INTERVIEW: Manolis Baboussis
Manolis Baboussis is a visual artist, that his artwork is balancing between art and architecture; since his initial studies and influences are always visible in his photographs, drawings, and poems. In his body of works entitled “Something Stupid”, Baboussis surprised us, since deconstructs and recomposes not only an era, but an entire world, making his personal city, “Mnemiopolis”. In the historic building of Romantso, a former printing plant of the once famous “Romantso” magazine, he exhibits a series of artworks-installations, where the ready-made acquires a new mythical dimension through the reconstruction, thus creating a positive-optimistic message about the future. Although his artworks seem unrelated and chaotic, through his architectural experience, is preserved an absolute order and even the cheapest materials get poetic dimensions… As Manolis Baboussis says in the discussion that follows, on the occasion of his exhibition “Every artwork and every exhibition acquires a special meaning in a historical period, in a given context. Maybe if we turn the inside out of something inconspicuous, we will see if its context appears”.
By Efi Michalarou & Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Manolis Baboussis
Mr. Baboussis, how arose“Something Stupid” as a title for your solo exhibition at Romantso’s cultural center in Athens, why it was chosen for the specific exhibition?
Every artwork and every exhibition acquires a special meaning in a historical period, in a given context. Maybe if we turn the inside out of something inconspicuous, we will see if its context appears. Frank Sinatra when was singing, if I remember correctly, “And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid, Like I love you”, I guess that he provocatively meant that the words sound foolish in front of a value such as love, and even sometimes artworks need no explanations. Of course art is not stupid, art is sacrilegious and subversive but at the same breath art is art is structured hierarchically into distinct categories. This is the reason that many of those who have an institutional role, when they don’t censor the artists – they prefer a selfie with: immigrants, Acropolis, flags with hammer and sickle, the established symbols, and also with the sacred contemporary art including artists and artistic directors as a background. Those who pretend a need like to learn something from the art world, sometime it would be more useful to learn something else that they do not already know, maybe to play piano… When Langue de bois and the reason of intentions without work is accompanying us more and more intensely, does ultimately the consequential reason hides the important artists, the meaning, and our era?
At the inauguration of your exhibition, although your installations are up on ephemeral pedestals from cardboard boxes, I felt like the “Alice in Wonderland”. You managed to create a fairytale space, where through deconstruction of the world we know, rather to created feelings of fear and pessimism to the viewer, he either reads a new story, or he has the opportunity and the freedom to create his own. Was this a conscious decision or occurred?
Very often the beauty as we see it all over Greece, coexists with vulgarity and catastrophe, parody with temporary, hope and utopia with deadlocks, the waiting of a kiss with the forthcoming bombardment, every one of us coexists with the evaluation, the program, the dose, in a vast carnival, which as every imaginary element, has the need of symbols, thus I quite consciously used my photos from the Rio carnival, the night clubs with live bouzouki music of the ‘80s or the empty seats of the Greek parliament. When I was setting up the exhibition with hundreds of items, each one crumbling and in an offhand way, fragile and cheerful, to balance on a single artwork-shelter, I was feeling as a child, but without his innocence. I am glad that you feel like an Alice in a fairytale that is why we met on one of the roads of “Mnemiopolis” (Monument City) plans, at its colorful maquette with the video projection of the “guide to the city sights”, at the monuments forest, where things finally get back their real name
In a single installation structured into series of artworks whose core theme is the non-oblivion of institutions. Do you believe that oblivion has led us to the current state? If we reunite with our historical consciousness and memory, can we contribute in a creation of a better world, surpassing the serial crushing of the days?
We need by all means to connect with the truth. The problem is not that we have forgotten all the massacres, tragedies, atrocities, unfairness and ostracisms. We are continuing this glorious tradition of humankind with new ones. We have already devoted many Monuments to yesterday. We know who the guilty is. It is not enough. We turned over a new leaf; the problem is to understand the current post-hypocrisy of our era, what form we will give in to the future. The worst dreams of 10 people are in front of us! We erect them, name them and everyone welcomes them. The fact the thingy mediocre, great or small crook politician or artist, or censor art-keeper is overrated, or in this position, is a traditional problem, but today it is the least worst. They never were the ones to help us not to lose the senses and the emotions offered generously by the artworks everywhere we detect them. We need a precise tracking equipment for artworks, culture and training to neutralize the minefields, to highlight the artworks not to destroy them, on the contrary at “Mnemiopolis” they made provision for the creation of appropriate centers to concealment and falsify history.
Your “Mnemiopolis” ‘is the psychogram a country and its population, across location, time, history, political, social and sociοlogical changes. The milking, the hypocrisy, the cynical reciprocations and finally the crisis of an entire country, is projected internationally more than ever as an attraction. How do you feel that we have to resist against this phenomenon? What should be the reaction of the artists and what is?
When I listening 50 Greeks talking to each other broken English, rather than translate in three foreign participants the Greek language, I think that there are many ways to do something stupid… It is well known that in dark times there is always mobility, participation and willing collaborators for a project that gives hope. Through our artworks we should say, to everyone that promote or put the shame on us as a trendy attraction, that the institutions are part of the problem, with their choices and approaches of the spectacle, they are part of an reciprocation, in which they are protagonists from a power position. Leaving aside 4-5 countries which supply the 80% of the international exhibitions artists, all the other artists have similar problems with us. The center and the periphery do not swap roles, just titles.
I have been asked abroad, several times over the last years, from artists and other art people, about the reaction of the Greek artists to crisis, why they don’t make more dynamic and radical moves, more scathing artworks. They keep saying “In the major International Events, we are waiting from the Greek artists to be more entrepreneurial”. What is your answer?
If today the art market does not favor political or “offhand ” works and promotes for example a flawlessly executed, detached and sterilized object or in the best case a suggestive subject that does not bothers when you see it in the living room, then someone with a politically sharp work seems naïve and vice versa. In our case, the role of the art market is small, our space also, the issue becomes a matter of friendship… Friendship is a gracious gift that blunts the sharpness of artworks, committees, directors, collectors, teachers, appointed ministers, so primary friends are participating at the major International events, most times, we know months before the results, occasionally mistakes are made and instead of friends they choose an artwork. On the contrary in “Mnemiopolis” there is prediction the Biennial of the artist and his artwork, the association of artist’s collectors is founded as well as the Museum of his friends, so there are no more any problems. So I would answer that the problem may is resolved, if the artists themselves and only they choose themselves as candidates and after an honest discussion themselves would choose the sharp weapons of the duel, which would lead to a place in the sun. The countries of the South have sun, many beautiful girls and boys, they are also hospitable. “Definitely”, is the answer of my younger friend, maybe this is the title of my next exhibition.
Info: Curator: Apostolis Artinos, Romantso, 3-5 Anaxagora Str., Athens, Duration: 27/3-13/4/17, Days & Hours: Daily 13:00-21:00, www.romantso.gr
First Publication: www.dreamideamachine.com
© Interview – Efi Michalarou & Dimitris Lempesis
© Photo – Manolis Baboussis
