(April 2002)
General comments
I would like to caress the ears of the delegates with praises for the past and hopes for the future. Unfortunately, I can only do the latter, given that the past only brings negative memories from my contact (and more often from my lack of contact) with Mayors and other local authorities. Of course, there is no doubt that there are Mayors who have understood the magnitude of their cultural potential and responsibility and act impeccably, at least to the extent that the public machinery allows them. However, it seems that my luck did not bring me to meet them. Usually, however, in the citizen's mind, a generalized impression is created that is dominated by the negative aspects, perhaps because these are recorded more intensely and overturning them requires a lot of time and great persistence.
To examine how local government treats, and should treat, photography, we must first see how it treats culture in general. But even before that, we must examine its ability to generally face the challenges posed by its role. Let’s attempt to do so very hastily, with the risk that every such schematic approach entails, namely the disappearance of the fine nuances.
I wish to emphasize again, as I said at the beginning of the speech, that the following views do not express an absolute and exception-free picture, nor are they based on scientific analysis and statistical sampling, and therefore can contain a large percentage of error. However, they are the product of my intuition and my modest experience through specific incidents that I have encountered either earlier as a lawyer or later as a photography teacher.
My experiences, especially with the Greek provinces, with its inhabitants and its rulers, are based on my decade-long involvement in designing and organizing prototype photography departments on behalf of Popular Education, as well as the invitations I received from private groups to teach photography in many Greek cities. Lastly, my love for small communities is also evidenced by the fact that in recent years I have chosen Syros (where I am not originally from) as my permanent residence and, if possible, my permanent or nearly permanent place of work, and certainly not just as a summer residence. And for now, not a day goes by that I do not renew my enthusiasm for this choice.
Constraints of local government
No one disputes the importance of local government and we all welcome its strengthening. At least, however, in one aspect it has disappointed many expectations. And I refer to the fact that it not only did not moderate but transferred the weaknesses of the central political scene to the local level in an inflated manner. In the case of the central administration and the elected ministers, their intense partisan and clientelistic dependence is mitigated first by their sense that they are eternally transferable and second by the labyrinthine organization of each ministry which they usually ignore. In small communities, this dependence is accentuated and its results are inflated partly because of the personal and familial nature of relationships and partly because of the omnipotence of the local ruler who gathers all the machinery under his power.
Furthermore, there is the phenomenon that Mayors of small towns turn their office into an almost permanent profession (it is not rare for mayors to serve over twenty-year terms), whereas in large cities, they treat the mayoral throne as a springboard for more significant political positions in the central administration, resulting in everyone succumbing to the logic of political cost, instead of choosing political courage. The result of all this is that cronyism dominates in the selection of people and populism in the decision-making. And this is the main obstacle for local government to properly address its cultural role, or any other role for that matter. It is strange that in recent years, rationalism in decision-making has improved and cronyism has decreased in the central administration, perhaps because political and economic entanglement deals with the so-called big issues, leaving the smaller, and often not less significant, issues to the initiative of a few but worthy public servants who honor their position and frequently drive the state mechanism in the right direction.
ΕπαναλI repeat for the third time that with so many mayors in our country, the above generalization is dangerous and there are many exceptions,
However, there is also another drawback to the local political scene, specifically the fact that the local elected rulers believe that the people elected them not as managers but as experts in everything. And, among other things, experts in aesthetics, art, and culture. Instead of turning to one or more advisors who know each field, they usually prefer to design and select their cultural directions alone. These advisors should ideally be citizens of the community, but even if that is not feasible, it doesn't matter. After all, quality is not local. The opinions of these advisors or committees would not necessarily be binding on the Mayor, but if he wanted to act in a contrary manner, he would need to justify his action sufficiently. The same applies to urban changes and aesthetic and decorative interventions and to anything that requires knowledge and expertise which it is not logical for the Mayor, the Deputy Mayor, or other elected councilors to possess.
Culture and local government
Culture, a flexible concept, encompasses art but also many other things that affect art and are affected by it. The perception of local rulers about culture usually moves in three directions.
First, in the direction of preserving a tradition, a tradition that, usually detached from the concurrent production of contemporary culture, ends in the best cases in a simplistic ethnography and in the worst in an underground conservatism.
Second, in the direction of the advertising promotion of the Municipality through showcase initiatives, which offer immediate and measurable feedback.
Third, towards the exploitation of funds that the central administration or the European Community (more often the latter than the former) provides for artistic education and artistic events. Funds that are either diverted to other directions or needs or again serve the above purposes of promotion and showcase.
Aesthetics of cities
A space where the Mayors' perception of culture is expressively manifested is in the aesthetics of cities, but also indirectly of houses, for which, of course, urban planning is mainly responsible. This aesthetic approach is characterized by three directions.
First, by the arbitrariness of most mayors to make personal aesthetic interventions, filling avenues with bathhouse tiles, squares with vaudeville lampposts, ports with wrought-iron benches, and all sidewalks with offensively ugly railings, an arbitrariness possibly influenced by the tendency to imitate old European sovereigns and the corresponding desire to leave a visible mark of their passage through their city through “beautification” and not necessary interventions.
Second, by the tendency towards a folkloric uniformity. This is a mysterious choice that, in the case of the Aegean, for example, wants all the islands to be filled with tragically unaesthetic and boring uniform white little houses with dark blue windows and “Mykonian” arches (all painted with plastic paints), because for unexplained reasons a false tradition in the spirit of the blue and white was chosen, a choice that abolished all the charming pale and other earthy shades, the stone, and the watercolors, along with every private aesthetic surprise.
Third, by the tendency to mimic the past with the ridiculous copying of houses from the century before last and the representation of neoclassical or aristocratic houses with frivolous and railing, because once it was done (indeed, why don’t we go back further to ancient housing with columns and a hearth?), a tendency that ignores the basic principle that architecture must carry the mark of time along with the mark of space and that the image of the city must simultaneously be an image of its history, respecting a historical center and gradually expanding with an aesthetic path and evolution through time.
Local rulers and art
Regarding the relationship of elected officials with art, we note some common preferences again.
Firstly, there is a tendency to favor festival events that accumulate excessively numerous and questionable quality events, thinking that such events find an easier place in the media to ensure publicity for the municipal authority.
Secondly, the tendency to prefer summer for any events, a tendency that again promotes visibility at the expense of substance.
Thirdly, the tendency to usually invite commercial "artists" who are promoted by the Media and are pleasing to the public. This last argument should not be a criterion in any way. Otherwise, we would be holding referendums and end up appointing the director of a polling company as the governor. When a decision is not popular, it is more likely to be correct.
Fourthly, the tendency to promote traditional art and to disregard the production of art.
Fifthly, the complete indifference to the artistic and aesthetic education of the population.
This approach deserves the following criticism.
Firstly, artistic and aesthetic education is ensured over time and through the residents' familiarization with artistic practice. It is a project that does not yield immediate promotional results nor is it popular with the majority of the population. The Greek family, which has rightly been concerned with its transition to another economic and social category in recent years, could not achieve this aesthetic education. Neither can schools, partly because they are made up of teachers with the same deficiencies and weaknesses that characterize the students and partly because state education has turned (rightly or wrongly, it is not for us to examine) towards economic and professional security. However, it is primarily the task of small communities and their rulers, as the only way to accomplish it is through so-called lifelong education, which ultimately serves the deeper and more mature needs that accompany a person throughout their life, not just in their immature school years.
Cultural education is offered, claimed, discovered. It is hypocrisy to claim that people will ask for what they need and then we will offer it to them. To ask for it, they need to know about it. And it is the responsibility of the rulers to lead them forward. The rulers are elected to lead, not to follow. And it is natural in their leadership journey to incur diminutive cost, political or other.
Secondly, our local rulers must understand that their role is not to entertain the citizens. This is undertaken by television and all (good or bad) commercial entertainment. If a commercial show or a music act wants to be presented in a small town, let it do so with the commercial risk involved in any such event. The authorities' role is to bring closer to the citizen what would not come without them. Their role is to offer the citizen the opportunity to see the movie that television, commercial cinema, or the video club would not show, and the theater play that would not break the box office. Their role is to bridge the social and internal cultural and educational inequality, offering equal cultural opportunities for education and enjoyment. Their role is to focus more on infrastructure and less on events.
Thirdly, the greatest cultural contribution to the place, to democracy, and (last of all) to art, is a citizen who creates. Consequently, a thinking citizen, that is, a free one. Therefore, let the authorities leave behind the well-known (and often useless) KEKs (Centers for Lifelong Learning) with their subsidized students, which should not logically constitute an educational one-way, to manage the last funds left and create small teaching groups and communication with art. Not with the goal of professional rehabilitation, since that would be hypocrisy, but with the goal of bringing citizens into contact with the artistic event. The Municipal Gallery, the Municipal Theater, the Municipal Workshops should become places of communication and contact with art.
Fourthly, most events in small places, and especially on islands, should take place during winter when the locals are unaffected by their tourist activities. The events should primarily concern them and not the tourists. For summer, they can reserve a couple of glossy events as attractions, but the main body should concern the winter.
Fifthly, substantial decentralization should be favored, that is, one that brings to smaller places, mainly in the form of permanent installation, but even in the form of winter visits, artists, creators, teachers, and theorists who will thus contribute to the cultivation of the inhabitants. At this point, local authority must become a counterbalance to the innate defense and enclosure observed in small communities against any external presence. Even more so in a country like ours, where hospitality has been elevated to a national characteristic.
Photography as a means of cultural policy
Within the range of cultural problems and the dilemmas of related choices, it would be somewhat amusing to give particular weight to photography, if it did not have some characteristics that make it particularly important today.
Firstly, (unfortunately and fortunately) photography is in fashion. I say unfortunately because whatever is in fashion tends to be imposed through its most superficial and simplistic side. But I also say fortunately because we can use the attraction that photography exerts to move the initial interest of citizens towards creation.
Secondly (unfortunately) photography tends to occupy the center of our culture. I say unfortunately because our culture is and remains a culture of the word. Its transformation tends to reduce the significance (and knowledge) of the word without replacing it with the image, since word and image are not interchangeable concepts. What happens is the use of the image as an illustration of a word that is increasingly receding. However, what we now need is to deal with visual illiteracy. Since the image appears to dominate, citizens need to know it and learn both to read and to apply it.
Thirdly, (unfortunately and fortunately) photography is easy. I say unfortunately because photography, like any other creative process, is difficult when we demand quality. But something that seems easy does not impose discipline and seriousness on the one who applies it, resulting in the distance from quality. But I also say fortunately because its undoubtedly easy technique contributes to its application being feasible with short training and tangible results.
The way elected local leaderships ”andl’ culture, and specifically art, absolutely affects their position on photography. It would be comical to expect a positive artistic intervention in the field of photography if this did not also happen in the rest of the municipal cultural interventions. It is therefore a problem of general approach, not exclusively positioning against photography.
Personal experiences
The observations that preceded express a rather pessimistic view, but it is a fact that my memories, as I mentioned earlier, do not bring many positives to me. I will mention briefly some of my personal experiences, so that the above theoretical approach also acquires a practical aspect.
1. I have been invited to deliver seminars on photography and, lately, cinema, more than once in many Greek cities. In Patras, Thessaloniki, Heraklion, Rhodes, Agios Nikolaos, Florina, Alexandroupoli, Orestiada, Nafplio, Karditsa, Grevena, Nafpaktos, Skopelos, Kalamata, Metsovo, Rethymno, Lamia, and elsewhere, and except for the times I was a delegate of the General Secretariat for Popular Education, all other times I was invited by local photography groups, who brought me at their own expense. I was never invited by a Municipality.
2. Years ago, I was a member of the artistic committee of the Athens Municipality along with respectable colleagues, and we all tried to upgrade the level of the exhibition spaces of the Municipality with choices that would highlight high quality and a different level. Almost none of our proposals were accepted and gradually the committee fell into disuse. It should be noted that we ceased to meet silently and I was never notified of a cessation. Since then, through these exhibition spaces, personal promotion and politics are exercised, resulting in me directing almost daily invitations for the Municipality of Athens' halls to the waste basket as I know they will lack interest.
3. During one of my many teaching visits, I met in a remote Greek city an exceptional, educated, and talented young man, and when I recommended using him as an instructor, I received a response from the General Secretariat that they can no longer intervene because it is the responsibility of local bodies and that, as far as they learned, the said young man would never be hired because the one who held the position until then was the favorite of the local authority.
4. When I settled in Syros where, at my own expense, I created a seminar space with a fully equipped 120 sq.m. projection room, a fully equipped 50 sq.m. darkroom, four guest rooms, and many auxiliary spaces, I invited the Mayor and the person responsible for the Municipality's cultural activities, as well as representatives of other local powers to visit it. After a year and while many seminars have already been conducted with students coming during the winter from Athens, none of the aforementioned officials has yet visited. A visit that would have had no practical consequences but only symbolic significance for how the Municipality treats private initiative and culture.
5. Again in Syros, I organized a lengthy introductory photography seminar identical to the one I have been teaching in Athens for fifteen years, and decided to encourage the place of my new residence by pricing the lessons at 50% of those in Athens. I also asked the Municipality to cover part of the expenses of Syros candidates who would show interest and perhaps all the costs of the teachers and professors, so as to stimulate an interest in photography on the island. The Municipality refused. The seminar is underway and is nearing its end with students mainly working on the island who come from other cities and who had an interest in photography.
6. When I asked the Prefecture to fund the creation of a film club in Syros, since I have a film library with 600 movies, an excellent projection room, and can make weekly screenings with introduction and analysis of the films, the Prefecture refused. The related screenings are held for Athenians who travel during the winter to attend four-day film tributes.
7. When I asked the Region for help in supplementing the technical equipment in Syros, the Region refused and urged me to create a KEK. It is worth noting that the island has six KEKs that, at least in the cultural departments, underperform.
8. For the first and only time, I taught a lengthy photography course at a Prefecture's KEK. Thus, I had the opportunity to experience three new experiences. For the first time in my teaching career, I faced students who showed complete indifference, obviously only coming for the subsidy. For the first time, everyone, students and organizers, were surprised and complained that I adhered to the schedule I had signed. And for the first time, more than two years have passed since the completion of my work without having been paid.
9. At an earlier meeting of local rulers in Mytilene under Minister Benos, the then minister (whom I emphasize was one of the most likable to have passed through ministerial chairs) assured me in response to a speech of mine that he did something significant for photography when he was at the Ministry of Culture. When I asked for clarification, he specified that by his decision, photography was deemed equivalent to the other arts. The likable minister forgot that it is education that ensures the life and value of the arts and not ministerial decisions. And for artistic education, no one seems to be struggling, either in central or local authority.
10. Three years ago, with the thought of settling in Syros, I proposed in writing and with a detailed memorandum to the Ministry of the Aegean and five or six island mayors to undertake a program during the winter, which I had named "Photography in the Aegean." According to this, we would deliver a weekly seminar on artistic photography to any residents who wanted (with a special invitation to teachers and professors). We would photograph the island in a completely non-postcard-like manner, aiming to publish a very small album. We would assign specific photography themes of the island to the seminar students, aiming after a year to have a group exhibition of theirs on all the islands in rotation. We would explore the possibilities of establishing and supporting local photography groups. We would invite the excellent participants to an advanced seminar in Syros. I received no response from anyone. Not even a polite refusal.
11. In a small city in northern Greece, where I had just finished a series of lectures, the local artistic group asked the Municipality for 1 million drachmas to set up a darkroom. The Municipality refused and at the same time invited Savvopoulos, paying the high fee he asks for a concert. This is the cultural logic of most Municipalities.
12. When Jacques Lang took office as Minister of Culture under Mitterand, he sent officials of his Ministry to the provinces to find individuals who spread and cultivated Culture on site. He found them and supported them in their work. There are many such people in the small Greek cities. Find them and utilize them. Unless you think that art is produced by public servants and state organizations and that institutions can replace individuals.
13. When I spent a decade touring Greece teaching photography instructors on behalf of Popular Education, I met among the students of the departments (almost never among the instructors) people of great sensitivity and value. They are citizens of your small communities. It is everyone's responsibility not to make them feel isolated.
14. In most European countries, especially in France, Italy, and Spain, there is a custom for Municipalities to invite known and good photographers, (not necessarily their residents), to freely and artistically photograph their city and its life. Among the books I present in my classes, there is always the wonderful Barcelona of the well-known Englishman Craigie Horsfield and the excellent Venice of the young Moreno Gentili. The list could literally be endless. In Greece, it seems that all officials are satisfied with the postcard-like tourist guides issued by average photographers. At least that was implied by the response of the Ministry of the Aegean to my related request to undertake such a campaign. It is truly comical to think that the famous French photographer Bernard Plossu photographed the Dodecanese with French funding.
15. A Municipality of a border island invited me to take part in the judging committee of a photography competition to be held in the middle of summer. I replied that I consider it more serious and beneficial to organize a four-day introductory photography seminar since my travel and accommodation expenses would be paid anyway. I never received a response.
Dear congressmen, the list of my negative experiences is endless. Yet for some strange reason, I neither lose my mood, nor my patience, nor my humor. And paradoxically not even my optimism. And if I lose them, it will be temporary.
Our country seems to have solved its economic problem. It's time to deal with its intellectual deficit. This is not done through large organizations and coordinated groups or parties. It is the work of small groups, a few people, small communities. The war against anti-intellectuality will not be won by mass battles, but by cultural guerrilla warfare through patience and time. And this war is particularly important because aesthetics is the other face of ethics. My contact with power has made me pessimistic, but my contact with people extremely optimistic. After all, even the local rulers are people, citizens of a small community, before they are rulers. Perhaps it is enough for their intellectual needs to awaken, which I am sure they have.
Plato Rivellis