Back in 1989, the Italian philosopher Emanuele Severino wrote a pivotal book, “il Giogo”. Aeschylus is discussed as a thinker whose character Prometheus utters the following words: “I can bear everything because I have foreseen the future; and since I have foreseen the future I can bear everything”. Truth becomes the medium through which the future is not only anticipated, but also accomplished. Anticipation allows salvation.
 
In other words, however bound Prometheus can bear his fate because he is Pro-methéus, i.e. the one endowed with the knowledge that pertains to the prophet (pro-mathés), thus possessing the fixity of a viewpoint that is higher than everyone else’s. As such, he is freed from everyday constraints.
Thirty years after the publication of that book and 25 centuries from Aeschylus’ tragedy, contemporary Europe, which owns so much to ancient Greece, finally questions its repressed past, so that a new quest for justice and emancipation (alongside a genuine rejection for every form of exploitation and enslavement) finally emerges.

Now days, after an endless economic crisis and the suppression of rights of all kinds, can we finally identify ourselves with the ancient Greeks and declare ourselves anti-colonialists? That all-encompassing gaze, which used to connote Prometheus, is no longer the gaze of a Titan once stealing fire from the Mount Olympus, but rather the gaze of a multitude of human beings exploited by other human beings. The latter have stolen the future from a whole generation of innocents.      

Yet, just as Prometheus can bear his condition due to raising his gaze above his fate, so the gaze of these artists can help the oppressed to bear their fate simply by telling the story of their exploitation. Capitalism plays its part in it.

It is in this regard that the allegorical title of the Greek pavilion at the LVIII Venice Art Biennale is Mr Stiegl. A historical paradox, a metaphor, a hyperbole, a qui pro quo, it reports the drama of (in)existent anti-heroes whose (un)believable vicissitudes are able to arouse a bittersweet smile in the viewers. Hilarious.

So, what do we witness to in the pavilion created by the Greek artists Panos Charalambous, Eva Stefani e Zafos Xagoraris? A paradoxical miscellanea mixing and matching grand narratives and everyday life, the macrocosm of history and the microcosm of subjectivity.

While for Panos Charalambous the starting point is a glass installation (A Wild Eagle Was Standing Proud), on which a dance is performed, Eva Stefania produces experimental cinema half the way between reality and fiction. Zafos Xagoraris, instead (The Concession), travels back in time by linking civil war, concentration camps and avant-garde (in 1948, Peggy Guggenheim was invited to exhibit her art collection at the Greek pavilion…). All is magisterially curated by Katerina Tselou.
Text by Massimo Mazzone
 

INTERVIEW WITH ZAFOS XAGORARIS
by Matteo Binci

1) In 1948, Greece was in the midst of “the Civil War” (1946 - 1949), fought between the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) - the military branch of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) - backed by Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria and the Greek government army backed by Great Britain and the United States of America.

1948 is also the year in which the Venice Biennale reopened after many years due to the conflicts of the Second World War. In the same year, the Greek Pavilion was entrusted to the American art collector Peggy Guggenheim to exhibit her private collection. The assignment was entrusted by the general secretary of the Biennale, Rodolfo Pallucchini. There were 136 artworks and the setting had been designed by the distinguished Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa.

For the first time, the most important New York artists of the future decades landed in Venice, alongside Cubists, Surrealists, Dadaists, Futurists and Abstract Expressionists. The exhibition was interpreted as one of the most important moments for modern art exhibition history.

The last year the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice dedicated a retrospective to the pavilion, on the occasion of its seventieth anniversary. In 2019 one can find a white architrave, surmounted by off-white flags, engraved with a specific year: 1948 at the Greek Pavilion entrance.

Could you tell us about your site-specific project The Concession (2018 - 2019) on the facade of the pavilion, visible but at the same time silent, and how do you evoke the history of Guggenheim?
 


Zafos Xagoraris, The Concession, installation of a reconstructed Makronisos gate in the entrance of the Greek pavilion, 10m X 12.5m X3m, 58th Venice Biennale, 2019.
 

The Concession focuses on these two contradictory, simultaneous events. The outdoor part of the installation is a reconstructed gate of a concentration camp during the Greek civil war with approximate dimensions of 10m X 12.5m X 3m which is installed at the entrance of the pavilion, altering its architectural design (please see the image above). Since the pavilion is listed, we had to avoid using screws or nails, therefore we designed a temporary system of clamps to hold the structure on the existing building.

The history of the institution is relevant today, besides the context of the exhibition, the visitors or the space itself. Of course, the history of Peggy Guggenheim and the Venice Biennale after WWII are closely related.

Gražina Subelytė addressed this topic in her exhibition last year and also in her text included in the publication of the Greek participation in the 58th Biennale, curated by Katerina Tselou. However, at the same time we could also observe the gradual gap created between Modernism and reality or the increasing distance between an art show and the tragedy of a war.

Describing her experience after the 1948 exhibition, Peggy Guggenheim wrote:
“I felt as though I were a new European country” (Out of this Century, Confessions of an Art Addict, the Autobiography of Peggy Guggenheim, Deutsch, London, 1979).


2) Inside the pavilion, one discovers a series of documentary photos from 1948 exhibition, to which are added images from the prisoner camps built during “the Civil War”. It is possible to see soldiers and civilian’s intent on reconstructing miniature models of ancient temples. There is also a reconstruction of a temple that surmounts the architecture of the Greek pavilion. What is the relationship between the two stories and how do art, politics, history and the present time intertwine with each other?


Zafos Xagoraris, The Concession, 2019. Installation, dimensions variable, archival material, hybrid building consisting of an acropolis from Makronisos and the Greek Pavilion (display case design: Katerina Stefanidaki). Pavilion of Greece at the 58th International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia. Photograph by Stefanos Chandelis.
 

My intent was to focus on civil war: I used the indicative example of Makronisos, a concentration camp, a small prison – island, where soldiers and civilians were forced to follow a program of rehabilitation. Propaganda photos and films (one could see relevant footage in the Greek pavilion watching The Mouth by Eva Stefani) show cheerful inmates creating copies of ancient temples or sculptures as a way of “reconfirming” their national identity by hiding the many violent incidents happened inside the concentration camp.



Zafos Xagoraris, The Concession, 2019. Installation, dimensions variable, archival material, hybrid building consisting of an acropolis from Makronisos and the Greek Pavilion (display case design: Katerina Stefanidaki). Pavilion of Greece at the 58th International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia. Photograph by Stefanos Chandelis.


The silence and the non-functioning mode of the pavilion, by the side of the impossibility of exhibiting let Typalde Forestis, the Greek consul in Venice, to concede the space for the 1948’s presentation of the Guggenheim’s collection. The two contradictory stories and their arbitrary architectural symbols collide violently creating two double buildings: the camouflaged gate embedded in the actual entrance of the pavilion and a reconstructed Makronisos temple presented next to the archival material indoors, together with a small three-dimensional portrait of Peggy Guggenheim sitting on the stairs of the Greek pavilion.


3) In your artistic practice, you often resort to past stories as starting points and reflections, but you have rarely exposed archival materials directly. These images, which can be interpreted in a divergent manner maintain an ambiguous character and appropriate to the archives…
 


Zafos Xagoraris, The Concession, 2019.  Installation, dimensions variable, archival material, hybrid building consisting of an acropolis from Makronisos and the Greek Pavilion (display case design: Katerina Stefanidaki). Pavilion of Greece at the 58th International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia. Photograph by Ugo Carmeni.
 

The display case (designed by the artist Katerina Stefanidaki) includes archival material from the Contemporary Social History Archives and the Hellenic Literary and Historical Archive in Athens, the Biennale’s Historical Archives of Contemporary Arts (ASAC) and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection Archives in Venice and finally, from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Archives in New York. Most of the photos depict the exhibited artworks (we can see a sculpture by Antoine Pevsner next to an ancient temple), so the idea of them taking the traditional position of an exhibit seemed proper. Talking about the ways and places of display, one should also consider the decision of installing the Peggy Guggenheim collection in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, symbolically close to the Accademia, as well as the relevant Clement Greenberg’s later writings about how Pollock’s paintings live and die in the same context as Rembrandt’s or Titian’s.


4) Referring now to your  experience in sound art, I would like to ask you about the artworks The Welcoming Gate (2017), made for documenta 14 in Kassel, and Cyprus (2003 - 2005), one of the first sound installations in Cyprus. In the former, the sound recordings produced by Greek soldiers in the Görlitz German prisoner camp during the 1910s are disseminated, while in the latter, the faint sound of the villages of the island of Cyprus which were evacuated after the 1974 Turkish invasion, is amplified. In both works, the use of sound has a strong historical, narrative and political component...
 

Some historical events are important to us, since they are able to answer urgent questions about our lives and sometimes the past seems important for our future. At the same time, sound fills easily open spaces and is able to imitate aspects of a past event accurately.
 


Zafos Xagoraris, The Welcoming Gate, outdoor sound installation, documenta 14, Kassel, 2017.
 

A sign with the inscription XAIPETE! (pronounced herete in Greek) meaning HELLO! was placed at the exit of the underground train station in Kassel. This Welcoming Gate was a reconstruction of the entrance of a camp in Görlitz, where from 1916 to 1919 approximately 7.000 Greek soldiers were confined after their surrender to the German forces. Since Greece was at the moment neutral to the war, these soldiers had a bizarre status, being at the same time guests and prisoners. Loudspeakers attached to the sign transmitted some of the first recordings of Greek music carried out in Görlitz. This relocated gate apart from reviving an historical event, attempts to discuss the reality here and now: the context of documenta and the various sociopolitical relationships between center and periphery.
 


Zafos Xagoraris, Amp, temporary installation of sound amplifying system, Agios Sozomenos, Cyprus, 2005.
 

You are right about the origin of this work. From 2003 to 2005, I installed temporarily audio amplification devices in abandoned villages in Cyprus, in order to enhance the existing silence turning whispering sounds into noise. This brief animation of the villages reminds us of their past, but at the same time it’s a call to action.

More information

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Curators
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Artists Panos Charalambous, Eva Stefani, and Zafos Xagoraris
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Dates
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May 11–November 24, 2019
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Venue
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Giardini, Venice. Italy Italia
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Panos Charalambous (b. 1956, Acarnania, Greece) creates site-specific installations and public audiovisual presentations. Through in-progress units and sonic dance happenings, he is concerned with the “survival” potential of patterns, voices, sounds, ideas, feelings, and productive behaviors; “thinning” the prevalence of the present, and making new arrangements and distributions possible. Abdicating from the representational status quo, he pursues ionization through his own incidents of “en-act-ment.” At the same time, he explores his expressive ability as a subject within the “minor Modern Greek scene” and “indigenous establishment” of a multicultural environment.

He has participated in international group exhibitions, including: Voice-O-Graph & Flatus Vocis, documenta 14, Athens and Kassel, 2017; Genii Loci: Greek Art from 1930 to the Present, Saint Petersburg, 2016; Venice International Performance Art Week: The Dream of Antigone, Venice, 2016; White House Biennial, Varna, 2016; Break-Through, ARCO, Madrid, 2004; Eidos, Besançon, 2004; Copenhagen European Capital of Culture, 1996; Ogrody, Poznań, 1996; Kunst-Europa: Visual European Landscape, Berlin, 1991; Glasgow European Capital of Culture, 1990; Οut of Limits, Poznań, 1990; and 3rd Biennial of Young Artists from Mediterranean Europe, Barcelona, 1987.

Solo shows include: Αquis Submersus, Athens, 2014–15; Tobacco Area 1986–2011, Athens, 2011; Voice-O-Graph, Athens, 2006–07; Phonopolis, Athens, 2003–04; Psychagogia II, Athens, 2001; 1496–2000 / como humo se va, Athens, 1999–2000; Psychagogia I: Recreation, Athens and Thessaloniki, 1997; ΙΧΘΥΣ, Athens, 1995; Concerning Fishing, Athens, 1992; and Story of Τobacco, Berlin, 1991 and Athens, 1990, 1988. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts in Greece under Nikos Kessanlis. Charalambous lives and works in Athens, where he is Rector of the School of Fine Arts.

panoscharalambous.com
 
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Eva Stefani. Documentary filmmaker, visual artist, and poet, Eva Stefani (b. USA, 1964) uses video and super 8 film to make observational documentaries and short visual poems. Selected filmography includes Manuscript (2017), Virgin’s Temple (2017), Dimitris Papaioannou (2012), Bathers (2008), What Time Is It? (2007), The Box (2004), Acropolis (2001), and Athene (1995). She has been awarded international prizes, among: Principal Prize at the 64th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, National Quality Award from the Greek Ministry of Culture, International Film Critics Award (FIPRESCI), and 1st Prize for Short Documentary at Cinéma du Réel, Paris.

She has participated in international art exhibitions, most recently documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel (2017). She is the head of the Film Series at Patakis Publishers in Athens, as well as the author of two lm books, Documentary: The Observation Game (Patakis, 2016) and 10 texts on Documentary (Patakis, 2007), and a book of poetic prose, Fin’s Hair (Polis, 2014).

She studied political science at University of Athens (BA); documentary filmmaking at Ateliers Varan, Paris; Cinema Studies at New York University (MA); and documentary at National Film & TV School, London. She finished her PhD on Ethnographic Filmmaking in 1997 at Panteion University, Athens. Stefani is Associate Professor of History and Theory of Cinema, Faculty of Theatre Studies, University of Athens, and a Visiting Professor at Freie Universität Berlin.

www.evastefani.gr
 
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Zafos Xagoraris. In his work, Zafos Xagoraris (b. Athens, 1963) often refers to historical details or disregarded events that he shifts to the present as if breathing life into a ghost. His research starts in situ or within
the exhibition context.

He has participated in various exhibitions such as Have We Met? Dialogues on Memory and Desire, Stamps Gallery, Ann Arbor, 2018; documenta 14, Athens and Kassel, 2017; Politiche della Natura, Fondazione Zimei, Pescara, 2016; PIGS, Artium, Vitoria-Gasteiz, 2016; No Country for Young Men, Bozar, Brussels, 2014; 4th Athens Biennale, 2013; Sotto Quale Cielo, Museo Riso, Palermo, 2011; Manifesta 7, Rovereto, 2008; 1st Thessaloniki Biennale, 2007; 1st Bienal del Fin del Mundo, Ushuaia, 2007; and 27th São Paulo Biennial, 2006. In 2015, he presented the outdoor installation Downhill Classroom commissioned by the Benaki Museum, Athens, and in 2016, The Performance for NEON 
City Project, Athens. During 2017–19, he organized the educational project Dismantling Devices
 with the collaboration of Onassis Cultural Centre at six elementary schools in Athens. He has been invited to present his work at universities, including: Iuav, Venice; School of Visual Arts, New York; Academy of Fine Arts, Munich; Academy of Fine Arts, Palermo; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and School of the Art Institute, Chicago.

He was one of the curators of the Greek Pavilion at the 9th Venice Biennale of Architecture (2004),
 and the 2nd Athens Biennial (2009). He has been a Visiting Professor at Universities of Sassari
and Patras, a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University, and a Roman J. Witt Artist in Residence at University of Michigan. He is currently Professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts.

He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) under an Onassis Foundation scholarship. He was awarded his PhD on the construction of miracles by the “Hero of Alexandria,” National Technical University of Athens. Xagoraris lives and works
in Athens.

zafosxagoraris.net
 
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Published on: November 1, 2019
Cite: "Greek Pavilion: A Peripheral Viewpoint at last!" METALOCUS. Accessed
<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/greek-pavilion-a-peripheral-viewpoint-last> ISSN 1139-6415
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