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Journal of Visual Culturevcu.sagepub.com.ucd.idm.oclc.org

doi: 10.1177/1470412915595587Journal of Visual Culture August 2015 vol. 14 no. 2 176-181

Journal of Visual Culturevcu.sagepub.com.ucd.idm.oclc.org

doi: 10.1177/1470412915595587Journal of Visual Culture August 2015 vol. 14 no. 2 176-181

Contemporary Greek Art in Times of Crisis:Cuts and ChangesSyrago Tsiara

Abstract

This essay addresses the issue of cuts in the cultural sector in Greece during the lastfive years and its consequences on the sustainability of artistic production, institutionalsurvival and emerging forms of collaboration, self-management and art in publicspace. It describes new practices and strategies of cultural institutions and therelationship between the private and public spheres. Long-term artistic projects, suchas the Athens and Thessaloniki Biennale, public museums like the State Museum ofContemporary Art, private organizations and artist initiatives are discussed in thecontext of crisis.

artist initiatives biennale cuts museum public – private sector

The following essay addresses the issue of cuts in the cultural sector in Greece duringthe last five years and its consequences on the sustainability of artistic production,institutional survival and emerging forms of self-management. Based mostly onempirical data, since there has been no deep research or documented statistics, I willtry to describe the situation as it has developed in recent years, its impact on thepractices and strategies of cultural institutions and the overall reformation of culturallife in Greece, including the relationship between the public and private spheres incontemporary art practices. This text serves as a report intended to give a first-handaccount of an ongoing process of transformation.

Since the euro crisis erupted in Greece and other southern European countries,funding to the cultural sector has been drastically reduced due to the austeritymeasures that followed Greece’s submission to the International Monetary Fund’sregulations. The circulation of capital and loans inside the European Union has led tothe subversion of labour relations, mass-scale unemployment and the rapidimpoverishment of the population, all culminating in the exacerbation of socialinequality. One of the worst consequences is the widespread diffusion of racistattitudes and practices, expressed in the form of attacks against migrants and togetherwith homophobic behaviours, feeding into political extremism that opened the door forthe Golden Dawn fascist party to win seats in the Greek parliament. This coincidedwith the beginning of the ‘Grexit’ era, saddling Greece with the perpetual threat ofwithdrawal from the Euro Zone and the discontinuation of the euro as its nationalcurrency – a threat that still looms large today.

In this context, the place of culture in public policies is becoming dangerously weak.Culture, together with public health and education, has been severely suffering due toserious underfunding. The reduced funding for contemporary art has to be consideredin relation to the fact that contemporary art in Greece has always attracted lessattention from the state compared to the attention paid to the cultural heritage ofancient Greece, archaeological treasures, their conservation and display. Theconsequences of the crisis are already visible in the cultural sector, as almost everycultural institution’s survival is at risk. The State Museum of Contemporary Art(www.greekstatemuseum.com), one of the two public museums that were established15 years ago, has undergone a 70 per cent cut in public funding during the last fouryears, a fact that has affected not only its exhibition, collecting and public programplanning, but its very existence, since we are often confronted with the situation of nothaving enough money to face daily operational issues, such as electricity, art workinsurance, wages of the workers, and so on.

Generally speaking, in the sphere of contemporary culture, there has been a ‘back tothe basics’ trend: a tendency towards sparing one’s strength, rethinking curatorialpractices towards long-term projects, activating already existing communication andcooperation nets as well as expanding the inter-subjectivity of action. These processesare indicative of a broader tendency to re-evaluate active priorities and practicestowards the direction of resilience and self-management. In this environment ofeconomic downturn, where the state retreats from its fixed obligations towards public

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institutions, new artistic collectives appear and strive to realise their socialinterventions with minimum resources. At the same time, private institutions like NEON(neon.org.gr), the DESTE foundation for contemporary art (deste.gr), the StavrosNiarchos (www.snf.org) and Alexander S Onassis (www.onassis.gr) foundations re-examine their politics towards social responsibility models, or actively organize theirown program regarding art in public space, education, collection management,collaboration with existing institutions, support of original artistic production, networksof international partnerships and so on. This is the case with the NEON foundation thathas shown important activity in the last two years and – among other initiatives – hasbeen building new strategies concerning the activation of cultural heritage sites andpublic space through contemporary art.

Changes are happening in the form of artistic expression, too. The boundariesbetween visual and performing arts (painting, theatre, dance, video, performance, etc.)are no longer visible, while experimentation enhances the exploration of new ways ofcommunicating with audiences beyond the binary dichotomies between public andprivate space. The urban environment has been ‘attacked’ by groups or individualartists who ‘stage’ theatrical, musical, and other hybrid actions in the streets(www.thessalonikiallios.gr). Community projects that explore cultural history, everydaylife and urban and natural environments re-signify archaeological spaces or desertedindustrial sites, thus coming to terms with their role as social catalysts. Other groupssuch as ‘artspirators’ activate sites of historical importance through their artisticinterventions that engage local and non-local publics by selecting archives andtestimonies (www.artspirators.com). These interventions are focused on everydayculture – an underdeveloped realm compared to the overall developments in the realmof ‘high’, ‘institutional’ or ‘official’ artistic production. Additionally, institutions, big eventslike the Biennales in Athens (www.athensbiennale.org) and Thessaloniki(www.thessalonikibiennale.gr) and other smaller-scale initiatives bring back to theforeground the forgotten political dimension of art, supporting, or undertakingunconventional actions in public spaces, beyond the safety of museum walls. When Irefer to the ‘political dimension of art’, I don’t want necessarily to point out attempts todenounce through cliché the political system and the unreliability of political institutionsor to stress efforts to represent realistically the condition of a painful everyday life. Onthe contrary, I am referring to the critical space created by art that allows an originalunderstanding and interpretation of politics and human relations.

A characteristic paradigm of self-organization and collective undertaking is the 4thAthens Biennale, realized in 2013. Under the title ‘Agora’ which clearly refers to theancient Greek practice of citizens’ dialogue and common decision making, a collectiveof more than 40 artists, curators and intellectuals engaged themselves in a long-termexperimental project with interesting results declaring that:

At a time when the financial crisis in Greece and elsewhere is reaching ahighpoint, the 4th Athens Biennale (AB4) cannot but respond to this bleaksituation through a pertinent question: Now what? Using the empty building ofthe former Athens Stock Exchange as its main venue, AB4 proposes AGORAnot only as a place of exchange and interaction, but also as an ideal setting forcritique. (About Athens Biennale 2013, Agora 2013)

The investigation of the influence of social changes in artistic creation and thedetection of the critical research shift towards issues of collective interest highlyorienting the choices and directions of the Thessaloniki Biennale. In 2009, the 2ndThessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, organized by the Greek State Museum ofContemporary Art, attempted to record the state of art in ‘times of uncertainty’ focusingon a dialogue between artists from prominent geopolitical centres and their colleaguesfrom distant and not easily accessible areas foan aim that is well inscribed within thebroader agenda of the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art. The 2ndThessaloniki Biennale attempted to bring together in a common exhibition art worksfrom Latin America, Africa, West Europe and the Balkans. Based on the work of theEnglish theorist Terry Eagleton, After Theory, the exhibition ‘Praxis: Art in Times ofUncertainty’ tried to trace the emerging sense of awakening that seems to follow thelethargy of uncritical and total disregard of ideologies and sociopolitical systems.Wondering whether the time for the re-examination of the inherent value of artisticpractice has come, whether ‘the moment to explore art as a privileged space forrelatively free expression of ideas and for an alternative view of the world’ has arrived,the exhibition presented groups and single artists whose art came back to life, back toPraxis and to collective creation, contributing to the formation of a political view andproposing new ways of co-existing with the ‘Other’ (2nd Thessaloniki Biennale 2009).

This report regarding the critical situation that artists and institutions undergo duringthe times of crisis in Greece ends with History Zero, the work by Stefanos Tsivopoulosfor the Greek pavilion in the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 (see Figure 1).Tsivopoulos’s work is as an indicative case of creative reaction to harsh reality(www.historyzero.gr). It is a film in three parts accompanied by an archive of texts andimages. The film narrates episodes from the lives of three different people exploringhow the value of money is transformed in the hands of the three protagonists, seekingto understand how money impacts the formation of human relations in unexpectedways. The interconnectedness of everyone’s choices or how random acts might affectother people’s lives is a salient issue underpinning the political and social dimensionsof economic exchange. The Archive of Alternative Currencies accompanying the filmcontains examples and testimonies of alternative, non-monetary exchange systems.The archive focuses on the ability of such models to erode and throw into question the

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homogenizing political power of a single currency, pointing to ways in which, in hardtimes, societies can by-pass a monetary economy altogether and use a system ofexchange based on goods and services. History proves that it is precisely during thesecritical times that new approaches and meanings emerge concerning our relationshipto each other and the environment. Broadening the meaning of value meansintroducing the question of cooperation, solidarity and communal activity. And that,indeed, is exactly what History Zero attempted to do.

Figure 1.

Peliti’s iconic image depicting seed exchange. From the exploratory missionseeking indigenous seed varieties, August 2003, Pomakohoria of Xanthi,Greece. Alternative Currencies: An Archive and a Manifesto, 2013, photographfrom History Zero, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, black and white, 2013.

This analysis of contemporary art in Greece in times of crisis concludes with HistoryZero as a case study for political art focusing on new forms of social relations throughthe example of alternative currencies. Every certainty in Greece has been severelythreatened and disrupted. Public institutions have lost their mission of being catalystsfor the production of art and are no longer structures of support for art creators, privateorganizations transform the cultural environment through their own strategies, whileartists struggle to survive through common initiatives and self-organization. Thesewords are written during the final preparations for the 5th Thessaloniki Biennale whichwill open on the 23 June 2015. Katerina Gregos, the main exhibition curator, has giventhe title ‘Between the Pessimism of the Intellect and the Optimism of the Will’. Thesewords, derived from Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks (2011[1929–1935]),describe in the most accurate way the milieu for cultural workers, insisting onproducing meaningful art against all odds.

Syrago Tsiara completed her studies in History and Archaeology at the AristotleUniversity of Thessaloniki and continued with a Master’s degree in Social History ofArt at the University of Leeds. Her PhD dissertation was on public monuments and theformation of national identity. Over the last 15 years she has been working as acurator at the State Museum of Contemporary Art – Costakis Collection, and since2007 she has been the Director of the Contemporary Art Center of Thessaloniki. Hercuratorial and research interests focus on gender, public art and politics of memory.Among other shows, she co-curated the 2nd Biennale of Thessaloniki ‘Praxis: Art inTimes of Uncertainty’. She was also the curator of the Greek Pavilion for the 55thVenice Biennale, 2013.

Address: State Museum of Contemporary Art, Kolokotroni 21, 56430 Thessaloniki,Greece. [ email: syragotsiara@gmail.com]

References

AGORA 4th Athens Biennale 2013 (2013) About: Athens Biennale 2013 Agora.Available at: http://athensbiennale.org/en/agora_en/ (accessed 31 May 2015).

e-flux (2009) 2nd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art Biennale 2013 Agora.Available at: on producing mean http://www.e-flux.com.ucd.idm.oclc.org/announcements/2nd-thessaloniki-biennale-of-contemporary-art-praxis-art-in-times-of-uncertainty/ (accessed 31 May 2015).

Eagleton T (2003) After Theory . London: Allen Lane. Google Scholar

Gramsci A (2011[1929–1935]) Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks . New York:Columbia University Press. Google Scholar