The (origins of the) game
(2024)
Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
Happening, 2016. Participant's empirical research, including improvised full recorded interview with first generation Albanian immigrants to Greece, images, and thematic text. The research was conducted for the workshop, "Logics of Worlds", inspired by Alain Badiou's work and organised by architect Filippos Oraiopoulos, at Athens School of Fine Art (ASFA), Master of Visual Arts (Marios Spiliopoulos, Giorgios Xiropaides), December 2016.
Adopting the political approach of Badiou's "L' Organisation Politique" to apply direct intervention for societal problems, including immigration and labour, I used play as a method to facilitate improvised discussions. People share and respond more freely when participating in structured, but playful interactions, such as those a game involves. Albanians speak three languages, Albanian, Italian and, a few of them, Greek, so I wasn't able to translate parts of the conversation. Avlona is an English now obsolete name for Vlore, an Albanian seaport and former ancient Greek colony Aulon. Albanians came as non-EU refugees in Greece initially in the 1990s, after the fall of communism in their home country. Religion was banned in communist countries. The democratisation of Albania began in 1994, when Albanians protested for political pluralism in their country. At the beginnig ofbthe transition period after communism, Vlore became a port through which smuggling, mainly from Italy, was carried out.
Notably, the men I spoke to didn't want to be visualised. Hence, the exposition aims to juxtapose the experimental and the conceptual in the fine arts; and to make the 'invisible' visible.
Badiou is also known for his philosophy of metaphysics of the four "truth procedures": Politics, Science, Love and Art.
The workshop was slightly interrupted by a performance art student, who brought a live hen to slaughter in the studio. This can be taken as a metaphor for scapegoating (by symbolically re-assigning the gender of male) Albanian non-EU refugees.
For this exposition, I include an essay by Pantelis Boukalas, in Kyriakos Katzourakis, O "Dromos Pros Ti Dysi" (The Way to the West), 2001, as well as Kyriakos Katzourakis' introduction in English.
I don't have any personal or other connections with Albania - or North Macedonia or Kosovo: I had never visited before 2024. This was a project to research and document in an artistic manner the refugee and immigration crisis, as I experienced it in my native Greece and to voice my opinions on this topic from my perspective as a native Greek. I spoke to non-EU economic refugees. Non-EU economic refugees must not be confused with political asylum seekers, who encounter persecution for political reasons from the countries of origin or citizenship.
Albania (North Macedonia and Kosovo) is a non-EU country; Greece, my native (and my parents' and grandparents' native), has been in the EU since 1981. I have also been a UK national, by naturalisation, since 2011.
Paradoxically - or not so paradoxically, since I have been also investigating this case - the political outcome, and since 2020, of this project was that fictitious "daughter" of mine had been on the Met police's databases, as 22 Italian/Albanian female. Supposedly, I must had been given birth to a daughter in Albania in 2002! (!! the "prostitute"; that's believable!! Golden Dawn's, the BNP's, and others' cultural "imagination" with regards to Albanians): factually speaking, in 2002, I was living in Athens, Greece, engaged to be married to my former husband, a Greek national, working at MOB (Mauve) Architects, as an architect designer, with an international cohort of colleagues. I lived in Athens until 2004, working also at RCTech architects. The records with the fake IDs have been corrected in September 2024. Including records of falsely alleged children of mine born 2002-2004, when I lived and worked in my native Greece. From 1998 until 2002, I was living in the UK, working as an architect; there are no children. I gained my first practical experience working as an architect in the UK, working in private architectural practice from 1999 until 2002.
In 2009, when the G20 summit demonstrations took place in London, with the known case of the death of Ian Tomlison by a police officer, I had been living in the UK since 2005, working as an EU lecturer at the University of East London; I was also known as Betty Nigianni by my students and colleagues. I never participated in any public demonstrations in the UK, but I have attended demonstrations in my native Greece and in 2019 in the Netherlands.
Greek children take their father's surname and Greeks don't have many children; they're suffering from a shrinking population, although they are in the EU since 1981. My concerns about serious international organised criminal activity (not even honouring children's basic rights) were reported and confirmed by the Greek, Scandinavian and Albanian authorities. The British authorities have been lagging behind for a long time, intentionally, with their impossible unverified "stories", bashing the left and the liberals - or whatever is left of them - and whoever is decent - whatever has been left of that, too. The Greek police confirmed in 2024 all claims about children have been dismissed.
The Greek Golden Dawn - with their "Big Idea" (Megali Idea) of conquering foreign countries, like North Macedonia, and their chronic attacks on immigrants and refugees in Greece - was convicted as a criminal organisation in October 2020. They invented the 'concept' of the 'Real Greek', dependent on any Greek's political orientation. Now they're losing their sixty seven (67) appeals - and early releases. The conversation took place during the period Golden Dawn was prosecuted in the Greek High Courts of Justice (Areios Pagos), 2015-2020. Many non-EU immigrants to Greece provided testimonies in the courts, despite the fact they were frightened.
Manolis Glezos was the only Greek politician, who went to visit Magda Fyssa, Pavlos' mother, in the Greek courts.
For Pavlos Fyssas, aka Killah P.
For Alain Badiou, a communist-Maoist political philosopher, and the OP.
For the missing Albanian and of Albanian ethnicity immigrants.
For Michalis Katsouris.
For the "Other Greek Left".
Thanks to the Albanian embassy in London, the Tirane and Durres police, as well as the Durres prosecutor. Thanks to Edi Rama. Thanks to the Norwegian government. Thanks also to Skopje police and Prishtine police. Thanks to the Italian police at Bari. Finally, thanks to the Greek police chief and the Greek police organised crime division. Thanks to the very few Met police officers, who eventually figured it out.
Ongoing investigatory research with artworks, 2016-2024.
References:
Fred C. Abrahams, "Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe", New York: New York University Press, 2015.
Counterextremism Project, "Violent, Right-wing Extremism and Terrorism - Transnational Connectivity, Definitions, Incidents, Structures and Countermeasures", November 2020, available online.
"Investigating the Big Blue": cyanotype workshop in two parts, Amorgos, Cyclades, Greece
(2024)
Hannah L. M. Eßler, Micol Favini, Lovis Heuss, Eirini Sourgiadaki, Livia Zumofen, Anna Rubi, Tomer Zirkilevech, Alisha Dutt Islam, Charles Kwong
A 2-part module by the MA Transdisciplinary Studies of ZHdK, Department Kulturanalysen und Vermittlung. Held by Anna Rubi & Eirini Sourgiadaki.
Autumn 2023-Spring 2024
Colour perception varies, so do the semantics of colour terminology, for both sighted and blind individuals. The questions around colour perception from ophthalmology or neurobiology perspectives to cognitive and artistic ones, are infinite: Is there a universal human experience of the blue sky, the green grass and the brown soil? How is colour perceived in the brain, how is it translated into a communicable concept and how does it affect our perceived world, our mental and physical state? What is the role of colour in synesthesia? And most importantly, does colour have to do just with vision? In this module we work with the generation of blue colour on print, using the major light source available, the Sun.
The Island of Amorgos is often referred to as “Le grand bleu” after the famous french film was shot at location. Its ancient name is “Melania”. “Melani”, the Greek word for ink, (“Melano” for dark blue, cyan) as it is said that in ancient times the place was covered with dark green flora. Our investigation begins exactly with this deep tint. We pay a visit to the famous monastery and the water oracle, walk the trails to observe the sensual -not only vision-based- shades of blue. In the spring term, we participate in local activities such as beach clean-up initiatives of the remote bays by local fishermen and their boats. We visit bee-hives and herb-distilleries, we work with the most basic bits and pieces of the island to capture its essence.