Waiting for the Barbarians
An urgent show by the Athens Biennale
Curated by the Heart & Sword Division (FYTA, Kostis Stafylakis, Nayia Yakoumaki, Poka-Yio)
Will there ever be any “Learning from Athens”? What do words such as “education”, “freedom”, “queer”, “north”, “south”, “indigenous” signify in contemporary cultural debates? Are we witnessing the coming of the Barbarians, or the taming of the Barbarian? The 6th Athens Biennale Waiting for the Barbarians reflects on such questions.
Those Barbarians keep on coming, again and again. Recent biennials addressed the question of the Barbarian. The 2013 Istanbul Biennial entitled Mom, am I a Barbarian? investigated the Barbarian as a counter-image of civic identity, while Ireland’s Biennial 2016 EVA International entitled Still (the) Barbarians discussed Ireland as the primary test ground for modern European colonialism.
Since the start of the new century the Barbarians are ante portas. In the intellectual realm and the art field, though, the Barbarians are often depicted in positive and messianic terms: a new nomadic/rootless/hybrid/global subjectivity. This hypothesis seems to outline how the (im)possibility of resistance and insurrection is understood today and is a premise for our collective failure to foresee today’s escalation of regression.
We let go of assumptions and beliefs. The Barbarian is neither the ominous Other, the refugee, the migrant, the Muslim, nor the exoticizing and eroticizing orientalist, the “menace” of the “northern colonialist”. Yet, the Barbarian is closer than ever. We are no hosts, but we invite the Barbarians in.
On the 5th of April 2017 we declare a year of Active Waiting.
PROGRAM |
| Action #1: | Europa Clock, Dimitris Desyllas (sound intervention) |
| 5 April 2017 | 20:00 (sharp) | |
| Action #2: | Press Conference, Heart & Sword Division |
| 5 April 2017 | 20:30 (sharp) | |
| Action #3: | Invasive Species, Domestic Godless (culinary action) |
| 5 April 2017 | 21:00 – 00:00 | |
| Action #4: | Wandering in Bageion Hotel * |
| 5 April 2017 | 21:00 – 00:00 | |
| Action #5: | Klassenfahrt, Blue Owl Travels (educational excursion) |
| 9, 10, 11 April 2017 | 16:00 – 20:00 | |
| Action #6: | Documena, Documena (series of actions) |
| 15 April 2017 | 21:00 – 05:00 |
Critic Despoina Zefkili on the context of the Athens Biennale, in FIELD magazine:
‘On the other hand, documenta’s relation with the Athens Biennale, possibly the most precarious and the most influential contemporary art institution within the local art scene, was a more complex one, showing the limits of documenta’s willingness to collaborate with those who had a strong voice of their own.[1] What started as a mutual, publicly declared interest in finding a way to collaborate, with the two institutions sharing the same building for their offices, ended in a divorce, or as Poka-Yio, Founding Director of the Athens Biennale, wrote ”a white marriage”.[2] The first face of the 6th Athens Biennale (2017) Waiting for the Barbarians, which could be read as a critique of the exotic and paternalistic gaze of documenta14, included a series of performative gestures employing techniques of over-identification. These included, for example, a queer pseudo-nationalistic cabaret, the inauguration of the Nick Boricua Museum Athens, a temporary museum dedicated to the eponymous imaginary Greek diplomat and one of the primary instigators of the Puerto Rican revolutionary movement against the Spanish Empire, conceived by the artists Alexis Fidetzis, Panos Sklavenitis and Kostis Stafylakis, and the collaborative project Klassenfahrt, an alternative bus tour which “kidnapped” foreign visitors who came to Athens during the documenta14 opening and drove them to less visible parts of the city’s suburbs, in order to challenge the stereotypes that often influence artistic interest in exotic territories. Indeed, certain members of the documenta14 team interpreted the Biennale as a xenophobic gesture, rather than a critique of their own paternalism.’
Read the full text here.
