Immigrants spiral out from Kafeneon to sing the Greek anthem opposite the Greek Supreme Court

THE GREEK national anthem, written by Heptanese national poet Dionysios
Solomos, received an unusual performance at the closing events of the
experimental art space Kafeneon (????n?on).

On a rainy night just opposite the Greek Supreme Court, a crew of immigrants
took to the sidewalk and broke out in song, bringing traffic to a halt and
calling attention to visitors taking in wine and video art behind the
gallery's large panel windows. Add the flood lighting on the street and the
filming of the event from on top of a car slowly rolling against traffic,
interest was inevitably piqued from security across the street, but the night
proved a good cheer for all.

Kafeneon ran for one month at 23 Kyrillou Loukareos, near Ambelokipi
metro station. The closing performance was Monday 31 March. Artist and
current US Fulbright scholar in Athens Paul Zografakis created the venue with
the intention of hosting gatherings of all sorts and greeting any passerby
with a free Greek coffee.

Zografakis, who graduated with an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in
2005 and was last year an artist-in-residence at CESTA in Tabor, the Czech
Republic, is interested in how the "understanding of our contemporary
environments... may shape each culture, neighbourhood and life independently".

In Kafeneon he addresses those thoughts through revising the traditional Greek
kafeneion to formulate an experimental pop-up social space and
document its impact on the surroundings. The project's blog HREF="http://www.artzog.com/kafeneon/">http://artzog.com/kafeneon/
gives a lighthearted picture of daily life at Kafeneon.

Kafeneon's logo

Like its traditional counterpart, the documentation trail shows a space that
is a bit cliquish, but the big differences are: all genders are invited, the
coffee is free, no TV disrupts the conversation and anyone is asked to make
something happen. Little by little, people did.

Press announcements were sent out early on, but not to all the likely places.
The space grew by word of mouth, first housing quickly shifting wall
installations and weekly art project lectures and then moving on to host
Capoeira workshops and other diverse activities, depending on who offered
what. By its closing night, a large number of people were ready to celebrate
the space.

The grand finale was comprised of seven rotating film and video installations
by Greek and international artists. Free coffee was substituted for free wine.
Highlights included two cartoons by Irini Karayannopoulou, which combined a
dark and nostalgic look at teenage life in films that achieved motion by
building on a single drawing rather than scanning across a tableaux.
Stuttering rhythms fleetingly animated the textures by bouncing back and forth
between early and late images of the central drawings.

In The Saddest Woman in the World, Zografakis focused on the forlorn
looks of Elli Lambeti in numerous roles bent on tragedy. By blacking out
everything on-screen except her head and neck, a mesmerising image was created
that will likely impart a comic effect when viewing the originals by leaping
us beyond the narrative to this space in our memories where her characters are
rolled into one. Adding an explicit zaniness to the work, firework images
ruptured in the pervasive black background, contrasting her static glares and
suggesting psychological pangs of distress.

In Ioannis Theodoropoulos' hilarious Eftihos (???????), a man
dressed in white underwear and a ridiculous fake moustache danced an
altogether too droopy rembetiko in the corner of what seemed a very
empty apartment. The traditional rembetiko's lyrics repeatedly conveyed
the message: thank goodness I'm stupid and don't know what I'm doing. The
pathetic expression of isolation clinched the film's success, suggesting at
the very least that such grand displays carry more dignity in bars, with
friends, and with a little more clothing.

Music trumps all

Artist Paul Zografakis scales to the ceiling with makeshift mountain- climbing gear to give his own rendition of the joke 'How many does it take to change a light bulb?'

In the back of Kafeneon, a different performance mounted, organised by local
immigrant artists Jennifer Nelson and Toby Short. A mass of people packed
tightly in a very small room, and though some viewers tried, it was all but
impossible to get in.

The doorframe, packed with faces, seemed to lead to a horizon. When visitors
approached, they were handed metro ticket-size cards printed with testimonials
from members of the group on immigrant life in Greece and how each felt when
singing the national anthem together. By evening's end, they spiralled out in
a serpentine fashion to the sidewalk and joined together singing Greece's
Hymn to Freedom.

Most national anthems are filled with pitfalls for the nations of amateurs
meant to sing them. The melody of the British anthem, reworded and stolen as
its own by Americans, reaches beyond the firm range of any untrained voice, no
matter where you start it. The melody of the Greek national anthem, written by
Heptanese composer Nikolaos Mantzaros, poses its own difficulties. It
emphasises the strong Italian influence of Mantzaros' Ionian islands as it
gently lingers in the middle of the scale before finally reaching up to hit
the tonic - that, of course, being the one tone that gives singers assurance
of where they are. For this choir it was a rocky rise to that place, after
which they relished sudden dynamic changes at verses and pounded out the
strong crescendo to the finale.

A critic of the event suggested it was inappropriate to use these people's
lives, many of which are within, or coming from, threatening circumstances, in
the frame of an artwork that, by contrast, simply begins and ends. The
criticism is inevitable because the idea is so provocative. What does it mean
for these diverse people to squeeze into a room? To sing the national anthem?
And outside the Supreme Court?

In testimonies the choir wrote: "I am 16 years old. I come from Afghanistan in
search of a better life. " "I come from the Ivory Coast... I left my country
during the war... I have no more courage, but I have the hope that I had when
I left my country." "I am reminded of the New Zealanders and the Maori
battalion, of which my father was part, who fought in Crete in 1941." "The
thing I miss most since coming to Greece is the person I once was who believed
my dreams might have a place." "Ithaka gave me this marvellous journey, as
without her I would not have set out." "I have no papers. No job. I can't get
my residence permission done. I love singing." "I don't know how to
start. I am a student. I am attending language courses at the Athens
University. I miss my family, my friends."

As intriguing as the theoretical implications are, music trumps them all. This
Hymn to Freedom was not outside time, but clearly within time and the
lives of everyone who sang it. Nor was it loaded with a particular slant. At
rehearsals I dug for intriguing responses, but people were firstly frank about
enjoying themselves. Music builds community, and it does so quickly where
remoteness is rampant. Like Kafeneon, Hymn to Freedom was literally
building community.

The evening closed with a bang and broken glass as Zografakis scaled to the
ceiling with makeshift mountain-climbing gear to give his own rendition of the
joke "How many does it take to change a light bulb?"

* Zografakis continues his Fulbright residency in Athens
through the spring, Jennifer Nelson's video work The Chronicles of
Despair will hit municipal squares in Athens this summer and Toby
Short is creating a relief for the Metro Authority soon to be on display