Metapolitefsi
Xenia Kalpaktsoglou - Christoforos Marinos - Christos Chryssopoulos

The emblematic TV programme A film, a discussion (ERT, 1976-1982) by Robert Manthoulis had been a crucial meeting point fostering dialogue among Greek intellectuals of the post-war period.

Using it as a springboard and source of inspiration, curator Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, art historian and curator Christoforos Marinos, and author Christos Chryssopoulos revive the conditions that gave life to that programme as a multidimensional and ongoing project.

The set is completely reconstructed and transformed into a visual art installation, hosting works and archival material that comment on the timeline of the Metapolitefsi era (in cultural, political, social, and ideological terms). During the first three days, the set will host numerous open discussions with speakers from a variety of fields (artists, academics, activists).

The discussions will be filmed in real time to produce three contemporary versions of a television dialogue while maintaining the qualities of the programme’s original concept. An ambitious and complex project that explores the present by looking back at the legacy and timeline of the last fifty years of Greek history.

PERFORMANCES
The performances are interlinked with the respective discussion topic and act as equal participants in the dialogue. They source material from literature, poetry, critical theory, etc., treating them as a collective autobiography of the “self”. Participants place the first-person narrative at the very centre of their praxis (autotheory, historisation of the “self”) and revise the conventional classifications and disciplinary delimitations of the discourse genres they employ, while commenting both on genre and gender. The use of “auto-” is also a critique on the methodological narcissism of the production of “original'' discourse and the notion of the “authentic” creative subject. The performances in Metapolitefsi constitute a new position and attitude on the production of reflective knowledge; “live” and “embodied”, they engage with predominant views on the ostensibly opposing acts of “performing theory” to “performing art”.

05.06.24
IOANNIS KOTSONIS & CONSTANTINOS HADZINIKOLAOU
«1974», 2024, sound performance, 12‘
The musician Ioannis Kotsonis and the author Constantinos Hadzinikolaou meet for the first time to present a personal retrospection from 1974 to the present day, examining moments of the first fifty years of the Metapolitefsi, and employing a store of material that includes prose, audio excerpts, loops, samples and rhymes, stolen lyrics, rap and cassette tapes, events etched in collective memory and private references, a performance teetering between song, journal, recitation and lecture, with the awkwardness and timidity of a fifty-year-old still living “like a child and a fugitive”.

06.06.24
YOTA IOANNIDOU & PEGY ZALI
Stammering to herself, stammering to others, 2023, research performance, 18‘
A research performance formulated as a peculiar dialogue between Pegy Zali and Yota Ioannidou. The co-inscription of herself and the other takes stammering and murmuring as embodied ways of resisting the norm of the dominant patriarchal discourse through the study and distortion of the elements that make up a 'successful' public lecture. The text consists of excerpts from articles produced during the second feminist wave in Greece, interspersed with personal notes and profanity. The reading of the texts is accomplished through the sonic distortion of gestures and attempts to reintroduce historical references of inscription of self and other, deflecting the canon of the centre that places them in a depoliticised margin.

07.06.24
BUTOH ARMÉ (SIMON BARKER, YIANNIS GRIGORIADIS, YIANNIS ISIDOROU)
What to expect!, 2024, experimental, sound performance, 15‘
Waiting as a process of contemporary life does not meet our expectations. It is an illusion. We anticipate something with eagerness or hope and, ultimately, that expectation leads us to the despair of reality. The futility of expectation, however, creates a field of defence between desire and its fulfilment. That field is also a space of possibilities, changes and re-evaluations, both of ourselves and our relationships with the world. In What to expect!, through recitations of excerpts from Inger Christensen’s poem “Det/it” (1969), we create audio dialogues, moving along the above scheme, where anticipation is expressed by the pause, and the unfulfilled as an ongoing audio interaction that deliberately escapes a predetermined end.

DISCUSSIONS
What do transitions signify? What is the meaning of a particular “meta-” (post-)? The word “metapolitefsi” is equally a term, an anniversary and an opportunity to distinguish between the momentary and the ongoing historical event. While one could give a strict definition of “metapolitefsi” as an historic change of regime that took place over a few months and led to the advent of the Third Hellenic Republic, such an approach would undermine the fact that a change of regime was only one part (and, indeed, the smallest) of a process that had broader and longer-lasting cultural, social, political and linguistic consequences. The discussions seek to examine the metapolitefsi not so much as a period with clearly defined boundaries, but as an ongoing historical event that brings us to the present through the survival of demands, expectations and recognisable conditions of contemporary life.

05.06.24
The Metapolitefsi as a field of transformation of public discourse. From decompression and pluralism to the new discipline, the reversal of concepts and self-censorship.
MODERATOR Makis Malafekas, writer
PARTICIPANTS Jannis Varelas, painter; Maria Magkanari, actor, director; Zoe Mavroudi, writer, director; Dimitris Politakis, journalist.

06.06.24
Adventures in gendered identities
MODERATOR Vassilis Noulas, stage director, writer, visual artist
PARTICIPANTS Panayotis Evangelidis, writer, film director; Leo Kalovyrnas, psychotherapist, author; Anastasios Koukoutas, dance researcher and playwright; Pako Chalkidis, post-doctoral researcher, Centre for Social Studies (CES), University of Coimbra, Portugal.

07.06.24
Shaping the field of contemporary art in Athens: Institutions and independent practices
MODERATOR Despina Zefkili, art critic, Athinorama editor in chief, member of the Temporary Academy of Arts (PAT)

Participants: Danai Giannoglou, curator, writer, director and co-founder of Enterprise Projects; Elpida Karaba, art theorist, curator, associate professor, Department of Culture, Creative Media and Industries, University of Thessaly; Yorgos Tzirtzilakis, professor, Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly; Elena Hamalidi, associate professor of Art History, Audio-Visual Arts Department, Ionian University.

The discussions will be held in Greek.

Discussions start at 20:00
The venue is open to visitors at 18:00

Free entrance

We would like to extend our thanks to the artists and cultural producers for their significant contribution to 'Metapolitefsi', their kind permission to present their works and their support.