"Destroy Athens" 

Curated by Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Poka-Yio, Augustine Zenakos

Cities belong to their inhabitants. Concepts belong to whoever chooses to use them. It is the concept of Athens that we will address. Athens is emblematic in relation to the certainty that whatever we do is due to our good nature, to our perception of a world that is just for all - even for those who maintain that they do not desire to live in the world that we propose to them. Because "we alone do good to one and the other, not upon a calculation of interest, but in the confidence of freedom." *

If one were to claim that what we call the Western civilization has one prevalent characteristic, this would be its certainty that the values by which it believes it is defined, and that it defends - justice, equality, democracy, the western way of life - are so noble that they can't but be attractive to others. And it is in this certainty that the West finds a soothing alleviation of guilt: we do not oppress, we teach; we do not conquer, we civilize.

There appears here, of course, an issue of interiority and exteriority: the truth is that while everybody else perceives Athens mostly through its "positive" stereotypes, its inhabitants perceive it mostly through its "negative" ones. There are then at least three layers superimposed one upon the other:

Athens as a lived city is perceived almost exclusively through negative stereotyping (the pollution, the apartment building, the demonstrations, the rude taxi-drivers) by its inhabitants.

Athens as a site -to- visit is advertised, through positive stereotyping (e.g. the antiquities, the Olympic Games, or even Greek hospitality), by the Greek nationalistic construct in absolute accord with the world - wide cultural and tourist industries.

Athens as an emblem of western certainty is conscripted, again through positive stereotyping (e.g. the birthplace of democracy), to alleviate the guilt of a hegemonic civilization.

Unsurprisingly, every aforementioned layer is usually expressed through an aesthetic codification, be it the supposed "real" Athens with its desiccated urban cityscapes, or the tourist Athens with its Acropolis, or the universal, timeless Athens - that imaginary, ahistorical place, where justice and democracy always rule and inspire us.

The 1st Athens Biennial International Contemporary Art Exhibition aims to attack stereotyping, and this is what we invite artists to do. We do not invite them, as is often the case, to "live" the experience of the city and to create works about its supposed "reality". We invite them to destroy their preconceptions about it, which concern as much someone who lives in Athens as someone who has never set foot in it. We, then, invite artists to a celebration of dissent, which will employ the heretical treatment of the universal and timeless symbol of Athens as a pretext or as a metaphor for an assertion of self-determination.

* «Και μόνοι ου του ξυμφέροντος μάλλον λογισμώ ή της ελευθερίας τω πιστώ αδεώς τινα ωφελούμεν.» ( Pericles Funeral Oration, Thucydides ΙΙ 40,5 )