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Indexed in 2014 Arts and Humanities Citation Index

Journal of Visual Culture

vcu.sagepub.com.ucd.idm.oclc.org
doi: 10.1177/1470412915595587
Journal of Visual Culture August 2015 vol. 14 no. 2 176-181

Journal of Visual Culture

vcu.sagepub.com.ucd.idm.oclc.org
doi: 10.1177/1470412915595587
Journal of Visual Culture August 2015 vol. 14 no. 2 176-181

Contemporary Greek Art in Times of Crisis:

Cuts and Changes
Syrago Tsiara

Abstract
This essay addresses the issue of cuts in the cultural sector in Greece during the last
five years and its consequences on the sustainability of artistic production, institutional
survival and emerging forms of collaboration, self-management and art in public
space. It describes new practices and strategies of cultural institutions and the
relationship between the private and public spheres. Long-term artistic projects, such
as the Athens and Thessaloniki Biennale, public museums like the State Museum of
Contemporary Art, private organizations and artist initiatives are discussed in the
context of crisis.
artist initiatives

biennale

cuts

museum

public private sector

The following essay addresses the issue of cuts in the cultural sector in Greece during
the last five years and its consequences on the sustainability of artistic production,
institutional survival and emerging forms of self-management. Based mostly on
empirical data, since there has been no deep research or documented statistics, I will
try to describe the situation as it has developed in recent years, its impact on the
practices and strategies of cultural institutions and the overall reformation of cultural
life in Greece, including the relationship between the public and private spheres in
contemporary art practices. This text serves as a report intended to give a first-hand
account of an ongoing process of transformation.
Since the euro crisis erupted in Greece and other southern European countries,
funding to the cultural sector has been drastically reduced due to the austerity
measures that followed Greeces submission to the International Monetary Funds
regulations. The circulation of capital and loans inside the European Union has led to
the subversion of labour relations, mass-scale unemployment and the rapid
impoverishment of the population, all culminating in the exacerbation of social
inequality. One of the worst consequences is the widespread diffusion of racist
attitudes and practices, expressed in the form of attacks against migrants and together
with homophobic behaviours, feeding into political extremism that opened the door for
the Golden Dawn fascist party to win seats in the Greek parliament. This coincided
with the beginning of the Grexit era, saddling Greece with the perpetual threat of
withdrawal from the Euro Zone and the discontinuation of the euro as its national
currency a threat that still looms large today.
In this context, the place of culture in public policies is becoming dangerously weak.
Culture, together with public health and education, has been severely suffering due to
serious underfunding. The reduced funding for contemporary art has to be considered
in relation to the fact that contemporary art in Greece has always attracted less
attention from the state compared to the attention paid to the cultural heritage of
ancient Greece, archaeological treasures, their conservation and display. The
consequences of the crisis are already visible in the cultural sector, as almost every
cultural institutions survival is at risk. The State Museum of Contemporary Art
(www.greekstatemuseum.com), one of the two public museums that were established
15 years ago, has undergone a 70 per cent cut in public funding during the last four
years, a fact that has affected not only its exhibition, collecting and public program
planning, but its very existence, since we are often confronted with the situation of not
having enough money to face daily operational issues, such as electricity, art work
insurance, wages of the workers, and so on.
Generally speaking, in the sphere of contemporary culture, there has been a back to
the basics trend: a tendency towards sparing ones strength, rethinking curatorial
practices towards long-term projects, activating already existing communication and
cooperation nets as well as expanding the inter-subjectivity of action. These processes
are indicative of a broader tendency to re-evaluate active priorities and practices
towards the direction of resilience and self-management. In this environment of
economic downturn, where the state retreats from its fixed obligations towards public

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institutions, new artistic collectives appear and strive to realise their social
interventions with minimum resources. At the same time, private institutions like NEON
(neon.org.gr), the DESTE foundation for contemporary art (deste.gr), the Stavros
Niarchos (www.snf.org) and Alexander S Onassis (www.onassis.gr) foundations reexamine their politics towards social responsibility models, or actively organize their
own program regarding art in public space, education, collection management,
collaboration with existing institutions, support of original artistic production, networks
of international partnerships and so on. This is the case with the NEON foundation that
has shown important activity in the last two years and among other initiatives has
been building new strategies concerning the activation of cultural heritage sites and
public space through contemporary art.
Changes are happening in the form of artistic expression, too. The boundaries
between visual and performing arts (painting, theatre, dance, video, performance, etc.)
are no longer visible, while experimentation enhances the exploration of new ways of
communicating with audiences beyond the binary dichotomies between public and
private space. The urban environment has been attacked by groups or individual
artists who stage theatrical, musical, and other hybrid actions in the streets
(www.thessalonikiallios.gr). Community projects that explore cultural history, everyday
life and urban and natural environments re-signify archaeological spaces or deserted
industrial sites, thus coming to terms with their role as social catalysts. Other groups
such as artspirators activate sites of historical importance through their artistic
interventions that engage local and non-local publics by selecting archives and
testimonies (www.artspirators.com). These interventions are focused on everyday
culture an underdeveloped realm compared to the overall developments in the realm
of high, institutional or official artistic production. Additionally, institutions, big events
like the Biennales in Athens (www.athensbiennale.org) and Thessaloniki
(www.thessalonikibiennale.gr) and other smaller-scale initiatives bring back to the
foreground the forgotten political dimension of art, supporting, or undertaking
unconventional actions in public spaces, beyond the safety of museum walls. When I
refer to the political dimension of art, I dont want necessarily to point out attempts to
denounce through clich the political system and the unreliability of political institutions
or to stress efforts to represent realistically the condition of a painful everyday life. On
the contrary, I am referring to the critical space created by art that allows an original
understanding and interpretation of politics and human relations.
A characteristic paradigm of self-organization and collective undertaking is the 4th
Athens Biennale, realized in 2013. Under the title Agora which clearly refers to the
ancient Greek practice of citizens dialogue and common decision making, a collective
of more than 40 artists, curators and intellectuals engaged themselves in a long-term
experimental project with interesting results declaring that:
At a time when the financial crisis in Greece and elsewhere is reaching a
highpoint, the 4th Athens Biennale (AB4) cannot but respond to this bleak
situation through a pertinent question: Now what? Using the empty building of
the former Athens Stock Exchange as its main venue, AB4 proposes AGORA
not only as a place of exchange and interaction, but also as an ideal setting for
critique. (About Athens Biennale 2013, Agora 2013)
The investigation of the influence of social changes in artistic creation and the
detection of the critical research shift towards issues of collective interest highly
orienting the choices and directions of the Thessaloniki Biennale. In 2009, the 2nd
Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, organized by the Greek State Museum of
Contemporary Art, attempted to record the state of art in times of uncertainty focusing
on a dialogue between artists from prominent geopolitical centres and their colleagues
from distant and not easily accessible areas foan aim that is well inscribed within the
broader agenda of the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art. The 2nd
Thessaloniki Biennale attempted to bring together in a common exhibition art works
from Latin America, Africa, West Europe and the Balkans. Based on the work of the
English theorist Terry Eagleton, After Theory, the exhibition Praxis: Art in Times of
Uncertainty tried to trace the emerging sense of awakening that seems to follow the
lethargy of uncritical and total disregard of ideologies and sociopolitical systems.
Wondering whether the time for the re-examination of the inherent value of artistic
practice has come, whether the moment to explore art as a privileged space for
relatively free expression of ideas and for an alternative view of the world has arrived,
the exhibition presented groups and single artists whose art came back to life, back to
Praxis and to collective creation, contributing to the formation of a political view and
proposing new ways of co-existing with the Other (2nd Thessaloniki Biennale 2009).
This report regarding the critical situation that artists and institutions undergo during
the times of crisis in Greece ends with History Zero, the work by Stefanos Tsivopoulos
for the Greek pavilion in the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 (see Figure 1).
Tsivopouloss work is as an indicative case of creative reaction to harsh reality
(www.historyzero.gr). It is a film in three parts accompanied by an archive of texts and
images. The film narrates episodes from the lives of three different people exploring
how the value of money is transformed in the hands of the three protagonists, seeking
to understand how money impacts the formation of human relations in unexpected
ways. The interconnectedness of everyones choices or how random acts might affect
other peoples lives is a salient issue underpinning the political and social dimensions
of economic exchange. The Archive of Alternative Currencies accompanying the film
contains examples and testimonies of alternative, non-monetary exchange systems.
The archive focuses on the ability of such models to erode and throw into question the

homogenizing political power of a single currency, pointing to ways in which, in hard

times, societies can by-pass a monetary economy altogether and use a system of
exchange based on goods and services. History proves that it is precisely during these
critical times that new approaches and meanings emerge concerning our relationship
to each other and the environment. Broadening the meaning of value means
introducing the question of cooperation, solidarity and communal activity. And that,
indeed, is exactly what History Zero attempted to do.

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Figure 1.
Pelitis iconic image depicting seed exchange. From the exploratory mission
seeking indigenous seed varieties, August 2003, Pomakohoria of Xanthi,
Greece. Alternative Currencies: An Archive and a Manifesto, 2013, photograph
from History Zero, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, black and white, 2013.
This analysis of contemporary art in Greece in times of crisis concludes with History
Zero as a case study for political art focusing on new forms of social relations through
the example of alternative currencies. Every certainty in Greece has been severely
threatened and disrupted. Public institutions have lost their mission of being catalysts
for the production of art and are no longer structures of support for art creators, private
organizations transform the cultural environment through their own strategies, while
artists struggle to survive through common initiatives and self-organization. These
words are written during the final preparations for the 5th Thessaloniki Biennale which
will open on the 23 June 2015. Katerina Gregos, the main exhibition curator, has given
the title Between the Pessimism of the Intellect and the Optimism of the Will. These
words, derived from Antonio Gramscis Prison Notebooks (2011[19291935]),
describe in the most accurate way the milieu for cultural workers, insisting on
producing meaningful art against all odds.
Syrago Tsiara completed her studies in History and Archaeology at the Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki and continued with a Masters degree in Social History of
Art at the University of Leeds. Her PhD dissertation was on public monuments and the
formation of national identity. Over the last 15 years she has been working as a
curator at the State Museum of Contemporary Art Costakis Collection, and since
2007 she has been the Director of the Contemporary Art Center of Thessaloniki. Her
curatorial and research interests focus on gender, public art and politics of memory.
Among other shows, she co-curated the 2nd Biennale of Thessaloniki Praxis: Art in
Times of Uncertainty. She was also the curator of the Greek Pavilion for the 55th
Venice Biennale, 2013.
Address: State Museum of Contemporary Art, Kolokotroni 21, 56430 Thessaloniki,
Greece. [ email: syragotsiara@gmail.com]

References
AGORA 4th Athens Biennale 2013 (2013) About: Athens Biennale 2013 Agora.
Available at: http://athensbiennale.org/en/agora_en/ (accessed 31 May 2015).
e-flux (2009) 2nd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art Biennale 2013 Agora.
Available at: on producing mean http://www.eflux.com.ucd.idm.oclc.org/announcements/2nd-thessaloniki-biennale-ofcontemporary-art-praxis-art-in-times-of-uncertainty/ (accessed 31 May 2015).
Eagleton T (2003) After Theory. London: Allen Lane.

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Gramsci A (2011[19291935]) Antonio Gramscis Prison Notebooks. New York:

Columbia University Press. Google Scholar