KünstlerInnen: Alexandros Georgiou and Jennifer Nelson, in collaboration with ITYS, Institute for Contemporary Art and Thought, Athens and Konate Mamadou and Theophile Yerbanga,
Photo: Paul Zografakis
Presented work: „January 12, 2008 – An Attempt”, 2008
Texts by R M Syllantavou (Doctor at Hellenic Center for Diseases Control & Prevention; Member of Medicines du Monde; for the last seven years, and in collaboration with Filippos Olymbitis, she has been been working as a volunteer on the island of Leros, Athens)
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A group of people of varying nationalities attempt an evening of exchange. It is difficult to begin given there has been no history of this in Athens. We gather at the Africana Pub in Athens to dance and drink together. Greeks, other Europeans, and Africans from Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria – all living in Athens – meet awkwardly. We don’t know how to begin. Some speak English, others French, and some Greek. We gather in pockets – little groups of white or little groups of black. And only with the music, and good will, we shyly find moments to dance together. We don’t know the social codes. All the issues of courtship, sexuality, and friendship – are they the same? We don’t want to give the wrong signals. But somehow the evening progresses. We all smile. We all try. And somehow, anyway, despite the artificial nature of the evening, we have fun. We are glad we came. And in one tiny step, a tenuous step – forged with effort and love – we have a beginning. This was our first attempt.
Jennifer Nelson
Are you 20 years old? Or 50? Or 70, perhaps?
Whatever your age, at least once in your lifetime you must spend one hour to ‘travel’ to an immigrant reception station and one more hour to return home. Those who decide to see the immigrants’ life with their own eyes rather than through television, and compare this with their own comfortable armchair and the full pot in their kitchen, will have no difficulty in understanding what MIGRATION means in our time.
The migrants are people like us, with physical and emotional needs, who decide to seek a NEW LIFE – like many Greeks did in the past, when they emigrated to Germany, Belgium, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, America and Australia. In earlier days immigrants were under strict control by the host country that welcomed (!) them as worker-contributors. TODAY a migrant is only under the state’s control in a vague and spasmodic way. Upon arrival in a country he or she is described as ‘illegal’, because swarms of people like him or her enter the country in secret, driven by HUNGER not poverty, and by POLITICAL CONFLICTS!
All this theory goes quickly through my mind, and then I remember …
The mother and boy landed on Farmkonissi, Leros, one morning, shivering from the cold after swimming for an hour. A slave-runner had put his gun to their heads forcing them to fall into the freezing water so he could avoid arrest. Now, a stranger unable to communicate, she’s hoping for some job, and the boy, ten years old, will learn his ABCs. “I am thinking of staying in Greece – I don’t feel up to any more travelling”, is the translated gist of her soft-spoken words.
Laina was sexually abused in Somalia. She gathered her forces and made dreams before setting off into the unknown. Who knows what fate awaits her in the strange country? We adults know the dangers around her and should consider our responsibilities: “in the trade of humans the customer is responsible too”.
Samir’s eyes shine with the joy of freedom. A piece of bread is enough as long as he escapes the imprisonment and the massacre, the humiliations of a brutal regime on the arid mountains of Afghanistan.
They were luckier than Hassan, a lad of twenty who breathed his last in the cold waters of the Aegean. Semil, a fellow-traveller, gave this translated description of what happened: “It was still dark when we fell into the water, a black, moonless night; we swam barefoot and only one or two had life-jackets; some drifted to the right, others to the left … after about an hour the lucky ones reached the shore. Hassan wasn’t among them …”
Life is not just about material possessions. … If it is to be ‘civilized’, it needs awareness and action. Spend two hours of your life to see for yourself the kind of civilization we are building!
R M Syllantavou