, exhibition catalogue (Milan: Mudima, 2006), p. 18.
10
Cliff Lauson, “Photography as Model”, Oxford Art Journal, 30/01/2007, p. 173.
11
Joshua P. Smith, “The Photography of Invention” in The Photography of Invention: Ameri-
can Art, 1989), pp. 9-27.
12
33
can Pictures of the 1980s, exhibition catalogue (Washington D.C.: National Museum of Ameri-
Marc Augé, Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, trans. John
Hone (London: verso, 1995), pp. 77, 94, 101.
13
Ibid., p. 103.
14
Lawrence Graver, Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989), p. 21.
Panos Kokkinia’s exhibition is presented at Xippas gallery (53D Sofokleous str., tel.: 210 3319333,
www.xippas.com) from the 31st of May until the 20th of September 2007.
Stella Sevastopoulou
discusses with Jimmie
34
© COURTESY: BATAYIANNI GALLERY
Interview
Jimmy Durham
Durham about his
Jimmie Durham, Form and Content, Installation view, 2007
Cherokee roots and the
Western hierarchies
Interview
Jimmy Durham
I
(yet without denying completely another darker interpretation): “For four
years I had a studio in Berlin that was in the Gruenwald Forest and was built
by Adolph Hitler for his favorite artist the year I was born, 1940 (between
me and Hitler’s artist there was only one other tenant, the Fluxus artist Wolf
Vostell, who was able to purify the studio so that it was excellent for me to
use). This was a classic studio in the European sense and I had a great energy
there. I did much work in wood as well as my more usual stone works, simply
because there was abundant wood, but then I met Hermann Noack who has
the famous old casting foundry in Berlin and got interested in the process. I
still could not imagine to work in clay or plaster and as you might be able to
see, the original sculpture models for the bronzes were made of wood. I really
do not know how much I might continue with bronzes, because I have left
Berlin…But I liked making bronze sculpture that has no obvious relationship
to the tradition of bronze sculpture. My pieces do not stand up, they have no
pedestals, they have no top nor bottom, nor right way to be. I think you are
completely right that there is something sinister about these pieces. In the
wooden models one did not see that sinister aspect, so that I myself was quite
surprised by it and yet pleased” explains Durham, and adds some mystery:
“Often in the process of making things, things happen that one doesn’t know
about until it happens. I gave most of these pieces names from contemporary
science, in which I am greatly interested. Actually only one piece has a title
that refers to Cherokee culture (the one about the Rattlesnake Star) and in
that case it’s only because I wanted to make no separation between contemporary Greek or European culture and contemporary Cherokee culture.”
35
t is not often that we get to see the work of a contemporary Cherokee
Indian in Athens – but the Batagianni Gallery’s show of Jimmie Durham’s
work, entitled ‘Form & Substance’, presents us with just that, and also
of how this artist’s once political creative journey, has now changed its
course, exploring a more formal and conceptual terrain.
What has triggered this change, is his move to Europe. The outcome however is equally intriguing: after having deconstructed the American myth of
how the west was won, now Durham turns western art traditions on their
head with his new set of bronze works. “I left the US in 1987 and moved to
Europe in 1994. Moving to Europe, I did not want to entertain Europeans with
tales of exotic, far away sorrows. In Europe I want to join the contemporary
European discourse so I began, in ’94, to address the strange phenomenon of
architecture. These new works are part of my ongoing anti-architecture, antimonument project. I am very pleased with these new pieces for the simple
fact that they are bronzes which act like anti-bronzes and have no obvious
definition beyond mystery”, explains the artist to me (the journalist). However this is one journalist who cannot believe that all the ‘American stories’ of
the past have been abandoned just like that, with one move to Europe. I ask
therefore, could someone go further with these bronze works, and find something sinister about their ‘burnt’ appearance and their hybrid human/branchlike forms, could we be dealing with the ‘American holocaust’ as Durham has
referred to it in the past, which has destroyed so many Indians, disguised here
in ‘bronze’?
Durham kept on his formal and conceptual track however, with his answer
Interview
Jimmy Durham
Interview
Jimmy Durham
United States’, ‘Eating Indian Artists’) have continuously told the alternative
story of how the west was won: it wasn’t a case of taming an unpopulated wilderness, but about colonizing a pre-existing society. Similarly the show that
Durham co-curated with Richard Hill, entitled ‘The American West’, also aimed
to reveal America’s ‘colonization process’.
Durham’s ‘anger’ with American or western concepts of progress, hierarchy
and power was vented via art performances among other creative mediums
– eg the smashing of an expensive sports car with a rock in front of the Sydney Opera House, at the 14th Biennale of Sydney (entitled ‘Still life with Stone
and Car’, 2004). He has also smashed an airplane, a mirror, a bicycle and even
a fridge with rocks. Obviously humour has played an important role in his
creative process, combining it often with some natural ingredients associated
with his Indian culture - such as skulls, turquoise, wood, totems, feathers and
rocks. These ‘poor materials’ and natural elements also tie in with the European artistic trends of arte povera, and some of his assemblages (such as ‘Will/
power’, the massive snake-form with mud-moulded head and body made of
industrial piping), point further in that artistic direction, taking him away from
his ‘American’ concerns.
The reason why Durham left the American Indian Movement is still a
touchy subject for him. “Times change. I don’t like to talk about this period
very often as it all still seems a bit too close”, he explains, but he still believes
that “art is an intellectual activity, just like writing poetry or composing music
and therefore: intellectual activities must be political. Political activism cannot
always be appropriate even though commitment must always be appropri-
37
For many years, Jimmie Durham’s work was inextricably tied to his Cherokee roots, and aesthetically shaped with a political edge aimed to expose the
whole ugly issue of the uprooted, and culturally displaced American Indians
– that the USA tried to turn ‘invisible’, in order to negate their own role as
colonizers rather than as ‘discoverers’ of America. Born in the USA’s Arkansas
city in 1940, Durham didn’t set out to be an artist from the beginning. Back
in 1993 he told Lucy R. Lippard (in an article published in Art In America), that
he had even “got stupid and joined the Navy”, later built atomic bombs, and
also went to Vietnam, where he felt his job was “to start the war”. After this
chapter in his life, came the artistic one, starting with performances in the
sixties, gaining an art degree at Geneva’s art school and returning to America
in the seventies ready to get active with the American Indian Movement
– something which he did through his visual arts practice as well as his social
activities, and through his writings. From Director of the International Indian
Treaty Council and its representative at the United Nations, he later opted out
of all this, and became Director of the Foundation for the Community of Artists in New York City (1981-3). A restless spirit, he moved to Mexico in 1987,
and then to Europe in 1994. Durham’s poems have been published in Harper’s
Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry among other editions, while
in terms of exhibitions, his work has been shown in prestigious art institutions
such as the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, ICA London, Kassel’s Documenta,
the Whitney Biennial and the Venice Biennale among others. Retrospectives
of his work have been shown in Europe (e.g. at the Musee d’Art Contemporain
de Marseille), and his many writings (e.g. ‘Cowboys and…’, ‘The Myth of the
Interview
Jimmy Durham
Interview
Jimmy Durham
that there has been progress: “I am very encouraged that there is an Indian
president of Bolivia, Ivo Morales. I look much now to South America and to
Mexico for new directions for Indians of the Americas.”
And as for his art? Are we to believe that it has been stripped of its social/
political message, escaping instead to the formal and conceptual paths of Europe, or should we read between the lines? Maybe the message is still there,
more sinister than before, but also more ‘civilised’ let’s say, now versed in ‘European diplomacy’…a strong and deadly undercurrent. After all, why choose
a studio associated with Hitler? Why blacken the bronze? Why do they look so
much like burnt bodies? What wins after all, the form or the substance?
39
ate.” However, the new journey of his work tells a different story. Once claiming that he was a ‘social artist’ and not a studio artist, he now has dedicated
much of his creative time working in studios such as the one in Berlin, where
the bronzes were created, and now he finds himself at Alexander Calder’s
studio in Paris, feeling that this is a “great ‘European’ privilege” for him. His
social and political self is still active, but now more by the process of curating
shows and through other activities: “I cannot go to the studio in the morning
and make work with only my own soul as the reason. In the past few years I
have co-curated a militant show about the American West and tried to begin
a boycott of the San Paulo Biennale because in Brazil Indigenous peoples are
still not legally recognized as human beings. But how marvelous to work in a
good studio!”
Durham is still concerned about the whole issue of what he has termed
in the past the ‘American Holocaust’, claiming that ‘colonialism’ is not a thing
of the past, but very much part of our present global situation. He explains:
“When there are two entire continents (North and South America) where in
no single country do the indigenous peoples have their natural human rights
and it is the discovery of these two continents that make up our contemporary world, how can we then say that we live in a post-colonial world? Our
world today is guided by the colonial powers of the New World.” Although he
has separated this social message from his work to a certain extent, he is still
keeping his eye on the situation of what he has referred to as the ‘invisible’
Indian, the original Americans, who were stripped of their rights, their land,
and who today are still fighting for their political and social existence. He feels
Jimmy Durham’s exhibition is presented at Batagianni gallery (20-22 Agion Anargiron str., tel.:
210 3221675, www.batagiannigallery.gr) from the 9th of April until the 6th of September 2007.
Vana Kostayola put up
a language game of
30
This is (not) a performance
(or is it?)
Kostis Stafylakis and
Α Few Trustworthy Men, Stills from the performance, 2007
corporate structure reinstitutionalization, claims
Elpida Karampa
(or is it?)
The CranioSacral Therapy
41
Just a few days before the “A few trustworthy men” exhibition, an annoying
email began to appear, addressed to the human resources departments of
large companies active in the Greek construction, services, pharmaceuticals, market research, telecommunications and new technology markets.
The email contained an advertising photograph and a text inviting human
resources managers to attend an event to be staged by the Rebirth Therapy
Group at the a.antonopoulou.art gallery in Athens with a view to presenting
the Greek business community with its full range of therapy services. According to the email, visitors of the exhibition would be able to meet the group’s
therapists and familiarize themselves with a long list of therapies which could
be applied in their workplace, depending on the networks it contains, and the
problems endemic to their particular company. The list of therapies offered
was a long one and included Meditation Work Retreats, Colour Light Therapy,
Tachyon Healing, Sound Therapy, Walk Therapy, Music Therapy, Autogenic Training, Biofeedback, Creative Visualization and Angelic Reiki, Rebirth Therapy, Craniosacral Therapy and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.
At the exhibition, the visitor could watch a video in which the RTG therapists explained “the secrets of CranioSacral therapy”. A lawyer explained
therapy had helped her deal with the career/motherhood dilemma by allowing her to experience pregnancy without bearing a child. Visitors were also
given assistance in filling out questionnaire which then served as referrals for
one of the treatments on offer. The therapists then explained the stages in,
and results of, each therapy as they examined visitors using a range of paramedical methods. In another room illuminated by green fluorescent lights, a
therapist placed stones on recumbent visitors (stone and light therapy). The
visitors, some dressed in overalls, were positioned to face a screen onto which
the principles of management, network building and Jungian-influenced psychology were projected.
The artists shaped a context based mainly on elements of reality. The artists drew on New Age practices which are very popular in North America and,
in some cases—Craniosacral Therapy, for instance—in Greece. The therapies
promise improved productivity in the workplace. A brochure explained the
therapeutic services on offer, while placards on the walls described the application of therapies in different networks.
The need to organize a structure
To begin with, the question or statement “This is (not) a performance (or is
it?)” begs a discussion on the practices adopted by Kostis Stafylakis and Vana
Kostayola, and how these practices are linked inter alia to work of NSK, the
Atelier Van Lieshout and the Critical Art Ensemble. Practices of this sort have
proliferated to the extent that we now speak of a virtual genre or category
with specific characteristics, strategies and mechanisms; a category which
has emerged from the broadening of the scope of traditional performance
through the complexity of the elements of which it is composed. The most
42
(or is it?)
production of the conflict’ which some theorists consider the militant version
of relational aesthetics, is simply inadequate.
Stafylakis and Kostagiola’s practice would seem to hinge on a mechanism:
re-institutionalization. The virtual/fake strands of genuine research conducted
into corporate language seek to initiate a dialogue with an alienating environment through an aggressive/all-out assault on the banal mainstream rather
than through an antagonistic deconstruction. The ideas that take shape
consist of tensions, clashes, disagreements and discord which serve to reveal
the paradoxes of the very structures being (re)produced. These paradoxes
are recorded in the identity of the subjects who decide to play the game of
language set up by the artists. The artists invoke the concept of “identity correction” as this has been used by The Yes Men, explaining that “identity correction is a slightly ironic concept and means that the subjects taking part in
the game reveal equivalences between their own desires and the desires that
govern the proffered discourse: the desire for greater productivity, the desire
for better control of group results, for putting free time to better use and so
on. Above all, identity correction means processing our own identities. This
is what it has in common with analytical discourse”. Meaning that the structures are presented larger than life and transposed in order to ‘reveal’ their
repressed/contradictory elements (for example, the illogical link traced between the experience of motherhood and a democratic style of leadership).
And it is on this self-same lack of logic—an illogic which contains within it the
process of simultaneous overidentification and disidentification and which
relies on the creation of distance/repulsion through the sudden, overwhelm-
43
important elements in this more complex and sophisticated practice relates
to the fundamental collaboration of “non-artistic” actors (actual doctors, for
example, psychologists or company executives), painstaking research into the
symbolic structures reproduced by these actions, and the re-composition of
elements of reality rather than an entirely fictional narrative.
It is an exhausting undertaking, and one that reproduces the need, the
challenge to organize a structure far more than the structure itself does:
research, public relations, publicity, communicational virtues, information/
knowledge, self theorizing texts explaining the substance of an ‘ideology’,
personnel organization etc.
The practice adopted by Vana Kostayola and Kostis Stafylakis is provocative, though it is not purely denunciatory; it de- and re-constructs to reveal
profound contradictions which it expounds in a forensic way. In some of their
collaborations, including A Few Trustworthy Men, the focus is not on areas of
the social in which the aggressive form of identities is high. Here, in contrast,
the jargon of corporatism, theories of management and team building is
smoothly co-articulated with the New Age discourse and generalized worldviews on energy, energy flow, spiritual systems and models which contrast
with the more militant, pin-pointed practices used in other projects like the
AKKK (Kalamaria Community Autonomist Movement), which focused on issues of national and religious identity1.
In both artists’ case, just as the over-used term “relational aesthetic” is
insufficient to explain a host of practices which are the prerequisites for the
formation of a relationship between the participants, a ‘pure agonism’ or ‘reα. the athens contemporary art review
44
(or is it?)
ing proximity with the underpinnings of a dominant structure/trend—that
the double revelation rests on. And it is a double revelation, seeing that the
very desire of the subject emerges in parallel with the foundations of the
structures along with the ambivalent structure of desire to be found in its intimate relationship with power and allure. Which is to say that the challenge
is as much to do with the subjects as with the structures themselves coming
into confrontation with their own secret desires, utopias and dystopias and
undertaking to decode the points of contact.
The management of the remainder
But there is still a ‘remainder’: even in a process which seems utterly organized
and under control, the outcome remains unforeseeable, since identities and
transference cannot be preconceived. So what about the organizers or participants/visitors who identify themselves to such an extent that they cannot
be critical of, or distanced from, the discourse with which they are presented,
even for a moment? Might there not be a risk here of manipulation or méconnaissance? The risk of these practices lies precisely in the way in which this
remainder is dealt with. The artists have this to say:
“Let’s take something that happened at the exhibition recently. We were
visited by a middle-aged lady who taught Mass Media in Norwegian prisons.
She asked us to explain what she was to expect when she lay down on the
examination couch. She was delighted when we explained that ours was an
46
(or is it?)
47
entirely bloodless process, lay down on the couch and began to talk about
her work. She revealed that she was already familiar with the content of two
or three of the therapies described in the exhibition area, and that one of
them had reached Norway through a close friend of hers. She promised to
bring us into contact with her friend, and we exchanged contact information.
The woman agreed with our diagnosis and left, entirely satisfied.
In essence, you are setting up a linguistic game with a series of rules defining modes of response to the whole range of visitors, from the most sceptical
to the most easily convinced. You invite someone to choose, to understand a
stance inherent within that choice…and, of course, to play the game out, at
least until some significant rift or upset. If we didn’t play the game out to the
end, if we stopped in the middle of a dialogue, it would be like slapping the
visitor on the back and revealing that we’d ‘tricked’ them; that we didn’t really
believe in the methods we were trying to sell him. Because that would be belittling, and we’d be doing nothing more than commenting on the ‘gullibility’
or ‘intelligence’ of the man on the street, which is exactly what the psychologist/management gurus do. In fact, we didn’t consider the visitor incapable
of diagnosing the actual structure of the game, or even of subverting it. Of
course, we shouldn’t think that all this is just a process of emancipation. Our
hopes and our desires can assume especially unfamiliar forms through the
condensing and shifts our context seeks to provide…”.
This presentation of the A Few Trustworthy Men show at the a.antonopoulou.art gallery at Aristo1
See, for instance, abortions and the Ateilier Van Lieshout, eugenics and the Critical Art
Ensemble, Nazism and Leibach.
fanous 20, Psyri, May 25-June 23, was based on a discussion between Elpida Karaba, Vana Kostagiola and Kostis Stafylakis.
About the ironic
enticement and
the antinomies of
The Damien Hirst
Formula
decentralization writes
Despoina Sevasti on the
occasion of the exhibition
Damien Hirst
The Damien Hirst
Formula
W
our desire to show our work at this moment outside of it”. So, two kids posed on
the orange-coloured invitation in front of a car, with the typical ‘70s haircut,
T-shirt and expression, a familiar scene from the family album.
Searching Faliro’s regular, orthogonal streets for the small block with an
estate agent’s on the ground floor and a foreign language school on the first,
I thought the short journey away from the ‘art-loving’ centre was perhaps already something of a relief. The exhibition had been set up in the abandoned
floor of a building, once used as a tutorial school, which had not received any
“myth-making” interventions in order to accept the artistic load – unless one
considers the denial of intervention as an equally drastic gesture. Each work
dominated a room of its own and only in the central area Giannis Tzavellas’
wall-hung work co-existed with the participating artists’ collective effort, a
makeshift view master in which they posed as pop stars in Thesion. This confined arrangement seemed at first contradictory to the broader nature of the
press release and most independent exhibitions in undefined spaces. One
could, however, view it as the need by four artists, who share some common
ground, to exhibit their work with their own terms and to bypass the formation of a shared concept to label the space which defines them both literarily
and metaphorically.
In one room Andreas Kasapis’ figure looked out over the blocks of flats
unfolding through the window which run around all the rooms. Surrounded
by sharp black triangles in an attempt to present a unified vocalization of the
space, it had a half-bothered, half-funny expression as two diverging threads
beginning at its forehead, ended up on the window opposite. This unfolding
49
hile this article was being written, Damien Hirst’s exhibition
Beyond Belief opened at the Whitecube gallery in London, causing
new scandalous tremors with his work For the Love of God, a
platinum skull covered with diamonds, possibly the most costly
piece of contemporary art. Both the object itself, described by Rudi Fuchs
as “otherworldly” and the shockwaves it has caused in the public debate
about art have brought about an unprecedented, for this country, epopee of
reconstruction and politics.
At the same time an independent exhibition by Karantinopoulos, Kassapis,
Roussakis and Tzavellas entitled Damien Hirst was taking place at Palio Faliro.
From the beginning, even before I even visited it, this exhibition had something which was excessively familiar, and something which made the familiar
awkward; or rather something which made the familiar unfamiliar – a contradictory form shaken by romantic hints regarding self-determination and
other demons. Firstly, the brief press release “The reason for this exhibition does
not exist…” I liked this sentence because it had a distinctive poetic rhythm, a
definite momentum which seemed to be almost planning nervously in the
space between us a situation so tangible; it was planning a reason, a true
need – the need for release from what is defined in the press release as “curatorial myth-making”, at least as far as established galleries are concerned. This
gesture was realized bathed in the brilliance of a member of the former YBA’s,
whose celebrity and importance had long surpassed the boundaries of the
banal. As Dimitris Karantinopoulos mentioned “… we just pulled out the most
brilliant diamond of the art system to name a DIY exhibition which occurred from
The Damien Hirst
Formula
50
of the figure in a room seemed to be one of the most successful habitations
of an interior space by Kasapis’ figures and not the somewhat ‘encyclopedic’
excerpt of his work, which is sometimes included in ‘official’ exhibitions.
In the central area Giannis Tzavellas had designed an oversized, sweating
skull between a snake and a cross with engraving ink, a beautiful drawing
inspired by the world of comics/tattoos which seemed, however, to spread
comfortably between the two toilet doors on either side rather than engulfing them. One had to glimpse it momentarily from a neighbouring room in
order to function as the fleeting impression of a memento mori, while from
up close it became discharged in an amusing way – something between
the solution to Holbein’s optical illusion and a huge transfer which perhaps
mocked Hirst’s deadpan acrobatics on the concept of death.
In the centre of the adjoining room Karantinopoulos had placed one of
his plaster models behind a section from a Formula 1 car, almost life-sized.
Without recognizing the original object the consistency of the white form was
magnetic, with references to Rachel Whiteread’s negative molds. The revelation of its identity made me feel somewhat uncomfortable. The videos with
strong cinematographic references, the caustic performance “The best is still
to come” at BIOS, and the poetic installations by Karantinopoulos at the ASFA
seemed like three different languages, a provocative bet. In any case, this particular sculpture appeared to have existed in the devastated room for several
years, a condensed positive ghost in which the handmade, pure white re-articulation of aerodynamic literature became a peculiar archaeological trophy
of the future.
Dimitris Karantinopoulos’ work
The Damien Hirst
Formula
In the fourth room Costas Roussakis had placed a cardboard staircase, an
exact replica of the staircase in his studio in Kipseli, which led up to a blind
wall. Constructed with amazing precision, it formed a generous monument to
the autistic process of the creative act/handicraft, inviting the visitor to use it
while revealing its paper fakeness through the drawn incisions, the tape stuck
on to its underside and the random staples which, with delicate irony, held
together the afterthought of the absolutely indifferent initial/utilitarian form.
Young Greek Artists 2007
I met with the artists there and while seated in the makeshift sitting area in
the central room, which resonated a disconcerting familiarity - something like
the days at the ASFA – we talked about the need for exhibiting outside the
established system, the trend for ‘black and white’, the romanticism of factionalism, the hid-n-seek between the theorists’ texts and the artists’ reasoning,
the cliché of the underground and other such things as was - probably – to be
expected.
However, what was most clearly expressed was the significance of the
experience of an independent exhibition. It is always a wonderful space for
artistic action which gives the subject freer conditions for the self-definition
and composition of the artwork even if this has been earlier completed; even
if the artists are aware of the corniness of the term ‘underground’ or of the
‘romanticizing’ of the most popular acts of self-definition or, perhaps, because
Kostas Roussakis’ work
44
Andreas Kassapis’ work
The Damien Hirst
Formula
thing this particular exhibition attempted and was successful in doing.
Exiting the building it was already dark; on the third floor balcony shone
Roussakis’ sign AMIEN HIRS, made out of the same mat cardboard as the staircase, on the underneath balcony a line of Christmas lights and further down
the standard neon sign of the language school on the floor where it actually
now functions. Contemporary Greek reality in a typical snapshot pierced by a
shattered new title…
53
of this. These reoccurring contradictions extensively discussed lately… The
important thing is that it brings to the fore the need for artistic activity and
the active placement of artists themselves in order to overcome the satiation
of the trivia surrounding the contemporary Greek (art) scene.
Artist which could be considered the promising future of the ‘contemporary Greek scene’ , organized an exhibition which allowed them to function
according to their own rules using Damien Hirst’s name as a wonderful, ironic
enticement for the system; the same system which, in part, defines them. But
how can an exhibition which talks about ‘a framework which is self-defined
through the (unmediated) experience’ manage to function as a treatise on the
performativity of the artist in the mirrored hall of the domestic star system?
The exhibition could be seen as an exercise on the meaning of the offprint
– from the model of the Formula 1 and the staircase to Tzavellas’s skull - and
the artists as rising DIY stars, a series of mise en abyme in the ex-tuition centre
above the functioning language school in Palio Faliro which, in the end, is
not that different from some of the neighborhoods of the centre, etc., etc., an
endless game of associations.
Paraphrasing one of the Documenta 12 leitmotifs we could ask ourselves:
is Damien Hirst our ancient era? We already know, through a mainly imported
experience of novelty, that movements outside the system are entirely possible and eventually return within it. The point is with which terms they return since we are attempting to escape the wooden established-curatorial
language, which seems to be the only remaining articulated refuge? Perhaps
a new strategy of escape-antidote is not to take ourselves too seriously someα. the athens contemporary art review
The exhibition Damien Hirst was held at an independent space located at Palio Faliro, Athens, (44
Proteos str., contact: hirst_damienhirst@yahoo.com) from the 4th of May until the 4th of
June 2007.
For the installation by
Nikos Papadimitriou at AD
Gallery and his esprit de
competition writes Giota
© COURTESY: AD GALLERY
The spirit
of the game
Konstandatou
Νikos Papadimitriou, Gallery Trophy, Installation view, 2007
The spirit
of the game
Τ
he pure deep blue of the installation of Nikos Papadimitriou “Gallery
Trophy” is imposing—a half-life-size transcription of a tennis court,
folding in space, climbing up the walls in order to meet its other end on
the ceiling, forming a kind of envelope, a proofing wrap for player and
spectator alike. Outside the distorted space of the court, the winner’s trophy
hangs on the wall—the sarcastic emblem of a supposed victory on the battle
field—a wild boar’s head, hand made hair by hair.
The main, recurring approach-method in Papadimitriou’s work is mapping. Two years ago, he mapped his home interiors in “Mapping my House”.
Similarly in his video “Part of a Dramatic Story”, 2001, he mapped the scene
of a couple taking a car ride at night in the city; he reproduced an analogue
evocation of the Lycabettus Hill in successive layers of wood, in his work of
the same title installed on Apostolou Pavlou Street in 2004; he recently juxtaposed a wild boar hunting scene in “Hunt”, a rendition after 1835 Rubens’
drawing entitled “Boar Hunt”, and a drawing of a modern tennis court—the
work in progress out of which came the current installation.
The form taken by the work is mainly an outline, whose economy and
freedom make it a suitable medium for following traces which remain faint
to a large extent, for “jotting down” things, avoiding verbosity, for capturing thought in matter through a strict syntax, economy in material, purity of
line and a bare minimum of colour. Papadimitriou’s mappings-transpositions
demonstrate accuracy and abstraction, scientific rigour and creative autonomy, structure and architectural syntax. Not by accident, he often employs
a preliminary model, which also sometimes becomes the material for the
The spirit
of the game
The spirit
of the game
a sphere with predetermined functions. The work and the honours promised
are reduced to a rather cheap award, also implying, according to barbaric customs, the disgrace of stripping the defeated opponent off his weapons and
the monumental installation of the work as a testimony reminding us of the
victory (the term “Trophy Art” has emerged in recent years, denoting particularly expensive art, acquired as a status symbol by extremely wealthy people).
Now, there are many ways in which to contribute to the greater discussion about the beastly art market, the tricks, the networks and the immoral
behaviour therein. The cheap old favourite of nagging, even when expressed
in technically impeccable terms, the sly way of self-determination and convergence with the market, and the good manner of producing a work that
does not take an assertive stance but is rather a poetic utterance, capturing
the spirit of the times by articulating truths on everyone’s account, without
betraying the totality of the work for the benefit of the intentions. In his installation “Gallery Trophy”, Nikos Papadimitriou demonstrated a true esprit de
compétition—in other words, he went onto court and played in the spirit of
sports.
57
development of the final work, as it is a suitable medium for the controlled
reduction and the construction of a concept in its completed form. Moreover,
an indication of intensive preliminary study of the work, of mental analysis of
the model in order to reconstruct and set it up in space. Most of Papadimitriou’s work inspires the feeling of a research concerning space, its various aspects and conceptual limits, the energies with which it is imbued, and in this
respect, “Gallery Trophy” is one of his most accomplished works.
The artist has stated it “is a comment on competition in art”. For his objective, he chose the poetic transposition of a sports ground—of tennis, a
predominantly individual sport, of a high social and economic status, played
in an organized grid—into the space of the gallery, which is thus revealed in
its most cynical, contemporary function as a place for business, in which the
battle for predominance rages, the game of publicity is played out, values rise
and fall, winners are declared, and prizes are awarded.
Built on the archetypal axis sports-art-hunting, the conceptual field in
which Papadimitriou plays is cohesive, suggestive, and covertly transgressive. The artist is depicted at the same time as a noble sportsman (the suggestive English term “tennis man” also exists), a competitive race horse and a
blood thirsty hunter. Basically, however, he plays by himself in a distorted and
therefore disorientating court—accentuating the effect of the terrain, which
engulfs you, and the dazzling, suggestive blue colour. Competition in art is
nothing but the old survival game of living organisms interacting in order to
gain control over the resources in a specific environment. Surrendering a public game organized by advertising and the media, the art sector is restricted to
Nikos Papadimitriou’s exhibition was held at the Alphadelta [AD] gallery (3, Pallados str.,
tel.: 210 3228785, www.adgallery.gr) from the 2nd of May until the 19th of May 2007.
Dimitra Sakkatou
presents the program
taught at public schools
organized by Locus Athens
Book review
68
of contemporary art
Book review
However, it would be impossible
to talk about the book, and not the
workshops which exemplify the
process through which the book
came into being.
In the pages of the book, one
sees Nikos Alexiou and the pupils of
the Hill school tracing on rice paper
the mural of the Ivirou Monastery of
Mount Athos. Kostas Bassanos and
his highschool students exploring
the notion of abstraction, as opposed to representational forms,
by creating abstract structures using souvlaki sticks. Nikos Markou
introduced his students to the basic
workings of a manual camera before they went on shooting photos
of their school. Seeing their photos
of details of their familiar environment, it is evident that drabness was
lifted somehow. They managed to
unveil the extraordinary out of the
ordinary and reveal some beauty.
Maria Papadimitriou’s work was also
concerned with cast away beauty. In
accordance with her work on the Romanian Vlachs, who live as nomads
in Avliza, in the outskirts of Athens,
she asked the students to construct
a city made of garbage. Alexandros
Psychoulis played with another
young group of students the game
of taking creativity in one’s own
hands. The children created their
own fairy tale of a dog looking for
his awry home illustrated by images
that they chose together from the
artist’s computer.
For those who hold the book and
have not participated in the workshops, it transfers the atmosphere
and the spirit of the work. The text
by Alkisti Chalkia is playful, engaging
and connecting the artists’ work with
that of the children. It also makes the
concepts behind the work clear. For
example, Bassano’s text section eloquently presents the notions of inner
and outer space paired with photos
59
W
hile in highschool, art
classes were viewed as a
chance to lay back and
relax- it’s ok, you do not
have to pretend you are not bored of
school, the teacher does not pretend
to be excited either (at least in the
schools I’ve gone to, the average,
state highschool) and the bonus is:
you even get a good grade.
Well then, I was a bit jealous of
the children who participated in the
series of workshops organized by
Locus Athens. Firstly, they organized
art workshops lead by five distinguished artists in five schools around
Athens. Secondly, they put together
the artists’ and children’s work in a
book entitled “A Super Book of Contemporary Greek Art” (Kalidoskopio
publications)
of interior and open air photos.
At the end of each section the
theme of the workshops is further
enhanced by proposing practical,
Do-It-Yourself ways to be creative in
the direction of the workshop presenting ideas such as to continue the
pattern of a labyrinth with a pen in
the pages of the book. Maybe one
can then get a taste of the meditative feeling that Alexiou’s patterns
exude. Another proposal is to write
notes with personal feelings and
desires and hang them on the wall
“or on the balcony so that the whole
neighborhood can see”.
Therefore the book stimulates
readers to become communicative
and relate with their environment in
a creative and personal way, even after they have closed the book. Hence
they might be tempted to reach out
and express themselves by putting
notes everywhere, or by offering a TISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007
Book review
tip toe often between angry university students shouting their mottos
to the armed police officers across.
Amid this aggression, one cannot
but think that the link with the ancient Greek notion of an individual
being able to communicate and cooperate in our polis is severed.
60
shirt to a Romanian Vlach as Maria’s
work inspires.
Her work turns the attention
towards the alternative culture of
the nomad. Looking at the photos
of a balcony full of colorful hanging
blankets, I couldn’t help but wonder
about the student’s reaction to the
exposure of this social group the
way suggested by Maria. Does our
tolerance expand as our aesthetics
do?
The whole book emphasizes the
process rather than the end result,
thus liberating creativity. Through
the projects and concerns described
above, the book encourages the development of an extrovert individual
who goes about interested and related to the world around him, individuals who is expressing their inner
world to the outer world.
The workshops took place last
year in a city where citizens had to
Publication: The Athens Biennial – Non-Profit Organization
Publication Advisors: Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Christopher Marinos, Martha Michailidi, Alexandra Moschovi, Panayis
Panagiotopoulos, Michalis Paparounis, Poka-Yio, Yannis Stavrakakis, Yorgos Tzirtzilakis, Augustine Zenakos
Editor in chief: Theophilos Tramboulis
Assistant editor: Despoina Sevasti
Contributors to this issue: Jimmy Efthymiou, Elpida Karampa, Andreas Kasapis, Giota Konstandatou, Christopher Marinos,
Alexandra Moschovi, Giorgos Panagiotakis, Dimitra Sakkatou, Stella Sevastopoulou
Text editing: Effi Giannopoulou
Translations: Thaleia Bistikas, Michael Eleftheriou, Kleio Panourgia, Dimitris Saltabassis
Lay Out: Vassilis Sotiriou
Design: The Switch Design Agency

EN pdf - Nikos Papadimitriou

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