Exercise in Cultural Citizenship Between Individual and Collective

~ Center for Interdisciplinary Studies ~

and

~ Institut de la Communication ~

UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy and Management

Master thesis:

Exercise in Cultural Citizenship between Individual and Collective

by: THEODORA MATZIROPOULOU

Supervisor: SILVIJA JESTROVIC, PhD

Belgrade, October 2013

Contents

Résumé ...... 7

Introduction ...... 14 Hypothesis and methodology of research ...... 17 Conceptual Framework ...... 18

The Case Study of Costakis Collection ...... 20 When blinds open and light enters the room: Costakis Collection of Russian avant-garde ...... 20 The closed book of Russian avant-garde ...... 23 Collecting the Avant-Garde: a personal excavation ...... 25 The apartment on Vernadskii avenue: a worksite for democracy ...... 28 Thaw and the bulldozers – the clashing stones of ‘60s and ‘70s ...... 30 Clouds begin to appear: negotiating an exodus ...... 33 A travelogue of a collection ...... 34

The Case Study of ‘Our Great Circus’ ...... 38 Joining our Great Circus ...... 38 Symplegades, dragons and the mythical monsters of censorship ...... 39 “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Great Circus called Greece” ...... 40 Theater as a political rally ...... 48

Conclusion ...... 55

Bibliography ...... 57

Appendix ...... 61

2 Acknowledgements

Thank you. To my mentor Dr. Silvija Jestrovic, whose lectures inspired me and helped me conceptualize this thesis. Her generous help and guidance have been important. To my always ‘teacher’ Dr. Dr. Efi Voutira. I owe her a great depth of intellectual gratitude. To Evelina Kotridou for guiding me, providing me with sources and advising me in such an inspiring way. To Maria Tsantsanoglou for her suggestions and for opening the ‘blinds’ were closed years ago.

To my parents, for making my studies happen all these years. Their support is priceless. To my sister, who is always there. A funny, creative tornado. To Dimitris for his unending support and unconditional love.

3 Abstract

This thesis focuses on cultural acts that could be read as exercises in cultural citizenship. The aim is to examine, through two main case studies, cultural acts as expressions of political resistance. The two case studies: “Our Great Circus” and “Costakis collection” are situated in different spatial, social and political contexts. Nevertheless, both of them are events of great importance for different reasons, which will be analyzed in the paper. The main common ground is that both of these cultural acts become dissenting acts and cultural citizenship becomes what Holloway Sparks has called “dissident citizenship” exercised by citizens that lack democratic participation but want to claim it (Sparks, 1997:74).

While it is crucial to acknowledge the civil, political and social rights as promised by the attainment of citizenship, Marilyn Friedman has argued that citizenship is more variegated and multiple: “It can be an identity; a set of rights, privileges, and duties; an elevated and exclusionary political status; a relationship between individuals and their states; a set of practices that can unify – or divide – the members of a political community; and an ideal of political agency” (2005:3). Indeed this is the topic examined in this thesis: a relationship between individuals and their states and how a set of practices (in this case cultural acts) function as a political agency on individual and collective level.

This year State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki celebrates the 100th anniversary after the birth of the collector. During the exhibition “The Costakis Collection and the Russian Avant Garde. 100 years after collector’s birth”, there will be a special tribute to the collector. The author finds the conjuncture ideal to question collector’s motivation and examine this motivation as a cultural act had been done under the prism of expression of cultural citizenship.

4 rediscovered and collected Russian Avant-Garde, which was lost since Socialist Realism became the official state policy after 1932. 1275 pieces of his collection belong to State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki. This example questions an art collection as an individual exercise of cultural citizenship and if this practice of collecting works of art was a conscious or unconscious exercise of cultural citizenship.

Extremely interesting is the case of the theater play “Our Great Circus” as well. This case study touches the collective exercise of cultural citizenship through a theater play took place during turbulent times in Greece. “Our Great Circus” is a legendary theater play written by Iakovos Kambanellis and introduced to the public in Athens back in 1973, during Dictatorship time in Greece. In 1973 Tzeni Karezi (the main actress) asks Iakovos Kambanellis, whose plays have been performed by ‘Karezi- Kazakou’ troupe, to write a play with a partisan message. The texts, however, had to go through the censorship committee. In order to pass the censorship, the play was presented as a historical comedy. It was delivered to the competent committee partially, unordered and enriched with episodes, which were not intended to be played but to provoke the censors and act as "lightning rods" (Kambanellis, 2012: 20; 2010:14) for the rest of the oeuvre. “Our Great Circus” is an allegorical play narrates the history and suffering of the Greek state from the arrival of King Otto in 1833 until the Nazi Occupation of the country. Considering these seven years of Dictatorship in Greece as a very important part of country’s modern history it is clear that such an important cultural act should be questioned and investigated more as an expression of cultural citizenship transformed into “dissident citizenship” (Sparks, 1997:74).

This thesis is based on several resources: • Existing theories of citizenship are used to examine different models of citizenship practices • Existing theories of cultural citizenship are used to analyze the link and differences between citizenship and cultural citizenship • Existing research has been done on the two case studies, which is analyzed in this paper • New qualitative research that was conducted for the purpose of this thesis:

5 interviews with experts, analysis of previous interviews already exist, visits in audience and artists that are connected with the two selected case studies

The main hypothesis of this thesis is the following: ‘Cultural acts are exercises in citizenship’. As specific hypothesis have been: 1. Art collection can be an expression of cultural citizenship on an individual level. 2. Festivalization of a cultural act can be an expression of collective citizenship.

Costakis started collecting works of art of the lost Russian Avant-Garde. He searched and found objects lost in attics and basements basically in Moscow but also in Leningrad. He literally rediscovered and collected Russian Avant-Garde, which was lost since Socialist Realism became the official state policy after 1932. Costakis came against great obstacles in his attempts to gather information and collect the works. Nevertheless, he found his way to access this forbidden and forgotten art and to remove “the thick layer of oblivion under which the Russian avant-garde was buried” (When Chagall cost less than a sack of potatoes, 1997). He himself believed that the failure to appreciate the value of the avant-garde artists was a tragic mistake; he was conviced that “ one day people will need and learn to value this art”. As Margitte Rowell, the curator of Guggenheim Museum put it, “when we first saw the collection, we understood that the history of art of the 20th century should be rewritten”.

More than 400 000 viewers attended the performances of “Our Great Circus”. Performances in ‘Atheneon’ theater have been declared as the “most massive political rally” until the events of the uprising of students in the Polytechnic faculty. Some testimonials of the audience show clearly the impact of the play on the repressed society. “When we want to feel human beings we come here”, claimed a couple when they were asked why they come to the theater again and again. An excellent example of how a cultural act itself or participation in it can be perceived as an exercise of repressed, who want to claim democratic participation is the following incident: a man approaches the box office and asks “Do people vote here? Then give me three good votes”, meaning he wanted to buy three tickets for the performance

6 Résumé

Introduction

C’est un fait, la notion de “citoyen” dans un monde en pleine globalisation a changé. Les flots migratoires, les allers-retours quotidiens, le métissage, les identités hybrides nous forcent à repenser la notion de citoyen. La question de la citoyenneté est large, et peut être abordée sous différents angles et perspectives d’approches : la sociologie, les sciences politiques, la philosophie, l’histoire, … (Meredyth D., Minson J., 2001).

T. H. Marshall identifie trois éléments constitutifs de la citoyenneté: les droits civiques, les droits politiques et les droits sociaux. Les droits civiques concernent la notion de liberté et comprennent les droits nécessaires à la liberté, tels que la liberté individuelle, la liberté d’expression et de pensée, le droit à la justice, à la propriété individuelle, ou les droits d’association. Les droits politiques réfèrent au droit de participer au pouvoir politique et aux processus décisionnels. Le processus de participation est à double face: il implique la participation comme électeur du corps politique mais également comme membre de ce même corps politique. Quant aux droits sociaux, ils assurent la sécurité et le bien-être économique, le droit de partager les héritages sociaux et le droit de vivre en adéquation avec les standards de la société (Marshall, 1950:10-11).

Un modèle démocratique idéal, qui inclurait la notion de citoyen, repose sur la répartition des pouvoirs entre l’Etat, le marché et les citoyens de la société civile. Somers insiste sur le fait qu’être citoyen c’est « le droit d’avoir des droits » (Somers, 2008 :5). Le premier droit d’appartenance à la politique est le droit à l’intégration sociale. Par intégration sociale, elle se réfère au « droit d’intégration par les autres, comme individus moraux égaux, traités par des standards et des valeurs équitables, et qui demandent le même niveau de respect et de dignité que tous les autres membres (Somers, 2008 :6). C’est ce droit d’intégration et d’appartenance à une communauté qui permet « la reconnaissance mutuelle de l’autre comme personne morale égale, digne de la même reconnaissance sociale et politique. » (Somers, 2008:6).

Différentes théories sur la citoyenneté mettent l’accent sur le fait qu’être citoyen est un processus à double sens qui implique aussi bien des droits que des devoirs (Yuval-Davis,

1997 :19). Par exemple, le vote est bien souvent perçu comme le droit primordial du citoyen.

7 Hua (2011) déclare : « Le citoyen culturel que j’imagine parle au-delà de la dualité traditionnelle entre droits et devoirs du citoyen, dictée par la législation de l’Etat-Nation. Il déploie les actes culturels et les performances comme un moyen de défier les exclusions socioculturelles dans l’Etat-Nation, dans le but de les inscrire dans la nation même. Je m'intéresse tout particulièrement à la manière dont la citoyenneté culturelle permet de mettre en scène les notions d'identité, d'appartenance ou de possession de biens (…) ».

Ce mémoire s’intéresse particulièrement aux actions culturelles qui peuvent être vues comme l’exercice de la citoyenneté culturelle. Le but est d’examiner, au travers de deux cas d’étude, les actes culturels comme expression d’une résistance politique. Ces deux cas d’études sont “Our Great Circus” et “Costakis collection”, qui se déroulent tous deux dans un contexte spatial, social et politique différent. Cependant, tous deux représentent des évènements d’importance capitale pour des raisons sensiblement différentes, ce qui sera analysé et expliqué à travers cette recherche. Tous deux se rejoignent cependant sur une base commune, en devenant des actes dissidents, contestataires, témoignant ainsi de ce que Holloway Sparks nomme une « citoyenneté dissidente », exercée par des citoyens en manque de participation démocratique mais qui veulent cependant la revendiquer (Sparks, 1997 :74).

Alors qu’il est crucial de reconnaitre les droits civils, politiques et sociaux garantis par l’acquisition de la citoyenneté, Marilyn Friedman soutient que cette notion de citoyenneté possède une dimension plus variée, des facettes multiples. « Cela peut être une identité ; un ensemble de droits, de privilèges et de devoirs ; un statut politique élevé, exclusif; une relation entre les individus et leur Etat, un ensemble de pratiques qui peuvent unifier ou diviser les membres d’une communauté politique ; et un idéal d’action politiques» (Friedman, 2005:3). Effectivement, il s’agit bien du sujet examiné dans ce mémoire : la relation entre des individus et leur Etat et la manière dont un ensemble de pratiques (dans notre cas un acte culturel) fonctionne comme une action politique au niveau individuel et collectif.

Ce mémoire s’appuie sur différentes ressources :

• Les théories sur la « citoyenneté » sont utilisées afin d’examiner les

différents modèles de pratiques de la citoyenneté.

• Les théories sur la « citoyenneté culturelle » permettent d’analyser les

liens et les différences entre citoyenneté et citoyenneté culturelle.

• L’analyse des recherches effectuées sur les deux études de cas.

8 • Une recherche qualitative réalisée pour les besoins de ce mémoire, par le biais d’entretiens avec des experts, d’analyses d’entretiens déjà existants, de visites et rencontres avec des artistes qui sont connectés avec les deux

exemples choisis.

Hypothèse et méthode de recherche :

L’hypothèse principale de ce mémoire stipule que ‘les actes culturels sont un exercice de la citoyenneté.’

Les hypothèses spécifiques sont :

1. Une collection d’art peut être l’expression d’une citoyenneté culturelle

au niveau individuel.

2. La festivalisation d’un acte culturel peut être l’expression d’une

citoyenneté collective.

Ce mémoire a pour projet de souligner les connexions qu’il existe entre actes culturels et expression de la citoyenneté. C’est pourquoi il est donc essentiel d’avoir une connaissance théorique de fond qui permette à l’auteur d’approfondir les concepts de citoyenneté en général et de citoyenneté culturelle en particulier. De ce fait, une période de lecture théorique fut essentielle pour gagner en connaissances, grâce aux écrits académiques existants. Une analyse théorique détaillée sur le concept de la citoyenneté culturelle fut ainsi menée.

La méthodologie est en adéquation avec les hypothèses de départ. Les différentes méthodes fournissent à l’auteur les donnés nécessaires à une analyse minutieuse pour apporter des réponses à ces hypothèses.

Une collection d’art peut être l’expression d’une citoyenneté culturelle au niveau individuel.

• Une analyse théorique fut réalisée. Pour collecter un maximum d’informations et de connaissances, une recherche théorique sur les travaux académiques portant sur la citoyenneté culturelle et les collections d’art fut

menée.

9 • L’étude de cas en rapport avec cette hypothèse est « Costakis Collection ». Les informations relatives à ce cas furent trouvées grâce aux archives et à la bibliothèque du Musée National d’Art Contemporain de Thessalonique. En parallèle, une visite de l’exposition en cours, qui porte sur

le collectionneur en personne, fut réalisée.

• Des entretiens avec les experts, qui ont été en contact direct avec le collectionneur pour la réalisation de l’exposition, furent effectués. La méthode dite d’effet boule de neige a permis de rencontrer différents experts du milieu. Les premiers experts contactés ont donc recommandé d’autres experts à

l’auteur.

Pour enquêter sur la seconde hypothèse, la festivalisation d’un acte culturel peut être l’expression d’une citoyenneté collective, l’auteur :

• A analysé une étude de cas : la pièce de théâtre « Our Great Circus ».

• A réalisé des entretiens directifs avec le public, principalement des personnes ayant assisté à la pièce en 1973/4. Le but de ces entretiens est de mieux comprendre le vécu de leur expérience. En effet, ils ont eu la chance de

pouvoir exprimer leur citoyenneté durant une période difficile.

• A essayé de rentrer en contact et d’effectuer un entretien avec l’acteur principal de la pièce pour aller plus loin dans la compréhension. L’auteur s’est intéressé principalement à comment la décision de jouer la pièce a été prise et au sentiment du besoin d’exercer ses droits de citoyen. Finalement, ce contact

n’a malheureusement pas pu être finalisé.

• A effectué une analyse théorique du texte original de la pièce «Our Great Circus» d’Iakovos Kambannelis dans le but d’avoir un contact direct avec le texte initial pour essayer de comprendre toutes les parties allégoriques, cachées. Ainsi, l’auteur a lu plusieurs éditions de la pièce et en a profité pour

en analyser les différentes introductions et annexes.

• A regardé les différents enregistrements de la pièce pour essayer de comprendre les choix dans l’adaptation du texte en pièce de théâtre, les choix de mise en scène, comment l’improvisation des dialogues fut menée et comment l’interaction dynamique avec le public et les réactions de l’audience

ont influencés toute la performance.

10 Cadre conceptuel

Le Musée National d’Art Contemporain de Thessalonique célèbre cette année le centième anniversaire de la naissance du collectionneur. Pendant l’exposition: «The Costakis Collection and the Russian Avant Garde. 100 years after collector’s birth». Un hommage est donc rendu au collectionneur. L’auteur trouve la conjonction idéale pour questionner les motivations premières du collectionneur. Elle examine sa motivation comme un acte culturel qui a été fait sous le prisme de l’expression de la citoyenneté culturelle.

Les collectionneurs d’art sont motivés par une variété de stimulants et de besoins qu’ils essaient de faire coïncider, le résultat étant l’engagement dans le processus de collection d’œuvres d’art. Costakis commença à collectionner des pièces d’art de l’Avant-Garde Russe. Il chercha et trouva des objets abandonnés ou perdus dans des greniers ou des caves à Moscou, mais aussi à Leningrad. Il retrouva et collecta l’Avant-Garde Russe, qui était perdu depuis l’époque du socialisme réalisme dû à la politique officielle de l’Etat après 1932. Mille deux cent soixante-cinq pièces de sa collection appartiennent ainsi au Musée d’Art Contemporain de Thessalonique. Cet exemple questionne le fait qu’une collection d’œuvres d’art peut être un acte citoyen culturel, et cette collection de pièces d’art fut de façon consciente ou inconsciente une manière pour le collectionneur d’exercer sa citoyenneté culturelle.

L’étude de cas de la pièce de théâtre « Our Great Circus » fut particulièrement intéressante. Cet exemple aborde un exercice collectif de citoyenneté culturelle à travers une pièce de théâtre qui se déroula durant une époque conflictuelle en Grèce. « Our Great Circus » est une pièce légendaire écrite par Iakovos Kambanellis, qui fut présentée au public athénien en 1973, sous la période de dictature en Grèce. En 1973, l’actrice principale, Tzeni Karezi, demanda à Iakovos Kambanellis qui avait l’habitude de travailler avec la compagnie “Karezi Kazakou”, d’écrire une pièce avec un message partisan. Les textes devaient cependant passer devant un comité de censure. Pour réussir cette étape, la pièce fut présentée comme une comédie historique. Le script fut donné incomplet au comité compétent, dans le désordre, et enrichie d’épisodes qui n’étaient pas supposés être joués mais qui étaient là pour provoquer le comité de censure et jouer le rôle de « paratonnerres » (Kambanellis, 2012: 20; 2010:14) pour le reste de l’œuvre. « Our Great Circus » est une pièce allégorique qui relate l’histoire et la souffrance de l’Etat Grec depuis l’arrivé du Rois Otto en 1833 jusqu’à l’occupation Nazi dans le pays.

11 Considérant les sept années de dictature en Grèce comme une époque capitale dans l’histoire moderne du pays, il est clair qu’un acte culturel d’une telle importance doit être questionné, approfondi, comme l’expression d’une citoyenneté culturelle transformé en « citoyenneté déviante » (Sparks, 1997:74).

Conclusion

Plus de quatre cent milles spectateurs participèrent à la performance. Rapidement la junte réalisa que la pièce n’était pas seulement une comédie, mais au contraire un message discret contre la dictature. La performance s’arrêta et l’actrice principale fut emprisonnée, en isolation. Les performances au théâtre « Atheneon » furent déclarées comme le « rassemblement politique le plus massif » jusqu’aux évènements du soulèvement des étudiants de la faculté de Polytechnique. Des témoignages de membres du public montrent clairement l’impact de la pièce sur une société en pleine répression. « Quand on veut se sentir humain, on vient ici », soutint un couple quand on lui demanda les raisons de sa venue répétée à la représentation. Un excellent exemple de la manière dont un acte culturel peut, en lui- même ou par le biais de la participation publique, être perçu comme un exercice des réprimés, de ceux qui veulent revendiquer leur citoyenneté, leurs droits de citoyen, est illustré par l’anecdote suivante : Un homme s’approche de la billetterie et demande « Est-ce que l’on vote ici ? Alors donnez-moi trois bons votes ! ». Il voulait ainsi acheter trois tickets pour la représentation de la pièce.

Costakis se tourna quant à lui vers le travail de l’Avant-Garde Russe après avoir vu le tableau d’Olga Rozanova en 1949. Dans la brochure « Avant-Garde. Masterpieces of Costakis Collection », on peut lire sur la note parlant du collectionneur que : « Costakis rencontra de nombreux obstacles dans son parcours et essuya des difficultés à récupérer des informations sur les artistes du mouvement. Il réalisa ainsi que le régime de Staline avait imposé un climat de silence et de non-dits à propos du mouvement de l’Avant-Garde. » (…) A partir des années 1960, Costakis commença à présenter sa collection aux visiteurs. (…) Le régime soviétique eu du mal à tolérer l’activité apparemment excessive dans l’appartement de Costakis. Les changements des politiques gouvernementales se reflétèrent sur les relations de Costakis avec la bureaucratie soviétique, qui n’étaient jamais faciles, même dans les meilleurs moments. La situation devient spécialement difficile au milieu des années 70 avec deux cambriolages non

12 résolus et un incendie « accidentel » dans la maison de son frère. Ces évènements précipitèrent le départ de Costakis, qui quitta Moscou et « négocia sa libération » (158-159) en laissant quatre-vingt pour cent de sa collection à la galerie « Tretyakov » de Moscou et rapatriant le reste.

13 Introduction

It is a fact that the traditional notion of citizenship in the globalized world has changed. Migration flows, commuters, mixed communities and hybrid identities force us to rethink the notion of citizenship. The issue of citizenship is a wide one and it has been dealt with from different angles and disciplinary perspectives, including sociology, political science, philosophy, intellectual history and ethics (Meredyth D., Minson J., 2001).

T. H. Marshall defines that there are three elements of citizenship: civil, political and social rights. The element has to do with the individual freedom and includes the rights necessary for that freedom such as liberty of the person, freedom of speech, thought and faith, the right to justice, the right to own property and to conclude valid contracts. The political element is about participation in the decision making process and refers to the right to participate in political power. The participatory process is a coin with two sides: participation as an elector of the members of a political body or as a member of a political body. The social element suggests the right to economic welfare and security, the right to fully share social heritage, and the right to live life according to the standard in the society (Marshall, 1950:10-11).

An ideal democratic socially inclusive citizenship model rests on a balance of power among state, market and citizens in the civil society. Somers insists that citizenship is “the right to have rights” (Somers, 2008:5). The first right to political membership is the right to social inclusion. By social inclusion, she refers to “the right to recognition by others as a moral equal treated by the same standards and values and due the same level of respect and dignity as all other members” (Somers, 2008:6). It is this right of inclusion and membership that permits the “mutual acknowledgement of the other as a moral equal, and thus worthy of equal social and political recognition” (Somers, 2008:6).

Various theories on citizenship emphasize that citizenship is a two-way process, which involves obligations and rights (Yuval-Davis, 1997:19). For example, voting is seen as a main citizenship right.

14 Anh Hua (2011) mentions: “the cultural citizenship I imagine speaks beyond the traditional duality of obligations and rights as citizens as dictated by the legality of the nation-state. It deploys cultural acts or performances as ways to challenge socio-cultural exclusion within the nation-state in order to write them into the nation. In particular, I am concerned with how cultural citizenship can allow for the performance of identities, home and belonging (…).

This thesis focuses on cultural acts that could be read as exercises in cultural citizenship. The aim is to examine, through two main case studies, cultural acts as expressions of political resistance. The two case studies: “Our great circus” and “Costakis collection” are situated in different spatial, social and political contexts. Nevertheless, both of them are events of great importance for different reasons, which will be analyzed in the paper. The main common ground is that both of these cultural acts become dissenting acts and cultural citizenship becomes what Holloway Sparks has called “dissident citizenship” exercised by citizens that lack democratic participation but want to claim it (Sparks, 1997:74).

While it is crucial to acknowledge the civil, political and social rights as promised by the attainment of citizenship, Marilyn Friedman has argued that citizenship is more variegated and multiple: “It can be an identity; a set of rights, privileges, and duties; an elevated and exclusionary political status; a relationship between individuals and their states; a set of practices that can unify – or divide – the members of a political community; and an ideal of political agency” (Friedman, 2005:3). Indeed this will be the topic examined in this paper: a relationship between individuals and their states and how a set of practices (in this case cultural acts) function as a political agency on individual and collective level.

Art collectors are motivated by a variety of incentives and needs they try to meet and as a result they are engaged in process of art collection. Costakis started collecting works of art of the lost Russian Avant-Garde. He searched and found objects lost in attics and basements basically in Moscow but also in Leningrad. He literally rediscovered and collected Russian Avant-Garde, which was lost since socialist realism became the official state policy after 1932. 1275 pieces of his collection belong to State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki. This example will question an art collection as an individual exercise of cultural citizenship and if this practice of collecting works of art was a conscious or unconscious exercise of cultural citizenship.

15 The other case study of “Our Great Circus” will touch the collective exercise of cultural citizenship through a theater play took place during turbulent times in Greece. “Our Great Circus” is a legendary theater play written by Iakovos Kambanellis and introduced to the public in Athens back in 1973-4, during Dictatorship time in Greece.

In Greece the political context of that time is the following: on April 21, 1967 a Military coup takes place in Greece. Greek military junta lasted for 7 years from 1967 to 1974 and is also known as "The Regime of the Colonels” or "The Junta” or "The Dictatorship" or "The Seven Years”. On the other hand the social context is misty and blurry. From the first moment Article 14 of the Greek Constitution, which protected freedom of thought and freedom of the press, was immediately suspended. During these seven years more than 6000 suspected communists and political opponents of the regime were imprisoned or exiled to remote Greek islands. More than 3,500 people detained in torture centers. Nonexistent civil rights and psychology of fear among the citizens were a part of the new era citizens had to adapt to.

“Our Great Circus” is an allegorical play narrates the history and suffering of the Greek state from the arrival of King Otto in 1833 until the Nazi Occupation of the country. More than 400 000 viewers attended the performances. Soon the junta censors realized that the play was not a simple comedy but contrary to that, left discreet anti-dictatorship messages. Performances stopped and the female main actress was imprisoned in isolation.

Hypothesis and methodology of research

Due to fact that this paper wants to find the connection of cultural acts with the citizenship, it is necessary to have a strong theoretical framework that allows the author to know in depth the concept of citizenship in general and of cultural citizenship in particular. As a result a period of firm theoretical reading was needed in order to gain the knowledge through the pre- existing academic works have been done. In order to gain as much information and knowledge as possible, desk analysis of existing academic works on the field of cultural citizenship was conducted.

The framework is achieved by using different methodology according to each hypothesis. The different methods provide the author with data that after a deep analysis provide answers to the hypothesis.

An Art Collection can be an expression of cultural citizenship on an individual level:

§ A desk analysis was conducted. In order to gain as much information and knowledge as possible, desk analysis of existing academic works on the field of cultural citizenship and art collections was conducted. This provides for knowledge on the relation of cultural citizenship and an art collection as cultural act. § Using the Case Study method by choosing “Costakis Collection” as a case study. Information was gathered with the use of the Archive and the Library exist in the State Museum in Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki and by visiting the ongoing exhibition, which is dedicated to the collector himself. § Interviews with experts were conducted with whom the author talked about the topic. A guideline was elaborated after theory readings. Afterwards, the method of the snowball effect was used since the author was open for further suggestions from

17 experts in the field. The first contacted experts suggested to the author other experts in the field.

In order to prove the second hypothesis Festivalization of a cultural act can be an expression of collective citizenship, the author:

§ Used the Case Study method for the theater play “Our Great Circus”. § Used structured interviews with audience, namely, people, who attended the theater play back in 1973-4 period in order to find out how they experienced this chance they had to exercise their citizenship during turbulent times. § Tried to contact and have a structured interview with the main actor trying to go deeper and understand how the decision to perform this play was made and the need existed for exercising citizenship rights. Finally this contact was not feasible. § Did a desk analysis by reading the original text of the play “Our Great Circus” of Iakovos Kambannelis in order to have a direct contact with the initial text as a try to understand all the hidden and allegoric parts of the play. For this purpose the author read two different editions of the play seizing the opportunity to analyze two different introductory notes and appendixes from both books. § Watched all existing videos of the play trying to understand how the transfer of the text from the book to a theater play worked out, how was the set up of the stage, how the improvised dialogues were performed and how the dynamic interaction with audience and its reactions influenced the whole performance.

Conceptual Framework

18 Extremely interesting is the case of the theater play “Our Great Circus” as well. This case study touches the collective exercise of cultural citizenship through a theater play took place during turbulent times in Greece. “Our Great Circus” is a legendary theater play written by Iakovos Kambanellis and introduced to the public in Athens back in 1973, during Dictatorship time in Greece. In 1973 Tzeni Karezi (the main actress) asks Iakovos Kambanellis, whose plays have been performed by ‘Karezi-Kazakou’ troupe, to write a play with a partisan message. The texts, however, had to go through the censorship committee. In order to pass the censorship, the play was presented as a historical comedy. It was delivered to the competent committee partially, unordered and enriched with episodes, which were not intended to be played but to provoke the censors and act as "lightning rods" (Kambanellis, 2012: 20; 2010:14) for the rest of the oeuvre. “Our Great Circus” is an allegorical play narrates the history and suffering of the Greek state from the arrival of King Otto in 1833 until the Nazi Occupation of the country. Considering these seven years of Dictatorship in Greece as a very important part of country’s modern history it is clear that such an important cultural act should be questioned and investigated more as an expression of cultural citizenship transformed into “dissident citizenship” (Sparks, 1997:74).

19 The Case Study of Costakis Collection

When blinds open and light enters the room: Costakis Collection of Russian avant-garde

“He who does not forget his first love will not recognize his last.”1

“When I first came across with works of Russian avant-garde –the first artwork that I saw was a painting by Olga Rozanova- I was strongly impressed. The various Dutch and Flemish artists that I was purchasing up until then had started to irritate me. When I brought the first avant-garde paintings, I took them to my house and hung them alongside to the Dutch and Flemish paintings. I was overwhelmed by the feeling that until that time I was living in a room with closed blinds. It felt that I opened them and the sun burst impetuously. At that moment I decided to leave everything else that I was collecting and devote myself to the acquisition of works of the Russian avant-garde. This happened in 1946” (Label in the exhibition ‘The Collector George Costakis and the Russian Avant Garde. 100 years since his birth’).

George Costakis was born in Moscow in 1913. He was Greek origin. His father, Dionysius Costakis was a wealthy tobacco merchant from the Greek island of Zakynthos. He had emigrated to Tsarist Russia in about 1907, seeking his fortune. Rudenstine hightlights the following aspects of Costakis’s biography: “He settled in Moscow, where there was a sizable and flourishing Greek community, joined a large tobacco firm, and within a few years had become the owner of the entire business” (Rudenstine 1981: 9). His mother was also Greek from the island of Samos.

“When the Bolshevik Revolution came in 1917, the Costakis family, like many other Greeks, remained in Moscow. They were not supporters of the Bolshevik cause: as pious orthodox Christians they could be expected to oppose it on religious grounds alone. Furthermore, they – like many others – did not expect the regime to last. As time went by, and their expectations were disappointed, they accommodated themselves to new conditions” (Rudenstine 1981: 9). After 1917 and the change of the socio-political conditions, his father was reduced to being a guard at the Greek embassy.

1 A Slap in the Face of Public Taste: Russian Futurist Manifesto of 1912.

20 And Rudenstine continues: “as George Costakis was growing up in the 1920s, the Bolsheviks were restructuring the entire educational system. Lenin's aim had been to raise cultural standards, and to expand literacy through mass education, but the actual situation during these years (when open admissions were established, but admissions quotas were simultaneously instituted for the bourgeois) was one of confusion and limited opportunity. Costakis’s family was of some cultivation (his mother knew six languages), but he had little in the way of formal schooling” (Rudenstine 1981: 9). Costakis having no special education changed several job positions and in 1929 he started working as a driver at the Greek embassy. He remained there until 1939. The embassy closed due to the forerunner events of Second World War. “Following the signing of the Soviet-German Treaty2 and the subsequent severance of diplomatic relations between Greece and the Soviet Union, Costakis worked for three years at the Swedish Embassy, and then at the Embassy of Canada, where he stayed until his retirement” mentions Papanikolaou (ed.) in the catalogue Russian Avant-Garde, A Selection from Costakis Collection (2002: 28-29). Quite often he drives and accompanies foreign diplomats in antique shops and galleries, as part of his professional duties. The fact they were privileged paying in foreign currency allowed them to obtain works of art and antiques in reasonable prices. This is a tactic Costakis also followed later on in his purchase.

The intimate contact Costakis has with works of art, antiques and precious objects leads to the cultivation of an intuition for art. He begins to show the first signs of becoming a collector. “The fields he chose were conventional: Russian silver, porcelain and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Dutch paintings. Within a decade, he had amassed a considerable collection in these areas” (Rudenstine 1981: 10).

Angelica Zander Rudenstine (1981: 10) analyses “the two important factors, which helped in the thirties and early forties to produce a favorable climate for collecting, and they gave added impetus to Costakis’ss natural inclinations. First, the Government, which desperately needed foreign currency in order to purchase industrial machinery, had from 1928 ordered massive

2 Also known as Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, German-Soviet Treaty of Nonaggression, Hitler-Stalin Pact, (August 23, 1939). The Treaty divided eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. It was signed by Ribbentrop and Molotov in the presence of Stalin, in Moscow. For more information: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/230972/German-Soviet-Nonaggression-Pact and http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/ir1/nazisovietpactrev1.shtml

21 sales of paintings and antiques to foreign buyers; simultaneously, it also encouraged sales to Soviet citizens who could buy similar items in state-owned ‘commission stores’. Second, art collecting was entirely legal in the Soviet Union, and – because currency fluctuations were then so volatile –investments in art and antiques were highly desirable”.

Under these circumstances and his collecting craving, Costakis managed to obtain under his possession a collection consisting of works of art and antiques. “By the end of the 1930s, he had already formed his first collection consisting of Dutch paintings, china, carpets, textiles and silverware” (Papanikolaou (ed.) 2002: 29). But describing his attitude towards his Dutch paintings Costakis says: “there were about 25-30 paintings hanging on my walls, all in the same color scale, the only difference was the subject. In some cases the subject was the representation of a kitchen, a still life or something different in others. There were times that my hands were itching: I wanted to scratch the paintings, to scrape all these brown surfaces in case something else comes out from beneath!” (Label in the exhibition ‘The Collector George Costakis and the Russian Avant Garde. 100 years since his birth’).

It was an Olga’s Rozavova astonishing painting that impressed him and turned his interest towards the aesthetic period of Russian avant-garde. “I was dazzled by the flaming colors in this unknown work, so unlike anything I had seen before” (Rudenstine 1981: 10). He bought the avant-garde paintings on the spot. When he went home and hung them next to the Dutch masters he realized that he ‘had lived his whole life in darkness’ and that ‘the sun had finally entered his house’ (Papanikolaou (ed.) 2001: 158).

Costakis sold his entire collection with almost no second thought. He started collecting Russian avant-garde beginning “what would become a thirty-year quest for the works of the avant-garde and for information about the history of the movement” (Rudenstine 1981: 10). Costakis wants to gather information about the artists. It is a tough task. Rozanova’s painting amazed him but she was an artist of whom he had never heard before. The identity of the artist, her origins, the historical and aesthetic environment from which she came – all these became the subject of immediate inquiry (Rudenstine 1981: 10). For the first 35 years of his life George knew nothing of this. He had never heard of the avant-garde or any of its members (Roberts, 1989).

22 The closed book of Russian avant-garde

“We draw what we need and we need Socialist Realism.” -Ivan Vasilievich Kliun, 13.04.19343

Angelica Zander Rundentine (1989:10) unveils and briefly explains that this silence around Russian avant-garde was not a sudden unexplained reality. “There were a number of reasons why that history was essentially a closed book in 1946. The most compelling reasons were of course political and ideological. The Bolshevik regime had initially encouraged the ambitions of the avant-garde to create a major revolution in art, comparable in its implications to the political revolution, which had just been achieved. […] Artists were asked to ‘construct and organize all art schools and the entire art life of the country’. This situation, however, lasted only a short time. The avant-garde was of course a minority among artists, and they soon became deeply divided even among themselves4. Lenin finally insisted on a reduction of the authority of the avant-garde group. This was the beginning of official political opposition to the avant-garde – an opposition that grew steadily over the course of the next decade and more”.

Following the October Revolution of 1917 many artists associated themselves with the policies of the Bolsheviks, cooperated with the state machine and threw themselves into the work of creating propaganda by designing banners with slogans, posters, painting train carriages and trams and designing propaganda constructions and speakers’ platforms for rallies (State Museum of Contemporary Art, 2008). “The unfettered use of the artistic imagination was not however part of the Bolshevik programme. Slowly the walls closed in. Scenting anarchy in the avant-garde, Lenin himself rejected this kind of art” (Roberts, 1989).

From mid-1920s onwards the official stance to avant-garde movements and their representatives began to harden. By 1928 Stalin had consolidated his power. By 1932 he had

3 The quote is taken from the documentary When Chagall cost less than a sack of potatoes, G. Papakonstantinou and G. Zervas, 1997. 4 Innumerable disagreements and dissensions developed along aesthetic and intellectual lines. In addition, Lunacharsky's official support for this revolutionary cadre came under attack from the very start. As early as 1920, there was significant organized opposition from within the artistic community: many artists felt that the avant-garde's formal, abstract approach was far too limited in its appeal, that its work was essentially unintelligible and that the complete break with the past advocated by the Section of Fine Arts was destructive rather than regenerative (Rudenstine 1981: 10).

23 moved to impose party control on all cultural activity and by 1934 the Stalinist state was ready to demand total subservience to the dogma of Socialist Realism, persecuting many of the individual artists and denying them the right to exhibit their works (State Museum of Contemporary Art, 2008). He proclaimed Socialist Realism to be the only acceptable art form and obviously the avant-garde in Russia was dead, along with literature and much else (Roberts, 1989).

Since Stalinist regime had imposed the absolute dogma of Socialist Realism as the official art and had banned works of Russian avant-garde, the great fear of persecution is present. Artists, writers, poets and intellectuals with millions of people are imprisoned in forced labour camps, Gulag. Latvian artist Gustav Klucis5 was executed by Stalinist regime in 1938.

It is clear that Costakis comes against objective difficulties according to Roberts. “It was not easy work. It was illegal, to begin with. Common sense said there was no money to be made from it (common sense was wrong, as it turned out) and collector friends and art experts told him there was no fame to be made from it either. Owners of the works were afraid to offer them for sale. As for, he did not know so much as the names of the members of the movement, much less where their work could be found. Many were dead, some had emigrated, others were in prison camps” (Roberts, 1989).

“Initially I decided that I need to get some support, to seek a man who can guide me and give me advice. I met with Nikolai Khardzhiev, a renowned at that time collector. He knew very well the work of Malevich, he was studying Mandelstam’s poetry, he was considered to be an expert in Mayakovsky, and consequently he was directly connected to the avant-garde. We met and I mentioned him my intention to start collecting works of avant-garde. He replied ‘You know, Georgii Dionisovich6, all these are of a great interest, but it is a lost cause. Nobody needs the avant-garde, it is finished for good. Since 1932, this kind of art is forbidden, it is not presented anywhere, the interest is lost, and its funeral has been completed’” (Label in the exhibition ‘The Collector George Costakis and the Russian Avant Garde. 100 years since his birth’).

5 Only few of his works have been rescued. 80 of the scarcest works of Klucis belong to the Costakis collection. 6 Georgii Dionisovich Kostaki or George Costakis as he is known in the West.

24 Collecting the Avant-Garde: a personal excavation

“He was digging like Schliemann, but not in soil, in time”. -Aliki Costakis7

Costakis states: “To make the long story short, I decided to become a collector of avant-garde. Many of my friends and relatives felt pity for me. They thought that I was doing a big mistake by abandoning my older collection and start buying things that according to all, they were considered ‘nonsense’. Among the circles of collectors in Moscow I had the not so flattering nickname ‘the mad Greek’, who collects useless garbage” (Label in the exhibition ‘The Collector George Costakis and the Russian Avant Garde. 100 years since his birth’).

Collectors or individuals, who possessed works of Russian avant-garde kept them out of sight or even hide them. Large paintings were hidden under beds, in cupboards, “stuffed between walls, used to board up barn windows. The splendid Rodchenko Hanging Construction, now in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, he retrieved from the top of the stove (where the bed is in old Russian houses) in the artist's apartment” (Roberts, 1989).

A series of reasons contributed to the collecting-Russian-avant-garde process. First of all comes Costakis’s innate and special sense. Although he lacked any kind of art education, he had special aesthetics, a sharp eye and a feeling for art. He already knows what he is looking for and what he likes. Keep on narrating his meeting with the collector Nikolai Khardzhiev: “I carefully heard him and nevertheless I asked him to name the most famous artists of the avant-garde. He mentioned Chagall, Kandinsky, Malevich, Larionov, Goncharova, Olga Rozanova… And he stopped there.

I did not agree with him. I had already formed a different view. I was observing the paintings of Popova, Kliun and other artists who at that time were not known. I was affected by the fact that all these paintings gave the impression that they resemble each other, but at the same time they were completely different. The most impressive of all is that while some artists initially walked in the footsteps of their mentors, for example Kliun or Kudriashow who were students of Malevich, within two-three years had changed and had found their own special way of

7 The quote is taken from the catalogue Five Seasons of the Russian Avant-Garde.

25 expression” (Label in the exhibition ‘The Collector George Costakis and the Russian Avant Garde. 100 years since his birth’).

The general contempt of works of Russian avant-garde also played a significant role. Once Costakis paid a visit to the stepson of Popova’s brother, who lived in the countryside. After a while they started walking to the garden. “I noticed that the window of the storage house was nailed with plywood. On the plywood I could read a number and below the signature: ‘Popova’. I entered the storage house and I saw the other side of the plywood. It was a great painting! ‘No, I can’t give it to you. If it rains the warehouse will be wet. Bring me a plywood and only then I will give you the painting’. I had to go to Moscow and look for a piece of plywood. I didn’t find the dimensions needed so I bought two smaller pieces and brought them to Zvenigorod. In return, the landlord gave me the wonderful painting” (Label in the exhibition ‘The Collector George Costakis and the Russian Avant Garde. 100 years since his birth’)..

This contempt arose from the artists themselves as well. “Some members of the avant- garde began to suffer a serious loss of confidence in their own methods and goals. […]Far from advertising the art of their early years, some of them turned away from it: they transformed their styles, and neglected and, in some cases, even lost or destroyed the work of their youth” (Rudenstine 1981: 10-11). “He had to save Aleksandr Rodchenko’s works from destruction and from the artist’s own indifference, sometimes at the very last moment. One painting had been turned into butcher’s block, while others were entirely destroyed because they had been forgotten on the veranda of his apartment. Sometimes artists destroyed their work with their own hands – something the collector spoke about with great bitterness – because the general climate of disdain made them doubt the quality of their own work” (Papanikolaou (ed.) 2002: 29). Rudenstine (1981: 12) mentions that Rodchenko continued to be surprised at any interest shown in his avant-garde achievement – almost to the time of his death in 1956.

“In the early 1930s, the art of the avant-garde was forbidden in the Soviet Union and this had brought the artists and their families in a very difficult position. I remember once I went to see the works of Kliment Redko. I met with the artist’s widow and asked her to show me the works from the 1920s. She said that these works were in the attic. She asked me with wonder: ‘Why are you interested in these older works? My husband considered them a failure; he was embarrassed about them and didn’t even show them to me. He believed that his most creative

26 period was the 1930s, when he worked in France’. The 1930s were for Kliment Radko a very interesting and productive period indeed. But I was interested in the works from the 1920s. His wife climbed to the attic and brought them down for me: ‘Tell me honestly, Georgii Dionisovich, do you really like them?’. I replied: ‘I like them very much’. Then – she told me – if you want, you can take them all’. I said: ‘Why do you say ‘take’? I will buy them!’. ‘Well, if you want, you can pay a little something’…” (Label in the exhibition ‘The Collector George Costakis and the Russian Avant Garde. 100 years since his birth’).

He always buys the works of art right away he locates them paying in foreign currency and offering more than the price he was asked to. His daughter, Aliki Costakis (2008: 27), explains: “in his autobiography he gives five ‘postulates of a collector’. Apart from his opinion that a collector should be ‘mad’, he gives the following advises: collector should be a millionaire even if he is penniless, rationalism is the great enemy of a collector, he should give up everything in order to obtain a work he loves; a collector must not hangle but pay even more than he is asked. And the most important: a collector must define the limits of his collection”.

Communal apartments were a reality in the Soviet Union. The limited space in those miniscule apartments made the everyday life of people quite limited in terms of space and convenience. Costakis says: “With great difficulty I sought and found works by Ivan Kliun. And of course I bought them immediately. Many of his works were lost. Kliun lived in an apartment in the region of Sokolniki in Moscow. When the War broke out, evacuation was declared and he had to leave his home. Nevertheless, a famous actress who rented a room next to Kliun decided to remain and the artist asked her to keep an eye on his works. Many of these paintings were stored on the roof of the house and children from the neighboring houses who were climbing and playing on the roofs took many of those paintings, which were, of course lost” (Label in the exhibition ‘The Collector George Costakis and the Russian Avant Garde. 100 years since his birth’).

Whole families used to live in a single room, sharing some square meters for years. On count of this, big works of artists were a kind of ‘trouble’ for their relatives being annoyed about possessing them. Even though for those who lived in bigger apartments, big paintings were difficult to handle with. “Popova died in 1924. I met her brother, Pavel Sergeevich Popov, a university Professor. He was a tall and handsome gentleman. He lived in one of the alleys of

27 Arbat in central Moscow in a large apartment. In the room where he welcomed me I noticed two small canvases by Popova on the wall. I told him that I have heard a lot about his sister. He said ‘Yes, you know, she died too young, but some of her paintings have survived’. I told him that I collect her paintings and I would like to buy some. He answered ‘Why not? I’ll show you’. He led me into another room, where 10-15 canvases were stacked against the wall. They were all masterpieces. I bought them. Pavel Sergeevich separated from the small paintings with great difficulty. When I said that I would like to buy a small painting he did not agree: ‘No, I will keep this, it is small and I can hang it on the wall. The big ones… where to fit them?’” (Label in the exhibition ‘The Collector George Costakis and the Russian Avant Garde. 100 years since his birth’).

The apartment on Vernadskii avenue: a worksite for democracy

“I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams...” -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince8

“Gradually people heard about this "crazy Greek," and began bringing their "junk" to him. By 1957 the little apartment was aglow with Malevich, Kandinsky, Chagall, Kliun, Rozanova, and many others. And the collection grew every day. Not only did it grow, but it became known. Interested Soviet people – artists and collectors though, rather than officials – came in large numbers to see it” (Roberts, 1989).

During the 1960s Costakis decides to ‘open’ his apartment and show his collection. “More than 2,000 masterworks in all were stored in the Costakis’s home, which became a must stop on any Soviet tour for Western VIPs and art curators” (Andriotakis, 1979). Visitors from all over Europe pay visits to his apartment and enjoy the hospitality and the personal guided tour by the collector himself. Foreigners were continual visitors. “As time passed, and particularly at the beginning of the following decade, the number of visitors to his apartment continually grew. The Costakis collection became a central attraction for European intellectuals visiting

8 The quote was taken from: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/desert.

28 Moscow and a bridge with the Western world about which Costakis was well informed. The warm atmosphere of his apartment, and the personal tour, not only gave his visitors an opportunity to become acquainted with the collection, but, in their own words, contributed to the valuable experience” (Papanikolaou (ed.) 2002: 31).

The apartment was by then a new and larger one, but groups of as many as 60 sometimes jammed it, with the hospitable Zina Costakis providing tea. Stravinsky came. Chagall came, when he thought it safe. Senator Edward Kennedy came. (Roberts, 1989). “David Rockefeller once turned the page of the guest book so he wouldn't have to sign right under Ted Kennedy, who had been through not long before” (Andriotakis, 1979).

In early 1970’s visitors from abroad were searching for Costakis in the Embassy asking ‘How can we visit Costakis collection?’. Sometimes 80 people visited in a single day. In the documentary When Chagall cost less than a sack of potatoes (1997), Aliki Costakis, collector’s daughter, describes the following occurrence: she was returning home and while being in the elevator she heard the commotion from their apartment. When she got off the elevator a man asked her where he could find a priority number. Obviously such a thing never existed. At that time, there must have had showed up around 90 visitors.

Aliki Costakis (2008: 27) describes how every-day routine was while living in a flat turned to be a ‘museum’. “I could assure you that to live in a house, a flat which actually became a small museum, is not easy. Neither for the collector, nor for his family. But my father had a very strong principle: whoever wanted to see the collection, could see it. He never said no to anyone who asked. It could have been an unknown artist from Kiev or Novosibirsk, a group of 100 students from Moscow art school, or David Rockefeller and friends coming over after midnight after a night at the Bolshoi”.

Maria Tsantsanoglou, Director of the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki and curator of Costakis collection, in her article The Journey of a collection after the collector (2012) describes the role and the importance of Costakis’s apartment. “Costakis’s apartment in Moscow during ‘60s and 70s is directly connected with the forbidden avant-garde and operates as an unofficial Museum of Modern Art. Intellectuals and artists remember the renowned apartment of Vernadskii Avenue, which almost daily is the meeting point of the most heterogeneous companies; young artists, foreign diplomats and politicians, students,

29 writers and authors. In an atmosphere of creative euphoria, accompanied with music and vodka, visitors are chatting surrounded by walls fully covered from floor to ceiling with works of avant-garde. At that time, those works could not be exposed and seen anywhere else than in Costakis’s apartment”.

Roman (1982) calls Costakis apartment ‘mecca’ for visitors or western art-historians. “The apartment was the only place in the Soviet Union one could go to see such works, which, because of their abstract and non-objective nature, were officially regarded as culturally decadent and socially useless”.

Thaw and the bulldozers – the clashing stones of ‘60s and ‘70s

“An artist is walking on the street followed by three art critics dressed in civilian clothes”9

“Socialist realism in Soviet art was firmly established for approximately twenty years, from 1934 to 1954. Those twenty years were harsh and dominated by persecutions and extermination of intellectuals (1937-1938), World War II (1941-1945) as well as an irrational and rabid worshipping of Stalin (1946-1953)” (Tsantsanoglou 2006: 17). “Josef Stalin died in 1953 and three years later, in the famous 20th Communist Party Conference, Nikita Khrushchev announced de-Stalinization, condemning any type of veneration in Stalin’s name and giving amnesty to thousands of political captives. That’s when a number of young artists10 returned from the labour camps and were rehabilitated. A year after Stalin’s death, veteran Soviet writer Ilya Erenburg published the novel ‘Thaw’. The little completely reflected the Khrushchev period. Intellectuals and artists were in search of new avenues that would melt the figurative ice ” (Tsantsanoglou 2006:21).

After validation of the political liberalization of the 20th Communist Party Conference, the decisions (without the full text of the secret speech but leaked soon) printed in abridged form and sent across the country, guaranteeing the right to free expression. In the years that followed, most labor camps were closed forever (leaving only a few for criminal prisoners)

9 Famous joke on account of the KGB intrusions. The joke was taken from the catalogue Soviet Alternative Art (1956-1988) from Costakis Collections. 10 Including Yulo Sooster, Boris Sveshnikov as well as Lev Kropivnitskii (Tsantsanoglou 2006:21).

30 and most former inmates rehabilitated as ‘victims of Stalinism’ (617,000 restorations only the first ten months), having the right to return to work. Committees’ censorship in the press, education and the arts was loosened. For the first time, banned books are printed, Western movies and music are allowed. Cultural, educational and sports exchanges started between the Soviet Union and the Western bloc. In symbolic terms the statues of Stalin were torn, his body was removed from Lenin's Mausoleum and his name was removed from the city of Stalingrad, which was named Volgograd again.

“When Khrushchev abolished all forms of Stalin reverence with a decree, the artists realized that this formal destalinization was indicated of a new field of action that they were called upon to act in. Not wanting to lose time whatsoever, they rushed to grasp the opportunity that was given to them with a newfound air of optimism. Art in Stalin’s period was defined by three basic categories: ‘de-ideologization’ (bezideinost), ‘cosmopolitism’ (kosmopolitism) and ‘formalism’ (formalism). The artists felt an impulsive need to decriminalize these categories with their work without, however, the official consent of the government” (Tsantsanoglou 2006: 23-25).

Exhibitions take place freely; experimental, abstract works are exhibited and conservative artists’ together with KGB agents try to undervalue any ‘new art’. Tsantsanoglou (2006:24- 27) describes the case of an exhibition organized in Moscow in December 1962 by the Moscow Artists’ Union for its 30th Anniversary. Young artists could present works of experimental and abstract art. By his presence at the opening, Khrushchev disapproved the artists and their work wanting to put an end to the artists’ ‘excessive freedoms’. Some artists asked for explanations. Nikita Khrushchev answered in the frame of the Cold War climate of that time saying that he never feared Kennedy and that would not hear them arguing about their stupid works of art.

A few days later, the official instrument of the Communist Party, newspaper “Pravda”, published the formal answer: “Some people say that we must provide artists with freedom to do whatever they want…We can’t measure Freedom against Communism. We must ensure the ideology of art according to Lenin’s instructions for the supervision of the arts…”.

Artists participated in the exhibition were dismissed from the Union but this fact motivated them to experiment with different exhibiting ways and spaces. Maria Tsantsanoglou in the

31 chapter ‘From the Apartment to the Outdoors’ of the catalogue Soviet Alternative Art (1956- 1988) from the Costakis Collections, lists the alternatives of the excluded artists. Such places were: § Apartments of many artists, musicians, composers and intellectuals, who offered their spaces for weekly meetings or daily exhibitions. A new exhibiting way of the art was born called Apt-Art (‘exhibition at the apartment’ of Nikita Alexeiv in 1982). George Costakis next to his collection of works of Russian avant-garde exhibited works of alternative Russian artists of that period. § Cafes: the well-know café ‘Artisticheskoe’, café ‘Molodezhnoe’ and the ‘Sinaia Ptitsa’. § Theaters (‘Tarusa’), cinemas (‘Udarnik’) and hotels (‘Yunost’). § Institutes such as Institute of International Affairs, the Institute of Atomic Energy and the Institute of Biophysics and Mechanics. Administrations of the Institutes had liberal attitude and offered spaces of the Institutes -most of times scientific- as exhibition spaces.

Many of these exhibitions at institutes, cafes and other alternative spaces were shut down by the KGB only a few minutes after their opening or even before they had the chance to open. The same applied to the exhibitions that were held in apartments. Intellectuals, art lovers, foreign diplomats and journalists, who were invited to these exhibitions, were followed by KGB agents, who observed every move. On account of the KGB intrusions, a joke was made popular at the time: ‘An artist is walking on the street followed by three art critics dressed in civilian clothes’ (Tsantsanoglou 2006: 43).

These alternative exhibitions and activities reached their peak with the ‘First Outdoor Autumn Exhibition’. It took place on September 15, 1974 in Beliaevo district. Artists, after sending a written request to the Municipal Council of Moscow asking permission for a two-hour (from 12:00 to 14:00) outdoor exhibition and not getting a response, decided to hold the exhibition. The exhibition made history as ‘The Bulldozer Exhibition’ and made headlines all over the world. At noon, at the exact time of the opening, secret service agents started violently to disband the exhibition with the help of bulldozers arrived and moved towards the crowd. Restriction of the artists was followed by arrests. Since many international media covered the event, authorities were forced to inform foreign journalists through a press release explaining

32 that the artists had no permission and decided to hold the exhibition at a place, where redevelopment constructions were in progress. This was the reason bulldozers were there. George Costakis, during the disperse of the exhibition, dared to approach the secret service agents and shout angrily to them “You are fascists”. According to him, thereafter started a sneaking and insidious war against him.

Clouds begin to appear: negotiating an exodus

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” -André Gide11

Roberts (1989) describes the political situation in the beginning of the 1970s, which were difficult years in East – West relations: “the conservatives then in charge of Soviet external relations thought there was too much contact going on with the West, and they saw Costakis and his collection as a kind of loose cannon on that deck. At last they began to pay attention to him, and not in a good way”.

There were thefts of art in a professional manner from his apartment in Moscow. As if this was not enough, a mysterious fire threatened his country dacha (summer cottage), where he also had works stored. When Evelyn Weiss visited Costakis’s apartment in 1975, he told her that he was already been the victim of an assault – his dacha near Moscow had been robbed – and he was now very careful and on his guard (Weiss, 2001). He became fearful for his collection and eventually for his life and the safety of his family. After the burglaries and the fire Costakis decided to leave the Soviet Union in 1977 ‘negotiating his release’.

The Introduction of Angelica’s Zander Rudenstine (general ed.) Russian Avant-Garde Art: The George Costakis Collection (1981) makes reader a witness of the negotiation process in Costakis’s apartment. “In the living room of a fifteenth-floor apartment in building No. 58 a most curious event took place over several afternoons in August 1977. The entire floor of the twenty-six foot room was strewn with drawings and water-colors singly and in piles of

11 The quote was taken from: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/4661-man-cannot-discover-new- oceans-unless-he-has-the-courage.

33 several hundreds each. Stacked against three walls were row after row of paintings. Amid this chaos sat several people, two of them curators from Moscow’s Tretiakov Gallery, a third the host and owner, Georgii Dionisevich Kostaki, or, as he is known in the West, George Costakis. From time to time tea would be served by Zinaida Panfilova, Mrs. Costakis, a handsome and serene native of Moscow. Two of Costakis Mediterranean-looking daughters were also present, watching intently, as their heavy-set, sixty-four year old father chain- smoked and presided over the strange process”. Under an agreement with the Soviet Government, the Tretyakov received the bulk of his immensely valuable collection (Roberts, 1989).

He started lengthy negotiations with Tretyakov Gallery, which in the end took almost two years and resulted in the surrender of eighty per cent of his collection to the Russian State. Costakis believed that a collector must not be selfish, egocentrically possessive; on the contrary, he should share his art with others” (Papanikolaou (ed.) 2002: 31). According to Butterwick (2013), Costakis brokered an astonishing deal between himself and the Tretyakov Gallery whereby he was able to keep a part of the collection with the lion’s share remaining in the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, Costakis escaped with unimaginable masterpieces by Popova, Rodchenko, Filonov, even Malevich. Costakis succeeded to secure a permission to leave the country, exit visas for himself, wife Zina, two of his four children, a daughter-in-law and a grandchild and the twenty per cent of his collection, carefully selected by him and curators of Tretyakov Gallery.

A travelogue of a collection

“In the history of the collective as in the history of the individual, everything depends on the development of consciousness.” -Carl Jung12 “A huge continent, strewn with unexplored islands awaits discovery.” -Evelyn Weiss13

Pamela Andriotakis on the title of her article (1979) wonders ‘Why Would George Costakis

12 The quote was taken from: http://www.workingwithoneness.org/articles/we-live-living-universe. 13 The quote was taken from: Avant-Garde Masterpieces of Costakis collection, p. 36.

34 Give Up His Incomparable Russian Art Collection? Freedom’. “So, unhonored and unmentioned, Costakis and part of his collection – but a very important part, carefully chosen by him - left Russia in 1977. From 1982-84 his works made a triumphant tour of the West: the United States, Canada, several West European countries, where people got their first real look at this art - brought back almost literally from the grave” (Roberts, 1989). “If this (works of Russian avant-garde) would be discovered, world would be surprised”, said Costakis once. And so did it. Part of the Costakis collection he brought with him in the West toured the world for two and a half years. In 1982 a vast monograph of the collection was published, the collection toured the world and the masterpieces of the Russian Avant Garde became known, for many for the first time, to a wide audience (Butterwick, 2013).

Costakis does not cite political reasons for his self-exile. “Life became difficult”, he shrugs. “The apartment was no longer a home, but a museum. It wasn't safe to live in the flat with all those treasures”. “Russia is like my mother”, he says. “I don't want people saying bad things about her”. Another possible reason for his reticence is that two brothers and two of his daughters and their husbands remained behind (Andriotakis, 1979).

The rest of the story is well known. “After the consecutive deaths of three General Secretariats of the Party in 1985, and amidst an atmosphere of financial crisis and an ever- dominating bureaucracy, Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed political leader of the Soviet Union. With his ‘Glasnost’ politics, Gorbachev essentially abolished censorship and defended the right of free expression. Alongside these changes, came the abolishment of the terms “official” and “unofficial” art” (Tsantsanoglou, 2006: 55).

“Within a couple of years the whole ramshackle edifice, which had passed for Soviet cultural policy was swept into the ashcan. Costakis was among the first to be recognized. He was hailed in the Soviet press as a national hero for having saved these priceless works, and the works themselves were declared an inalienable part of the Russian and Soviet heritage. He was invited back to Russia by the minister of culture to attend an exhibition of some of the avant-garde paintings that had stayed behind - now officially labeled in Moscow as ‘The Costakis Collection’ (Roberts, 1989).

Peter Roberts in his article in Toronto Star on May 6, 1989 writes: “the future of the

35 collection, that part of it now in the West, is unknown. Costakis and his family will decide”. And they decided. In 2000, after negotiations, the Greek State bought up the collection and gave it to the city of Thessaloniki, to the State Museum of Contemporary Art.

Costakis was intelligent, tenacious, and immensely human. These qualities led him to the right doors, and caused those doors to open. He drank tea with widows and children and bought their hidden Chagalls, Kandinskys and Popovas (Roberts, 1989). Thus he preserved from destruction and disappearance a body of achievement of exceptional importance for the history of European culture.

During much of Costakis’s lifetime, the art of Rodchenko, Malevich, Popova and many others was not displayed in any official museum. They were kept in storage facilities, which were closed to the public. These facilities were treated as if they were secret military sites, like silos with atomic weapons. One could not even say the word abstraction out loud; it was a term employed only by hostile ideology. The only places to view the works was in private collections. And Costakis apartment became one of few places where it was possible to see works by Russian avant-garde artists (http://www.kolodzeiart.org/georgecostakis.html).

“The creation of the collection was the result of a long, persistent process that took almost forty years, during which time, changes in government policy were reflected in Costakis’s relations with Soviet officialdom, which were never easy at the best of times” (Papanikolaou (ed.) 2002: 31). Costakis had always retained Greek citizenship and Greek passport. He was a foreigner in Stalin’s state, a fact that – despite his collecting activity – was dangerous. There were periods that he had to slow down his research because of the dangerous times. Or he faced objective difficulties such as mobility difficulties due to his Greek passport. He could not travel all over Russia without a special kind of visa.

Nevertheless, Costakis found his way to access this forbidden and forgotten art and to remove “the thick layer of oblivion under which the Russian avant-garde was buried” (When Chagall cost less than a sack of potatoes, 1997). He himself believed that the failure to appreciate the value of the avant-garde artists was a tragic mistake; he was conviced that “ one day people will need and learn to value this art”. “His great achievements is that not only he managed to find and save an enormous amount of works, but he made it famous. As Margitte Rowell, the

36 curator of Guggenheim Museum put it, “when we first saw the collection, we understood that the history of art of the 20th century should be rewritten”.

37 The Case Study of ‘Our Great Circus’

Joining our Great Circus

“Most people don't know that wrestling came out of the circus.” -Billy Corgan14

In 1973 Tzeni Karezi (the main actress) asks Iakovos Kambanellis, whose plays have been performed by ‘Karezi-Kazakou’ troupe, to write a play with a partisan message. To be precise, Tzeni Karezi and Kostas Kazakos got the idea since spring of 1972. The two protagonists requested a theater play written by Kambanellis after a groundbreaking performance they had seen in Paris. "Given the situation, the dictatorship, my mind started going into a partisan play, an anti-junta one" says Kambanellis in his interview in the TV show “The Time Machine” (Η Μηχανή του Χρόνου)15. "Iakovos got the idea of Saturn eating his children and started viewing the present through a panorama of Greek history” recounts Kazakos at the same TV show. Kambanellis gets to work. Within a few months the play is ready, full of anti-junta messages. The result is a musical and theatrical play, which unfolds episodes of Greek history in a satirical way: Philip of Macedonia in the Oracle of Delphi, Byzantium during the reign of Emperor Andronikos I Komnenos, the Ottoman Domination, the Otto and the people that wants Constitution, the First World War, the Asia Minor Catastrophe, the German Occupation and Resistance, the present.

“Gentlemen, I will stand by your side! But I would like to inform you, once and for all: I have never in my life entered in a theater!”. The dictator Papadopoulos said those words after his meeting with representatives of the Pan-Hellenic Association of Free Theatre. In this context took place the performance Our Great Circus of I. Kambanellis in the summer of 1973, which was, according to the author himself, an attempt to articulate the forbidden political discourse” (Hager, 2006: 244).

14 The quote was taken from: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/circus.html 15 Available in three parts here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dFgn8DnN50, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4g_bPoX6Xk and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXqjMzSiyLQ (24 Aug 2013).

38 Symplegades, dragons and the mythical monsters of censorship

“The real world is where the monsters are.” -Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief16

The texts, however, had to go through the censorship committee. The regime had several ways to restrict freedom of expression. As for the theater, first was the censorship. (Hager, 2006: 252). “At that point, a hoax takes place. The scam is that many (chapters) are submitted. The play, as a vertebrate play, would have ten or eleven vertebrae. But I write other ten and all of them are scattered without the series would be played in the show”, remembers Kambanellis. In order to pass the censorship, the play was presented as a historical comedy. It was delivered to the competent committee partially, unordered and enriched with episodes, which were not intended to be played but to provoke the censors and act as "lightning rods" (Kambanellis, 2012: 20; 2010:14) for the rest of the oeuvre.

From the beginning the play had to pass the clashing rocks of censorship. For that reason it was submitted with the fake passport of historical play, in parts and in a random order, so they would not perceived its real meaning. The episodes were not intended to be performed, were also submitted. These skits were deliberately written and submitted in order to be cut by the censorship, to serve as a lightning rods and save the others. (Kambanellis, 2012: 20, 2010:14)

Philip Hager in his analysis The Performance as Pretext: Our Grand Circus of I. Kambanellis, or the Narration of History in the Present Tense explains: “Kambanellis succeeded the connotations of the text to remain unnoticed by the censors by depositing the episodes in a different order and disjointed. Then he submitted thirteen additional episodes written openly against the regime in order to censor those. At the same time, he knew that the intake level of regime’s censorship, or else censors’ artistic adequacy, was much lower than audience’s. Finally, the text acquired onstage multiple connotations, which was impossible to be predicted before the beginning of the performances (2006: 252). “The action of the project was placed in different periods of Greek history. The performance consists a pretext of theatrical speech and essentially political expression. History, the main theme of the text,

16 The quote was taken from: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/60002-the-real-world-is-where-the- monsters-are.

39 functions as a camouflage of political discourse and ultimately will become a key theme pattern” (Hager, 2006: 244).

“The Karezi-Kazakos Theater Company performed a deliberately confusing selection of skits. The censors were fooled once more and granted their permission for the show to open at the Athinaion Theater, an outdoor theater in central Athens” (Van Steen, 2007:308). The junta censors, watching the dress rehearsal of Our Great Circus, warn the troupe that the play will be a failure. The play was finally approved and the performances start on June 22nd 1973.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Great Circus called Greece”

“The audience itself was a performance. Moving, shifting, laughing, clapping all as one as if they were all part of the same soul.” -Orson Scott Card17

It is summer of 1973 and on Patission Street is located Athineon Theatre. Karezi – Kazakou troupe perform Our Great Circus of Iakovos Kambanellis. The theater is exteriorly decorated with lights and colorful flags; folk paintings of Evgenios Spatharis18 adorn the building. The performance starts right on the pavement. At the entrance some actors perform welcoming the spectators “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Great Circus called Greece”.

The allegorical and allusive speech of the play is present even in the title. The use of the word ‘circus’ is a careful trick, which allows the playwright to incorporate irony even in the title but then to create a play brightened elements of a typical circus. In Greek the word Circus (Τσίρκο), apart from its literal meaning, in colloquial language is also used to describe a ridiculous spectacle, a comic situation far from any sense of seriousness. The same way are used most of the words describing the artists of a circus such as: pagliaccio (pejorative characterization of a ridiculous and unworthy person), clown (an individual behaving ridiculously or a person, whose behavior causes laughter or ironic comments). Also a numero

17 The quote was taken from: Amy Spaulding’s book The Art of Storytelling: Telling Truths through Telling Stories. 18 For more information, please visit: http://www.karagiozismuseum.gr/en/spatharides/eugenios_spatharis.htm

40 (an autonomous scene of circus program) can be a stagy or laughable behavior.19 It is clear that Kambanellis wisely chose to write about ‘a circus’ than any other possible parallelism.

According to Van Steen (2007:308) “when juxtaposed to the formal performance space of classical Greek tragedy, the term ‘circus’ suggests a casual performance space. It also conjures up the presence of itinerant performers, fleeting moments of illusion and bravado, as well as childhood memories of escapism and laughter. The Karezi-Kazakos Company presented Our Grand Circus with all the liberties that the performance style of the circus naturally grants or accommodates. The show was a blend of folk festival, clownery, variety spectacle, and revue. The word “circus” in Greek also suggests chaos, irrationality, and low standards. Greek political life of the early 1970s was destabilized, lacking cohesion and logic”.

Hager (2006: 245-246) argues “if we accept that Kambanellis uses the word ‘circus’ in this sense (with an ironic and chaotic connotation), we conclude that the title of the play has nothing to do with the circus as a particular kind of spectacle, as it had been perceived by some of the critics. The title of the play in this sense refers to Greek history in order to demystify it. The word circus in this sense implies the use of history from the regime and finally the ideology of the Hellenic-Christian culture was promoted”.

Probably Kambanellis was also inspired by “a revue show of 1966 was called Τσίρκο η Ελλάς (Circus Hellas), after a common Greek saying (used even nowadays). This meaning of ‘circus’ was lost on the theater critic Kostas Georgousopoulos, who took issue with Kambanellis’s choice of the title; in his view, the circus is not an artistic or entertainment form representative of the Greek tradition and cannot, therefore, adequately place a kaleidoscopic lens on Greek history or performance (1973). Georgousopoulos may also, of course, have chosen not to elaborate on the less-flattering, ironic association” (Van Steen, 2007: 329).

Under the word ‘circus’, the playwright managed to encompass multiple meanings. It consists and indirect comment on the political reality lacking rationality and severe substance, on the

19 Etymological analysis was conducted according to the lemmas in the Dictionary of Standard Modern Language, available here: www.greek-language.gr/greekLang/index.html.

41 absurdity society experiences, the ridiculousness of the military regime. Simultaneously, the lightness of the skits and the vivid atmosphere of a real circus with all its clowns, acrobats, jugglers, the music and songs in between the numerous, were the elements also used for this political revue show covered with the mantle of the historical comedy.

The other element of the initial title worths a comment is the adjective µεγάλο (megalo). In Greek it “can denote size and scale, ‘big’ or ‘large’ or quality, ‘grand’ or ‘great’. All of these connotations came into play in reference to Greece as a country” (Van Steen, 2007: 329). As a result the adjective can be translated in various ways obtaining each time a different complexion. Gonda Van Steen for her article Joining Our Grand Circus has chosen the adjective grand. In my book, grand applies to what is physically or aesthetically impressive20 and great is used to refer to non-material things. As a native Greek speaking individual, the connotations I understood while reading the whole play lead me to choose the adjective great as the appropriate translation in this particular academic work. Both versions of the translated title are found in bibliographical references.

Stage curtains open are Our Great Circus begins. Narrators are Kostas Kazakos and Tzeni Karezi as Romios and Romiaki. Romios and Romiaki are a kind of presenters and commentators in this circus called Greece. The music is written by Stavros Xarhakos, songs of the show are performed by Nikos Xilouris, Evgenios Spatharis cared for the backdrop decoration, Kazakos directed the play.

Walter Puchner explains that the theatrical finding of Romios and Romiaki gives from the outset a solid structure and a vertebrate axis that allows changes, additions and subtractions to the numeros of the ‘circus’. This element is not only an artistic choice but an absolute need for the unanticipated interventions of censorship. So that with the balance of the whole play is not disturbed by prohibitions and deductions. The introduction of two narrators presenting cute satirical dialogues is an element quite widespread in the inspection and in Karagiozis, a shadow puppet and fictional character of Greek folklore21 (2010: 463).

20 www.thefreedictionary.com/grand. 21 For more information, please visit: http://www.karagiozismuseum.gr/en/.

42 Romios and Romiaki undertake this function of linking and bridging (between episodes) [...] in dialogues that remind the introductory dialogues of Karagiozis and Kollitiri22. Besides, the effect of the announcement, presentation and commentary of the scenes was endearing by the Revue show, old and new. […] Romios and Romiaki present themselves, announce the play and comment on it, explain the upcoming scene, prepare the audience for the use of many songs, [...] indicate that the audience is not obliged to laugh anyway, because the project was approved by the censorship as a comedy and that any resemblance to "drama" is completely coincidental. Here, the polysemous term ‘drama’ sparkles (Puchner, 2010: 463).

In the begging of the play Romios wants to introduce himself to the audience. He admits that he is an inmate of a psychiatric hospital. But there is no reason for concern since he is completely harmless. Nevertheless, his disease is quite common with national characteristics. It could even be called patriotic. His disease has to do with his desire to become a prime minister – as so many Greeks want to. But his therapy is simple: you remain tied since they are convinced you will not become a prime minister and you are discharged from the hospital. And for the only reason his disease was a political one, he was recommended to spend the summer in the theater (Kambanellis, 2012:29).

According to Gonda Van Steen in the article Joining Our Grand Circus “this is a direct blow at junta strongman Georgios Papadopoulos, who rigged the July 1973 plebiscite held under martial law, and elected himself president of the Greek ‘parliamentary republic’. Kazakos presents theater as an alternative political stage which has its own craziness but is more “therapeutic” and less damaging to others than the mad scene of real-life politics” (2007: 311).

Even from the first scene, the analytical reading tools of the play are given to the audience. “The hall of our circus, as we see, has a specific character. It does not remind us a circus; nor even a theater” (Kambanellis, 2012: 30). It is characteristic that the play begins searching for

22 The three sons of Karagiozis are Kollitiri, Kopritis and Mirikogos. Kolllitiri appears more often on the screen. He has exactly his father's character and he is very charming and amusing (information extracted by http://www.karagiozismuseum.gr/en/figoures/index_2.htm, 8 Aug 2013).

43 the stage. Romios and Romiaki are looking for the stage, the conventional stage of a theater, and they do not find it. There is no stage. Van Steen (2007:309) claims: “at the opening of the performance Karezi delivered Kambanellis’s metatheatrical comment about the absence of a conventional stage. She did so with a humorous gibe at the censors: “If I go in and tell them there is no stage, they may look at me with suspicion and say that I am an anarchist!”

(Kambanellis, 2012 :27). The theatre play, the history of Greece, gets unfold today, now in our midst. Audience simultaneously is acting individuals and spectators.

Kambanellis wants to awaken and alert the spectators, to take them on in the play’s demonstrations, which cross the theater from side to side. A podium is a pretty interesting element of the show. The huge ramp crosses the pit. It is a walkway that ends in a small circular stage. The action is being developed on the walkway and the secondary action takes place on the circular stage, where no particular set design exists. The seats are positioned facing and embracing the ramp. “The spectators are seated in a far-from-conventional arrangement, which also allows the actors to deftly deploy their public. […] It exposes the performers to view from all around and brings them face-to-face with many more spectators, on whom they call very often and whom they invite to participate in the unfolding of their own historical narrative.” (Van Steen, 2007: 309).

Positioning of the ramp is quite important. It is a directorial conception that allows the actors to play among the audience, making the audience participants and accomplices turning them into di-historical characters. A timeless persona of betrayed and tormented Greek. “The majority of the spectators could now observe other people’s reactions, which encouraged self- observation and self-reflection, especially when the actors fired difficult questions at them. Metatheatricality was thereby greatly increased, as was the exposure or vulnerability of the actors and audience members. […] When the stage moved from the end of the hall to its very center via an arrangement of peninsulas or platforms, it helped create an altogether new theater that doubled as a meeting place in the civic life of Athens” (Van Steen, 2007: 309).

Also in the opening scene of the play presenters introduce the audience to the spectacle. They present Athineon theater, which is, as stated, “in Athens, which has two patrons, goddess Athena and St. Dionysius the Areopagite . The exact address of our circus is October 28th Street (Patission street), number 58” (Kambanellis, 2012: 30). Place and time of the action is

44 the present. So as the show extends to the city with the onset of the action starting on the pavement, intelligently the city, the summery Athens of the year 1973, penetrates the play.

Kambanellis writes a political protest inspection, with songs, placards and cryptograms referring to the political scene of the time. “The banners and signs which the actors of some skits carry as if in a ragtag street demonstration provide additional commentary” (Van Steen, 2007:312). So do songs. “It has to be said that especially in this play Kambanelli’s songwriting and poetical capability reach a level, which exceeds brechtian commentary and it is differentiated using linguistic expressions and vivid imagery from the world of popular culture and the poetic of folk songs” (Puchner, 2010: 464). Kambanellis uses a lot of folklore elements and one of them is proverb. He often uses stereotypical expressions of colloquial language and many popular proverbs. He does so in order to give the tone of folk authenticity of language. This way audience is immediately identified with this language, because it is recognized as a common ground.

Proverb may give an authenticity to the theatrical language, be used in different contexts, be used intentionally wrong or may be an ironic comment. It is about an agile ‘intertext’ with a multiple use and operation, used as a poised piece on the linguistic mosaic of the text (Puchner, 2010: 469). Dragan Klaic wrote that “intangible cultural heritage covers skills, cultural practices, and forms of cultural memory such as languages and dialects, songs and festivals” and that “communities have been accumulating, preserving and transforming these artefacts of human creativity throughout the centuries as a resource and a distinct market of their collective identity” (2007:31). Folklore elements such as songs and dances, proverbs and simple language forms are used by Kambanellis as a common ground, which constitutes a collective identity.

Greece is a Great Circus from antiquity to the Ottoman era and from 1821 (Greek revolution against Ottomans) to the present. Greece is a scene parading clowns and jesters, musikants and dummies, liars and thieves, amid bloody revolutions and betrayed dreams, between negated heroes and budding executioners. This circus has no animals. People are cheaper, funnier and are good in performing comedies. Also for people the funniest spectacle are people. And since this play is a historical comedy, requires from the actors to be extremely funny (Kambanellis, 2012: 31). Only two snakes are in the circus but the management of the theater forbids the actors to say more. They are not invited to the show; do not belong to the

45 troupe neither to the Hellenic Actors’ Union. They came on their own and they eat actors (no spectators for now, only actors) (2012: 31-32).

Features are the two dragons-snakes (manufactured by Spatharis), which adorn the stage. Thus inaugurated a particular system of symbolism: • snake-cops, who come and go every night to the show and are the tentacles of power • Kronos23 eating his children and timelessly characterizes the Greek reality. Moreover this is the theme of the first scene of the play. “…I have babies and you eat them" Rhea shouts to Kronos. “Sot, dictator, glutton, greedy monster” (Kambanellis, 2012:36). The priests and the king propitiate Kronos; in order not to leave they will give him to eat. It is a tribute Greece has to pay in human souls through the centuries. Greece is Kronos eating its children without sate. Greece is a vast arena where unbelievable things happen. Nevetheless, Kronos has been used in Art as a symbolic figure much earlier24.

This is therefore a political revue show browses the Greek area for centuries, writes in 1973 Iakovos Kambanellis with censorship hanging like the sword of Damocles over writer’s and cast’s head. And this timeless historical tour takes place during one of the darkest periods of modern Greek history, just a few months before the special moment history would be written a few meters away from the Athineon Theatre, in Polytechnio25.

23 Κρόνος or Cronus or Saturn. 24 Goya's Saturn refers to the ancient Greek mythology with an extreme way, which is open to political and personal interpretations. Saturn eating one of his sons illustrates the representational cannibalistic bloody dismemberment of an infant. The art of Goya made people see the uttermost possibilities of human nature in extreme moments of crisis. The artist defended his goals (referring to himself in the third person): the detection of human errors and perversions- even though it seems they are protected by the rhetoric art and poetry - it can also be a valuable object for painting. He selected topics appropriate for his work, from the abundance of nonsense and errors are commonplace in every political society. Goya portrayed violence not to cause sensationalism or to shock people but, precisely, to stigmatize it (Freeland, 2005:29-33).

25 In November of 1973 the student uprising at the Polytechnic University of Athens took place. On the 14th November, students decided to occupy the Polytechnic University. Civilians supported the students bringing food and medicine. More and more people gathered out of the university. On the 16th

Xilouris, as singer, and members of the troupe as People sang "People do not tighten belts even further" and the troupe, addressing the supposed Otto, appeared on stage holding banners with the words CONSTITUTION and FREEDOM and FOOLISH ARROGANCE written on them. The two snakes symbolized Greece, which like Saturn devours its own children.

The play solemnly ends with the troupe on stage; with a message of optimism, with Brecht's didacticism and reflection. The author asks for audience’s critical look towards the happening events: “but what we wanted is you to come to our show and do not leave indifferent. To disagree, find mistakes, get angry ... but do not leave indifferent ... And if we occasionally embittered you or we made you laugh at things that we should not, this is because we chose the wide road, where life is loose, funny, blasphemy, the holy and sacred, saint and ungodly” (Kambanellis, 2012: 186).

The historic moment extends and enters the pit. The essence of the Greek people is timeless, a people laden with the defeats and victories of the past, urging them not to compromise anymore, but to participate in a purgatory festival of resistance. “Our Great Circus is not a glorification of the Greek past or of the ‘martial virtues of the ancient Greeks’. Those were offered by the regime in the mass festivities in the Panathenaic Stadium. Kambanellis demystifies history, lowers the heroic level to the level of citizen. In order to achieve this, he uses episodes […]. The episodes are not intact historical facts but consist historical substance. Kambanellis places in different time, actions that could be modern representations. The function of this theater writing coincides with the Brechtian technique the parable.” (Hager, 2006: 244).

policemen and tanks showed up around the area. Saturday, November 17, 02:50: a tank crashed university’s main gate and put a violent end to the uprising against the Military regime. For more information, please visit: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/ckostopo/GreeceEurope/15._November%202%202010/Athens%20polyt echnic%20uprising.pdf (27 Aug 2013) and http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2011/11/17/17- november-1973-athens-polytechnic-students-uprising-rare-footage-videos/ (27 Aug 2013).

47 Theater as a political rally

“A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good.” -T.S.Eliot26

Soon, Colonels realized what was going. They realized that they approved a partisan project. It was then that war of nerves began. Kazakos describes that five or six o'clock in the morning the phone rang. He always had the phone next to his bed. On the other side of the line a Colonel orders 'Take your wife and come by my office. I am waiting for you in half an hour'. The phone used to ring four times per week calling Karezi and Kazakos at Mpoumpoulinas27 street.

Censorship was becoming tighter day-by-day. The pressure on authors was stifling. Karezi, Kazakos and Kambanellis were taken every other day before the military censor to give explanations. One of the Generals threatened the couple that they would send them for ‘holidays’. “Now, I press the button and you are transferred in Yaros28” is the exact sentence Kazakos remembers.

Our Great Circus premieres at the Atheneon Theater with the censored texts. Those chapters left are enough to cause such a doom, the uprising of the people that every night jampack the theater. "People did not come to see a show anymore. They came to contribute to the revolution" says Giorgos Lembesis, the theatrical entrepreneur of the theater at that time (on TV show The Time Machine)29. This reciprocation fascinates the actors. The audience stimulates the actors. This irritation the audience had, was transfered on the stage and from the stage passed down to the pit. It was a round of warmness and gushiness" Kambanellis describes.

26 The quote was taken from: http://quotationsbook.com/quote/30557/#sthash.9iJRYyg0.dpuf 27 In the building at 20-22 Mpoumpoulinas street were the offices of KYP, National Information agency (KYΠ), where horrible torture took place during junta. 28 A remote island of the northern Cyclades (Aegean Sea), where leftist political dissidents were sent on exile between 1948-1974. 29 Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4g_bPoX6Xk.

Civilians were entering and leaving detention rooms, beaten, others with their hands in plaster, with broken legs, hunted. They were coming directly in the theater hunted by the ESA (ΕΣΑ)30 even in the theater, recounts Kazakos in his interview. “We had all the ESA and the National Security Agency in the theater, soldiers strolling in the corridors and taking notes. At any point audience applauded, they would write down the phrase as a subversive phrase. Entire blank sheets of paper with notes”.

Anti-junta messages are delivered by innuendo. The songs of Xarchakos speak to the heart of people and Kolokotronis (hero of the Greek Revolution), who is performed by Papagiannopoulos, is beyond any suspicion. The author chooses historical landmark moments to satirize people and circumstances, to taunt or to bitterly smile; to cry and scream, eventually transferring his political message. The censors analyze the play but they cannot find any dissident expressions. They cannot bring an accusation against the troupe.

It is November of 1973. Just across the Polytechic University Karezi and Kazakos still perform the play Our Great Circus. “Vox populi Wrath of God” (Φωνή Λαού Οργή Θεού) and “Bread Education Freedom" (Ψωµί Παιδεία Ελευθερία) were some slogans of the play adopted by the uprising students. Kazakos, Karezi and Xylouris were involved in the uprising.

Three days later, many actors of the troupe are hosted in Karezi’s and Kazako’s house. With utmost secrecy they make copies of Polytechnio’s radio broadcast. The the doorbell rang and the excitement was cut short. Kazakos remembers them entering under covered. “They told me ‘National Security Agency’. Nobody checks their IDs. The leader says ‘Let's go’. They took me and Tzeni down to the entrance of the building. Two or three cars were there. I was holding Tzeni’s hand. They open the door, split us and put her in the car. I stayed on the sidewalk waiting. I have never felt this way. What was that? They took my wife and they are gone”.

For an entire day Kazakos is looking for Karezi. Military authorities mock him. Eventually, he requests the assistance of a friend who is a doctor at the American Embassy. Tuesday early

30 Greek Military Police (Ελληνική Στρατιωτική Αστυνοµία).

49 morning he is at the office of the Embassy. Karezi was taken in the prison of EAT-ESA31. Mediated by an American Colonel Kazakos and Lembesis were allowed to bring her a few clothes and food. They got to the gate and barely reached the headquarters. Of course they did not meet her. They were not allowed to go further but only to leave the stuff hoping she would get them.

In EAT-ESA she was kept in a large cell, the central one, where mechanisms of torture, chains and other things were hanging from the ceiling. Her blood run cold. However the next day Kazakos also gets arrested: “In there we saw orgies. We were walking and through the cracks we saw people being dragged or been carried and held by two. The howling…”.

On December 15, Karezi gets released. She was not physically tortured but psychologically she is a real wreck. On the same day Kazakos is being released as well. On December 22 performances start again. Kambanellis describes the symbolic experience of that day: “I remember the premiere. It was awesome despite the many policemen who were standing in the aisles of the theater; standing not under covered but overt, looking at the audience. When the performance ended up a sudden rain of flowers fell on stage. Hidden flowers, red cloves hidden in pockets, in bags..”. The curtains fall and Karezi whispers ‘Yes I can serve time again’. Our great circus is a milestone performance that combined artistic excellence, feeling, talent and especially political awakening against the monster of dictatorship.

After actors’ release, the police permanently paid visits to the theater. “ESA and KYP sent experts to make cuts”, said Iakovos Kambanellis in ‘TA NEA’ newspaper on January 13th, 1976. A constant blood letting of the play took place. “A guerilla started. Once we cut parts of the play, the other we said that the actor was distracted and repeated that particular part”. In the same article the great dramaturge and academic noted: “From this experience what remains for me is the satisfaction that even the theater can make a dictatorship scared”.

People participated massively in performances, Koumantos says, “with the feeling that perform a task, such as in a demonstration, as in a mobilization”. Our Great Circus can be read as kind of desecrate civil disobedience and a public event that we might think of

31 Special Investigation Department of the Greek Military Police.

50 something that has a form of festivalization. In this instance festivalization is related to the notion of protest and civil disobedience. Puchner (2000: 118) states, “the play turned into a major protest against the dictatorship”. Hager (2006: 247) cites “the testimonies of the time are indicative: people and actors became one and on the of occasion the political discourse, both of them played their roles with an indescribable passion. And when the show ended, thundered the spontaneous, redemptive, unbearable slogan. We will win!” […] These reactions of the audience can visualize the impact of the play, which eventually exceeded the boundaries of theatrical expression and converted the moment of the performance to a political declaration and, potentially, to a political demonstration”.

When Kambanellis writes Our Great Circus, the events at the Law School, the movement of the Greek Navy32 and the first trial of members of the PAK (ΠΑΚ)33 have already taken place. The hope that the junta will not endure, flourishes. In the theater there is a clear trend opposition to dictatorial regimes and a reflection on the social and political role of the theater is being developed.

Our Great Circus comes as a corollary, is the theatrical event of that summer and performances, as indicated by the author, “are the first public political rallies that occurred during the dictatorship”. Our Great Circus touring over the centuries develops a cryptic speech and abounds in symbolisms. The audience decodes them, projecting them to the sociopolitical context of the time.

Our Great Circus becomes a device of cultural citizenship through which citizens (even if only symbolically) assert their rights in the context when theses rights have been denied on the level of the state. Due to the social and political circumstances, audience was disposable to interpret the theatrical message as a political one (Markaris, 1975: 57-58). A common

32 Μovement of the Greek Navy was a partisan action group consisted of officers of the Greek Navy with the goal to overthrow the Colonels in 1973. On May 25 crew of the warship 'Arrow' got the decision to withdraw from the exercise of NATO. He ship entered in Fiumicino, Italy, where the crew sought political asylum, bringing significant blow to the Junta. 33 PAK was a political anti-dictatorship group founded by Andreas Papandreou in Stockholm, Sweden in 1968. The aim of the group was a dynamic and coordinated resistance against the Dictatorship was imposed on Greece.

51 ground between authors and the audience already existed (Hager, 2006: 251). The message of a text acquires further connotations in direct relation to the actor who speaks, the bodily- expressive specificities and the social features. […]The message acquires as an additional emission source the actor himself, a social person and a popular symbol. Therefore this specific discourse acquires immediacy and new connotations. (Hager, 2006: 251).

Performances in ‘Atheneon’ theater have been declared as the “most massive political rally” until the events of the uprising of students in the Polytechnic faculty. Some testimonials of the audience show clearly the impact of the play on the repressed society. “When we want to feel human beings we come here”, claimed a couple when they were asked why they come to the theater again and again. An excellent example of how a cultural act itself or participation in it can be perceived as an exercise of repressed, who want to claim democratic participation is the following incident: a man approaches the box office and asks “Do people vote here? Then give me three good votes”, meaning he wanted to buy three tickets for the performance. More than 400 000 viewers attended the performances of “Our Great Circus” and in one performance during summer of ’73, receipts exceeded the amount of 100 000 drachmas. This was an unprecedented phenomenon in Greek theater forum (Hager, 2006: 252).

The historical comedy was certainly a metaphor: “In the text it was Greece shouting to us not to bend in the hard adventure even if during the years was about to become unbearable. Both actors, Kazakos with granite passion of an unbending strength and Karezi with the burning passion of the outbreak, did not only serve the Art - they served one People” (Giorgos Koumantos).

Tzeni Karezi on an interview in ‘Tilerama’ magazine back in 1981 said: “Our Great Circus was a milestone in life and in my career. It was something more than just theater, it was a political act. Plays like this never happened easily. It was a theater play while saying essential things. We dream of restaging a play like Our Great Circus but it is quite hard to be found. The political play always has a risk of becoming a brochure so ceases to be a theater play. I'm afraid that this unique gift of ‘Circus’ cannot happen again. If such plays existed, we would not play something else than them”34.

34 Available here: http://theovaf.blogspot.gr/2011/09/blog-post_04.html (26 Aug 2013).

I found extremely interesting the notes of Karezi and Kazakos in the programme of the performance called The Enemy People, which was performed after the fall of the military regime.

“June 1973. In this space, in the heart of the dictatorship “Our Great Circus” is performed. The audience and the actors, all of us shout together for the betrayals, always happening in this country, for some obscure and invisible forces that pull the strings and pass them as a loop around people’s necks. Those people, who still believe, struggle and pay the piper ..

June 1974. In this same space again is performed the gagged Broad Bean and Chickpea (Το Κουκί και το Ρεβύθι). Nothing is left to be said here anymore. Yet.. We and the audience manage to understand each other.. Without using words anymore since the most concise of them have been mowed by the censorship. But with glances and pauses, with a nod, a scream, a song or tracks that are heard from the tape recorder. We talk about the events of the November, about Ioannidis and everything paranoid is happening around us. And when at the end of the play sounds the song “Πάµε και εµείς στη αυλή του φθινοπώρου” (We go to the courtyard of Autumn) the audience erupts in applause. We managed to communicate once again.

June 1975. The colonels are gone. People breathe, hope.. Invisible forces are moving once again in the dark. As always..

And we, always following the line of the political theater we have mapped, we change the target . The Enemy People (Ο Εχθρός Λαός) is a play of bitter criticism. We will not talk anymore about the plight of the dictatorship but about the mistakes of Democracy. For these mistakes, which never again need to be made. And that is why, it is advisable not to forget them but to remember them. And fight them as much as everybody can. In order to be able to move forward.

We hope that here, in this very same space, we will manage to communicate once again”. (Tzeni Karezi, from the brochure of the play The Enemy People found in Kambanellis, 2010: 137-138) “The theater we dream to deal with, we want it to be a political act. Of course not in the sense it will try to shape our political life. It is of political parties’ business. But in the

53 sense it aspires to be a place of research on our political phenomena. We believe that through the theater forms, the gifted writer with the delicate political sense of smell and free from the need for historical accuracy and proof, can unfold in front of the audience the multilevel political fact; give a human scent in inaccessible bodies and even violate the double locked doors of the behind-the-curtains political reality.

Through the dialectic of theatrical language, the theatergoer people can cultivate their political sensitivity and shape their political criterion.

The rich experiences Our Great Circus left behind have convinced us that we are on the right track.

We will follow it with as much passion and as much sobriety we can!” (Kostas Kazakos, from the brochure of the play The Enemy People found in Kambanellis, 2010: 139)

54 Conclusion

“What is possible under the auspices of citizenship?”, wonders Sasha Roseneil in her article Beyond Citizenship? (2013). Inclusion and exclusion, individuality and collectiveness, equality and inequality. Roseneil mentions that the concept of citizenship has been expanded beyond the classical concern with political citizenship, to articulate demands for wider social, cultural and economic change. Gerard Delanty highlights that citizenship “had been held to be based on formal rights and had relatively little to do with cultural belonging”. And cultural citizenship is grounded in cultural belonging.

Citizenship as performance allows one to witness how cultural citizenship is imagined via the arts such as literature, film, music, performances, satellite TV, Internet blogs, everyday cultural gestures and so on, as well as permit one to understand how migration, displacement and informal networks of communities can produce more nomadic forms of citizenship. (Hua, 2011: 45). Such an informal community was the audience of the play Our Great Circus, which became a symbol of people’s political opposition and gave them the opportunity to express themselves feeling the safety of massive influx of audience.

According to Warner (2002: 56-57) “counterpublics are defined by their tension with a larger public. Their participants are marked off from persons or citizens in general. Discussion within such a public is understood to contravene the rules obtaining in the world at large, being structured by alternative dispositions or protocols, making different assumptions about what can be said or what goes without saying”.

Citizenship and identity are not always one thing. Sometimes there is a tension between them. And this fact has been confirmed in both case studies were developed above. In both cases of ‘Our Great Circus’ and Costakis Collection culture worked as “an important site for political contestation for it can be the expression of resistance to oppression [..]” (Hua, 2011:52). The main hypothesis “cultural acts are exercises in citizenship” has been confirmed for both of the cases.

Particularly, the specific hypothesis “art collection in an expression of cultural citizenship in an individual level” in the case of Costakis collection is fully confirmed. The Collector despite his enthusiasm for Russian avant-garde, decided to collect and save it from extinction and oblivion considering its forbiddance a tragic mistake and that “one day people will need

55 and learn to value this art”. By his choice to insist collecting this art for 30 years he achieved to save an enormous amount of works, make it famous in the West and as Margitte Rowell, the curator of Guggenheim Museum stated to re-write the history of art of the 20th century.

The second specific hypothesis “festivalization of a cultural act can be an expression of collective citizenship” as been also proved through the case of ‘Our Great Circus’. Although not a festival, the performances of this play were declared as the “most massive political rally” during dictatorship adopting a character of a celebration of civil society, transforming the theater, an alternative space, to “a space of freedom of civil society” (Milena Dragivecic Šešic, 2007:41).

It is a demanding task to write about cultural citizenship. Many aspects of the same analysis arise when you deal with such abstract concepts. Also dealing with two totally different cases studies. With visible similarities though such as the extreme political conditions both of them took place.Of course this thesis is based on a basic research, which faced limitations and boundaries. ‘Our Great Circus’ and Costakis Collection had been examined thoroughly under the prism of theater studies and history of art. Nevertheless this academic endeavor tried to approach such case studies in a unexpected subversive way, analyzing the sociopolitical context, historical details of the time and the attitude of the actors in both of them. Hopefully it succeeded to utter questions and answer some of them to some extend. The floor is open for further academic ‘toil’. “As you set out for Ithaka hope the voyage is a long one” (CP Cavafy).

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Links http://www.greekstatemuseum.com (State Museum of Contemporary Art) www.ntng.gr (National Theater of Northern Greece) http://theovaf.blogspot.gr/2011/09/blog-post_04.html

Documentaries

Papakonstantinou G. and Zervas G. (1997). When Chagall cost less than a sack of potatoes.

Other sources

Labels in the exhibition The Collector George Costakis and the Russian Avant Garde. 100 years since his birth, available in the exhibition in SMCA.

60 Appendix

George Costakis in his apartment in Moscow, SMCA

George Costakis in his apartment in Moscow, www.iefimerida.gr

Costakis apartment in Moscow, www.ellada-russia.gr

Costakis apartment in Moscow, SMCA

Karezi, Kazakos and Xylouris on stage, in Our Great Circus, 2012

Kazakos, Karezi, Papagianopoulos on stage, in Our Great Circus, 2012

63 Karezi and Kazakos, Our Great Circus, in Our Great Circus, 2012

Xyloyris, singing on stage, in Our Great Circus, 2012