Mytilene-Lesvos European Capital of Culture 2021 Candidate City
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Mytilene-Lesvos European Capital of Culture 2021 Candidate City [Application file] five year old volunteers painting TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction – General considerations pg. 1 1. Contribution to the long-term cultural strategy pg. 9 2. European Dimension pg. 19 3. Cultural and artistic content pg. 25 4. Capacity to deliver pg. 39 5. Outreach pg. 49 6. Finance- Additional information pg. 57 LESVOS 2021: Introduction – General considerations Intro.1 Why does your city wish to take part in the competition for the Lesvos stands at the meeting point of two currents that sometimes flow title of European Capital of Culture? quietly and sometimes rage uncontrollably: East and West, Christianity and Islam. Lesvos became a welcoming bosom where myths, beliefs, No matter what you say about this land, there will always be something traditions, and people from the two opposite coasts of the Aegean Sea that cannot be expressed in words. Something deep, elemental, furtive, and combined in a new whole. yet tangible. Unable to describe it, you can only experience it. Lesvos and Lesvos resembles a boat that sails incessantly for 5000 years through Mytilene have enough charm to keep you enclosed you in a gentle prison. art and culture, ever ready for the unexpected in life. A boat that 1 accommodated, willingly or not, conquerors, “friends”, visitors, Persians, artist to follow the poet’s counsel: “if I was to speak about spring in Romans, Byzantines, Genoese, Turks, pirates, fugitives, refugees. Lesvos, I would paint.” These adventures and contacts with the “Other” explain the Poetry was a fertile field where members of reading clubs from metamorphosis of the island into an extraordinary place that is able Constantinople and patrons of popular local coffee houses planted to absorb and mesmerize you. The inhabitants’ primordial poetic and introspective reflection and creativity, while shaping speech. sarcastic psyche, a result of the island’s Aeolian past, captivates you. Poetry is the hidden sister of the local idiom that does not limit itself These are the endless changes in the island’s history that account for the to the form of the language but embraces its very substance. It is an appearance and growth of such a bewildering variety of personalities, ingrained philosophy and attitude towards life. tendencies, philosophical currents, works of art, and monuments of Poetry defined the city of Mytilene with its urban character, the idyllic everyday culture in Lesvos. environment and an overflowing amorousness. Poetry was imparted through the eyes of the emblematic heroes POETRY DESIGNS THE CITY depicted by the folk painter Theophilos, and the mellifluous writing of This island learned to live half in heaven, half on earth, half in doubt, Odysseas Elytis, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. half in immortality, half in mayhem, and half in hope. Poetry sustained Tériade in his successful fight to establish the unfledged It is hard to incorporate, present or explain Lesvos. Its long history revolutionary movement of modernism in the visual arts canon of the precludes that. It is equally hard to account for all the reasons that 20th century. shaped the conditions for the continuous production of culture on the Poetry as it thrived and was reborn through the words and thoughts of island. A culture that refuses to stay put. There is an irrepressible the island’s most important intellectuals (Miltos Kountouras, Kostas tendency to export words and ideas that influence intellectual elites at Kontos, Thrasyvoulos Stavrou a.k.a. Melikertis, Argyris Eftaliotis, Fotis home and abroad. Kontoglou, Stratis Myrivilis, Elias Venezis, and the Vernardaki brothers). The cause is not really that important. What matters is that poetry Poetry that always opposed tyranny and exalted freedom. has always held the place of honour in the daily life, the history, the Poetry, with its inspired craftsmen and their scintillating spirit, so full memory, the heritage, the morals, the spirit and the future of the island. of love for life and sarcasm that it managed to deflate the fear of death. Poetry provides an unbroken record of reality through the wounds, Poetry that never rested. It comes all the way from the revolution in the the feelings, the fantasies, the anxieties, the joys, the dreams and the use of metals, through Homer, to the age of constitutional upheavals images of the natural and lush landscape. Poetry is the cornerstone of and the creation of the city-state, the birthplace of democracy. intellectual achievement and cultural heritage. It prompts the island Poetry written by foreign literary giants, such as Charles Baudelaire, forward and becomes, even today, a life-giving reference point for the who never forgot Lesvos. His collection The Flowers of Evil, is an almost islanders. prophetic search for the befitting acquittal of the island from the charges Poetry. Glorified by Sappho and Alcaeus. Drafted by Longus in Daphnis of History: and Chloe, the oldest pastoral novel, about which Goethe claimed that Which of the gods will dare to be your judge, Lesbos, its annual reading enhances the human intellectual ability. Poetry as And condemn your brow, grown pallid from your labors, recited by Aristotle to his students, when he returned from writing his If his golden scales have not weighed the flood Historia Animalium (History of Animals), a pioneering work of zoology Of tears your streams have poured into the sea? inspired by his observations in Lesvos. The poetry that assisted Arion in giving form to the satirical drama and the dithyramb in honor of […] What are to us the laws of the just and unjust […] Dionysus. The poetry that accompanied the dramatist Menander’s plays in the ancient theater. Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil Poetry defined the works and the days of simple stonemasons, allowing their imagination to reach the most unpredictable limits, and to create, Poetry that accompanies, without a murmur, for two centuries already, across the island, architectural wonders of the highest aesthetics. the culture of ouzo, the island’s local nectar that inebriates the senses Poetry sustains the potter’s joy in molding clay to create his pots in worldwide. kilns whose fire remains unextinguished for more than 4500 years. It Poetry that was always present in the inhabitants’ sense of humour. To inspires the wood carver to shape the wood of the chestnut tree into the present day they set up mock trials and establish associations of exquisite iconostases and chests. It motivates the shipbuilder to build “oppressed spouses,” with fixed days of coming together around a table the most beautiful hulls that will carry the ship to the end of the world. full of delicacies to exchange views on the various “accidents” of married Ιt prompts the weavers to follow Penelope’s example as they labour at life. home, their own temple of creativity and responsibility. It animates the Poetry that remains a vigilant defender of the island’s castles; that self-taught organist to put together delightful verses and lyrics during flows in the water conduits of the ravaged Roman aqueducts; that 2 funfairs that go back to the time of Dionysus. It stimulates the visual offers prayers in more than 100 byzantine basilicas; that fills the sails of the island as it travels on the edge; that stays up all night walking the for centuries. Poets and refugees have always been part of our cellular island’s cobbled streets; that embraces lesbians during their summer memory. Our grandparents were refugees and our parents were congregation in the beaches of Eresos. immigrants. All this is happening and strengthens poetry’s place in the island’s life Our candidacy is based on two pillars: poetry and solidarity. To remain and culture. For there is only one poetry and there is only one sky. As true to our history, our moral values, and our culture, we must join Odysseas Elytis wrote in The Little Mariner: our weapon and our shield, namely poetry, with our moral values that shaped our sense of solidarity. Solidarity is a cultural value. It rejects «…what matters is from where one looks at the sky… for I have seen the building of walls and enables you to accept difference, adopt it and it from the open sea.” create something with it. Poetry clears the field with its transcendence. Financial differences, social distance, racial prejudice are replaced What better place to view the sky than Mytilene and the entire island of by solidarity as the supreme blessing. The combination of this way of Lesvos? thinking with new ideas and innovative actions produces the result we The same poetry continues to guide our steps through the ancient wish to carry to our European fellow citizens. We wish to convey it with streets with the point of the compass steadily facing the future. It is the the same extrovert spirit that the old islanders demonstrated when they poetry and the lyre used by the locals as indestructible weapons against transported their wares to Europe. With culture as our boat, it would would-be invaders, who, envious of this blessed land, tried to conquer be a shame to miss an opportunity to contact, interact and mutually it. It is poetry, her practitioners and those who carry on its tradition with complement other cultures. continuous practice and the creation of new material with innovative Over the past few years, through an arduous adjustment, we methods that become defenders of their land and the castle of the Muses. rediscovered the forgotten gift of introspection and the necessity of As they sing the glory of what is truly great in life, they bestow upon the filtering through the old material. We understood that Lesvos does not next generation a safe crossroads of civilization, peaceful coexistence signify just a home but a way of living in this land.