Bringing together Greek artists from the 18th century till the most recent times, HELL AS PAVILION is an exhibition that aims to comment on the role of Greece in today’s European sociopolitical proscenium. “Scapegoat”, “demonisation”, “crisis”, “paradox” and “paralogo” are some of the elements that inflamed a great dialogue between Nadja Argyropoulou and Yorgos Tzirtzilakis, who later on managed to project it on the walls of Palais de Tokyo. The result was a total of numerous paintings, sculptures, videos and photographs conversing with each other, working as a unit and playing with concepts such as humanism, punishment, radicalization, the collective and the connective. Read as we question Yorgos Tzirtzilakis about his involvement with the project as well as about the project itself.
What is the story behind the name of the exhibition ?
The exhibition was named after the way Jean-Luc Godard chooses to use it in his recent film “Socialisme”. The title is a clear commentary on the recent “demonisation” of Greece during the times of a severe European crisis while at the same time, it subtly focuses on the absurdity of co-existance. It’s important here to note that there is a new term introduced through the exhibition, the term of “Minor Culture”, which has three main characteristics: deterritorialization, the fact that individuality has a political nature and that creation, in general, is collective.
What was the initial incentive behind the theme of the HELL AS PAVILION?
First of all it’s worth mentioning that we were asked by the museum itself to set up this exhibition, a fact that is a great honor since Palais De Tokyo is one of the biggest exhibition centers in Europe at the time being. Moving on to the core of this work, “HELL AS PAVILION” is placed in the middle of a bigger plan of re-approaching and thus, re-translating contemporary Greek art. Initially, we set up some questions such as “How does Greek culture co-exist with the European?”, “What are her characteristics that distinguish her from the rest?” or “What is our contribution to the West at the current time?”. What we tried to do was actually to inflame a series of intense discussions around what Greece has to offer to the contemporary European art proscenium. “HELL AS PAVILION” has a centroid: the enigma of the otherness, how Greek culture becomes a commentary and approaches the meaning of the “other” and how we can spot the traces of a culture dedicated and inspired by mysticism. Our goal, in a more general approach, is to make an archaeological reading on the contemporary culture, not by isolating it and studying it like a solitary unit but having always in mind its contemporary nature.
In what ways did you manage to include art pieces from the Byzantine period till the very contemporary works of the 21st century and at the same time preserve a harmony between them, making them narrate a story?
From the very beginning, we thought of the exhibition as a whole, a piece of art itself. While every single art piece that is being included in “HELL AS PAVILION” has a magnificent value of meaning, they function all together as a whole expressing something special. In this way, we create a great mosaic, a fresco, a harmonic co-existence, a radical where no discerning takes place and thus, revealing one and true masterpiece. All of the pieces are connected in the middle of a delirium maximum, creating a united surface. In other words, there is an intense conversation going on under a wider hypertext of art pieces. As for a common theme, we could say that most of the artists choose to concern themselves with the human body and the relationship modern man has with it. But then again, it’s only one of the common horizons all of the art pieces have.
What does “paradox” mean for the contemporary art? In what ways has the definition of the term changed through the centuries?
According to the East Culture of the past, any kind of malformation leads to the sacred and its mystic nature. “Paradox” inflames thinking either it is critical or not. We can find it at the spot where cultures collide. For example, the way east and west culture face death reveal some of the most basic information about each of their ethos. So we could say that there is no strict definition as the “paradox” of each culture derives from its subconscious, which is always something secret and recondite.
During the times of thoroughgoing globalization, when the perception and the ideas concerning art meet no borders, is the “artistic identification” of a nation possible?
Personally, I think that it is quite unquestionable that we still can recognize geopolitical and cultural borders even if these are prone to alterations. However, there are still ethic and culture origins that we shouldn’t refuse but recognize and embrace since this contemporary alteration, the “scapegoat” characterization, leads us to a redefinition of our own identity. Tracing these origins can be done via analyzing the psychosynthesis of the country itself. More specifically, for the West civilization, Greek culture was something idealized and weathered at the same time, a mix of the glory of the past and the flavorless of the present.
The exhibition included numerous forms of art such as paintings, drawing, videos, films and pottery. What purposes did this variation in the mediums serve?
As mentioned before, although one of the common horizons is the human body, we cannot ignore the fact that different mediums express the same thing in a different way. And what we did was to seek a deeper meaning in every single art piece, only finding out that in the end, a video can function in the same way with a byzantine mural as a byzantine mural can replace a contemporary painting. If you know how to read each medium, the meaning is the same. We also came up with a new term, “typotopography” while trying to describe the multiplication of the relationships among the art pieces.
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN : Yorgos Tzirtzilakis
PROJECT TEAM : Malvina Panagiotidi, Vassiliki-Maria Plavou, Yorgos Rimenidis
ARTISTS : Alexis Akrithakis, LoukiaAlavanou, Vlassis Caniaris, Savvas Christodoulides, Costis, Dimitris Dimitriadis, Antonis Donef, Andreas Embiricos, Nikos Engonopoulos, Haris Epaminonda, Stelios Faitakis, Takis Giannousas, Hollow Airport Museum (Nikos Charalambidis), Lakis & Aris Ionas (The Callas), Vassilis P. Karouk, Andreas Ragnar Kassapis, KavecS(VanaKostayola& Kostis Stafylakis), AnjaKirschner & David Panos, Panos Koutrouboussis, Blind Adam (Thanos Kyriakides), Konstantinos Ladianos, Stathis Logothetis, Andreas Lolis, Panayiotis Loukas, Rallou Panagiotou, Nikos-Gabriel Pentzikis, Kostas Sahpazis, Saprophytes, Kostas Sfikas, ChristianaSoulou, Thanassis Totsikas, IraTriantafyllidou, Souzy Tros (MariaPapadimitriou), Iris Touliatou, Nanos Valaoritis, Marie Wilson-Valaoritis, Jannis Varelas, LydiaVenieri, Vangelis Vlahos, Kostis Velonis, Tassos Vrettos, Takis Zenetos
APPENDIX FILM : Antoinetta Angelidi, Costis, Constantine Giannaris, Alexis Damianos, Nicos Papatakis, Angelos Prokopiou & G.Hoyningen -Huene, Thanassis Rentzis, Kostas Sfikas, Eva Stefani, Stavros Tornes, Athina-Rachel Tsangari, Christos Vakalopoulos & Stavros Tsiolis