Greek Olive: A Greek Olive Tour & Greek Art Highlights
Greek Olive: Greek Art Highlights, a video installation featured at Tourism, a show curated by Elpida Karamba & Glykeria Stathopoulou, the Symptom Project, Amfissa, October 2017.
Greek Olive: Greek Olive Tour, a performance in the framework of “Southern Teachers”, curated by Panos Sklavenitis, in the framework of “Learning from Documenta” Conference, Athens, October 2017.
Greek Olive is a parafictional project experimenting with recent developments in the industry of art tourism. The Greek crisis has rendered Athens an exotic destination for “sensitive” art tourists. Romantic tropes are often employed to portray Athens as a field of urban decay yet endless creativity and “alternatives”. Greek Olive is a guided tour agency. It mimics a company of urban tourism that worked with Documenta14 in 2017. Kostis Stafylakis presents himself as a Greek Olive guide and designs strolling experiences full of “art and the city”. His description of places compiles texts and interviews by the curators of Documenta14.
Stills and video from Greek Art Highlights:
For the Greek Olive Tour performance, Stafylakis guides a group of attendees through various sites of the Greek Polytechnic, an Athenian landmark that drew much of Documenta’s attention. Stafylakis repeats phrases stated by Documenta’s curators to describe to various spots. Some marble stairs people sit on are described, with the words of Paul Preciado, as “the opposite of the neoliberal chair”.
