Learning to care - A conversation with Theo Prodromidis

Welcome to the Onassis AiR conversations. My name is Myrto Katsimicha. I am a curator and cultural worker based in Athens and your host in this series of recorded encounters with the participants of Onassis AiR. Founded on the principles of learning and doing with others, Onassis AiR is an international research residency program in Athens initiated by the Onassis Foundation in 2019. They say that what happens in one place stays in that place. I cannot find a better way to describe all the things that have been happening inside the Onassis AiR house since I first entered as a participant of The Critical Practices Program in fall 2019. The truth is, it is not easy to transmit an open ended process of relationing which is very personal and relevant to a specific place and moment in time. How can I then give you a glimpse into that process? Everything starts with a conversation. Throughout this series, I'll be speaking with the Onassis AiR participants, to shed light on their artistic practices and needs, as well as to reflect on ways of being and working together.

In this conversation, I am very happy to be speaking with Theo Prodromidis. Theo is a visual artist and director based in Athens. Often the outcome of a socially engaged and participatory art process, his work encompasses a variety of media, including film and installations that address the role of historicity and the power structures involved in the production of political subjectivities. Theo is a participant of The School of Infinite Rehearsals Movement VII with a collective research focus on the notion of community economies. Today, we will draw from his experience in autonomous practices of education to discuss ways of fostering an economy of care.

Theo, welcome to Pali-Room!

It's great to be up here in the attic and thank you Myrto for the invitation.

Theo, it's a pleasure to have you here today, especially since we've known each other for many years, but actually never had the chance to have this kind of conversation before. That being said, it's been quite interesting for me to observe how you gradually moved from a solitary towards a more collaborative art practice and I am interested to locate this moment in time.

First of all, I think that, you know, I will start questioning this idea of solitary practice in the arts. But indeed, from being a student and working with film in a kind of experimental form and practice, where you start to negotiate the world through a lens, I did experience a movement through these processes of negotiating how I work with people. It was becoming clear that I had a desire to work with people, I enjoyed working with people and somehow experimental film practices were very much author based in many ways. So, I started dwelling and playing around with ideas of fiction and performance. I started moving more towards a cinematic practice, which in itself is a very collaborative form. And it was indeed while making a couple of more ambitious work, that in the preparation of filming I started seeing myself needing to engage more with the people I work with, beyond the role of a director. I wanted to imagine myself more involved with the scene that I was setting up. So actually for me to be in the frame of this action while it was happening, rather than envisioning how it would be filmed —from those desires and through a residency I did in Paris in 2016 where I shifted what I was looking for through meeting people there. I kind of freed myself from the necessity to continue a linear sort of relationship with making a work. It was meeting people —people from political movements— that were trying at that moment in Paris to open up the academia space to students and professors coming from Syria at that time, and after long conversations with both the people that organized and the people who were in Paris at the moment trying to reconfigure their lives that I started thinking of how can I engage myself with similar processes back in Athens.

So, I started thinking how to combine these two desires —to open up spaces with other people and to negotiate this idea of learning together. I don't know if this is a release of authorship more than a way to renegotiate collectively who is the author —not of a work, but of a certain social condition or a moment— or in a way trying to instrumentalize possibly a personal access to a cultural institution and redistribute whatever means that might exist there, either monetary in terms of production and work, but mostly in terms of time. Because artistic practices do sometimes offer a different understanding of time of engagement, which is different from working in theater or cinema. There is always the possibility of creating a common time, while you develop the work. One, though, has to also renegotiate again how this demand of time from collaborators is valued by the institution itself. For example, while in another residency in Belgrade, again I met people socially and I came to know the housing movement there. It was extremely moving how it brought together many different people from social and artistic movements in Belgrade. At that moment, I had quite a lot of funds in my hands, so I thought to commission previously executed labor in the form of texts and bring them in a format which was like a sheet of a tabloid newspaper. So I could at the same time assign a fee for already performed labor, but also connect three cities and three experiences of struggle of housing movements in those cities —in a way, trying to redistribute means, but also becoming a bridge or becoming a sort of space of coming together through personal filters, through the places I've been or the people I've met and trying to produce a little bit of shared time and space together. That was indeed an approach of how to make work with others and at instances one finds her/himself always renegotiating where the self is in the production of a work. How does one become useful in terms of the tools and experiences one brings to others? Leading or initiating a project always includes this choreography between the self and the others, and how you can be useful in leading a certain step or how you can allow yourself to be led in another step by the others.

I feel that this notion of a structure, the structures that need to be placed in order for us to have a common space, but also, as you mentioned, a common time and the question of who has access to these structures and what this access entails have been an ongoing thread in your work. This was also the way that you chose to introduce yourself somehow to one of the workshops that we did together during the residency on how do we work together. I was wondering whether you could describe a little bit the object and the logic behind it.

It was actually a workshop that you led and you asked us to bring an object. I brought two objects. I brought an element of a work —of an installation that I did some years ago—, which is actually the combination of two works. Anyhow, this is called "The element for the support of new structure", which is like an object made out of bronze, like an expanded sort of cross that functions as an element of a shelf to host a book. The book itself was an outcome of a performance. The other object that I brought was a riddle, which was a gift from a friend. And I brought these two objects to introduce a personal sort of negotiation between a formal way of looking at structures and support and a wish to play with others. Play is something that might entail an element of surprise or an impossibility to do something. What was interesting about this element, this bronze element that I brought, which kind of looks a little bit severe or stiff due to its design, was that it was actually a solution of how we can place a book in different ways on a wall. That book, when it was exhibited in two instances —at the Thessaloniki Biennale in 2015 curated by Katerina Gregos and at the Fondazione Sandreto Rerebaudengo in Turin— because it was not bound to this element of support, it was taken away. I was fascinated by the audience taking the work and run and it did trigger to me a desire to start looking at how we can take the work and run, how I can start engaging in making works that can be distributed, like the newspaper I mentioned before, or even not have a physical boundary to a wall or a floor. I think that this was coinciding with what I mentioned earlier, like after Paris coming back to Greece and lookign for a space to go as Theo, as a citizen and not as an artist, and enter a process of self-learning without engaging into an artistic process per se.

So, I became a volunteer at the Open School for Immigrants of Piraeus in 2016 after months of negotiating that I wouldn't like to go there as an artist, that I wanted to go there without this definition of myself. But throughout all this time there I was frequently asked to bring my tools as an artist to the group, because this was the only way I would be really useful, by bringing whatever I could bring in this learning and sharing experience. So I think that the combination of learning how to move, to step back and forth —a choreography of sharing, let's say— and also attempting to create set ups where nothing is really taken for granted and introducing the possibility for the audience to take the work and run or for both the audience and the participants to take the work and run was something that also drove me to apply for this program hoping to negotiate community, which is this kind of movement with others and by others and with yourself and this choreography of sharing, as well as this idea of how we can take the work and run. So take the value or whatever in an economical sort of approach to how a work operates within an exhibition space or within a social space, and how this sharing of the works or sharing this value can be connected with an idea of community.

It's interesting to observe how when you are talking you always try to distinguish these two roles of being an artist and entering into a space where you want to somehow not erase completely, but keep out this identity of the artist or at least this is how I was observing that. In the aesthetic field, we have to deal with this question of representation and with this question of access. From a position of access how can we create this common space with, instead of or for others.

If we start formulating learning as a practice or an artwork as a learning process, then indeed the role of the initiator or the author or the artist in this process or the primary function for it to take shape is to listen. And of course listening is a very potent tool, as is it described in feminist practices and in practices of care. And I think that instance, when you initiate a process of listening, of groups listening to the members of each group, what you're trying to formulate possibly is a common fragment or a fragment of a common language, by learning how others articulate and how desires formulate words and sentences and how these can come together. So, going back to your question on access, I think we access each other by listening to each other. For example, I did a project in 2021 in GMK in Zagreb called "30 Years One Day", where I collaborated with two dramaturgs from Zagreb and we opened up and formulated a small group of participants coming from different backgrounds and struggles. But all of the participants had already made a first step in articulating these struggles through artistic practices —theater, music, writing and activism. And we did try to bring those experiences, that ranged from having a Roma background, being an LGBTQI+ activist or someone coming from the experience of a journey to Europe as a refugee, to find the smallest sort of common fragment that we could make together. We made a radio commercial for a performance and then the sort of work developed from there.

I think that what we tried to negotiate was a common language among us in order for then this articulation to be presented to a wider public and demand a common approach to access to this public space where we circulated these works. That was very informative for me because in many instances this articulation was done in Croatian, in Serbo-Croatian. So in that sense, I think that it could have been easier for me to approach language as something that entails much more than a demand. And I think that it is the formulation of a new set of demands —or in a sense, a new set of representation— that leads us to create a common space or a common new space. I don't know if that answers your question, but for me the transformation of representation as a demand is very important in trying to reconfigure how we open up this communal space to as many people as possible and maybe even consider this as moving between being a rehearsal of something or the actual manifestation of it. What is the final aesthetic experience? Is it a rehearsal or is it an actual event?

I think it does answer the question, especially when you mentioned that there was a lot happening in their language. So you found yourself in a place where things had to be translated to you. You didn't have this power of the language that you had to impose to your collaborators, to the participants, etc. So all this space of negotiation that you are mentioning already breaks this loop of representation. But I would like to go a little bit back to The School of Infinite Rehearsals and this notion of community economy that you have been trying to tackle with the rest of the group. My question is around value. I think that our capacity to transform the structures that we live in lies in a shift of perspectives and in a collective redefinition of value. You've dealt with the notion of value very prominently in one of your works —it has a very long title— "Towards the production of dialogs on the market of bronze and other precious materials", where you also question the role of art in society. So going back to community economies, I am curious to know how did this notion of value feed into your collective discussions and into your practice, of course?

It's interesting that you bring this work after talking about the aesthetic experience either as a rehearsal or as an event, because the work that you mentioned is based on Bertolt Brecht's "The Messinkauf Dailogs", which in Greek translates "Διάλογοι από την αγορά χαλκού". It's an unfinished piece by Brecht written during the Second World War that led him to produce a more manifesto like text, titled "The little organ for theater", and indeed this dialectic piece by Brecht is the intrusion of a philosopher in a theater stage on the process of a rehearsal, where he discusses with a dramaturg, an actress, an actor and a stage technician a series of scenes on how art can act within the social space in terms of introducing his interest —what is valuable in art and how art dealt with its own transition.

That work was a very formal approach as it was transformed into a video installation, whereas the stage of this happening was transported into a couple of locations in Athens that I found very emblematic at that moment and symbolic of the moment that Greece was going through -that was 2013. So the first scenes are set in the Communist Party's headquarters in Greece, whereas until today it was the only fiction filming that they allowed, and the different locations of the stock exchange in Athens as the biennial who commissioned the work was housed in the abandoned 20th Century Stock Exchange building. I think that the main question that I took as a struggle from negotiating with that text and that work as an artist was indeed the notion of value —how to imagine making work at this specific historical moment, not only in Greece, but globally.

I think that the symbolic spaces where we are invited to perform are in a perpetual crisis. So we are asked as artists to renegotiate value in perpetual crisis. So, with increasing inequality being one of the major outcomes of our historical period, how can an artist negotiate value? How can we imagine to create spaces of equality in a time of massive inequality? And so, I think that in that sense trying to negotiate what for me is a paradox between community and economy has been a very fruitful negotiation within the group as we comprised of people from very different and distinct experiences. Our coming together was very productive. It did coincide with the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the invasion of Russia in Ukraine. Indeed, we had to completely renegotiated how we were going to approach community economy. Trying to negotiate this question of value within a community economy in times of war is an extremely demanding process to negotiate within seven weeks of research. But somehow, I was thinking just now that I didn't think before from your question that the text that I mentioned earlier, "The Messinkauf Dialogs" were indeed written in a time of war. So as that text remained unfinished, I think that we are actually experiencing right now, without maybe possibly understanding, the necessity to renegotiate our understanding of values in community.

We've talked a lot about this negotiation that needs to happen in order for us to have a common space, a common time and actually, according to Gibson and Graham, who were the people that lent us the title for this movement "Community economies", community economy is perceived as this space of collectively negotiating our interdependence between all life forms. I feel that also this collective space that we are talking about, The School of Infinite Rehearsals, is about this constant negotiation and I am curious to know more practically, how did that develop for you as a group during these seven weeks?

We started discussing before we came together, trying to bring our understanding of community economy, but also our desires and fears of how we are going to continue with this collective research. As I mentioned earlier, we did have to start negotiating with this kind of coinciding with this extremely violent act and I think it did influence how we started thinking about our resources. I think that we collectively looked at various examples of how collectives operate, what is the public understanding of free or not-for-profit or for different modes of economically structuring alternative systems of either having access to what is considered to be the public space, but also examples of how self-organization between subjects that are in crises or subjects that are invisible has been formulated. Towards the end of our research, we did try to bring all of these discussions together and look at labor that is not visible and we did try to focus on the artistic community as it was something that we all sort of shared, but also we could actually look at the specifics of a certain community, rather than talk about communities at large, because each community is situated somewhere. There are different dynamics between the constituency of a community and so on. So we did try to kind of narrow down where we are looking at and start to think and reflect all together on the invisible labor involved in the artistic community. That's something that we have set as a collective space of negotiation and we are still reflecting upon how we're going to continue this after we go back to our constituencies and how to keep on connecting not only between us, but also trying to underline invisible labor, not only for others, but for ourselves as well.

From what we've discussed so far, I still have one question that I would like to address. Is it learning to care or caring through learning?

As I mentioned earlier, being with others is a choreography of stepping back, stepping back your ego to listen to others, learning how this is a comfortable space for you in order to make it comfortable for the others. And then, when the moment arises that you are called or are useful to contribute, to step back and actually instrumentalize whatever tools and skills you have to share with others. So I think this back and forth —this step forward, step backward— of learning how to dance with others, to be both led and to lead —maybe we can even consider this beautiful "panigiri" sort of circles that shift and rotate and people take different leads and come in and out, they dance, they go back to eat something and someone steps forward, you're waiting for your song that you really love and you sort of jump in there. I think that this might be a better model to understand the multiplicity between learning and caring, as if learning is taking this small step back in order to listen and caring is taking this small step forward in order to give.

I really like this metaphor of the "panigiri". I had never thought about it before.

I mean, they are collective moments of joy and sharing. You do need a lot of components, you need a band, you need someone to cook. So it expands to all these necessities. It's material also. It can be even monetized. Actually, "panigiria" are sometimes fundraising moments for a community. But to go back to this idea of care as a possibly process of redistribution, the recent heightened attention towards care that came out of the pandemic came at the moment when states tried to completely reorganize ministries of care —mostly with really detrimental outcomes in terms of national health systems— and with the paradoxes of going through this pandemic and people trying to privatize the health care systems at the same time and making people working in carework or people from immigrant or refugee backgrounds even more invisible in moments of need. This triggered in our collective understanding of institutional operation the need to look at care practices that however exist to support people in need.

And so one has to think of what are the needs of cultural institutions per se, if they can share their understanding of their own need with the community. It's not really the institutions that should look at how they're going to support the communities, but actually invite the communities to change the institutions themselves according to the community's needs. Of course, this is a very demanding process for an institution to actually go through an analytical process —almost resembling therapy— and understand what are its boundaries of operation and how it can actually, because of its scale, step back, as we said earlier with the dance, and listen to others. How can a huge institution step back? Because they're so grounded to the space and so bound to this idea of expanding either as an operation or towards communities and enlarging themselves to the public that it's really impossible for them to exercise the action of stepping back, of listening, of allowing themselves to be full of holes. However, I think that this moment that the pandemic brought of heightened notions of care, which, of course, now have to be renegotiated in this moment of war that followed up this period, could be indeed very informative of where we can go forward. And that's something that we have been looking in the last few years at the School of Mutation, which is an institute of the Institute of Radical Imagination, which I'm a member of. This is what we are at the moment strategizing and planning for the next years of how to take these discussions on care towards institutions themselves and how we can think of models for these institutions to learn how to step back.

I think that's very important, I mean the way that institutions should rethink of themselves. They should remember that instituting is a way of constant becoming instead of just being and existing. So what you bring forward is very important at this moment and I would like to thank you for sharing the room with me today. It's been a pleasure talking with you and I hope that we will manage to rethink and to keep negotiating our presence.

Thank you Myrto.

Thank you for listening. If you want to listen to more conversations, please subscribe to our channel. You can find more about the Onassis AiR residency program and each participant at www.onassis.org. This series is produced by Onassis AiR. Thanks to Nikos Kollias, the sound designer of the series, and to Nikos Lymperis for providing the original music intro theme.