At documenta 14, Everything’s a Strategy—Even Bad Hanging
The major art event’s strong political message is weighed down by concept.
Riders walk with their horses beneath the Acropolis in Athens on April 9, 2017, marking the start of a 100-day horseback journey from Athens to Kassel, organized by artist Ross Birrell. Photo Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images.
The much-anticipated quinquennial exhibition documenta 14 opened to the public on April 8, one day after Greece and EU finance ministers signed an agreement on new austerity measures that would allow the country’s third bailout to proceed, ahead of the July deadline for the payment of over €6 billion of its debt.
On the evening of April 7, the city’s main roads were blocked for traffic as protesters took to the streets; meanwhile, other main routes were fenced off as security measures for the German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s official visit to open documenta. Much like everything else at the exhibition, curated by Adam Szymczyk, this coincidence of events felt like a calculated strategy.
However, more often than not, the curatorial team’s carefully scripted decisions were, in fact, deliberately meant to cause confusion. Take for example their listing of Jani Christou’s Epicycle on the website as a work that would be performed on certain days at all documenta 14 venues. The dates on the piece were listed as “1968-2017.” The author, Christou, is a Greek minimalist composer who died in a car accident in 1970. Viewers, logically, went looking for an actual performance.
But Epicycle, it turns out, was not a performance, per se, but a meditation on expanding the idea of music, inviting you to consider the “continuum” of artistic experience as a musical score. “Anyone wishing to participate in the continuum is welcome,” Christou is quoted on documenta’s website, by way of explanation. This writer, therefore, interprets Epicycle‘s inclusion as a conceptual cue that applies to the entire documenta, an invitation to participate in the show more generally.
If this sounds confusing, that is because it is. Reviewing documenta’s many venues, it gradually became clear that not everyone will be “wishing to participate” as an active viewer, at least not outside of the art world, as the exhibition was weighed down by such conceptual sleights of hand.
Nevin Aladağ, Music Room (Athens), 2017, installation with furniture, housewares, musical-instrument components, and performances, Athens Conservatoire (Odeion), Athens, documenta 14, photo: Mathias Völzke
Still, the idea of inclusion, at least, seemed key for many of the pieces on view at the Athens Conservatoire, where music played a central role. On the building’s terrace, Norwegian artist Joar Nango built a tiny village resembling a tribal community, with elements taken from different indigenous peoples from around the world. The artist, who comes from Sámi heritage, refers to the installation as a mobile theater, and performances, as well as communal cooking, took place there throughout the first days. When not used as a stage, the site became a playground for toddlers, or a chill-out area for tired parents.
People look at art work Artist book from Daniel Knorr at a preview of Documenta 14, on April 7, 2017 in Athens, Greece. Photo by Milos Bicanski/Getty Images.
Downstairs, occupying the building’s atrium, artist Daniel Knorr was standing at the foot of a mount of scrap materials. Selecting from this pile of bric-a-brac, Knorr pasted pieces of refuse to the pages of books, made upon request as unique artist’s books. Selling at €80 a piece, proceeds would go towards funding his work in Kassel, which will feature smoke coming out of the Fridericianum.
Inside the venue, few works stood out among the many displays of ephemera and documents behind glass vitrines, with important pieces by electronic music heroine Pauline Oliveros or the experimental, short-lived ensemble Scratch Orchestra rendered especially inaccessible to anyone without any pre-existing knowledge of their work.
In general, conventional wall texts were non-existent (in itself not a bad idea), replaced by long paper scrolls on the ground which listed the works’ titles, held in place by rectangular pieces of marble that bore the artist’s name (with many either disappearing in the hands of visitors or not yet placed).
It was the performances that made the venue come alive: Nevin Aladağ’s whimsical furniture-pieces-turned-musical-instruments were activated in improvisational jams several times a day, and 86-year-old experimental composer and influential scholar Alvin Lucier captivated the audience with a live performance of his seminal piece I Am Sitting in a Room, which uses repetition and the frequencies of the space to resonate the room’s spatiality.
Perhaps because music makes up such a big part of the show, and the inherent difficulty of “showing” music as physical artworks, it seemed as if a decision had been made to make the presentation of paintings, sculptures, and installations intentionally indecorous as well. Artworks were rarely given enough space, as if to insist that no visual hierarchy should be allowed to exist between the mediums.
Beatriz González, Decoración de interiores, (1981), Athens Conservatoire (Odeion), documenta 14, Photo: Mathias Völzke
Such was the case with Colombian artist Beatriz Gonzalez’s smart and visually arresting piece Interior Decoration (1981), a 140-meter-long curtain that shows Colombia’s controversial president at the time, Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala, entertaining a coterie of guests. The artist collaborated with textile makers to create the decorative patterned fabric with the party scene in endless repeat, which could be ordered by the meter. But the artwork, on loan from the Tate, was hardly given the space it needs, to show off its sheer scale or give it the proper visual impact.
Nairy Baghramian, Drawing Table (Homage to Jane Bowles), 2017, various materials, EMST—National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, documenta 14, photo: Mathias Völzke
Other examples of what could only be intentionally ‘bad’ hanging abounded at another venue, the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST). A new artwork by Nairy Baghramian, Drawing Table (Homage to Jane Bowles) (2017)—one of just a few works on view produced especially for documenta—is a brilliant balancing act of over-layering, an assemblage of items meant to somewhat suggest items from a short story by the American author Jane Bowles. The dense work is cornered on one side by Ashley Hans Scheirl’s brightly colored paintings, and pushed to the wall by proximity to more glass display tables, of which there are many.
Similarly, Yael Davids’s elegant installation centering on the difficult biography of poet Else Lasker Schüler, felt cornered. A poignant piece by Moyra Davey showing photographs she had folded like envelopes and sent from her home in New York State to the documenta curators in Athens, is hung on the wall of a long corridor in a room overladen with other works.
Moyra Davey, Portrait/Landscape (2017), 70 C-prints, installation view, EMST—National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, documenta 14, photo: Mathias Völzke
Downstairs, almost an entire room was dominated by the ritualistic masks and wooden sculptures of Kwakwaka’wakw artist Beau Dick, who passed away on March 27, days before the opening. But around the room’s perimeter were pieces by other artists whose presence was unexplained and indecipherable. They were a distraction, if at all noticed.
Beau Dick, Twenty-two masks from the series ”Atlakim”, 1990–2012, various materials, installation view, EMST—National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, documenta 14, photo: Mathias Völzke
The list goes on. Yet in some cases, it was evidently the choice of the artist. Douglas Gordon showed his latest film, I had nowhere to go, based on the eponymous autobiography of Lithuanian filmmaker Jonas Mekas, at a traditional local open-air cinema nestled inside an inner courtyard. For this first screening of the season, foliage had overgrown to obfuscate the screen, and was left untouched. When asked about it after the powerful film—which includes long stretches of only audio featuring Mekas’s voiceover, and at one point, a very long sound sequence of a bombardment—had ended, Gordon replied that he didn’t see why the branches should be cut.
Douglas Gordon, I had nowhere to go, 2016, digital video transferred from Super 8 film and video, installation view, Municipal Cinema Stella, Athens © Douglas Gordon/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017, documenta 14, photo: Stathis Mamalakis
It is all the more puzzling, then, that certain works are given ample space, and long explanatory texts.
An entire room with a museum-like, grey-toned wall encloses the curious project by Piotr Uklanski, who invited artist duo McDermott & McGough to show works from their 2001 series “Hitler and the Homosexuals,” alongside his own series based on Leni Riefenstahl’s film Olympia. The viewer is welcomed by Uklanski’s uninteresting paintings, and a mildly offensive text explaining (or justifying?) the double entendre in the installation’s title, The Greek Way.
A woman looks at a piece of work ttitled The Greek way which is an installation that juxtaposes the work of Piotr Uklanski and McGouth at a preview of Documenta 14 at the EMST- National Museum of Contemporary Art on April 6, 2017 in Athens, Greece. Photo by Milos Bicanski/Getty Images.
At the Benaki museum, a venue where most of the works centered on narrative, another black-humor Holocaust joke comes courtesy of Israeli artist Roee Rosen, who’s showing an old piece, from 1995-1997, called Live and Die as Eva Braun. It imagines, in a room-filling installation of text and drawings, the last days of Hitler’s secretary and lover.
Why, besides its focus on narrative, would the curators choose to present Rosen’s monumental jest—which naturally caused a stir when it was first exhibited in the Israel Museum—in the same context as a piece like Thai artist Arin Rungjang’s video And then there were none (Tomorrow we will become Thailand) (2016) is anyone’s guess. The latter, a one-channel video, weaves the stories of two sites of popular uprising, the Democracy Monument in Bangkok and the National Technical University in Athens, which became the site of a bloody uprising against the Junta in 1973. A new work produced for documenta 14, it was presented in a small screening room that was easily overlooked.
Needless to say, this documenta is highly political, and there are many powerful and striking works across all venues. But by means of their presentation, they are shorn of their physical impact, as if their very materiality is inappropriate. With news of the chemical strike in Syria, followed by Trump’s retaliatory airstrike, flooding the media with images of suffering on the opening days of documenta and—as Syrian filmmaker Charif Kiwan, a member of the Abounaddara collective, stressed at the press conference—the indignity thus imposed on the victims, why should there be any place here for beauty?
Not even a work that is pure ceremonial gesture was given an overly festive launch. On Sunday, a procession of horses embarked on a 100-day ride from the south slope of the Acropolis in Athens to Kassel as a piece by artist Ross Birrell: A few speeches in the sun, with long thank-yous to sponsors, including the tourist café across the street, and the group was sent off.
Whether documenta’s strategies of directed confusion and, at times, negligent inaccessibility make for a successful event remains to be seen. During the opening weekend, however, another exhibition, unrelated to documenta, was described by many as far more engaging.
Michael Landy, “BREAKING NEWS-ATHENS.” Presented by NEON. Diplarios School, Athens. Photo: Hili Perlson
At the empty building of the Diplarios School, artist Michael Landy presented his “BREAKING NEWS-ATHENS.” The artist used graffiti found on the streets of Athens as well as suggestions crowdsourced online for imagery, slogans, and pictograms that serve as pithy commentary on the situation in Greece. These were then etched on clay-covered sheets in an onsite workshop, with help of local artists, and hung on the walls in the empty classrooms, halls, and even bathrooms. Anyone who sent in a suggestion that the artist ended up realizing would receive the artwork with their own design when the show closes, on June 11.
In a recent interview with the German Kulturradio, Szymczyk insisted that the documenta was never intended to engage with the local art scene, as that would be too limited a scope for the exhibition. Unfortunately, this strategy resulted in a major show that often feels aloof.
documenta 14 is on view until July 16 in Athens, and from June 10 to September 17 in Kassel, Germany.
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https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/documenta-14-review-bad-hanging-strategy-919811
The Messy Politics of Documenta’s Arrival in Athens
As documenta opens for the first time in Athens, Greek artists and anthropologists are closely observing how the German quinquennial will respond to its new location.
“Learning from Documenta” round table on March 9, 2017, “The Politics of Art Making,” at the Athens School of Fine Arts; participants (from left to right): N. Pappa, P. Charalambous, N.G. Khan-Dossos, A. Lampropoulos, and E. Rikou (coordinators), R. Lowe, A. Omrani, T. Tramboulis (photo by George Sakkas)
With its head cocked 90 degrees to the side and its eyes opened wide, the owl of Documenta 14’s logo is poised for observation. The owl, a symbol of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and learning, and the mythological patron of the Greek capital, signifies Documenta’s new location and theme, Learning from Athens. Since its inception in 1955, the international exhibition that has been staged in Kassel every five years, but the 2017 iteration opened in Athens on Friday, before a second installment opens in Kassel on June 10.
The documenta 14 logo (courtesy documenta)
Athens was ostensibly chosen by Documenta 14’s artistic director Adam Szymczyk (the former director and chief curator of Kunsthalle Basel) because, like Germany in the period immediately after World War II, Greece has experienced a series of crises over the past decade: economic, political, and related to migrantion. (Until the March 2016 deal between the EU and Turkey, Greece was Syrian refugees’ primary gateway into Europe, though it is unclear if the designation “crisis” is reserved for the refugees or Europe itself.) While Documenta’s additional location is intended as a recuperative gesture, with the potential to bring international attention and cultural tourism to the country, some — including former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis — have accused the German culture machine of trafficking in trauma exploitation, and others have likened the arrival of Documenta’s non-Greek curators in Athens two years ago to colonialism and exoticization.
The Greek anthropologists Eleana Yalouri, from the department of social anthropology of Panteion University, and Elpida Rikou, from the Athens School of Fine Arts and TWIXTlab, are examining how the orientation of Documenta’s gaze colors the lessons the German cultural institution learns from Athens and what dynamic its presence creates in Greece’s capital city. Yalouri and Rikou coordinate a group of international artists, thinkers, and educators through the program “Learning from Documenta.” The group’s own logo, designed by artist Io Chaviara, is a viewfinder resembling those positioned at tourist sites like the Mount Lycabettus, the highest point in Athens. From this metaphorical distance, “Learning from Documenta” has been watching Documenta learn from Athens since its curatorial team first arrived in the city two years ago.
As Rikou and Yalouri told me, their multidisciplinary research platform is driven by many questions, including: “What ethics and politics are employed to learn from, with, or even against Athens? How does Athens respond to the desire of a big international institution to learn from a city ‘in crisis’? What processes of learning is Documenta engaged in? How does it unlearn its own cultural perspective to learn from Athens? What can be found in the crossing trajectories of Documenta’s learning from Athens and our learning from Documenta? What means has Documenta employed to ‘learn from Athens’ and by what means have we elected to ‘learn from Documenta’? What can an interaction between anthropology and contemporary art offer to this process of learning?”
Anthropology is a particularly potent discipline for approaching these questions. “Anthropologists are very sensitive to the concept of ‘learning,’ to the relationship between the observer and the observed, as well as to claims of giving voice to ‘the other,’ because the history of anthropology as a discipline has been associated with colonial endeavors and programs,” Yalouri said. “So any claims to learn from or to give voice to the other rings a bell to anthropologist.”
“Learning from Documenta” builds on two previous research platforms Rikou and Yalouri were involved in that examined the intersection of anthropology and contemporary art: For the two-month-long workshop, “Value,” they studied the accumulation of economic, ethical, and aesthetic value in the context of the 2013 Athens Biennale; Voices, a project that ran from 2011 to 2014, coordinated by Rikou and featuring Yalouri as a participant, investigated how sound materializes into social relationships. All three project express the collaborators’ aim of exchanging methods between contemporary art and anthropology to build a more expansive research toolkit.
“Learning from Documenta” workshop in September 2016, “Art and Anthropology Research Kit,” at ΤWIXTlab
(photo by George Sakkas)
While their new project’s title, “Learning from Documenta,” can be understood in a critical sense, the organizers also choose to take its meaning quite literally. In June 2016, the program held its first public event: a presentation of its mission alongside a presentation by Documenta 14 curator Szymczyk. Since then, the group has organized four roundtable events: on the politics of learning; the politics of curating (with Documenta curator of public programs, philosopher, and trans activist Paul B. Preciado, and Katerina Tselou, assistant to the artistic director and curatorial advisor for Documenta); the politics of art making (with social practice artist and Documenta 14 participant Rick Lowe); and the politics of cultural exchange between Greece and Germany. “Learning from Documenta” employs anthropological methods to understand and analyze discourses, practices, and other curatorial gestures and their social significance in the conjunction of local and international politics that have accompanied Documenta’s arrival in Athens. “Our project also has a political function in this critical perspective on Documenta,” Rikou said. “We are participating in and formulating a state of public debate. We are trying to understand, respond to, and make public certain issues that are present now or are in the process of shaping themselves.”
Since September 2016, Documenta’s presence in the city has been established by a series events including conversations, lectures, film screenings, and workshops, organized by Preciado at the Athens Municipal Art Center, which is housed in the former headquarters of the military police, the place where dissidents of the junta regime in power from 1967 to 1974 were tortured. The venue’s past life is acknowledged in passing on Documenta’s public programs webpage, and may be lost on the international viewer, but it’s a gesture that speaks volumes to Athenians.
“Local memories and local traumas like dictatorship are touched, for example, by Preciado’s public program, and these events have created some reactions,” Rikou said. “It’s a difficult situation and we are trying to find pertinent ways to approach it.” In the weeks following Friday’s opening, the group will record, analyze, and discuss the various reactions to Documenta 14 from the many publics who form its audience. Though the Documenta team kept especially quiet about who and what would be presented during the exhibition until the very last moment, several trends became evident from studying Documenta over the past two years.
Andreas Angelidakis, “Unauthorized (Athinaiki Techniki)” (2017), installation view, Polytechniou 8, Athens, Documenta 14
(photo © Angelos Giotopoulos)
Greece has built its cultural profile on its ancient heritage. How this image will be reflected back to Athenians and Documenta’s international audience is one among many points of interest for the “Learning from Documenta” team — indeed, Yalouri’s own work focuses on the role of antiquity in the Greek present. Preciado has built Documenta 14’s public programs by borrowing organizational models with ancient Greek roots, such as parliaments and assemblies, to frame discussions on democracy. Athenian artist and architect Andreas Angelidakis designed a set of oversized cushions that can be moved and rearranged to fit the needs of different events at the Athens Municipal Art Center. The cushions are modeled after the concrete blocks of buildings left unfinished after Greece’s economic collapse and the marble bricks of ancient temples — the ruins of the old and new. Documenta organizers have been collecting books once banned but now in circulation to restage Argentine artist Marta Minujín’s 1983 installation “The Parthenon of Books,” a life-sized replica of the Parthenon built of books. By recreating it this year in Kassel, Documenta will bring a symbol of both Athens and an internationally recognized image of world heritage to Germany. These projects and programs led “Learning from Documenta” to ask if stereotypes of ancient Greece will be subverted or exploited in the exhibition proper.
“Given the emphasis Documenta has placed on the emblematic importance of Athens, one may ask how the symbolic will feed into the literal and vice versa in the process of ‘learning,’” Rikou said. “If the symbol is being engaged, who creates the symbol and what meanings do they give it? What part of these meanings are stereotypical and are stereotypes reproduced through the projects that are proposed? Documenta is opening up a question about how contemporary art in Greece — which has, up to now, depended mostly on private institutions and entrepreneurs — will affect local cultural policies in the long term. Specific artworks and Documenta 14 as a whole operate vis–à–vis certain stereotypes regarding Greece’s ‘difficult’ heritage.”
In addition to its ancient past, Greece’s public image is very much shaped by its debt crisis and the refugee crisis. Rikou understands such positioning as part of Documenta’s legacy. “Documenta 14, in particular, adopts a discourse of the oppressed other, of the refugee, of the trans subject, of the marginalized indigenous, and at the same time, Documenta is a powerful institution that comes to a city in crisis,” she said. “When activists acquire an important role in an important institution, their discourse changes context and creates other effects. This is a major issue and we have to go a step further. Art production today has to think about the relationship between grassroots projects and the institutions that adopt the same language.”
A “Learning from Documenta” event (photo by George Sakkas)
In my own experience of Documenta’s public programs in the fall of 2016, I noticed the frequent conflation of mistranslated terminology. For instance, “indigeneity” was a word used to reference both the Native American experience and the indigenous European in relation to the foreign refugee. In the latter usage, “indigeneity” took on the tone and characteristics of nationalism in a false equivalency of two very different kinds of encounters. The recreation of “The Parthenon of Books” in Kassel runs a similar risk. This curatorial gesture seeks to draw a connection between the censorship of Nazi Germany and that of the Argentinian dictatorship, but it inadvertently makes a parody of the forces that brought objects like Pergamon Altar from ancient Greece to Germany. As Apostolos Lampropoulos, another member of the “Learning from Documenta” team, asked during the “Politics of Curating” round table in January: “Is there something to be gained from this loss in translation that is taking place both ways?” Yalouri added:, “It will be interesting to see how Documenta as a whole can avoid homogenizing different kinds of ‘otherness.’” The question remains what voice will be given in Documenta 14 to these multiple ‘others’ — will they be positioned as the subject of discourse or given the opportunity to be discourse producers?
For all the mistranslations and misunderstandings, positive exchange has already occurred because of Documenta’s presence in Athens. Rikou and Yalouri cited the presence of Rick Lowe, the artist and founder of Houston’s Project Row Houses, as enriching. “Having this contact with Rick, I can see how he works and the way he thinks about this project,” Rikou said. “Let’s see what kind of situation Rick’s presence is going to create at his ‘Victoria Square Project.'” Yalouri added: “It’s one thing to think about what Documenta is going to leave behind when it goes in terms of cultural policy; it’s another thing [to think about] what is left behind at the level of personal involvement and collaborations and artworks and experiences and impressions and feelings and so on. The two outcomes may be connected.”
Rick Lowe, “Victoria Square Project” (2017–18), social sculpture, Elpidos 13, Victoria Square, Athens, Documenta 14 (photo © Freddie Faulkenberry)
“Learning from Documenta” will present its research in the form of audio recordings, photographs, videos, and films collected by artists, in a workshop in Athens in October. The Athenian portion of Documenta 14 is on view at locations throughout the city through July 16.
https://hyperallergic.com/371252/the-messy-politics-of-documentas-arrival-in-athens/
Documenta Under Fire over Artist and Refugee Evictions
Riot police use tear gas to disperse demonstrators marching in protest of the raid of a squat in the area of Zografou, Athens, on March 13. Photo: EPA
Following the opening of Documenta 14 in Athens, an artist group published an open letter criticizing the exhibition’s silence after a series of evictions of artists and raids of buildings housing refugees in the city.
Artists Against Evictions claim that viewers are not “Learning from Athens”—the title of this year’s exhibition—but are instead only seeing a version of the city that is state-approved. It accuses the mayor of Athens, Giorgos Kaminis, of standing by while the government evicted artists from the shared space Villa Zografou, arrested 120 refugees who were squatting in Alkiviadou, and bulldozed refugee homes in Thessaloniki. Kaminis had said that refugees occupying buildings owned by the municipality are “degrading the city.” In response, the signatories declared that this is “not a time of culturally archiving crisis. Now is a time of action not blind consumption.”
Addressed to all Documenta 14 visitors, participants, and cultural workers, the letter states: “The silence of Documenta is not acceptable and only goes further to accommodate Mayor Kaminis, the State, the Church, and the NGOs who stand against us and force thousands into segregated concentration camps, prepped and ready for the very bodies your director says he’s trying to protect. This violent act is dividing the legitimate bodies from the illegitimate ones by state force and Documenta has so far been silent.”
Unofficial refugee housing, known as squats, have cropped up throughout Athens in order to provide shelters that often have far better living conditions than official refugee camps. While the mayor allegedly calls these spaces “ghettos,” Artists Against Evictions considers them to be homes to thousands of displaced people. The group calls for all those participating in and visiting the exhibition to help refugees by supporting housing for migrants in Greece. The group believes that Documenta has a responsibility to address the constant raids on refugee shelters. It also claims that the “Parliament of Bodies,” a series of programming—talks, events, workshops—that preceded the opening of Documenta, had pledged to represent minority voices. “Well, we are those voices, we are inclusive to all genders, we are migrants, we are modern pariahs, we are the dissidents of the regime and we are here.” The letter continues, “We walk with you, we tread the parallel streets, but you don’t see us.”
The full letter is as follows:
To all Documenta 14 Viewers, Participants and Cultural Workers,
We call for your attention, in this immediate moment of “Learning from Athens.”
We are the people who inhabit this city and we are talking to you as our guests.
Your jostling bodies crowd the streets of Athens, your mouths are speaking of our hardship, your feet are pounding the pavements. But this is not enough. Now is a time for carving out a space for all, not a time of culturally archiving crisis. Now is a time of action not blind consumption. We ask you to redirect your limbs into the shadows and the black outs, away from the feast the Mayor of Athens has staged for you.
You say you want to learn from Athens, well first open your eyes to the city and listen to the streets.
One of you laments the discourse of illegitimate bodies. At the same time, by staying silent, he is assisting the eradication of spaces for the thousands of bodies who inhabit this city in autonomous units. These squatted houses are under constant threat; daily we are told we will be evicted through violent means. Not only jeopardizing our basic human needs, but our support networks, spaces of autonomy and unified cultural practices. In these buildings, artists and activists coexist together with thousands of refugees, who have come here from war-torn countries to seek new lives with dignity and freedom.
The silence of Documenta is not acceptable and only goes further to accommodate Mayor Kaminis, the State, the Church and the NGOs who stand against us and force thousands into segregated concentration camps, prepped and ready for the very bodies your director says he’s trying to protect. This violent act is dividing the legitimate bodies from the illegitimate ones by state force and Documenta has so far been silent.
The precursor events of Documenta 14, entitled “The parliament of bodies” spoke of the voices of resistance, transgender voices, the voices of the minority. Well, we are those voices, we are inclusive to all genders, we are migrants, we are modern pariahs, we are the dissidents of the regime and we are here. We walk with you, we tread the parallel streets, but you don’t see us – you have your eyes trained on the blue dotted lines of your Google map. You have been programmed and directed not to see us, to just miss us, reverse and avoid us – our culture has been censored from you. We ask you to recalibrate your devices, we ask you to get lost, to hack your automation, and rewire your cultural viewpoint.
In the run up to all those budget airlines hitting the tarmac, we have confronted some serious battles.
Only three weeks ago, at dawn on the 13th March 2017 the state evicted the social space Villa Zografou. They simultaneously raided Alkiviadou refugee squat and arrested 120 refugees only to release them out into the cold, homeless and without their belongings in the streets at midnight. This is not an isolated incident of oppression. Last summer in Thessaloniki, people faced the violent eviction and bulldozing of refugee homes. Immediately after these barbaric evictions and abuses, mayor Kaminis stated that the occupation of municipality owned buildings by migrants is “degrading the city.” The same mayor stood before you on April 6th, presiding with pomp over the Documenta press conference.
The Greek government today threatens to destroy anyone who seeks grassroots solidarity, self-organization and to build spaces for new beginnings. Over 2000 refugees share these spaces with artists and others, and form communities.
This aggressive cleansing will not stop, and we are under threat of losing all autonomous houses by the summer of 2017. These houses are our culture, our homes, and our structures. The mayor of Athens calls them ghettos but what is one man’s ghetto is thousands of people’s home, and site of social expression and interaction.
WE ARE ASKING YOU TO FIRST SEEK ATHENS AND THEN LEARN FROM US.
BY PARTICIPATING BLINDLY YOU ARE SUPPORTING THE GOLDEN GHETTOISATION OF OUR NEIGHBOURHOODS, THE EVICTION OF OUR COMMUNITIES, AND THE SYSTEMS OF PATRIARCHY THAT STAND ON OUR FINGERS AS WE TRY TO BUILD OUR OWN, SELF-SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURES.
CONSIDER YOUR PARTICIPATION AND ROLE IN EVENTS THAT IMPLICITLY LEND COVER AND LEGITIMACY TO THE MAYOR AND STATE’S ACTIONS.
YOU ARE CONDONING THE WAR ON GRASSROOTS INITIATIVES FOR ALL IF YOU IGNORE OUR CALL.
WE CALL FOR YOUR SUPPORT AND SOLIDARITY TO:
CLOSE THE CAMPS, NOT THE SQUATS
SOLIDARITY TO ALL SQUATS
AGAINST THE AGREEMENT OF EU-TURKEY SHAME
OPEN THE BORDERS
8th April 2017, Artists Against Evictions
