INTERVIEW: Eleni Tzirtzilaki
Eleni Tzirtzilaki studied Architecture at Facoltà di Architettura in Florence, she is a politically active and deeply sensitive human being since she originates from a Cretan family that played an important role in the Greek Left Movement. Also as a member of the feminist movement in Italy in the 70’s she developed serious social action. Eleni Tzirtzilaki is a sensitive creator, who opened the boundaries of the city-centered architecture to the human. From “Urban Void” and “Nomadic Architecture Network” to the “Home As Fabric” her latest performance-work in progress Eleni Tzirtzilaki’s is linking Architecture and Art, the public and the private space with the human being and his needs. On the occasion of her participation in the 3rd ASFA BBQ “Dwelling / Housing” International Performance Art Festival with her performance “Home As Fabric”, we unfold together all the aspects of home in contemporary society, the social and psychological extensions of house and home.
By Efi Michalarou & Dimitris Lempesis
The project-performance “Home As Fabric” is the next step of your exhibition with Jilly Traganou and Lydia Mattweus at the The Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens, a few years ago. Do you think that it was a forerunner of the current project?
The “Home As Fabric” is associated with “The Open House. Spatial imaginary and multiple belonging” because it was a project that belonged to the field of the anthropology of gender and took place in the open space of the Byzantine Museum in June 2008. Its purpose was to explore the imaginary dimension of habitation at the diasporian-communities that are created beyond national borders focusing on the experience of women, as well as the exploration of the everyday life mythographies in conditions of displacement, temporariness and deterritorialization. During the project a community of women of different nationalities, ages or profession, formed, all had personal experience of deterritorialization or displacement but they had not opportunities to exchange experiences. This community appropriated the exterior space of the Museum in a way that reminding the co-habitation of totally different but connected women in the fiction of Elif Shafak. In parallel were presented the stories of two Greek women that had immigrated in Berlin and New York, and the story of Teresa, a woman from Sri Lanka who lives in Athens. In the project participated women from Africa, Sri Lanka, Albania, Turkey, Canada, as well as children that women brought along them.
What are their similarities? Is there a common conceptual axis linking these two projects?
In both cases participated women and during the course of a community formed. An intimate space was created, a “Home” from by different women. Then some women mentioned the Fabric and its meaning in their lives. This is how the idea of the project began.
Also last summer (20/8/16), I collaborated with others mainly architects to realize the “House of Desires and Pains” in Sifnos Island, Inspired from the book “Wayfarer to the Source” by Aristomenis Provelengios, this was also one of the events of the Greek participation at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, under the title “ThisIsACo–op” by the Architects Association. Thus the Home concerns me with its multiple expressions.
The House-Home beyond the building is extremely important as a concept because encapsulates a series of ingredients that form our character, personality and our subsequent course in life. Your own House-Home that has an important history through your ancestors’ political action, what role played in your actions and choices?
It was pivotal! A home proud, open, hospitable, that was trying desperately to stand on its feet, after the intense trauma. Τhe sister of my mother, Eleni (Nitsa), whose partisan name was Electra, she was killed in Sideroporti, allocation in the mountain near the village Kallikratis in Sfakia, Kreta Island during the impossible revolution… the Greek Civil War (1946-49)*. My father lived a considerable amount of time in exile, initially in Ikaria Island and then in Makronisos Island, and the first days of Dictatorship (1967-73) he left the house and had to hide away for several days not to be arrested. Myself when I just finished school, I left almost mandatory my home to study in Italy. Thus Home for our family has always been a hovering, fragile situation. That I am transferring in my artwork that deals extensively with the trauma, the shifting, but also with the community that is created each time, which for our family was home.
“Home As Fabric”, the project-performance that started some time ago, encapsulates a number of different meanings and symbolisms, would you like to explain to us how it came about?
Refers to the fragile and nowadays the ever-changing concept of the home and how it relates to the fabric literally and metaphorically. Home is place of desires, perfumes, romanceσ, memories, dreams. The Home is hidden, silent, disturbed, vulnerable, in dept, contraband. By the term home we refer to the community, to the homeland, somewhere you are feeling security and acceptance. In the present time, the above have ceased to be certainties and are a demand, many times unfulfilled for large population groups that are obliged to move, who are forced to leave their permanent residence and seek a new, more secure and often non-existent place of residence. Fabric has crucial significance in the home, particularly for women, as a childhood memory, as the thread that for years the women weave, knit, or embroider. Fabric often dominates home through materials such as: curtains, covers, sheets etc. is connected with the memories of the family, with the memories of house that has to be abandoned and very often is connected and often covers the secrets of a house, absorbs violence and turns into its skin. Nowadays in many cases a piece of fabric forms home, like a tent in a camp, a mattress, a blanket on the street. The project belongs to the category of the feminist approach. Yarn – weaving -fabric. The yarn turns into a cocoon-shelter that protects women, and often in patriarchal societies, is marginalizing them (embroidery, knitting, head covering, body cover) as they appropriate it. On the other hand, fabric has cohesion, transparency, is a transformed material, fits everywhere … It could be the home of desires, alters, has colors.
As we now your project started from a private space (your studio) and began to unfold in the public space (ASFA BBQ) and will continue… Which were the reactions of the participants in the Private space and which of the participants in the Public space?
In my studio, there was more discussion about the issue of violence. But it was very important that the wooden tiny house in the garden of Athens Scool of Fine Arts was transformed into intimate venue and we spent three hours of undiminished interest, discussing-reading-writing-about home. It helped the reading of my poem “House”, the hearings from the family meeting at the Grandmother Despina’s memorial service at her house in Kozani, The “Hymn of Love” from of Maria Kenanidou’s voice. It was expressed a nostalgia for that house with garden, with many people, with songs, that no longer exists, a house from another Greece. There were read poems about House that were written by: Anna Akhmatova, Emily Dickinson and Anne Sexton, also were read responses from women who participated in the previous workshops. We talked about the homes we had shifted in our lives, most of the times from needs, studies, work, or eviction, until that shift became a permanent situation. We talked about the violence that usually took place aτ our early age, and often the fabrics gently covered it. Often some books, hot food or some favorite items in the backpack make our home wherever we are locating. A towel, an embroidery, a soft cloth, are the favorite fabrics we carry on our journeys. Around us in the garden, the birds farewell the day and we although the house seemed crushed, more an idea that we carry inside us with fear for its lost, we seemed to want to keep in his new meanings. The community was very important.
It has a Woman-Feminist character, this is obvious not only from the participation of women in your performances, but also from your own goal of involving women of all ages, from every social, economic and ideological venue, just like in the feminist movement of the 70s in Italy, that you where an active member.
Yes this is my desire, to get together women of different ages and experiences and express-share their thoughts their experiences about the house. I believe that Greek society is patriarchal, this is expressed in all venues from universities and artistic workshops to offices, factories and the public space. Inside the home women experience different forms of violence that make them adopt roles. In Greece, there has never been a feminist movement of great impact like in other European countries, I am glad that are created groups by young girls now.
As an Architect, you have designed and realized Residences that, as you told us, are housing the dreams and wishes of people, at a time when the social structures are shaken (Economical Crisis and Immigration), what is the significance of the Home today?
Is a whole new world, as everything is shaken, the meaning is changing, house becomes something that you carry it with you wherever you go. Solidarity is of great importance as well as community.
Fabric is not considered a solid material to create a house, although semiologically it refers to many other uses within it. Why did you choose it?
Because it has fragility, it is often transparent, it is workable, changeable, transformable. For me as a material, fabric express the home in today’s conditions. During the meetings, different women share their thoughts about the house as experience, memory, as a place we leave behind, that changes. Women note their answers on colored cards and we ask every woman for a piece of cloth. The project also takes place online, through the social media such as facebook. This process is crucial because many women prefer to remain anonymous and the internet enables the project to become more widely known… At the same time, we are investigating archives related to the fabric and the weaving process or the fabric and its use. Data on auctioning are also collected. Research is carried out on texts of literature, poetry. A series of performances are carried out exploring the body and its potentials in relation to the fabric.
In your Prerformaces you broach the subject of violence, which unfortunately most of us have received, either underground, either verbal, or in the form of conformance. How much violence can be hided inside a home?
From the replies it appears that we all have experienced violence at home. The participating women do not talk easily about it, they need to feel intimacy, το listen to other stories, at our first meeting a woman from Africa spoke at first about the violence she had suffered in her homeland, then each one unleashed her story about violence at first inside the family, then inside a relationship. There is also verbal violence. Frequently heavy fabrics, curtains, covers and embroideries hide this violence. What is obvious from the answers is that many women, particularly young, have escaped from it, through movement, changing the stability of their former home, with a moving one that often consists of few objects and from people who know their movements.
The American Psychiatrists believe that the three major shocks a person may suffer in his life are: Resettlement, Separation and Death. However, many of us have resettled too many times, do you believe that domestic violence has prompted us to multiple and continuous resettlements?
From the meetings and the answers it seems that is an element quite powerful, ulterior. Domestic violence is often also associated with state violence, with a society living in necropolitics conditions. Necropolitics promotes segregation, violence, patriarchy and marginalization.
The performance “Home As Fabric” at ASFA BBQ, which I attended and participated, had elements that we all need, that’s why kept our interest unabated for 3 hours. Was full of feelings (warm and safe), life (colors and fabrics), cozy (through treats), and your own behavior as a hostess, memories (audio document), It was true (acceptance), love (hymn to Love) and dreams (poetry and literature), for that reasons we participated with ease in the dialogue and the testimony of our personal experiences. It gave us space and the conditions to dream. Is this the ideal home for you?
An intimate space that can be created anywhere, without borders, a space between, which is created to include diversity, where there can be play, feelings, dreams, love.
At this meeting recited my poem “The House” and poems written by: Anna Akhmatova, Emily Dickinson and Anne Sexton. I want to thank Shevi Tsambala (for our discussions and her support to the project), Maria Kenanidou and Despoina Panayotopoulos for the material they gave me and all the women that participated so far.
“Partisan Nitsa–Eleni Papayiannakis Electra”, private publication and silent walking from Village Kallikratis to the location Sideroporti (12/9/15), documentary
Photo: Stefanos Chandelis, Bianca Levi, Eleni Tzirtzilaki, Sophia Karoumba, Charis Chlorou. A project by Eleni TzirtZilaki and Nomadic Architecture Network (http://nomadikiarxitektoniki.net)
First Publication: www.dreamideamachine.com
© Interview-Efi Michalarou & Dimitris Lempesis
