The discourse about the exoticization of Athens has recently been very popular within the art world of Greece. But what is the signification of such a term? Through which processes does this exoticization take place? What are the different aspects of this 'locus exoticus'? Where do we place ourselves within this new(?) geography and from which position do we criticise it?

Discussion:
Kostas Christopoulos, Iris Lykourioti, Kostis Stafylakis, Glykeria Stathopoulou, Poka Yio 

Designs:
Yorgos Bougiouk, Alexis Fidetzis, Eva Giannakopoulou, Athina Kanellopoulou, Korina Kassianou, Dimitra Kondylatou, Konstantinos Kotsis, Theodoros Kovaios, Paris Legakis, Ioanna Mathopoulou, Aimilia Moraiti, Persefoni Myrtsou, Maria Nikiforaki, Dimitris Papoutsakis, Michailangelos Vlassis-Ziakas, Konstantinos Zilos, The Flower Girls (Eleftheria Kotzaki, Christina Spanou, Dimitra Stamatopoulou)

Coordination:
Panos Sklavenitis



DESIGNS:

Alexis Fidetzis

Welcome to Exarchia
The Home of Civil Disobedience

Consistent with the narrative of the reactionary, vibrant, passionate... the poor but honest, the fighting, emancipated crowd of Athens, is a piece of the “exotic reading”. In the eyes of Western leftists both the image of the indignant Syntagma Square, and the imagery of the Exarchia neighborhood, are parts of a heroic reading of modern Greece and the Greek people as objectification models of the popular concept of civil disobedience. The design of my day for the project was made through a reenactment of a walk I had with an American friend in the streets of Exarchia, remembering our conversations and his reactions to the scenery.
Initially I noticed  the ways in which romantic tendencies and readings naturally oppose rationalization and integrates the "exotics" in a context of imaginary identity. When Martin Heidegger finds himself in the Black Forest, he is removed from rationalization as he faces the fulfillment of his pastoral fantasy. Ιn his objectified subject, the observer projects underlying features that are missing from them, and by projecting their desires on what he hopes to identify with is thus redefined -through a unilateral arbitrariness- as a potentially romantic subject.
The question that arises is whether such readings eventually produce a national oration when they project on the "irreconcilables" who perform civil disobedience characteristics appropriated also by the Greek Right wing: "reactionaries," "Do not bow their head," "know how to live", " poor but honest ".
Does such gaze affect local identity? Does the characteristics imparted by the observer form a reactive, introverted narrative that somehow ties the social fabric under attributes defined as national?
A narrative in which Prekas in Roupel is part of the same story with the protesters in Syntagma Square, and King Leonidas with Nikos Romanos ... And is it for all of them Churchill said that heroes fight like Greeks etc etc?

Dimitris Papoutsakis

Exotism reperaz


exotism_reperaz from d.m.papoutsakis on Vimeo.


The 19th century appearance of banditry in mainland Greece and its portrayal is regarded here as the utter description of a pure and exotic community. In the folk conscience the bandit's teams are the par excellance aboriginals and were thoroughly reflected in literature at the first half of the 20th century. My intention is to present a single day location scouting from the city of Agrinion that can draft a today's narration of a banditry. To do so, I obtained material that relates to the outlines of the Greek banditry and, with the use of a java algorithm, I received the words that appear more frequently from that texts. Then I attempted to swap the words to existing locations.

Dimitra Kondylatou

Greek Kamaki



Uneven Love from d. kondylatou on Vimeo.

Kamaki includes practices of exchange. Kamaki also raises the competition between the kamakia. Kamakia use very specific phrases and specific tactics, depending on their target. The practice of kamaki reproduces many social stereotypes. It involves cultural techniques that have shaped a specific identity for certain locations (eg Rodos), mainly during the 80s, that however are still performed on a national level and that have consolidated throughout the years, a certain type of man, the macho-casanova-bumpkin guy.
There are two main problems in this process, no matter if it considered by some as nostalgic or picturesque. First of all, there is severe sexism, as it is a male practice -rarely it is the other way round- that presupposes a kind of passivity, from the female side, reproducing in this way, old and conservative traditional stereotypes. Secondly, it can be considered as a(n) (self-) exoticizing method of commodification, since this process has actually created a specific cultural approach to holidays in Greece.
Together with some islands of the mediterranean european countries, mainly the Ibiric peninsula, Greece is apparently one of the most exotic destinations in Europe -if there is such thing as “exotic” in Europe. Greece has been repeatedly exoticised as the country with the white ancient temples and the sun-burnt, illiterate, poor yet gentle and hospitable residents, as the country with the crystal blue seas and the white beaches, rare to find in Europe, as the country of entertainment and constant eating/drinking/dancing, as the country of the greek lovers and the know-how-to-enjoy-life people, as the country of coffee and cigarettes, as the country of the sun, as a country to live a myth in.
The tourist industry makes profit by advertising and selling all these aspects of Greece and many more, while it also contributes to the emergence of new types of tourism that are either diachronically maintained, or transformed into other types.
This project tries to investigate, through the paradigm of "kamaki", the interactive relationship of tourism with the construction of (the national) identity, having as a starting point the recent interest shown upon Greece for its supposedly political resistance against an implacable technocrat: Europe, that is overemphasized in the case of the greek art scene.

The Flower Girls (Eleftheria Kotzaki, Christina Spanou, Dimitra Stamatopoulou)

Exotic vs Locals

Exotic vs Locals from FlowerGirls on Vimeo.

The Royal Garden was commissioned by Queen Amalia in1838 and completed by 1840. It was designed by the German agronomist Friedrich Schmidt who imported over 500 species of plants and a variety of animals including peacocks, ducks, and turtles. Unfortunately for many of the plants, the dry Mediterranean climate proved too harsh and they did not survive.
In the 1920s the park was opened to the public and renamed "National Garden". In honour of Amalia of Greece, the entrance was moved to the 12 palms she planted and the street in front was renamed Queen Amalia Avenue. Since then the National Garden, is open to the public from sunrise to sunset. This video consist of a small interview with an employee of the National Garden. We questioned him about the diferent species that were imported (plants and animals) trying to investigate in which ways they influenced the local environment.

Konstantinos Kotsis

Phoenix tree

During just one night literally, palm trees had been planted through the biggest part of Syggrou avenue, the day before Greece joined the European economic society, as prime minister Konstamtinos G. Karamanlis requested. This was the avenue that lead the foreign leaders to the Zappeion.
There are lots of thrills connecting palm trees with Athens. According  to changes of  national narration, trees appeared and disappeared from the city's landscape, approaching either  the east or the west.
Nowadays palm trees in Athens are in front of total disaster because of the red palm weevil threatening them to death. It has been said that the beetle was imported to Greece with palm trees from Egypt, which had been planted to venues of Olympic Games 2004.

Special thanks to Dimitris Athanaselos.

Paris Legakis

Birds

- I will invite immigrants and local people to narrate their stories based on the sociopolitical condition that is at stake.
- I will encourage them to sing a song of grief and a song of happiness.
- This, I will stage to happen on the rooftops of a neighborhood.

Birds migrate from place to place to find food, shelter and breed. It is a process of survival. A similar process happens with the immigrants who move from their home country due to war, violence, social and economical factors in order to find a better future. What characterizes both, the immigrants and the birds, is their mobility. What keeps them distinct is the flight, which has as a result the immigrants to be stopped on the geopolitical borders which cut their routes.
In a period where the migration flows have overflow Athens and the whole country, the city’s landscape becomes the scenery of a riotous sea. As the waves rise and fall, clash and harmonize, so the local people and the immigrants behave. The rooftops become the rafts that float in the seaway. They are the places where the birds stand to rest for a while and then [perhaps] continue.
The chirpings of the birds, are the voices of the immigrants.

Eva Giannakopoulou, Maria Nikiforaki

Omonoia Erotics

Performance, 2016, in the context of GOMENES I (curated by Eva Giannakopoulou and Rilène Markopoulou), part of the Athens Biennale 2015-2017 OMONOIA, Athens, Greece



Omonoia Erotics from maria nikiforaki on Vimeo.

Dogs, megaphones and women. Stray dogs of Athens and “skiladika”*, animal rights, women versus political correctness and social pretentiousness, stand as a trigger to initiate a discussion about females, nature and politics. Five erotic terrorism proclamations are thrown at the centre of Omonoia Square for the passersby who have been used to glimpse at porn stars’ big posters placed on the cinema facades. Texts printed on the female body dictating the “urban soundscape”, personal narratives imposed on the public territory, political narratives written on the private body.
Sexual desire, love stories, the birth of a national bank and that of a breastfeeding child, juxtaposed as regulating flows towards the female body, in an attempt to exorcise monogamy, body politics and sustainability in an Athenian landscape heavily charged with symbolisms of the binary; routine - eccentricity.

*Skiladiko is a derogatory term to describe a genre of Modern Greek music and particular nightclubs in Greece in which a form of popular music culture is performed. It also refers to the so-called "decadent" type of popular songs. Derives from the Greek word ‘dog’ (σκύλος, skilos), meaning "doggish" or "doghouse".

Photo by Nikos Stathopoulos

Photo by Nikos Stathopoulos 

Photo by Nikos Stathopoulos

Photo by Alexandros Kaklamanos 

Ayşenur Babuna

Photo by Maria Pamouki

Αysenur Babuna is a successful feminist entrepreneur and Islamic activist from Turkey. Aysenur travels in different places to share her perspectives on different social, theological and artistic discourses. In May 2016 she was invited by Mr. Panos Sklavenitis to take part at the Locus Exoticus Daysign Workshop regarding Athens as an exotic destination of creative management of crises.
Ayşenur found it extremely hard to pinpoint processes of exoticfication in the city of Athens. After long discussions with the locals she concluded that potentially this happens because she comes from a place which has always been “exotic”. Crises and conflicts are a normality in Turkey, cultural clash an everyday ritual. With the Blue Mosque in the background, a suicide bomber may explode, a blaze of colours ravenously blending in the nightfall. Allahu ekber! Allah is great! The sweet voice of the imam comes to soothe the hearts of the people, so that life can go on. And it does go on. If exotic means not being dull and uninteresting then her normal way of living is exotic.
And to live in Istanbul. Oh, the glorious Constantinople! Isn't this exotic by default?
Istanbul. Constantinople. Byzantium: a city that straddles two continents, Asia and Europe - East and the West.
The most glorious city in the world. The City of all the cities. The waterway that runs through it, the Bosphorus, a palimpsest of magnificent epochs of triumph and squalor. To be able to see it by day is exhilarating; to view it by night is enchanting. The lights on both sides of the water shine like luminous beacons and touch the souls, hearts and minds of past and present inhabitants alike.
There is no other city quite like Istanbul. The heart wishes to go to Istanbul, to be reunited with it's desires...
Back to Athens. It was impossible for her to see what could constitute Athens an exotic destination.
She was frustrated. She did not want the other participants of the workshop to think that she is simple and naïve. The night before she stayed awake. Highly anxious she started biting her nails again and broke one of them. By the end of this sleepless night, she had her eureka moment: There was nothing wrong with being exotic. She had to help Athenians get rid of their inner demons that prevented them from enjoying their exotic charisma: they had to return to their local roots, to revive the partisan heroes of the national resistance and peasant women from Epirus loaded with mountains of straw like animals. All Ayşenur did for Locus Exoticus was just to elucidate the ways she sees things; Athenians can learn from Istanbulites. From her perspective, she presented her experience of an alternative tourist walk by Maria Bandouka that took place around Omonoia square.

Photo by Eva Giannakopoulou (Video Still)

Photo by Eva Giannakopoulou (Video Still)

Photo by Maria Pamouki

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Ayşenur is an invented persona. Her external over-sexualised, queer appearance is contrasted by the content of her speech. Ayşenur functions as a disrupting agent that reexamines prevailing art discourses from exotic and extreme perspectives.

Connect with Ayşenur on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100011798803077&fref=ts)

Michailangelos Vlassis-Ziakas, Yorgos Bougiouk

Current project consists of an exploration regarding the topic of the “exoticization” and “self- exoticization” of Greece and Greek people. Facing the ambiguity of those terms, at least for the case of Greece, we suggest a lateral approach to the topic using the medium of everyday dialogue. In other words, following suggestion explores conversation as a daily process of primal signification regarding said terms.
Three casual conversations around said topic took place under various shadows around the city of Athens. Taking into account the character of the places where the conversations occur (e.g a degraded area, or, a mainstream touristic spot), participants look back to their personal experiences and explore, on the one hand, multiple aspects of Greek identity and the way these aspects appear in the everyday life and memory of local people; and on the other hand, how (or, if) these aspects may be defined by difference to a broader western identity.
While shadows are seen as shelters from the sun (a core environmental element that constructs Greek identity) participants approach the topic in a daily manner and furthermore place themselves in relation to various spaces of a possibly exotic Athens. Additionally, a map it is constructed with the places where the conversations took place in order to create a visual connection between the recorded dialogues and the urban geography of the city.
The dialogues occurred at three places: under a shadow next to Aerides, a mainstream touristic site situated at Plaka; under a shadow of a transplanted olive tree at Omonoia square, the official center of Athens; and under the shadow of the buildings at Sapfous street, a street of the degraded area of central Athens.
Tourism and crisis tourism, tradition and the connection of the local population with it, people’s connection with the landmarks of Athens, the positioning of Greek identity between east and west etc. are topics that emerge through the conversations.



Aerides Dialogue from Michaelangelo Vlassis-Ziakas on Vimeo.


Sapfous Dialogue from Michaelangelo Vlassis-Ziakas on Vimeo.


Omonoia Dialogue from Michaelangelo Vlassis-Ziakas on Vimeo.

Aimilia Moraiti

Potato day