The Damien Hirst Formula

issue 13 - May-June 2007 Contents

03 Editorial 40 This is (not) a performance (or is it?) 07 Drafts 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 48 The Damien Hirst Formula Christopher Marinos reviewing the plethora of American art exhibitions About the ironic enticement and the antinomies of decentralization writes in Athens Despoina Sevasti on the occasion of the exhibition Damien Hirst

24 The Burden of Self-consciousness 54 The spirit of the game Real becomes elastic in Panos Kokkinias’ photographic work, claims For the installation by Nikos Papadimitriou at AD Gallery and his esprit de Alexandra Moschovi competition writes Giota Konstandatou

34 Interview Jimmy Durham 58 Book review Stella Sevastopoulou discusses with Jimmie Durham about his Cherokee Dimitra Sakkatou presents the program of contemporary art teaching at roots and the Western hierarchies public schools organized by Locus Athens Editorial by KostasGeorgousopoulos inTanewspaper Nea on Tuesday June12, com exponents. resistance Greek ofthecontemporary culture andits againstmodernism narrative inGreece, articulated andthevarioustransformations ofthe demonstrates boththe systemic evident intheparallel quality modernist Gonatas, awriter whoisnoteasilyaccommodated withintheGreek canon, sensitive shemadeonEpaminondas works by Stefani isthedocumentary accordingly. Moreover, that oneofthemostacclaimed andmost thefact impending Athina organizers oftheArt (seep.trial 7)should, Ibelieve, beinvestigated the and work Stefani’s Eva of current oftheconfiscation juncture ofnegotiation. become objects as well asthemanagement ofmemory The consensus are declared anddesire andthepoliticalemancipation ofidentity and disobedience disagreements, narratives contribute, oppositions, conflicts, ope artv kth nwihfito n igah,tx n image and text biography, and a complex narrative sketch, inwhichfiction narrativeforting for herself, asshehighlights ofpain,and thecommonality her narrative andphotographic compositions. thisway In shecreates acom Calle’s work istheway shemanagesandusesherexperience asmaterial in Venice Storr. Biennaleby curator Robert Oneofthekeyelements ofSophie Calle’smenting onSophie displayed pavilion work, inthisyear’s at theItalian N It isinasimilarmannerthat we titled shouldregardIt thearticle “Art 2007” of publicdialogue, constitutively from empty metaphysics, to which for two centuries: theestablishment andhisart ofaspace subject towith respect amajorissuewhichhastormented the Western I believe that theGreek experience seemsto beincreasingly lacking

03 - - Editorial

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,04 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 over- simplifications 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 man- ages 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

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 cor- rect. 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.05 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 fa- mous 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 rein- forcement 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.

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 Editorial

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 or- chestrated 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 ﬂag06 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.

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 Drafts

Exhibition without title against of cinematic pornography as a form to television audiences. Finally, we censorship of tortured, internal release for re- consider it an attempt to replace all pressed instincts. The use of archival other forms of political and artistic The following text was signed online by material, the filming of oppositional expression with a series of stere- more than 2000 people after the seizure elements, dialogue, the representa- otypes which reject the essence of of Eva Stefani’s video from the Art Athina tion itself of these two seemingly political and artistic expression. fair by the police. The work was based on different narratives give the work the This is why we, the artists which archival material on pornographic films power to speak about politics and took part in the exhibition and all of the 70’s, while the National Anthem of personal history in a joint manner. those who appended their name to Greece was used as sound material. Be- To condense meaning and forms is this text, declare it is art’s inalienable tween 4-7 June, an exhibition was organ- both07 art’s privilege and its contribu- right and essential obligation to ad- ized with more than 120 artists. tion to the shaping of public dis- dress issues which do not require course. the consent of every institution in The work removed by the police We consider both the seizure public discourse; issues which, still from public display in such an unac- of the work and the media furore more importantly, do not require the ceptably brutal manner during the stirred up in its aftermath by rep- consent of those who believe they “I syghroni elliniki skini” exhibition, resentatives of LAOS and others are daily stating self-evident values, part of Art Athina 2007 brings to- to constitute a direct attempt to when they are actually stating poli- gether two separate narratives. On impose control on public discourse cies aimed to suppress any aspect the one hand the exploitation of as a whole. We also consider it an at- of public discourse beneath a pro- national symbols by the authoritar- tempt to appropriate these symbols foundly conservative and autarchic ian politics which characterized the -while purporting to protect them- rhetoric. Greek state during the 1960s and with a view to transforming them Furthermore, the cosignatories to 1970s and on the other the spread into caricatures designed to pander this document declare they have co- Drafts

ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 Drafts

signed it as co-creators of the cen- mouse” in Greek, and, with the ex- publishers did not go totally bank- From the clear line of the Belgians sored work, and they are therefore ception of a few ill-fated, or at least rupt, and another issue came out, to Max Anderson’s punk contrasts. jointly responsible under the law for not long-lived, efforts, such as Kolou- and then another one after that. The From Edika’s fun postmodernism to any further prosecutions or penalties mbra and Mamouth, their intended magazine began to have a few pages Mattioli’s splatter pop-art. it should incur. public was strictly limited to those in colour and a few native contribu- In the meanwhile, the worry was al- Finally, this exhibition remains not hard of hearing just yet. For the tors, who naturally didn’t dare ask for ways there: will Babel be able to pay untitled. It might thus constitute an rest, there was always Taratata—the pay. Cruising towards the glam heart the VAT? Will it be saved from confis- act of intransigence in the face of rumble from the Alkyonides islands of the Greek ‘80s, adulthood slowly cation? Is another issue coming out this attempted co-opting of the art earthquake threatening to disrupt came along. Babel kept up with the and when? The magazine endured. world rather than an exhibition of the pace of reading. different aesthetic trends and let learning from its mistakes. It even or- ephemeral content. Then came Babel. A futuristic cover them08 sort out their differences in its ganized a festival. It invited artists to in colour by Caza with black and pages. Bilal’s dull colours and filmic meet the audience in person which white pages. With a clear political decoupage met the sweaty black were in fact human just like us. The Feasible Target and… stance but unclear aesthetic persua- and white stories by Muñoz. Pazien- As the issues piled up, causing sion. The militant minimalism of Wol- za’s nihilism and narrative anarchy backaches when moving house, it The first issue of Babel appeared in linski and Copi but also the sensuous met Loustal’s formalist technicolor. suddenly dawned on us that this di- kiosks in February 1981. In those aestheticism of Crepax’ Valentina. Manara’s mainstream wet dreams verse comics magazine had become days, Vina Asiki had not yet become Reiser’s transgressing vulgarity but Bernet’s neo-noir gunshots. There one of the few constant references in the main star of the VHS nor had Akis in a light version—lest they go to jail. was Vullemin, too—a worthy suc- Greek art. Babel is not a major maga- Tsochatzopoulos yet been a minister, As many as five ad listings—includ- cessor to Reiser—at his earliest and zine, nor does it create trends, seed- and the term “visual” directly in- ing “Hnari. Magazines. Records. 5 worst moments. The decades went ing new artists, harvest mediocre voked sofa and home stores, at least Kiafas Str. (near Akadimias Str.)—but by, and trends changed by leaps and ones; thank god, it does not fly high in speaking. As to comics, these were featuring an essay on the language bounds. The complete evolution of above Greek reality for we are up to generically mispronounced “mickey of comics. Strangely enough, the an art was covered page by page. here with such high-flyers. Yet, Babel

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is always one click up from the best going through them; yet go through It was also around that time Greek magazine, pulling the average you did, first casting furtive looks that the idea behind this feeling of up by the hair so as to get it up from until you found yourself totally im- violence, which had shocked me so the sand, where it is placidly basking mersed in the stories. It was a pure much in my first encounter with the in the sun. It represents the feasible and extremely lifelike violence, stories in Babel, began to clear up in- target. without the romantic idealization side me. It was the sincere portrayal of self-destruction; it smelt like the of a generation that emerged out of Giorgos Panagiotakis dirty feet of your brother, a soldier frustration (frustration?) of the claim then, similar to the sense of shame for a possible utopia. A post-political, in the “archetypal” dream of going to nihilistic and often self-destructive ...the Archetypal Dream school without any clothes on. This generation.09 Yet, one that was also was my impression of the stories by disarmingly honest and free from The history of Babel began for me Pazienza, Breccia, Vuillemin, Muñoz pretentiousness. It was through that sometime in early adolescence and then Kaz, Lavric, Martin… sincerity that Babel, both the maga- Yuri Leiderman (around 11) on board ship to A few years later, I began collect- zine and the festival, has managed to Mytilene on holiday with my mother. ing the magazine. At first, I simply keep alive even up to now the possi- To make the long journey less tedi- bought every new issue at the kiosk; bility of utopia through the inverted features are the acclaimed comic art- ous for me, my mother bought me a later this was not enough anymore, perspective of the violent reality it ist Phillipe Druillet , a retrospective copy of Babel. I must admit that the and I began to hunt down previ- invokes. exhibition by Hungarian illustrator first thing that struck me in that issue ous issues at the Monastiraki flea The best confirmation is the fes- Ferenc Pinter, Danijel Zezelj, Raul, was the impious, sickening violence. market. It was around then that I tival, which has become almost the Paolo Cossi , an exhibition of Turkish I got the feeling that the stories had visited the Babel Festival for the first equivalent of a great annual holiday illustrators and the Greek artists So- no moral boundaries and there was time— possibly the third time it was for its public. This year, the festival tos Anagnos/Kostakis Anan, Manos no way to come out unharmed after happening. theme is urban legends. Among the Antaras, Dimitris Vitalis, Kostas

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Vitalis, Giorgos Goussis, Spyros Der- SEARCHING FOR THE TREASURE preferably displaying the following veniotis, Giorgos Dimitriou/Dimitris MAP AND POINTEDLY IGNORING features: abandoned for years, cheap Vanellis, Christos Dimitriou, Michalis THE TREASURE rent, splintered space, nice view. And Dialynas, Andreas Zafiratos, Petros bordering on the area (in the favoured Zervos, Lazaros Zikos, Lila and Maro “Place to be integrated”. Katechaki 56 phrase of the Athens Biennial) “out Kalogeri, Dimitris Kambouridis/Fanis there where there are monsters…”. Papachristopoulos Bekatoros, Con, I’m walking along a nameless de- Of course, with the rider that “out Ilias Kyriazis, Kostas Kyriakakis, Kos- serted beach (which is why I don’t there” could well be smack bang in tas Maniatopoulos, Vangelis Matziris/ say where). I’ve crossed a river bed the Centre, which is currently in the Dimitris Savvaidis, Giorgos Botsos, lined by huge plane trees. Now I’m process of moving. Elena Navrozidou, Alexia Othonaiou, walking10 over pebbles. I take a hand- Three hastily set-up tables enti- Gavriil Pagonis/Stavros Dilios, Pana- ful and wet them in the sea. A riot of tled “City Plan” (I, II, III: March, May giotis Pantazis, Tassos Papaioannou, vivid colours appears. The landscape and June 2007 respectively). And an Dimitris Papastamos, Thanassis is imbued with meaning. I would ulterior motive: to unite the three Petrou, Fotis Pechlivanidis, Smart, like to take here the people I care into a perfect ‘First Supper’. Artists Soloup, Taxis, JAM (Giannis Bardakas about. But it’s all too likely the build- and architects worked on the plan, - Maria Georgana), Helm, Orynos. ing contractors would follow in their but others were involved to in an wake. So I face a dilemma: the Place effort to the bringe together and Andreas Kasapis without the People, or the People exchange ideas. The creation of an without the Place? independent condenser for channel- Let’s start the experiment in reverse: ling energy. And the title, eschewing Phillipe Druillet the Athens Ring Road (Katechaki), a the obvious “Ektos Schediou” [‘Un- river of cars zooming off in every direc- planned’ or ‘Beyond the Plan’], could tion at once. A building in Ellinoroson, have also served as another declara-

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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 11 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.

Jimmy Eythymiou

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 A spectre is haunting the contemporary Greek art scene, claims Christopher Marinos reviewing the plethora of American art exhibitions in Athens LFAYAN GALLERY ΚΑ

: COURTESY © George Stoll, Untitled (4th of July: Dropped American Flag #1), 2005.

A Hylo-Idealistic Romance From the exhibition Darling, Take Fountain photo: Joshua While A Hylo-Idealistic Romance

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 Ath- ens. 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 ILEANA TOYNTA CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER 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 Califor- COURTESY

nian 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 Hanna Liden, Untitled, 2006. From the exhibition Dark Victory. 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 conclu-

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 A Hylo-Idealistic Romance

sions can we draw from the artists’ works?2 Looking at this ‘landing’ more care- fully 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 contem- ILEANA TOYNTA CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER

porary 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, COURTESY ©

Scott Campbell, Untitled, 2007. From the exhibition Dark Victory. ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 THE BREEDER, ATHENS : COURTESY ©

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

ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 Ε31 GALLERY : COURTESY ©

Chris Wilder, Installation view, 2007 A Hylo-Idealistic Romance

precisely how this style is channelled through the DESTE Foundation exhibi- ous and peevish ‘lyricism’ of the past. And so, in pursuit of a freshness and dis- tions, which for many years has been called by many the bastion of American sidence, apart from including contemporary trends of city art, such as street aesthetics and the basic platform for defining, in the best case (and mimick- art and graffiti, it is by no means an accident that the curators both of Anath- ing in the worst), models for Greek artists and consequently for collectors and ena (M. Fokidis and M. Yotis) and of What is Left is the Future (N. Argyropoulou) galleries. turned towards two emblematic (even while they were living) figures of Greek In a recent article in the magazine Texte Zur Kunst, the critic Diedrich Die- surrealism: Panos Koutroubousis and Nanos Valaoritis, respectively5. Though derichsen, after giving an initial genealogy of American surrealism (made up these exhibitions created a stir, the pop, light style, in tandem with the fetish- by artists, as he says, who struck out independently from the course imposed ism of youth and the ‘imported’ air of the works, was bound to get in the line by Greenberg’s modernism, keeping alive the achievements of French-Span- of fire7 of the Greek art critics – especially of the older and more conservative ish-Belgian Surrealism), points out the recourse to “American” surrealism, such ones – for whom any trace of American influence is taboo6. However, viewed as the one recently displayed in a series of large-scale exhibitions in muse- as a1 whole, their main drawback was nothing but their inability to draw a ums and biennales (such as the ones at the Whitney and in Berlin) as well as clearer dividing line and the incorporation of the works in a narcissistic narra- pop music groups like Antony and CocoRosie4. On second thought, the Panic tive (which was probably inevitable if one takes into account the ‘hard rock’ Room group exhibition, curated by Kathy Grayson and Jeffrey Deitch at the idiom employed by the curators and artists alike)7. In addition, I am afraid the DESTE Foundation in 2006, could well be included in Diederichsen’s list. It is object of their overall ideology (the superiority of experience over the posses- obvious that the strong presence of the Americans in Athens is another piece sion of goods, as expressed by the American futurist Jeremy Rifkin, in whose of the puzzle laid out by this exhibition. Panic Room presented designs of East theories curator Argyropoulou has delved) may boomerang on the works and West coast American artists and European artists, among which some themselves since the concepts of possession and ownership are considered Greeks were also included, and laid the foundations for a series of group ex- outmoded and anything new almost immediately becomes obsolete. Perhaps hibitions that attempted to chart the waters of contemporary Greek art. The the Greek artists who participated in these exhibitions are equally ambitious, distinctive feature of these exhibitions (What is Left is the Future, Anathena, determined and radical in their visual art as their American counterparts, but Part-time Punks, I syghroni ellniki skini) was a fun, subversive attitude which at- I doubt whether they are offered the necessary safety nets which would guar- tempted to highlight a more cutting and cynical aspect of Greek art, propos- antee the viability of their works in the future. ing a sense of humour, sarcasm and a DIY attitude to the melancholic, pomp- In a nutshell, though I could not tell if the future of Greek art will be a high-

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 A Hylo-Idealistic Romance Y ART CENTER ILEANA TOUNTA CONTEMPORAR

: COURTESY ©

Nate Loman, Installation view, 2007. From the exhibition Dark Victory. A Hylo-Idealistic Romance

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 Can- terville 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 Minis- ter and his family treat the ghost’s attempts to scare them leads the spectre to 19 the brink of a nervous breakdown. But the juxtaposition of American and Eu- ropean 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 Pink- KALFAYAN GALLERY

: erton’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 COURTESY by drawing it back with the Minister’s daughter’s coloured pencils. The ab- © surdity of the scene reveals both sides of the coin and the eternal dual mean- David Hockney, Mulholland Drive, June 1986. From the exhibition Darling, Take Fountain. ing of the issue. Ultimately, it is perhaps, yet again, a matter of how many of us, artists, curators and critics, feel they are Europeans.

1 To this activity we could also add the recent publication of Andy Warhol’s autobiography

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 © COURTESY: ΤΗΕ ΑPPARTMENT, ATHENS Αmy Adler ,

Τhe Lesson #1 , 2007

20 A Hylo-Idealistic Romance

in Greek (The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to Z and Back Again, Tsakarousianos Publica- tions) 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 spiritual- istic 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 every- thing is cast into doubt.” The artists “rebel against the decay of society, the corruption of politics 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 LLERY may be indicative that the latter two live and work in Europe.

4 E31 GA

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 COURTESY deep into the science ﬁction genre and the latter into the gothic novel. Both collaborated with © Chris Wilder, Installation view, 2007

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 © COURTESY: THE BREEDER, ATHENS Mindy Shapero,Mindy view Lightgh, 2007,Installation Heavy

22 α. exhibition, Gallery3, 2003–was notincludedinAnathena catalogue oftheKarikomoontes exhibition,Gallery3, exhibition the see – Koutroubousis of thatfan example, thefact Yannis Varelas, aconﬁrmed ofthepast.See artists Yorgos Tzirtzilakis, “Our Pop”, Own Ta newspaper, Nea 2001.For 7April the works. issues suchasthecontroversial hint madeby thecurators asto theunderground aestheticsof own course andambitions. the Pali inthe1960s, historical journal buttheysubsequently clashedandeachfollowed his cates thecurators’ muddledattitude intheseexhibitions. the athens contemporary art review art contemporary athens the 7 6 Also, thecurators didnotexaminehow thisnewpoptrend isrelated to thework ofGreek The ofthosewhowere criticism more “in theknow” focused onmore sensitive andcurrent indi 23- A Hylo-Idealistic A Hylo-Idealistic ISSUE Romance 13 • • 13 MAY-JUNE 2007 Real becomes elastic in Panos Kokkinias’ photographic work, claims Alexandra Moschovi COURTESY: XIPPAS GALLERY ©

Panos Kokkinias, Theoni, 2006 The Burden of Burden The Self-consciousness The Burden of Self-consciousness

The familiar becoming unfamiliar than not thought to be immediate and conceptually accessible (a “language without a code” for many, and not just Barthes’ enthusiasts). Others may be What is it that makes a dead cockroach so appealing? I wonder, a hopeless tempted to suggest, eavesdropping on current debates around the spectacu- entomophobic myself, gazing at Panos Kokkinias’ monumental, handsomely larisation of mainstream art, that it is just scale that blesses such a banal topic framed still-life of an unfortunate but ever so photogenic dictyopterous. with the aura of the artwork. It is true that size does matter, in all sorts of ways Could it be the misplaced adrenaline thrill that is tied in with all phobias and and practices one could playfully argue, but most of us have realised at some traumatic memories and which the recent preoccupation of contemporary point in life that size cannot be a panacea. Kokkinias’ work has consistently artists with the repulsive and the abject often draws upon?1 Could it be the proved that the large format and the emphasis on the kind of saturating life- uncanniness of the trivial, or rather the defamiliarisation of the familiar for like detail that has been eloquently described as “data sublime”3 is a means some, which photographed and presented larger than life reveals another and not an end in itself, and thus it is the end, that is, the poetics of the sub- kind of Benjaminian “optical unconscious”?2 Or is it the sense that this cannot ject25 matter, that justifies the means in this case. simply be taken at face value, that there is some kind of metonymy, which Kokkinias has long been after the modernist-in-orientation obsession one has to unravel? with the medium’s “unique phenomena”,4 the fascination with the act of tak- If one were to resort to semiotics, then on the level of denotation the signi- ing rather than making photographs and its respective metaphysics. In his fier is both the index and the icon of a dead cockroach; that is, as straightfor- mise-en-scènes, the triviality of the event photographed and the (seeming) ward and tautological a message as in any photograph. Yet, the signified is, I instantaneity of the picture-making skilfully turn the image into an ordinary find, intriguingly multilayered. Given that cafard (masculine), the French word snap, the kind of photograph one would take (nowadays probably using their for cockroach, stands for melancholy and nostalgia (spleen or les idées noires mobile phone) to show their friends how exceptionally big insects were in more fittingly) and cafarde (feminine) means “telltale”, the image can become that wretched cottage they rented out for their Mediterranean Easter break. a symbol of psychological conundrums, and, on another level of signification, There is no evidence that this is not just a snap of an objet trouvé but a “hard- a firm statement about photography’s own ontology. Some (and I refer here won” image as one cannot possibly be aware of the fact that the artist kept to both good old-fashioned photo-phobic Philistines and hard-core photog- the arthropod’s cadaver in a carton cigarette case for an entire year before raphy devotees) may claim that the above reading is far-fetched and perhaps planting it in that dusty corner and meticulously turning it into an artfully art- unnecessarily cryptic, especially as the photographic message is more often less still-life. It is this very delicate balance between reality and artifice, event

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22 The Burden of Self-consciousness

and non-event, chance and performance, index and digital forgery that make to attack the ideological premises of realism.7 In this spirit, the constructed up the idiosyncratic verisimilitude that is the gist of Kokkinias’ work. But does imagery that developed out of the 1970s conceptualist tradition and the the epiphasis of fabrication or the knowledge of the craftsmanship involved poststructuralist theory saw photography as “para- rather than meta-lan- in the only too recent return to the real (or perhaps more accurately to “the guage” and attempted to deconstruct by reconstruction and allegory the em- realistic”) attribute a different kind of exhibition value to such pictures? As piricist attachment to the “translucent” signifier.8 Régis Durand wonders, “why bother to make unreal worlds rather than delve This assumption has been at the heart of Kokkinias’ photographic prac- into the infinite strangeness of the real? For the pleasure of invention and tice. Having briefly indulged in his early career into the fleetingness of street performance?”5 I would tend to think that there is more to it than phantasma- photography and the enticing force of serendipity, he has been, for the past goria. decade or so, painstakingly engineering the instantaneity of the seemingly unmediated document. As stated elsewhere, he immobilises “the ‘micro The directorial mode gestures’27 that are either unobserved or largely concealed (performed in pri- Working towards a definition of what he first termed“the directorial mode”, vacy) and which are subtly illustrative of the intricacies of social life, and this A.D. Coleman would maintain in the mid 1970s that the sectarian clash be- revelation of the unseen and the momentary as a prolonged instant provides tween the advocates of purist photography and those keen on experimenta- the drama in the picture”. 9 Yet, he uses these “slices of life” (what Jeff Wall has tion and fiction had been all along a philosophical rather than a stylistic issue; termed “near documentary” as the re-enacting of everyday happenings that one that was deeply rooted in the “presumption of [the] moral righteousness moves against a “sliding scale of plausibility and veracity”),10 not just to tell accrued to purism” and which treated “the external world as a given, to be a tale but also, and perhaps most importantly as far as I am concerned, to altered only through photographic means en route to the final image”and comment upon photography’s ontological integrity and self-consciousness. not as some kind of “raw material, to be itself manipulated as much as desired Juxtaposing the politics of form with the politics of subject matter, Kokkinias prior to the exposure of the negative”. 6 This old idealist notion of analogy and aims at moving the discussion beyond the retinal effect. As such, his im- truth as photography’s inherent essence was to be conclusively challenged ages are not digital trompes l’oeil of the so called “photography of invention” within the context of Conceptual art. By re-enacting and fabricating pseudo- genre, in which the emphasis on staging, seriality, collage and manipulation documents, photoconceptualists specifically targeted documentary, not so that was originally employed to disengage photography from its inherent much in order to comment upon its social function or use value but primarily instantaneity11 has culminated in a return to the valorisation of craftsmanship

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and spectacle; neither are they devised to tick the boxes of contemporary art majority specifically selected“non-places”in the dual sense that Marc Augé debates and other agendas per se. attributes to the term, that is, both non-relational, a-historical “spaces formed Far from being a kind of postmodern pastiche, Kokkinias’ references in relation to certain ends (transport, transit, commerce and leisure)” and an- stem from a pool of disparate, often contrasting iconographic and literal thropological spaces formulated by the relations that the individuals develop sources, lived experiences, covert phantasies and unspoken fears that centre with these places.12 The physical epitome of “supermodernity”, non-places upon diachronic universal values. From Surrealist imagery, post-war figura- disorientate the visitor/passenger/customer not just by the wealth of the tive painting and photo-conceptualism to film noir, popular narrative cinema, typecast visual stimuli on offer but mainly by the very experience of an a-tem- and the tediousness of the everyday, the plurality and cross-fertilisation of poral space in which the sense of self and individual identity are invalidated. pictorial quotations that inform his images become pointedly prevalent in his In Kokkinias’ silent pauses, the “passive joys of identity loss”13 take on a sinister latest work entitled Visitors (2006-2007), which is currently on show at Xippas existential significance. Gallery in Athens. 29 Like Beckett’s dramaturgy, Kokkinias allegorical narrative combines the physical and the spiritual, the burlesque and the serious, the logical and the Non lieux and the fluid time of narration irrational, the everyday and the strange, all framed within some kind of relent- Revolving time and again around the recurrent motifs of the presence/ab- less stasis, as if it were a mode of being. The middle-aged goal-keeper waiting sence, weightlessness, anguish, and absurdity of existence, the series seem to in vain as it seems in an empty field and the scantily dressed, young woman take up the story that his self-portraits introduced some ten years ago. In that loitering in a dark corner of an underpass are emblematic of this stance. De- series, a clin d’oeil to Bruce Nauman’s performative self-portraits, Kokkinias spite appearing at first glance as generalised types that illustrate the human staged himself in the claustrophobic scenery of urban living, which he treated condition, the protagonists retain their individuality; their facial features are as the space for the eruption of the intimate, the irrational, and the imaginary. specifically discernible in the large size prints and which are named after There was an unnerving sense of scopophilia in those series, as one was lured them. Thus the man with the bewildered look on his face and the “visitor” to peep through a dense frame of references at the protagonist lost in him- label clumsily stuck on his jacket will always be Leonidas, as the Vermeerian self and his own little, ritualistic deeds. Similarly in the present series, we are elderly figure holding baby will be Theoni. invited to gaze at individuals looking lost in alienated(ing) public spaces and Time, real and photographed, expanded or compressed, is again the cru- witness what it is to be in a state of unknowingness. The spaces are in their cial determinant here. It may be that Kokkinias is inspired by Beckett’s cycli-

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30 The Burden of Self-consciousness

cal narrative but he invests the latter’s a-historical sense of “universal present 1 Hal Foster, “Traumatic Realism” in The Return of the Real: The Avant-garde at the End of the time”14 with a touch of historical specificity as all the locations selected do Century (Cambridge/Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 130-6. mark, even if subtly, specific moments and themes in modern Greek history 2 Walter Benjamin, “Small History of Photography” (1931) in One Way Street and Other Writ- and contemporary society. Equally, the fluid, multilayered time of narration, ings, trans. Edmund Jephcott & Kingsley Shorter (London/New York: Verso, 1979), pp. 240-57. both within individual images and in the series as a whole, moves beyond the 3 The term belongs to Julian Stallabrass, “What’s in a Face? Blankness and Significance in confines of the different chronological times at play and the narrative linearity Contemporary Art Photography”, lecture, University of Newcastle, 02/05/2006. of the event, occurring or reconstructed. Kokkinias uses the mutability of the 4 John Szarkowski, The Photographer’s Eye (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966), un- digital image to facilitate the passage from one reality to the other and show paginated. that the real has become elastic in physical and conceptual terms. 5 Régis Durand text for the exhibition Vraisemblances, Xippas Gallery, Paris, 2007, http:// www.xippas.com/en/exhibitions/exhibitions/detail_103, 12/06/2007. 31 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-tell- ing 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.

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32 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 Pictures of the 1980s, exhibition catalogue (Washington D.C.: National Museum of Ameri- can Art, 1989), pp. 9-27. 12 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 33 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.

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 Interview Jimmy Durham

34 Western hierarchies Cherokee roots andthe abouthis Durham discusses withJimmie Stella Sevastopoulou course, amore exploring formal andconceptual terrain. α. I hrfr,cudsmoeg ute ihteeboz ok,adfidsome therefore, with thesebronze works, could someonegofurther andfind the pasthave beenabandonedjustlikethat, withonemove to Europe. Iask ever whocannotbelieve thisisonejournalist that allthe ‘American stories’ of ento eodmsey,epan h ritt e(h orait.How journalist). (the me to artist the explains mystery”, beyond definition that theyarefact bronzes likeanti-bronzes whichact and have noobvious pleasedwiththesenewpieces formonument Iamvery project. thesimple architecture. ofmyThese newworks ongoinganti-architecture, are part anti- European discourse soIbegan,in’94,to address thestrange phenomenonof tales ofexotic, faraway sorrows. Europe In Iwant to jointhecontemporary Europe in1994.Moving to Europe, IdidnotwantEuropeans to entertain with head withhisnewsetofbronze works. theUSin1987andmoved“I left to how thewest was traditions won, ontheir western now turns Durham art ever having myth isequallyintriguing:after theAmerican deconstructed of in ‘bronze’? referred to itinthepast,whichhasdestroyed somany Indians, disguised here like forms, could we bedealing withthe ‘American holocaust’ has asDurham thing sinister abouttheir ‘burnt’ appearance andtheirhybrid human/branch- the athens contemporary art review art contemporary athens the What hastriggered thischange, ishismove to Europe. The outcome how Durham keptonhisformalDurham andconceptual track however, withhisanswer of how thisartist’s once politicalcreative journey, hasnow changedits entitled work, ‘Form &Substance’, presents uswithjustthat, andalso inAthensIndian –buttheBatagianni Gallery’s show ofJimmieDurham’s that wet isnotoften getto seethework Cherokee ofacontemporary - - - porary Greek orEuropeanporary culture Cherokee andcontemporary culture.” (yet withoutdenying completely interpretation): anotherdarker that caseit’s onlybecauseIwanted to makenoseparation between contem that refers to Cherokee culture Star)andin (theoneabouttheRattlesnake science, inwhichIamgreatly interested. onlyonepiece Actually hasatitle about until ithappens. Igave mostofthesepieces namesfrom contemporary things, intheprocess“Often thingshappenthat onedoesn’t ofmaking know by itandyetsurprised pleased” andadds some mystery: explainsDurham, wooden sothat modelsonedidnotseethat Imyself sinister aspect, was quite completely rightthat there issomethingsinister aboutthesepieces. the In pedestals, theyhave notop norbottom, norrightway to be. Ithinkyou are to thetradition ofbronze sculpture. pieces donotstandup, My theyhave no bronze Ilikedmaking sculptureBerlin…But that hasnoobvious relationship how muchImightdo notknow continue withbronzes, because Ihave left see, theoriginal sculpture modelsfor thebronzes were madeofwood. Ireally 35still could notimagine to work inclay orplaster andasyou might beableto andgotinterested inBerlin the famousoldcastingfoundry intheprocess. I because there was abundant wood, Noackwhohas butthenImetHermann there. Ididmuchwork inwood aswell asmy more usualstone works, simply use). This was aclassicstudiointheEuropean senseandIhadagreat energy Vostell, whowas ableto thestudiosothat purify itwas excellent for meto me andHitler’s there was onlyoneothertenant, artist theFluxus artist Wolf by Adolph for theyear Hitler hisfavorite Iwas1940(between born, artist years that was IhadastudioinBerlin theGruenwald Forest andwas built Jimmy Durham ISSUE Interview “For four 13 • • 13 MAY-JUNE 2007 - Interview Jimmy Durham BATAYIANNI GALLERY : COURTESY © Jimmie Durham, Form and Content, Installation view, 2007

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 α. de Marseille), and hismanyde Marseille), (e.g. writings ‘Cowboys and…’, ofthe Myth ‘The of hiswork have beenshown inEurope (e.g. at theMuseed’Art Contemporain the Whitney Biennialandthe Venice Biennaleamongothers. Retrospectives inBrussels,such asthePalais London, ICA Kassel’s Arts desBeaux Documenta, in terms ofexhibitions, hiswork institutions hasbeen shown inprestigious art of allthis, andbecameDirector ofthe Foundation for theCommunity ofArt Treaty Council anditsrepresentative at theUnited Nations, helater opted out andthroughactivities, hiswritings. From Director oftheInternationalIndian aswell practice ashissocial – somethingwhichhedidthrough hisvisualarts in theseventies Movement ready Indian to with the American getactive degree at Geneva’s gaininganart sixties, schoolandreturning to America art inthe withperformances chapter in hislife, one, starting cametheartistic also went to Vietnam, where hefelt hisjobwas thewar”.“to start After this he hadeven “got stupidandjoinedtheNavy”, later builtatomic bombs, and InAmerica), that publishedinArt in 1993hetold R.Lippard Lucy (inanarticle didn’t in1940,Durham city from thebeginning. setoutto be anartist Back colonizers rather thanas ‘discoverers’ intheUSA’s Born ofAmerica. Arkansas – thatto theUSAtried turn ‘invisible’, inorder to negate theirown role as whole uglyissueoftheuprooted, andculturally displaced Indians American kee roots, andaestheticallyshapedwithapoliticaledgeaimedto exposethe Anthology of20 Anthology and thento Europe in1994.Durham’s poemshave beenpublishedinHarper’s ists inNew York (1981-3).Arestless hemoved City spirit, to Mexicoin1987, the athens contemporary art review art contemporary athens the For many years, JimmieDurham’s tiedto hisChero work was inextricably th Century Native American Century amongothereditions, Poetry while - - – eg the smashing of an expensive sports carwitharock infront– egthesmashingofanexpensive sports oftheSyd and power amongothercreative wasperformances vented mediums viaart to reveal America’s ‘colonization process’. withRichardHill,entitled co-curated Durham American West’,‘The alsoaimed society.derness, theshow butaboutcolonizingSimilarly that apre-existing story ofhow thewest wasstory won: itwasn’t acaseoftaminganunpopulated wil United States’, have Artists’) ‘Eating Indian continuously told thealternative ney Opera House, at the14 always beappropriate even thoughcommitment must always beappropri and therefore: mustbepolitical. Political activities intellectual cannot activism that orcomposing“art music activity, isanintellectual poetry justlikewriting asitallstillseemsa bittoo often close”,very heexplains, buthestillbelieves touchy for subject him. “Times change. Idon’t liketo talkaboutthisperiod his ‘American’ concerns. himaway taking direction, from inthat artistic piping), pointindustrial further power’, withmud-moulded headandbodymadeof themassive snake-form povera, trends ofarte andsomeofhisassemblages(suchas pean artistic ‘Will/ rocks. These ‘poor materials’ andnatural elements alsotieinwiththeEuro culturewith hisIndian -suchasskulls, turquoise, wood, totems, feathers and creative process, combining withsomenatural itoften ingredients associated with rocks.a fridge Obviously role humourhasplayed inhis animportant and Car’, 2004).Hehasalsosmashedanairplane, amirror, andeven abicycle The Movement reason Indian theAmerican isstilla why left Durham 37Durham’s ‘anger’ orwestern with American concepts ofprogress, hierarchy th BiennaleofSydney (entitled ‘Still life withStone Jimmy Durham ISSUE Interview 13 • • 13 MAY-JUNE - - - 2007 - Interview Jimmy Durham BATAYIANNI GALLERY : COURTESY © Jimmie Durham, Form and Content, Installation view, 2007

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 α. n h oa r tl gtn o hi oiia n oileitne efeels He existence. social and political their for and whotoday are stillfighting theoriginal Americans, whowereIndian, oftheirrights, stripped theirland, keeping hiseye onthesituation ofwhat hehasreferred to asthe ‘invisible’ has separated thissocialmessagefrom heisstill extent, hiswork to acertain world today isguided by thecolonial powers oftheNew World.” Althoughhe world, howrary canwe thensay that we live world? Our inapost-colonial and it is the discovery ofthesetwo continentsand itisthediscovery that makeupourcontempo dotheindigenouspeopleshaveno singlecountry theirnatural human rights “When there are where America) two entire andSouth in continents (North ofourpresent globalsituation. Heexplains: muchpart of thepast,butvery in thepast ‘American Holocaust’, claimingthat ‘colonialism’ isnotathing good studio!” claim Once ate.” story. However, ofhiswork thenewjourney tells adifferent still notlegallyrecognized ashumanbeings. to work Buthow ina marvelous a boycott oftheSanPaulo peoplesare BiennalebecauseinBrazil Indigenous have amilitant show abouttheAmerican co-curated West to andtried begin and makework withonlymy own soulasthereason.pastfew In years I shows andthrough otheractivities: “I cannotgoto thestudioinmorning social andpoliticalselfisstillactive, butnow more by theprocess ofcurating studio inParis, feeling that thisisa “great ‘European’ privilege” Calder’s for him.His Alexander at himself the bronzes were created, andnow hefinds much ofhiscreative where instudiossuchastheoneBerlin, timeworking ing that hewas a ‘social artist’ henow hasdedicated andnotastudioartist, the athens contemporary art review art contemporary athens the Durham isstill concernedDurham aboutthewholeissueofwhat hehastermed -

- political message, escapinginstead to theformal andconceptual paths ofEu Mexico for for newdirections oftheAmericas.” Indians president Ivo Morales. ofBolivia, Ilookmuchnow andto toAmerica South that there hasbeenprogress: encouraged that“I amvery there isanIndian more sinister thanbefore, butalsomore ‘civilised’ let’s say, now versed in ‘Eu rope, orshouldwe read between thelines?Maybe themessageisstillthere, Jimmy Durham 210 3221675,www.batagiannigallery.gr) from the9 much likeburntbodies? What all, winsafter theform orthesubstance? a studioassociated withHitler? Why blackenthebronze? Why dotheylookso ropean diplomacy’…a strong anddeadlyundercurrent. After all, why choose 39 Are weAnd asfor to hisart? believe thatofitssocial/ ithasbeenstripped ’ s exhibitionispresented (20-22 Agion at Batagianni Anargiron gallery str., tel.: th of April until ofApril the6 Jimmy Durham th ofSeptember2007. ISSUE Interview 13 • • 13 MAY-JUNE 2007 - - This is (not) a performance (or is it?) Α Few Trustworthy Stillsfrom Men, theperformance

, 2007 30 Elpida Kara institutionalization, claims corporate re- structure a languagegameof Vana Kostayola Kostis Stafylakis mp a putup and This is (not) a performance (or is it?)

The CranioSacral Therapy and results of, each therapy as they examined visitors using a range of para- medical methods. In another room illuminated by green fluorescent lights, a Just a few days before the “A few trustworthy men” exhibition, an annoying therapist placed stones on recumbent visitors (stone and light therapy). The email began to appear, addressed to the human resources departments of visitors, some dressed in overalls, were positioned to face a screen onto which large companies active in the Greek construction, services, pharmaceuti- the principles of management, network building and Jungian-influenced psy- cals, market research, telecommunications and new technology markets. chology were projected. The email contained an advertising photograph and a text inviting human The artists shaped a context based mainly on elements of reality. The art- resources managers to attend an event to be staged by the Rebirth Therapy ists drew on New Age practices which are very popular in North America and, Group at the a.antonopoulou.art gallery in Athens with a view to presenting in some cases—Craniosacral Therapy, for instance—in Greece. The therapies the Greek business community with its full range of therapy services. Accord- promise improved productivity in the workplace. A brochure explained the ing to the email, visitors of the exhibition would be able to meet the group’s therapeutic41 services on offer, while placards on the walls described the appli- therapists and familiarize themselves with a long list of therapies which could cation of therapies in different networks. 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, The need to organize a structure Tachyon Healing, Sound Therapy, Walk Therapy, Music Therapy, Autogenic Train- ing, Biofeedback, Creative Visualization and Angelic Reiki, Rebirth Therapy, Crani- To begin with, the question or statement “This is (not) a performance (or is osacral Therapy and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. it?)” begs a discussion on the practices adopted by Kostis Stafylakis and Vana At the exhibition, the visitor could watch a video in which the RTG thera- Kostayola, and how these practices are linked inter alia to work of NSK, the pists explained “the secrets of CranioSacral therapy”. A lawyer explained Atelier Van Lieshout and the Critical Art Ensemble. Practices of this sort have therapy had helped her deal with the career/motherhood dilemma by allow- proliferated to the extent that we now speak of a virtual genre or category ing her to experience pregnancy without bearing a child. Visitors were also with specific characteristics, strategies and mechanisms; a category which given assistance in filling out questionnaire which then served as referrals for has emerged from the broadening of the scope of traditional performance one of the treatments on offer. The therapists then explained the stages in, through the complexity of the elements of which it is composed. The most

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42 This is (not) a performance (or is it?)

important elements in this more complex and sophisticated practice relates production of the conflict’which some theorists consider the militant version to the fundamental collaboration of “non-artistic” actors (actual doctors, for of relational aesthetics, is simply inadequate. example, psychologists or company executives), painstaking research into the Stafylakis and Kostagiola’s practice would seem to hinge on a mechanism: symbolic structures reproduced by these actions, and the re-composition of re-institutionalization. The virtual/fake strands of genuine research conducted elements of reality rather than an entirely fictional narrative. into corporate language seek to initiate a dialogue with an alienating environ- It is an exhausting undertaking, and one that reproduces the need, the ment through an aggressive/all-out assault on the banal mainstream rather challenge to organize a structure far more than the structure itself does: than through an antagonistic deconstruction. The ideas that take shape research, public relations, publicity, communicational virtues, information/ consist of tensions, clashes, disagreements and discord which serve to reveal knowledge, self theorizing texts explaining the substance of an ‘ideology’, the paradoxes of the very structures being (re)produced. These paradoxes personnel organization etc. are recorded in the identity of the subjects who decide to play the game of The practice adopted by Vana Kostayola and Kostis Stafylakis is provoca- language43 set up by the artists. The artists invoke the concept of “identity cor- tive, though it is not purely denunciatory; it de- and re-constructs to reveal rection” as this has been used by The Yes Men, explaining that “identity cor- profound contradictions which it expounds in a forensic way. In some of their rection is a slightly ironic concept and means that the subjects taking part in collaborations, including A Few Trustworthy Men, the focus is not on areas of the game reveal equivalences between their own desires and the desires that the social in which the aggressive form of identities is high. Here, in contrast, govern the proffered discourse: the desire for greater productivity, the desire the jargon of corporatism, theories of management and team building is for better control of group results, for putting free time to better use and so smoothly co-articulated with the New Age discourse and generalized world- on. Above all, identity correction means processing our own identities. This views on energy, energy flow, spiritual systems and models which contrast is what it has in common with analytical discourse”. Meaning that the struc- with the more militant, pin-pointed practices used in other projects like the tures are presented larger than life and transposed in order to ‘reveal’ their AKKK (Kalamaria Community Autonomist Movement), which focused on is- repressed/contradictory elements (for example, the illogical link traced be- sues of national and religious identity1. tween the experience of motherhood and a democratic style of leadership). In both artists’ case, just as the over-used term “relational aesthetic” is And it is on this self-same lack of logic—an illogic which contains within it the insufficient to explain a host of practices which are the prerequisites for the process of simultaneous overidentification and disidentification and which formation of a relationship between the participants, a ‘pure agonism’ or ‘re- relies on the creation of distance/repulsion through the sudden, overwhelm-

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 Α Few Trustworthy Stillsfrom Men, theperformance , 2007

44 This is (not) a performance (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 mécon- Α Few Trustworthy Men, Stills from the performance, 2007 naissance? 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

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 Α Few Trustworthy Stillsfrom Men, theperformance , 2007

46 This is (not) a performance (or is it?)

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 47 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 be- littling, 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 psycholo- gist/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 Aristo- 1 See, for instance, abortions and the Ateilier Van Lieshout, eugenics and the Critical Art fanous 20, Psyri, May 25-June 23, was based on a discussion between Elpida Karaba, Vana Kosta- Ensemble, Nazism and Leibach. giola and Kostis Stafylakis.

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 About the ironic enticement and the antinomies of decentralization writes Despoina Sevasti on the occasion of the exhibition Damien Hirst The Damien Hirst The Formula

ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 The Damien Hirst Formula

hile this article was being written, Damien Hirst’s exhibition our desire to show our work at this moment outside of it”. So, two kids posed on Beyond Belief opened at the Whitecube gallery in London, causing the orange-coloured invitation in front of a car, with the typical ‘70s haircut, new scandalous tremors with his work For the Love of God, a T-shirt and expression, a familiar scene from the family album. platinum skull covered with diamonds, possibly the most costly Searching Faliro’s regular, orthogonal streets for the small block with an pieceW of contemporary art. Both the object itself, described by Rudi Fuchs estate agent’s on the ground floor and a foreign language school on the first, as “otherworldly” and the shockwaves it has caused in the public debate I thought the short journey away from the ‘art-loving’ centre was perhaps al- about art have brought about an unprecedented, for this country, epopee of ready something of a relief. The exhibition had been set up in the abandoned reconstruction and politics. floor of a building, once used as a tutorial school, which had not received any At the same time an independent exhibition by Karantinopoulos, Kassapis, “myth-making” interventions in order to accept the artistic load – unless one Roussakis and Tzavellas entitled Damien Hirst was taking place at Palio Faliro. considers the denial of intervention as an equally drastic gesture. Each work From the beginning, even before I even visited it, this exhibition had some- dominated49 a room of its own and only in the central area Giannis Tzavellas’ thing which was excessively familiar, and something which made the familiar wall-hung work co-existed with the participating artists’ collective effort, a awkward; or rather something which made the familiar unfamiliar – a con- makeshift view master in which they posed as pop stars in Thesion. This contradictory form shaken by romantic hints regarding self-determination and fined arrangement seemed at first contradictory to the broader nature of the other demons. Firstly, the brief press release “The reason for this exhibition does press release and most independent exhibitions in undefined spaces. One not exist…” I liked this sentence because it had a distinctive poetic rhythm, a could, however, view it as the need by four artists, who share some common definite momentum which seemed to be almost planning nervously in the ground, to exhibit their work with their own terms and to bypass the forma- space between us a situation so tangible; it was planning a reason, a true tion of a shared concept to label the space which defines them both literarily need – the need for release from what is defined in the press release as“cura- and metaphorically. torial myth-making”, at least as far as established galleries are concerned. This In one room Andreas Kasapis’ figure looked out over the blocks of flats gesture was realized bathed in the brilliance of a member of the former YBA’s, unfolding through the window which run around all the rooms. Surrounded whose celebrity and importance had long surpassed the boundaries of the by sharp black triangles in an attempt to present a unified vocalization of the banal. As Dimitris Karantinopoulos mentioned “… we just pulled out the most space, it had a half-bothered, half-funny expression as two diverging threads brilliant diamond of the art system to name a DIY exhibition which occurred from beginning at its forehead, ended up on the window opposite. This unfolding

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 The Damien Hirst Formula

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 engulf- ing 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 50 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 par- Dimitris Karantinopoulos’ work ticular 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.

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 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 faction- alism, 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 Kostas Roussakis’ work 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

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 Andreas Kassapis’ work

44 The Damien Hirst Formula

of this. These reoccurring contradictions extensively discussed lately… The thing this particular exhibition attempted and was successful in doing. important thing is that it brings to the fore the need for artistic activity and Exiting the building it was already dark; on the third floor balcony shone the active placement of artists themselves in order to overcome the satiation Roussakis’ sign AMIEN HIRS, made out of the same mat cardboard as the stair- of the trivia surrounding the contemporary Greek (art) scene. case, on the underneath balcony a line of Christmas lights and further down Artist which could be considered the promising future of the ‘contempo- the standard neon sign of the language school on the floor where it actually rary Greek scene’ , organized an exhibition which allowed them to function now functions. Contemporary Greek reality in a typical snapshot pierced by a according to their own rules using Damien Hirst’s name as a wonderful, ironic shattered new title… 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? 53 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 The exhibition Damien Hirst was held at an independent space located at Palio Faliro, Athens, (44 language, which seems to be the only remaining articulated refuge? Perhaps Proteos str., contact: [email protected]) from the 4th of May until the 4th of a new strategy of escape-antidote is not to take ourselves too seriously some- June 2007.

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 For the installation by Nikos Papadimitriou at AD Gallery and his esprit de competition writes Giota Konstandatou AD GALLERY : COURTESY The spirit The of the game ©

Νikos Papadimitriou, Gallery Trophy, Installation view, 2007 ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 The spirit of the game

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 spectatorΤ 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 jux- taposed a wild boar hunting scene in “Hunt”, a rendition after 1835 Rubens’ AD GALLERY 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 COURTESY © freedom make it a suitable medium for following traces which remain faint Νikos Papadimitriou, Gallery Trophy, Installation view, 2007 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

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 The spirit of the game AD GALLERY : COURTESY © Νikos Papadimitriou, Gallery Trophy, Installation view, 2007

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 The spirit of the game

development of the final work, as it is a suitable medium for the controlled a sphere with predetermined functions. The work and the honours promised reduction and the construction of a concept in its completed form. Moreover, are reduced to a rather cheap award, also implying, according to barbaric cus- an indication of intensive preliminary study of the work, of mental analysis of toms, the disgrace of stripping the defeated opponent off his weapons and the model in order to reconstruct and set it up in space. Most of Papadimitri- the monumental installation of the work as a testimony reminding us of the ou’s work inspires the feeling of a research concerning space, its various as- victory (the term “Trophy Art” has emerged in recent years, denoting particu- pects and conceptual limits, the energies with which it is imbued, and in this larly expensive art, acquired as a status symbol by extremely wealthy people). respect, “Gallery Trophy” is one of his most accomplished works. Now, there are many ways in which to contribute to the greater discus- The artist has stated it “is a comment on competition in art”. For his ob- sion about the beastly art market, the tricks, the networks and the immoral jective, he chose the poetic transposition of a sports ground—of tennis, a behaviour therein. The cheap old favourite of nagging, even when expressed predominantly individual sport, of a high social and economic status, played in technically impeccable terms, the sly way of self-determination and con- in an organized grid—into the space of the gallery, which is thus revealed in vergence57 with the market, and the good manner of producing a work that its most cynical, contemporary function as a place for business, in which the does not take an assertive stance but is rather a poetic utterance, capturing battle for predominance rages, the game of publicity is played out, values rise the spirit of the times by articulating truths on everyone’s account, without and fall, winners are declared, and prizes are awarded. betraying the totality of the work for the benefit of the intentions. In his in- Built on the archetypal axis sports-art-hunting, the conceptual field in stallation “Gallery Trophy”, Nikos Papadimitriou demonstrated a true esprit de which Papadimitriou plays is cohesive, suggestive, and covertly transgres- compétition—in other words, he went onto court and played in the spirit of sive. The artist is depicted at the same time as a noble sportsman (the sug- sports. gestive 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 pub- Nikos Papadimitriou’s exhibition was held at the Alphadelta [AD] gallery (3, Pallados str., lic game organized by advertising and the media, the art sector is restricted to tel.: 210 3228785, www.adgallery.gr) from the 2nd of May until the 19th of May 2007.

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 Dimitra Sakkatou presents the program of contemporary art taught at public schools organized by Locus Athens 68 Book review

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 Book review

hile in highschool, art workshops which exemplify the accordance with her work on the Ro- of interior and open air photos. classes were viewed as a process through which the book manian Vlachs, who live as nomads At the end of each section the chance to lay back and came into being. in Avliza, in the outskirts of Athens, theme of the workshops is further relax- it’s ok, you do not In the pages of the book, one she asked the students to construct enhanced by proposing practical, haveW to pretend you are not bored of sees Nikos Alexiou and the pupils of a city made of garbage. Alexandros Do-It-Yourself ways to be creative in school, the teacher does not pretend the Hill school tracing on rice paper Psychoulis played with another the direction of the workshop pre- to be excited either (at least in the the mural of the Ivirou Monastery of young group of students the game senting ideas such as to continue the schools I’ve gone to, the average, Mount Athos. Kostas Bassanos and of taking creativity in one’s own pattern of a labyrinth with a pen in state highschool) and the bonus is: his highschool students exploring hands. The children created their the pages of the book. Maybe one you even get a good grade. the notion of abstraction, as op- own fairy tale of a dog looking for can then get a taste of the medita- Well then, I was a bit jealous of posed to representational forms, his 59 awry home illustrated by images tive feeling that Alexiou’s patterns the children who participated in the by creating abstract structures us- that they chose together from the exude. Another proposal is to write series of workshops organized by ing souvlaki sticks. Nikos Markou artist’s computer. notes with personal feelings and Locus Athens. Firstly, they organized introduced his students to the basic For those who hold the book and desires and hang them on the wall art workshops lead by five distin- workings of a manual camera be- have not participated in the work- “or on the balcony so that the whole guished artists in five schools around fore they went on shooting photos shops, it transfers the atmosphere neighborhood can see”. Athens. Secondly, they put together of their school. Seeing their photos and the spirit of the work. The text Therefore the book stimulates the artists’ and children’s work in a of details of their familiar environ- by Alkisti Chalkia is playful, engaging readers to become communicative book entitled “A Super Book of Con- ment, it is evident that drabness was and connecting the artists’ work with and relate with their environment in temporary Greek Art” (Kalidoskopio lifted somehow. They managed to that of the children. It also makes the a creative and personal way, even af- publications) unveil the extraordinary out of the concepts behind the work clear. For ter they have closed the book. Hence ordinary and reveal some beauty. example, Bassano’s text section elo- they might be tempted to reach out However, it would be impossible Maria Papadimitriou’s work was also quently presents the notions of inner and express themselves by putting to talk about the book, and not the concerned with cast away beauty. In and outer space paired with photos notes everywhere, or by offering a T-

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 Book review

shirt to a Romanian Vlach as Maria’s tip toe often between angry univer- work inspires. sity students shouting their mottos Her work turns the attention to the armed police oﬃcers across. towards the alternative culture of Amid this aggression, one cannot the nomad. Looking at the photos but think that the link with the an- of a balcony full of colorful hanging cient Greek notion of an individual blankets, I couldn’t help but wonder being able to communicate and co- about the student’s reaction to the operate in our polis is severed. exposure of this social group the way suggested by Maria. Does our tolerance expand as our aesthetics 60 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 re- lated 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

α. the athens contemporary art review ISSUE 13 • MAY-JUNE 2007 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