Listening Carefully to Greece

While much of this I had already heard about, what I didn’t know was that he also instituted a tourism program for the residents of the city itself!  I found this out through my wonderful tour guide Ioannis, who was one of four guides leading a municipal program to give Thessaloniki residents free tours around their city. Ioannis said that for many of them, it was the first time they learned of the Jewish and Muslim heritage of their city.  With most the old town destroyed by a devastating fire in 1917, most physical remnants of this heritage were erased forever from the city-scape, and afterwards it was never a priority, even taboo, to address these issues. But the local tours showed that residents were open to engaging with the diversity of their city; Ioannis said that sometimes up to 80 people would attend the weekly tours. This program lasted for almost three years.

As I later toured the Thessaloniki Biennial and its parallel exhibitions, I was struck by how far art has also become infused within urban landmarks, in ways that reveal and open up new ways of thinking. There was a remarkable exhibition by Chronis Pechlivanidis titled ‘A Journey into the World of Sufism’ at the hauntingly beautiful Alatza Imaret. Meanwhile, at Yeni Cami there was an exhibition by the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, on the "Invisible Cultural Monuments of Thessaloniki," examining the Jewish communities of the city through a rich array of archival material, also attempting to trace the location of the synagogues, once numbering over 30, on the current map of the city. And finally at the Thessaloniki City Hall, there was a show titled “Ident-Alter-Ity” investigating notions of gender, identity and the gendered self and held in collaboration with the arts organization Field Action Kodra and Thessaloniki Pride. With several provocative works addressing sexual identity, I was impressed that such an exhibition could take place in the city hall. Later on, a staffer at the municipality told me the community response has been considerably positive and welcoming.

Thessaloniki is also where Solidarity Now established its first center to offer services to those most vulnerable to the crisis, especially the elderly, migrants and asylum seekers.  Led by Epaminondas Farmakis, and comprising a collaborative network of NGOs and people Solidarity Now provides healthcare, housing, legal aid support and job-seeking guidance.  They’re also working to address the systemic changes needed to enable and empower vulnerable groups to succeed over the long-term: just this month, their advocacy efforts over the years paid off when the Greek Parliament passed legislation to offer citizenship to children of migrants born and raised in Greece.

After Thessaloniki, I encountered another admirable example of community tenacity when I spent my first evening in Athens at the soft launch of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, set to open in 2016. Thousands of families and children wandered through the gardens of the park, newly planted with olive trees, sage and rosemary, whose scents wafted through the evening air reminding visitors of the ecological richness of the Mediterranean. Over the four-day launch event, Athenians played together, took part in workshops, watched traditional theater, acrobatics, video screenings and musical concerts. Located on 50 acres, the centerpiece of the park is a new Cultural Center, designed by renowned architect Renzo Piano as a sustainable building par excellence. Underneath a cutting edge solar canopy, the Center will host the National Library of Greece, the Greek National Opera, a Center for Entrepreneurship as well as numerous other facilities. Even now, as a lightshow danced across the scaffolding and cranes at the construction site, the site has both come alive and brought life to the city, embodying the eloquent wish of Renzo Piano to create "a place of beauty and a place for good, because this is for the society." By uniting education, cultural and sustainability, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation has put forward a truly visionary concept, in recognition that these are 'essential requirements in enhancing the potential of the city and its people and for placing them within a twenty first century global context.'

With this outstanding, future-oriented example of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, it seems we will have much to learn from Athens over the coming years, which brings me to the last memorable encounter of my time in Greece, when Mayor Yorgos Kaminis announced a bold new partnership with the Athens Biennale. Earlier this year, Athens Biennale was awarded the European Cultural Foundation’s Princess Margriet Award for Culture for its contribution to European culture and the creation of an open, democratic Europe, and in the words of my fellow jury member Chris Dercon, for showing “how culture can be a means of solidarity and common ground that create tangible alternatives to the economic and political conflicts of our time.”

The co-founders of Athens Biennale, Poka Yio and Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, were joined by HRH Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands to announce the theme of the next edition of the Athens Biennale, which will be symbolically titled "OMONOIA” (Concord/Harmony). Launching in October 2015, “Omonoia” will run through 2017, once again breaking the mold of the conventional biennale format. In the words of Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, they will work over these years to continue to expand the role of culture in society, question and explore the role of the artist, activate the participation of people in art, and create the conditions through which people can understand cities.

The dynamism for which Athens Biennial is known, its commitment and its sincerity in seeking to nurture a common ground for collective action have even led the influential Documenta Biennale to take a radical decision with its 2017 edition, to base part of the exhibition in Athens, under the title “Learning from Athens.”

I also had many conversations with people in Greece about their views on the government, on the Troika, on how their country ended up in this situation. Rather than add to what has already been written on so widely, I prefer to share a different set of developments.  This week as we watch our neighbor with bated breath for the fateful decisions that will shape its future, as bitter accusations continue to fly around, I dare say that there is another story to pay attention to, one that holds lessons to what could form a common future.  It goes without saying to acknowledge, support and engage with the extraordinary people behind these initiatives, which are leading Greece, and Europe, into the future. (RZC/HK)