ARTIST STATEMENT

Claim your Anger

A manifesto on politics and political art

 

“How man, if he is to live in a ‘polis,’ can live outside of politics?” And how political art reflects the importance that politics play today? 

 

Political art is inseparable from politics. It implies art’s danger for it wishes to enter into the field of antagonism that politics is posited. “To do political art is also to do an art that talks to politicians, it is to enter their territory.”

 

I know that political art nowadays has become entangled in a dangerous moralism of neoliberal efforts, which suggests and promotes political art as another product of free-market. But I want to suggest another approach from what political art was or has been turned nowadays to be; for I find the first and foremost feature of political art to be that of “dissensus” and thus here, a dissensus with-it-self.

 

THESIS I

Political art addresses always a ‘we,’ that is a multitude. For political art’s kernel is not the action itself, whatever this might be in terms of materiality or performativity; for the action itself can never be political neither in its conception nor in its occurrence. An action becomes political only in its sociability; and thus the kernel of political art is the relation that one seeks through their actions to or with a multitude. Political art is extroverted, it exposes itself and moreover it invites for engagement through and with its exposure. I must insist and clarify that the multitude that I’m talking about here is a vast and variformed group of people that does not converge into One, it is not a unity. Rather it is a group that maintains its heterogeneity and individuality; a group that consists of individuals who are not only related to art, namely, artists or people who are interested in art, but moreover by non-artists and individuals who are not involved in art matters.

 

Thus the consequential question that is generated here is what would be of common interest to artists and to people who are not interested in art in order to meet and for what purpose? Only social and political concerns that touch directly both of them can bring them together and of course, the purpose is only one: claim for social change. And the space that political art claims is that of public space, because it is there that a multitude can be more easily approached. Needless-to-say that in political art aesthetics comes second in importance, yet without necessarily to eliminate.

 

But because I know that some will argue for an inevitable accumulation of power by the ‘Arkhêin,’ namely, by the ‘beginning’ whether this is expressed as the initiator, director, Author, leader or collective, group, etc., then I say that this is not that kind of political art that I’m suggesting here. The political art that I’m talking about questions first and foremost itself, again and again and again; for political art is dangerous to itself, since it is located on the border between social change and spectacle. Thus those who claim for political art must redistribute the power of arkhê by blurring the dynamic between the one who is considered the active and the one who is considered the passive, between the one who knows and the one who doesn’t, between Author and multitude. “The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the Author” explains perfectly what I mean, if I clarify only that in political art the ‘Author’ becomes the ‘author.’ That is to say, the author’s initial position can differ before, during and after the arkhêin. No proper political art is then; no right or wrong and no good or bad political art exists. Political art is only an intuition for the break with the logic of the arkhê.

 

But when a multitude is composed, a ‘new’ language is needed, perhaps each time a different one; a new language that will be ‘common’ to all who are engaged. To clarify that by ‘new’ I do not mean to conceive a new alphabet, neither by ‘common’ do I suggest a universal language. By ‘new’ and ‘common’ language I imply the intention of the involved people for mutual communication; a communication where thought, speech and action are claimed and can potentially clash. Political art and the multitude it addresses acquire a reciprocal relation in which both become exposed to each other and thus open to each other’s criticism. Herein, this is the ambivalent feature of political art that I want to highlight, its strength and its weakness, both at the same time; the very fact that it can be uplifted or shattered depending by the reception and reaction of the multitude.

 

THESIS II

If political art is circulated in a limited public and if political art hesitates or is afraid of the criticism and the reactions from a vast variformed and unpredictable group of people, then it is better to find a different name for that genre of political art that claims to be political without sharing the qualities of politics. This is the difference “between creating art about politics and creating art that works politically.” I suggest calling that genre of art about politics ‘good-for-nothing’ political art.

 

Good-for-nothing political art is that genre of political art that reduces itself only to comment; good-for-nothing political art is that genre of political art that ‘talks about’; good-for-nothing political art is that genre of political art that re-imagines according to what political art has so-far-been; good-for-nothing political art is that genre of political art that addresses a limited audience and not a multitude, that is, the audience of the art-world; good-for-nothing political art is that genre of political art that submits itself to neoliberal efforts, that is, efforts that twist political art into commodity and reiterate political art as such.

 

For if politics bears a responsibility, then undoubtedly, so must political art; a must that is not reduced to moral values, but a must that claims and doubts, seeks and demands. Political art that works politically is ‘good-as-beneficial,’ namely, it can be applied in the everyday life and it has an element of use in itself, that is, to long for the political imaginary. If one wants to make political art, then they must cogitate first the burden of and the cost for such a decision. In-other-words they must take the responsibility to claim the politicality for the action they want to take. I here use the term politicality to signify the essence I see in political art; that is, the amalgamation of the notions of art, philosophy and politics.

 

Those who claim for politicality in their work must always question themselves. Those who claim for politicality in their work must always question those who are at power. Those who claim for politicality in their work must redistribute the power of the Arkhêin. Those who claim for politicality in their work must bear the political responsibility for claiming the work’s politicality. Those who claim for politicality in their work must always seek ways to expose and communicate their work in a broad public, that is a multitude, no-matter-what. And those who claim for politicality in their work must always claim for the political imaginary.

 

THESIS III

And the political imaginary is what democracy is for the chasers of democracy; but it is the halt of democracy today that limits politics only to a here-and-now and thus severs the latter from its utopic potentiality, from its horizon. And if politics has come to be the border that attests the halt of democracy, then political art must enter into that same border and claim its anger for the political imaginary; it is within that same border that political art must counter-act politics; and it is within that same border that political art and politics must clash.

 

And let me say thus that the political imaginary looks towards a horizon. For horizon is the thin line in which the earth’s surface and the sky appear to meet; it is a meeting place, a place where the rising and the sunset come together; Yet-one-to-see and contemplate on horizon a sufficient distance is needed, which in return means that horizon is “not-here-yet.” But this is the issue here, this is what I’m arguing for; the-very-fact that our horizon has been not only restricted by and guided to pseudo-democratic promises, but has been moreover disappeared from people’s imaginary, that is, from people’s thought. People have lost their urge for a horizon, for a better future; some have perhaps forgotten its very existence or are too busy with their hectic lives and their own daily problems, too tired or too comfortable. How and why one to get involved in common issues in his neighbourhood, community, city, country or globally when they have so many personal and familial issues to deal with?

 

It is the idea of privatization that is at core; for privatization occurs not only in its physicality, meaning, in its material and spatial aspect, but it also occurs mentally, in each individual’s thought and thus, to the society as a whole, if society is seen as a broader conceptual body that is hold mentally deficient by the privatized. The word ‘private’ derives from the word ‘idiotes,’ which means a private person, individual, one in a private station; from ‘idios,’ one’s own, separate, removed from social responsibility. And-yet-the root of the word ‘idiot’ derives also from ‘idiotes;’ and along this line the ‘private’ and the ‘idiot’ have come today to mean the same.

 

If thus politics cannot provide ‘stability’ to multitude, then it is on multitude’s hands to do something about it. That is to say, it is about us doubting the efficacy of the State to provide a welfare life. Doubt was the method used by Descartes. He “doubts everything he can manage to doubt -all traditional knowledge, the impressions of his senses, and even the fact that he has a body- until he reaches one thing he cannot doubt, the existence of himself as a thinker.” That is how Descartes arrived at his statement “I think, therefore I exist.” The potentiality of thought is what I pay attention on here, the notion of which today, perhaps more than ever, is under restrain and control. And this is precisely what I mean by saying that the imaginary has been disappeared from our horizon; that our thought is subject to guidance and control towards a way that renders our horizon out-of-sight; it is the loss of horizon that signifies the ‘privatization of thought.’

 

Claim your Anger emerges from Descartes saying “I think, therefore I exist,” which through this manifesto I translate as ‘I have anger, thus, I live.’ But it is an “I” that wants to ‘disappear’ within a “we,” a multitude, and it is an Anger that rises from what we do not have and for what we imagine; it is an Anger that questions and defies, disagrees and claims. For the Anger that I, am talking about, WILL-come-back again-and-again to haunt us as ghost; for the Anger that I, am talking about, WILL-come-back to irritate our thought and activate our memory; for the Anger that I, am talking about, turns our loss and disaffection in-to-claim; for the Anger that I, am talking about is an Anger of political force.

 

And it is here where I see the essence of political art; it is to open a ‘gap’ to the privatization of thought towards a new horizon; it is the puncture of thought for the political imaginary; for-indeed-is in art that I see the ‘sperm’ for the imaginary; it is in political art that I see the potentiality for the manifestation of the political imaginary.

For political art is NOT here-and-now, it is NOT there-and-then; political art is the manifestation of itself here-and-now for there-and-then; a for that entails process; a for that denotes claim; and a for that proclaims the potentiality to a futurity. Political art is the spark. Claim your Anger is a polemic stance towards the implications of neoliberalism in artistic and non-artistic level. It calls for restlessness, a restlessness of the multitude for the multitude itself, to seek its own horizon and its own voice, each one individually or collectively, as wemagine.

BIOGRAPHY

I am a graduate of Fine Arts University of Athens (2003-2009), Greece, which I finished with large-scale sculptures in public space and video-installations. In 2008, I did the Socrates Erasmus program in the University of Lisbon, Faculdade de Belas-Artes, Portugal, for a semester. My interest for social issues and public space drove me to complete the MFA program “Public Art and New Artistic Strategies,” in Bauhaus University-Weimar, 2010-12, with scholarship from Panayiotis and Efi Micheli Institution, Greece. My experience there showed me a path outside of galleries and museums towards a work that favours and projects the interaction and friction with the audience and the idea of “public.” In my thesis project, “By Traverse of Social Border-My Home is Open For You,” I focused on the notion of ‘social borders’ and I researched the idea of home by bringing together the local community and students who resided for short term in a public performance. Concurrently, I developed my interests in experimental theater and dance by participating for a year in the play “Providurium,” which was nominated in the Avant-Art Thuringen Theater Festival, Weimar. Moreover, in 2012 I was a grant-holder for the “Truth is Concrete” marathon camp, in Graz, Austria, and in 2011 I won an honorary in the ANbau competition in Chemnitz, Germany.

In 2013, after finishing my MFA I decided to reside in South Korea for six months and complete two art residencies, ‘Incheon Art Platform’ and ‘Honguen Seoul Art Space,’ in order to explore further the notion of borders in their geopolitical and social aspect. I experimented with participatory artistic practices and I did a field research to the sociopolitical condition between South and North Korea. The project “Voices of the People” consists one of my most representative projects, which was chosen to be presented in “Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space,” 2015, together with my video-performance “linenality.” Returning to my home-country Greece I was selected to participate in the project “Artivists for Change,” Thessaloniki, which took place as parallel program to the Thessaloniki Biennale, 2013. In this context I realized the project “Two Teams Play With The Same Outfit.” The same year, I was accepted in the art residency R.I.C.E., “The Choreography of Humans,” in Hydra, Greece, led by Michael Klein.

 

In 2014, aiming to obtain a stronger theoretical basis about issues that preoccupied me, I applied to the MA program “Performance Studies” in Tisch, NYU, and I was accepted winning scholarships from Fulbright Foundation, NEON organization, Greece and from the department of Performance Studies. I focused on concepts such as politics and political art, activism and social movements, fascism and abjection, autonomy and memory. The notion of memory was of particular importance because of my intense experience during the protests back in Greece. In my thesis “Borders as Memoring, or, the Puncture of Thought Towards the Reverberation of the Imaginary,” I argued for the conceptual connection of people who experienced uprisings the last couple of years in different geographical location, such as in Egypt, Spain, Greece, Turkey, etc. I introduced the term ‘memoring,’ to express the connection of the memory of the people beyond geopolitical borders; a connection that is based on the common elements of oppression and injustice but also of the resistance and the constant struggle of the people. For my overall effort in NYU the department of Performance Studies awarded me for “Outstanding MA Work.”

 

Concurrently to my studies I realized my solo exhibition “Politischer!//?,” in “OKK/raum29,” Berlin. I presented a variety of works, from video performances and sculptures, to participatory projects and activism. As part of my exhibition I presented my recent manifesto “Claim your Anger, on politics and political art.” My presentation constituted the framework for a fruitful discussion on the issue of politics in the context of art. In addition, I was invited to participate in the project “Welcome to (Y)our State of Emergency,” in NGBK, Berlin, with my solo performance “Exercising the 27th Limb.” In my presentation and artist’s talk “Art as Role: public space and participation,” in CAMP!, Athens, 2014, I presented a series of participatory projects realized in different geopolitical contexts worldwide. The event produced a challenging dialogue between the attendees and for the artistic scene in Greece.

 

Finally, my participation in dance and theater workshops and seminars since several years, such as with Katsura Kan, Michael Klien and Athanasia Kanellopoulou among others, has influenced my artistic process. I blend elements from performance art, choreography, dance and experimental theater giving a multidisciplinary result. I create mainly participatory performances where artists and non-artists are invited to work together. Public space plays a crucial role for it is the space where art and the everyday life can meet. Field researches are essential for deciding the final interventions. Video work and photography compliment my artistic practice, while the documentation of my projects is important so as to display my work in interior spaces. My performances and projects have been completed and displayed internationally, including Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, Prague, Czech Republic (2015), Rapid Pulse Performance Art Festival, Chicago, US (2015), Movement Research, New York, US (2014), Athens Video Art Festival, Greece (2014), 2nd Cyprus International Performance Art Festival (2014), Façade Video Festival, Plovdiv, Bulgaria (2013), CAMP!, “Boiling Point,” Athens, Greece (2013), Marta Museum, “Wir Sind Alle Astronauten” Herford, Germany (2011). I have been invited to the “HomeBase Project Saitama 2015,” organized by the Israeli artist and curator Anat Litwin, which is a pre-event to the Saitama Triennial 2016, Japan.