Yiannis Grigoriadis, Melancholy of a fall evening (after De Chirico), 2005, photograph mounted on aluminium, 45 × 60 cm

‘A poet’s hope:
To be like some valley cheese
Local, but prized elsewhere.’
— WH Auden


I don’t know if anybody has thought about writing the ‘Handbook of the Successful Curator’ yet. I am thinking of something along the lines of the ‘Guide to the World’s Best Hangover Cures’, full of useful advice, like: read a lot of post-structuralism, preferably in the form of quotations you can find in catalogue essays; quote them in turn, profusely, making sure their relationship to any actual artwork remains obscure at best; no studying anything before the 1960s is allowed; learn all your history through contemporary art theory; never say you are anything more than a facilitator for artists; if inadvertently you do, and you momentarily appear as having anything remotely resembling a vision or, worse, an agenda, cover it up quickly with a phrase like ‘curators have to stand firm against the voracity of the market’; be as immaterial as possible, be a ghost; support everything anti-spectacular and insubstantial; when asked to describe it, use words like interventional, process-based, archaeological, investigative; if challenged with something like the inability of others to see the point, call them antiquated and formalist and declare the work of art to be changing; praise the local, but in abstract terms; make sure that you choose a local thing that does not require any local knowledge to be understood; if you can’t find something suitably local where you are, pick a Mexican or a Lithuanian one; when faced with a situation that is truly local, dismiss it as nationalist, and continue; be against state-run cultural policies, as well as private enterprise; declare your support for small autonomous zones of collaboration; when asked about their funding — public or private — don’t dwell too much: this is not about money; be for independent organisations, but when faced with one, call it cliquey and leave — there is nothing there for the taking, anyway; always acknowledge the public — say that all this is being done for their benefit because contemporary art is for everyone, then, blame lack of funding, public support, etc.; if someone appears to be practical about these things, call them a behind-the-scenes-mover-and-shaker and state that you are not interested in authoritarian structures; and so on.

Not meaning to sound too much like Tom Wolfe rewriting ‘The Painted Word’, this is actually a large part of what is going on. It is, of course, by no means a phenomenon exclusive to the art scene in this country. But, although one should never underestimate the ability of experts to misinterpret, I think that the baring of this phenomenon on the discussion regarding the art scene here is something worth talking about.

When my good colleague Xenia Kalpaktsoglou and I organised an exhibition for Action Field Kodra Visual Arts Festival, in 2005, we decided to throw a term on the table, ‘new Greek scene’, and we invited artists and panellists to discuss it. The question was plain: does such a scene exist?

The activity and discussions that have been going on since then provide evidence enough that it does. I have always pointed out that the term is nonsensical as an attempt to accurately describe the characteristics of art production in this given time and place — but that was never the intention. These three words do three things: First, they acknowledge a break with the past. Second, they refer to a geographic location — our place of residence. And third, they point out that an activity is observable. Now, one could argue against any of those three things — though not very easily. Perhaps that is why no one is doing it.

What we saw almost immediately was that, although everyone seemed frightened at the commitment, the term did prove useful. Either to agree or disagree — well, mostly to disagree — everyone was using it as a descriptive tool. Those that do this job with any degree of seriousness know that it is often imperative to find a name for something simply as a means to hold it under the light.

What is fascinating to observe, though, is the power that the ‘Handbook of the Successful Curator’ holds over people. I will give but few examples, unfortunately only referring to texts by those who have had the resolve to write their opinions down, as opposed to others who mutter a lot but do not write.

In the free-copy publication Local Folk, issue 4, art critic and curator Despina Zefkili writes about one of her favourite issues: ‘The often-addressed inability (or unwillingness) of young contemporary Greek artists to take into account their local reality, or to express a social and political consciousness in general, is not irrelevant to the specific characteristics of the development of the local art scene’. The lament about the absence of ‘local reality’ is indeed illustrated by a social and political consciousness ‘in general’: the image on the page of the publication is a work by artist Yiannis Grigoriadis, who “captures Romania-made cars DACIA with clear marks of the lines of socialist design in front of public buildings — ‘ghosts’ of Ceausescu’s era in Bucharest …”.

So, there we have an admonition to artists regarding a need for a local reality, but any local reality will do. Now, why is it not pretty logical to point out that this is just fragments of discourse borrowed from here and there, devoid of relevance in the absence of any effort to actually observe what is going on? And, just in order not to be misunderstood, I, too, find these images by Yiannis Grigoriadis fascinating. But the fact remains that as a choice to illustrate a need for more ‘local reality’, the chosen work testifies to a profound confusion.

Let’s move on: there is a mention there of ‘young contemporary Greek artists’. So there is even a tacit admittance that we have to call them something, if we are to differentiate them from their colleagues born in, say, Romania. But the same art-critic and curator asks, in issue 3 of the same publication, ‘Do we need a Greek scene?’ and calls for ‘a redefinition of the anachronistic “scene” concept based on nationalistic criteria’.

I wonder what ‘nationalism’ means in this context. Last time I looked, the term had meaning in relation to the construction of an identity serving as a symbolic boundary of a nation-state. It is not a name for such identities, but for an active programme that seeks to build them or safeguard them. There is, of course, a great deal of difference between the local and the national, but the name ‘Greek‘, just as the name ‘Romanian’ for that matter, is co-habited by both.

But, what the hell, let’s redefine it! Any suggestions? What do we call these people and what they do? Might I offer up ‘work produced by the inhabitants of the southernmost tip of the Balkan peninsula, particularly those that can be reasonably described as young, either while based there or in other places, which manifests a difference to former work produced by others, though not in one way but in numerous different ones, but which does nevertheless seem to appear, at the moment, to be the result of an overall activity observed in that geographic location in recent times’. Better?

What is most disturbing about the accusation of nationalism is not the historical or theoretical ‘faux pas’. It is the facility with which such an accusation is levelled at an endeavour which is quite plainly a project about making contemporary art visible and enlarging its possibilities within a local context and in relation to an international one. Such is the desire and urgency to participate in what is perceived as an internationally valid trend, that localities are in fact dispensed with, and are only present as abstractions. If such an accusation were truly mindful of the locality, it would have taken into account that the real issue of nationalism resides elsewhere: the fact that we have exhibitions here such as one of drawings and prints by Picasso, titled ‘Picasso and Greece’, where the discourse is all about how this modern master valued ‘our culture’, seems to me a legitimate target. Or, one interested in local realities could have a really good time with countless exhibitions based in that lucrative practice of defining contemporary identities in this country by virtue of some association with Pericles or Phidias. Not to mention, of course, all the shows that have to do with The Olive or The Greek Light. I don’t mean to surprise anyone, but most of the public funds and most of the support for current production still go to those places.

An interesting reversal is going on: there is something very attractive about ‘local realities’ and a ‘social and political consciousness’, but their employment in such a manner serves nothing else but the legitimisation of the writer within a field of perceived ‘international discourse’ and exhibits in fact very little acknowledgment of either. The truth is that a description for a hub of activity is a useful intervention within a context where contemporary art gets minimal support. It is, furthermore, directly linked to the fact that much of this awareness is created in the press and media, not unimportant players in the face of a Ministry of Culture that has pledged millions of euros in support for the arts, but after the change of two ministers and the attempted suicide of the General Secretary, declares it is broke and unable to pay. The ‘local’ issue is how do we wrench some stability out of those authorities, how do we use them, but also other sources, to support contemporary art production, not in a theoretical, but in a grounded, practical way? How do we support this art production and put it in contact with what is going on elsewhere, how do we identify it, fund it, show it, and provide some key for its being acknowledged and understood by others? This is, in fact, what local reality and a social and political consciousness is about — not quoting Nicolas Bourriaud, who, by the way, remains a great read and should not be blamed for not offering solutions for everything.

What is also interesting is that the project to increase the visibility of contemporary art in Greece is not rejected per se. Let me come to another example: in an article titled Hellenic Contemporary (not nationalist, mind you, merely descriptive), published in Flash Art, issue 256, curator and writer Katerina Gregos says that ‘when public interest for contemporary art goes beyond its now marginal niche, when contemporary art becomes a serious item for public discussion, when we are able to talk about an improvement of the conditions for art production itself, and artists can better empower themselves, and when Greek artists are able to take their place on the international map in the long term, only then will we be able to speak of a truly successful “scene”’. Yet, a couple of pages earlier, she writes: ‘There has even been talk of a “scene”, though this discussion is largely internal and serves local interests. What is a “scene” anyway, and what exactly does it consist of?’

I will resist the temptation of shouting “Damn right, it’s internal and serves local interests!” and move on to subtler points: here the ‘local’ is used in a different sense, it is that which is not connected to the international, and therefore of no relevance. But it is not so further down, where it is surmised that ‘the work of the younger generation tends to be quite formal and less concerned with the particularities of local context. Process-oriented, experimental, site-specific and conceptual practices, as well as institutional critique, are more rare’.

The local is again only legitimate in abstract terms. A ‘largely internal’ discussion is a bad thing and brings on the implicit accusation of ‘local interests’, but the local would be a good thing if someone would just — I don’t know — photograph cars in Romania, or something.

These are, I am afraid, flimsy arguments at best. Moreover, they are patronising to everyone, primarily the many Greek artists that in recent years have been showing a staggering variety of work in many parts of the world. To be precise, out of the ranks of those implied in the original — exclusively local! — discussion of a ‘scene’, a good portion is becoming strong in their artistic vision and can be now seen in biennales, art-fairs, galleries and art spaces from New York to Istanbul, from Lyon to New Orleans, from London to Berlin, or Rotterdam or Brussels. I will refrain from enumerating their names here — I have, anyway, done so at every opportunity in the last years.

To quote an old favourite: ‘no one is innocent’. Each active member of the ecosystem that is contemporary art is forging an identity for themselves, when formulating a personal position. This is not only acceptable, it is the only way of doing things, but nobody is entitled to hide behind the mask of the impartial observer. Furthermore, in formulating what is most useful to all, that is an unabashedly personal position, the as yet unwritten ‘Handbook of the Successful Curator’ is probably the worst source to plagiarise. As long as we agree that the project to increase the visibility of contemporary art in Greece is something important, I object to swallowing every disjointed bit of ‘international discourse’ — whatever that animal looks like — as if it were steroids. There are very few things more stereotypical and more devoid of any actual, grounded experience, than this quasi-political, local/global discourse being cut to measure by curators and arts writers all over the world. Politics matter. Local realities matter. And they are still, like they have always been, mercilessly specific things.


Augustine Zenakos is an art critic, curator and co-director of the Athens Biennial.