Submit your 30 seconds maximum video before April 1st for a chance to have it featured in the installation, which launches April 27th at the 2012 Hyères Fashion + Photo Festival,  next exhibits by  Yohji Yamamoto, Jasons Evans, and Inez van Laamswerde + Vinoodh Matadin.

Imagine what lies beyond the wall of the PILLORY installation.

All submitted videos must be
no more than 30 seconds long,
from one angle/point of view,
and submitted before April 1st, 2012.

Fore more info and video guidelines: contest@thestimuleye.com

Givenchy, Raf Simons, Ann Demeulemeester, Rick Owens, Gareth Pugh, Comme des Garçons…we had it all. We also had a great concept (think butoh meets inception), a fantastic cast (Ippei is an amazing butoh performer, while Matvey and Willy, both top men’s models, would film Woodkid’s IRON video a few days later), great hair and great make-up, everything great.

RAEVE stroke-inducing poster by Clément Roncier.

Only problem was, we never really found the time to edit it.

Until now.

So without further ado, ræve.

RAEVE
by Antoine Asseraf & René Habermacher

starring Ippei Hosuka + Willy Cartier @ Success Paris + Matvey Lykov@ Success Paris

styling Jean-Luc Française / photo assistant Laurent Dubain / styling assistant Tiphaine Menon / hair Tanya Koch @ B Agency /make-up Akiko Sakamoto / studio Le Petit Oiseau Va Sortir

editing Axelle Zecevic / Clément Roncier / postproduction Clément Roncier / music Oedo Sukeroku “Shunrai” + John Cage “Sonata V” / special thanks Jean-Marc Locatelli

“An artist should stay for long periods of time at exploding volcanoes”

Marina's fifth commandment. Photo by René Habermacher.

THE WIG
This is the wig of Willem Dafoe when it’s not on Willem Dafoe.
It’s in the make up room.

In the play, Willem appears as a demonic, cartoonish narrator, meticulously going through Marina’s life chronologically, year after year.

I Could Be Yours - Fall/Winter 2011/12 presentation, filmed by Antoine Asseraf & René Habermacher.

Antoine Asseraf: Did your presentation go well this week?

Jean-Paul Lespagnard: It went really well. The feedback is really good.  It was very difficult to organize, obviously, but as I always say “we learn from our mistakes”. ha ha. In the beginning I wanted to do something simple and small and in the end, I found myself doing 7 shows in one day! My assistants tell me all the time that when I tell them something, I think that it is really simple, when in fact it isn’t. So when I tell them that we are going to do something difficult, but that we will succeed, they know that it is going to be a mountain of work! But really really happy with how everything went. The people from the press are really enthusiastic. The people that came by the showroom are very enthusiastic too. I had some buyers–one from a boutique in NY, one from a boutique in Hong Kong, among others.

Was it complicated to plan?

It was a personal choice to put myself in the “off” on presentations by appointment. And i think that I will continue to do that. Because, this idea of doing 6 shows in one day was difficult and I launched myself into a crazy adventure, but I really want to do it again. I think its great because people can come whenever they want to. There is something that I like about not having chairs, it was standing only. I think that the next time, what I could do is have little portable stools for people that want to sit down. I just really like the idea of something spontaneous like what we did. So something that I am going to work on and try to perfect for next time. This defilé was meant as a way for me to come back after the festival and to present my work to buyers. When the buyers came to my showroom, they said “its great, its fresh, we have never seen this before, but we are not sure where to place your work for the moment” This is good actually because now, they have 6 months to digest what they say and to think about ideas for where to place my collection and about where my stuff fits in with other designers. I really very very happy with my fashion week in Paris!

You think that they will put your collection with the collection of….?

I don’t know. I honestly don’t know because there are pieces that are very constructed, such as the things with the pieces with the pillow cases. There are people that made a comparison between my work and Lanvin. Also with Moschino, which I can understand. Some even found similarities between some of my pieces and Margiela. So, it is a wide range.

Tell me a bit about the collection.

The theme of the collection was based on a story that I wrote about a woman who was walking on a road, crossing through the forest at dawn–all of these details are very important–and who meets a very fancy japanese truck. The truck is a normal truck that they transformed with structural elements and lights etc.  The interior of the truck is baroque, with baroque tapestries and fabrics and crystal chandeliers. I think it is interesting to imagine the technological exterior of the truck and the classical interior. So the idea of the collection was to fuse together this woman, who is a bourgeoise of the countryside, and this truck. Not the truck driver! The truck. haha.

So we saw this fusion in the structured shoulders on some of the pieces for example. Some of the pieces were transformable, such as a sweatshirt which could be transformed into a dress depending on it is zipped up.

There were a lot of things influencing the collection. What was great was the baroque theme, which in itself is an accumulation of many things. So, in the work, I researched this idea of accumulating a lot of things which didn’t necessarily relate to one another….however, they did relate. For example, in the collection there is a “brocard de soiree…” with gold lurex in it–very soft and chic. I also had a vinyl, sequined skirt–it is a fabric that is used to cover the seats in discotheques, which for me, referenced the …..of the truck. But when you put those two pieces together, it is two different worlds, but two worlds that can communicate. It is pretty bizarre and interesting.

Jean-Paul Lespagnard's 2008 Hyères collection starring Jacqueline. Video by Antoine Asseraf.

You seem to always have a story like this one…

That’s right, I try to as much as possible. I had Jacqueline, my French fry girl. This time, the woman in my story didn’t have a name. There was not a name that seemed to fit, so I didn’t want to choose a name just for the sake of choosing one.

You didn’t have a name for her but you gave all the girls the same look.

That is something that I always like. I like to have a sort of army of beautiful girls… I think that my next collection is going to speak about a group of people, who are sharing an experience. It’s not yet september and I am already starting to do research.

"25 Hyères" by Antoine Asseraf - excerpt. "Digging for Victory" installation by Ethan Hayes-Chute and Jean-Paul Lespagnard.

Caroline Daily : Would you maybe like to make films?

I think that I could make films with my collections. If you want, when I conceive of a collection, it is often a starting point for other things. I use the collection to inspire other artistic projects. For example, in Hyères last year, I started the nature-themed collection–I didn’t really have enough money at that time to develop an entire collection–so I developed a variety of silhouettes and as I was creating the collection, I was developing a story. The story is that during the night, in Brussels, I was coming out of a discotheque and I met a sorcerer who gave me magic seeds and who asked me what I dreamt of doing. I told her that my dream was to become a fashion designer. So she gave me the seeds and told me to spread them in the dirt so that they grow. So, I planted the seeds and then, they became trees. And when I cut the trees down, they became live beings. And these live beings became my assistants who would help me make the collection. So, in the collection, there were at least two silhouettes that looked like war camouflage, which reflected this idea of fighting a battle to get the collection finished and combined the idea of combat and the idea of nature.

I continued the nature theme through out the collection and also in the cabana that I created at the festival. The cabana was an installation at the festival and was in fact my studio, which I had moved from Brussels to Hyeres. And in the cabana, my “tree assistant” was helping me sew garments for the collection. I could have put anyone in the tree outfit, but it was very important that it be one of my assistants or one of my interns. We always put the designer on display and we forget to show the team behind the designer. So, it was important to put my assistant, who helped me with the collection, in the tree/camouflage battle outfit.

So, for this current collection with the truck, I am not sure what other projects it will generate, but I know that I would like to make some installations and to do a project with a photographer.

"Ce Jeu" by Yelle. Video by Yoann Lemoine. Styling by Jean-Paul Lespagnard.

So, Yelle came to you with some ideas…

I met Julie just after the festival, right when she was about to make a new video for their song “Ce Jeu”. A friend of mine, Yoann Lemoine,  was directing the video and he introduced Julie to my work and she really like it. So she contacted me to do the styling on the video. After that, she had a tour the US and she asked me to collaborate on the costumes for it. After that, we stayed in contact and most recently, they asked me to create the costumes for their album “Safari Disco Club”. They told me what they wanted. It was a really interesting collaboration because there was a real exchange and sharing of ideas. They showed me images and explained why they liked certain things and I told them that I liked certain things too and showed them plenty of references, some Belgian. We constructed something together for the album art. And I think that we will continue to collaborate. We have already started to talk about other projects… merchandising….

When I spoke to them the other day, I asked what the visual concept was for the album Safari Disco Club. They said that it was a mix of fun and elegance….

That also describes my universe: making a link between fun and elegance. With Julie, we talked a lot about how I wanted her to show her elegant side now. For example, the other day she went to the Castelbajac show and beforehand, she came by the showroom to try on different outfits. We had a lot of outfits that were funny, like the pieces that we used for the video “Ce Jeu”. But we decided on something different, something more elegant. Something that is “the new Julie”. There is always humor in the outfits, like the clogs and the pendant with my portrait on it, but there is something more refined about the look.

They have grown so much (Yelle) and I am so proud of them. I admire the fact that after putting out their first album with a huge record label, they have decided to leave that label to do something on their own, with their own vision.  Its really great. Visually it’s better and we can see how much they are growing as artists. I identify with this–I am still a young designer, but I feel that we have a similar path.

"Don't Worry Bee Happy" Making-Of.

Are you engaged in other collaborations at the moment?

Yes, there are other artistic collaborations that I am working on. I am leaving on the 16th of March to go to San Francisco to make the costumes for a dance performance, choreographed by of an American choreographer with whom I work often. Her name is Meg Stuart. When she shows her work in Paris, it is usually at the Theatre de la Ville. She is based in Berlin. I also have project with another American choreographer named Jeremy Wade. He is also based in Berlin.

We would like to hitchhike for two weeks in the United States dressed up like bees!  I recently did a photo exposition where I photographed dressed like a bee, Maya the Bee, on top of the Mayan Temples. I wanted to comment on tourism in Mexico. Also I thought, “when you go to Disneyland, you dress in Mickey Mouse ears. Well, when you go to the Mayan Temples, you dress like Maya the Bee”.  I was also exploring how people present themselves as tourists in another country. Whenever I am working on an artistic project, I think often about the questions around identity and how I present myself as an artist.

For the moment, I have all of those projects and I have the new collection which I have already started working on. And while I am in San Francisco, I am going to take a tour of the Hearst Castle, which was the inspiration for the Xanadu Mansion in Citizen Kane. Apparently it is the “Vatican” of the United States and I really want to see it.

Meg Stuart project, costumes by Jean-Paul Lespagnard.

You have a lot of costume projects? Do you want to stay in pret-a-porter fashion or could you see yourself solely doing costume work?

I don’t think that I could see myself only doing costume work. I like to be involved in a lot of projects at once–it is the constant creativity and the creative mix that interests me. If I am not being creative, my life has no meaning.

Caroline Daily: What was the first article or review you had in the press?

The first article on me was in the newspaper of my hometown. I had done an expo in the stairwell of the town hall and it received a lot of different reactions. My piece was part of an expo for the artists of the village. They invited me to put a piece in the show and my piece was an installation that was three meters high of a woman who transformed into a tree.

Can you talk about the clogs on which you collaborated with Nathalie Elharrar of LaRare ?

We wanted to have a “countryside” element to the styling of my collection and that is why I wanted to have a futurist-looking clog. So I collaborated with Nathalie Elharrar, who has a brand of shoes called Larare. I really wanted to have something traditional that had a futuristic side and something that had a hand-made spirit. In the collection, I wanted to find a balance between something robotic and something artisanal. I wanted to highlight the artisanal side with a pair of wooden clogs.

What is the last thing that stimulated you?

Honestly, I see things that stimulate me every day. Often it is something that I have never seen and I think “wow”. Something that is stimulating me at the moment is something that I saw about a year ago in Brussels–it was show of Romeo Castellucci “Inferno, Paradiso and Purgatorio” I would like to use that for my next collection.

Thanks to Lynsey Peisinger for her precious help transcribing and translating this interview.

In the last part of our conversation Dimitris Papaioannou speaks about his current project INSIDE that premieres in April at the Pallas Thatre in Athens

Scene from INSIDE by Dimitris Papaioannou. Photo by René Habermacher

RENE HABERMACHER: Let’s speak a little about your new play: INSIDE.

DIMITRIS PAPAIOANNOU: INSIDE is a work born where two situations come together. The first is a show that runs endlessly without beginning, middle or end. The second is a situation in which audiences are allowed to visit at any time they like, sit wherever like, and are free to leave and return as many times as they like. The theatre doors open at 17:30 and close at 23:30. The stage action begins before you come in, and continues after you leave. Nobody sees a beginning, or an end. The play recycles itself, but never repeats itself.

We are playing with the concept of empty time. INSIDE focuses on personal time, that series of moments we experience when we return home. In a way it monumentalises these moments: the very fact of eating, or the very fact of showering, or the very fact of undressing to go to sleep. And without any assistance from civilisation — without a book, a magazine, radio or television.

Scene from INSIDE by Dimitris Papaioannou. Photo by René Habermacher

What you see is a composition, a series of everyday private movements and actions that are exactly the same, repeated multiple times by 30 performers in various overlapping and recycled versions. These phrases come together, then one remains, then another five come into play. It’s about density and overlapping forms. An ongoing open composition that encourages audiences to create their own compositions, depending on how many times, how long and from which angle they choose to see the play.

This is an idea that intrigues me, that people in the centre of the city will visit a theatre to watch others doing things that they do themselves, and the people they watch are themselves watching the city through the window. This is something I feel is charming.

It is these two elements — that of the city documentary exploring a place common to all, and the freedom given to audiences as to how they can view the work — that come together in my view to create this project. The subject of it is one level, the form of it is another, and both are conceived at the same time. This is what interests me, and this is why I am doing it.

So this is what INSIDE is.

I don’t know what people are going to do and how audiences will make use of this game that I am proposing. It’s something of an experiment, we’ll see how it’ll work.


Scene from INSIDE by Dimitris Papaioannou. Photo by René Habermacher

It reminds me of the photographs of Eadweard Muybridge for example, or the performances of Marina Abramović.

Abramović has these elements of patience, and of exhausting the human body. She has done one performance [“The House with the Ocean View”, 2002] where she actually lived in a gallery, in public view, which resembles what I am doing. But my work is not performance art, it requires rehearsal and it will repeat itself everyday; it’s not like an algorithm that evolves organically in front of our eyes. That’s why we are doing it in a theatre and not in a museum or gallery, because it is a kind of a twisted version of a performance, but not performance art. It is something that is rehearsed, that has an acting tone, and is not personal like most performance art, which is about a specific person doing something in that moment. Of course, this experiment of mine would not have been possible if performance art had never existed.

INSIDE reminds you of Muybridge because it gives you the chance to see and imprint in your head the successive stages of a movement, just like Muybridge did in his photographs. They also share the element of observing people: how people move, how they walk.

It’s like filming a documentary in the savannah: you film for hours following a lion and then you have 15 minutes where the lion sits doing nothing. We are taking these 15 minutes of footage of the lion making slight movements and superimposing it many times, through shifts in the timing, to create an entire play out of it. It is still the lion. It’s still about observing the lion. The lion does nothing new. But hopefully we will be magnetised by these successive of layers of the same action taking place, and start meditating upon our own lives.

That was a good example! We are becoming very abstract and intellectual now.

I can’t help it!

Scene from INSIDE by Dimitris Papaioannou. Photo by René Habermacher

I understand that this idea for INSIDE has been in your head for quite a while now.

It was the first thing that came into my head after 2004, the first thing I wanted to do and found worth doing. Back then I had the idea of this room, and of creating a composition from a single simple series of movements by multiplying and superimposing it. Within the framework of a two-hour show, this seemed ridiculous — this limitation would have strangled the idea, forcing the whole thing to have a conclusion, a climax, a very specific story to tell. It would also seem like a joke to audiences, setting them up for something with a beginning, middle and end and then presenting them this thing repeating itself and multiplying, waxing and waning before their eyes, without giving them the chance to leave whenever they want. So I didn’t do it.

Last year, I made the leap in relation to the way the theatre itself could function: I could create a very long show and give people the freedom to come and go as they please. I had to deal with the logistics of the thing, but then suddenly a form was created in which this content could take place. Because once you liberate the audience from having to see it all, then you also liberate the show itself to develop in ways that do not necessarily lead to a defined conclusion. So that is why it is happening now, because it took me some time to conceive the framework within which this could function.

Official trailer for INSIDE. 

There are some recurrent elements that I always see on your mood boards, in your work, in your references, and last week I saw a key element once again: the kouros.

Yes!

That one always returns, either standing or fallen.

I deeply apologise, I cannot help it! Some things come back again and again, you know, until everybody will just be exhausted by it and nobody will ever visit anything I do ever again!

Scene from INSIDE by Dimitris Papaioannou. Photo by René Habermacher

Would you say you have an obsession with what the kouros represents: beauty, nobility, youth?

It’s not about youth. It just happens that I work with people who are quite young. I’ve never flinched from the idea of worshipping the structure of a human body: I like the body. I like looking at human bodies. There is something about beauty that charms me and puzzles me and magnetises me.

I have a certain understanding of the human presence, of the human body situated in space and against the vastness of the sky of existence. I usually have people looking at landscapes. I think in every play I’ve done, I’ve had someone looking at something. This is something that maybe comes from me: I tend to breathe things in by looking at them.

When the kouros came to ancient Greece from ancient Egypt, it took one giant step forward: extracted from his background, the axis of his body shifted over his two feet. So for the first time in history, there was a life-size sculpted human figure that could be seen from all sides. And this coincides in ancient Greek history with the dawn of poetry, of lyrical poetry, where people started to talk about how they feel. For me, the kouros is more than a celebration of youth and beauty. I think its more the celebration of wandering. A figure standing on earth, wondering about its own position in space. Wandering in space: where do we stand, where are we? You know, it’s a common puzzle for us humans, and it attracts me. My work reflects that I guess.

Is that enough, dear? Do you want more?! [laughs]

www.MESAproject.com

www.dimitrispapaioannou.com

Scene from INSIDE by Dimitris Papaioannou. Photo by René Habermacher

Continuing the conversation with Greek choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou, this second part concentrates on his post olympic work as MEDEA2 and the influences of butoh and his native Athens in his work.

Scene from MEDEA2 by Dimitris Papaioannou. Photo by René Habermacher

RENÉ HABERMACHER: Over the years your journey has brought your work to ever-larger audiences. Recently, with your play MEDEA2, you revisited the past. How was that experience?

DIMITRIS PAPAIOANNOU: It challenged me for a number of reasons. If you follow my journey, I was violently exposed to the general public with the success of the Opening Ceremony of the Athens Olympic Games. In order to recover from the experience, I had to take a two-year break.

The first thing I chose to do after this pause was a show called 2. 2 was actually an attempt to pick up where I had left off before the ceremony, to return to my roots and re-evaluate my work. I constructed a very personal show on a large scale because I was offered the opportunity to do so, and I tried to restart my interrupted line of development in an unusual way.

After this experience many question marks arose, and I realised that I was still exposed to a much larger public than I was used to. I had the feeling that there was a new kind of communication being created that was both charming and dangerous. I needed more time before taking my next step.

Jason crossing the sea. Scene from MEDEA2 by Dimitris Papaioannou. Photo by René Habermacher

Many people were suddenly exposed to my work through the Olympics, but of those who had a real interest, many were too young to have experienced MEDEA. So I returned to MEDEA, attracted by the idea of presenting it again with an all new cast, and approaching it with a new idea: to take the passion out. I wanted to reconstruct it, refine it, clear it out, strip it of anything unnecessary, drain the blood from the performance and deliver it in the cleanest form I could manage. That was my intention with MEDEA2.

Having done that, I could continue with new work, first NOWHERE and now INSIDE. This is a completely new phase, where I am tending to create shows with no protagonists and no characters. The crowd is the element I’m focusing on now, using it in a more open structure in order to create images involving spatial and human relationships.

Excerpts of MEDEA 2 accompanied by interview with Dimitris Papaioannou.

I had the impression that MEDEA2 was influenced by the Butoh school of expression, which I thought was a very interesting element incorporated into an ancient Greek drama.

Butoh formed part of my intense training in New York [with Maureen Fleming at LaMama studio] when I was 18 years old, and it was the first technique that was compatible with my body. And because it suited me, I discovered true sensations of human emotions through it.

Helios in the opening Scene from MEDEA2 by Dimitris Papaioannou. Photo by René Habermacher

When I started out with my group in the squat, most of my work was linked to Butoh. It was a mixture many things: of my Butoh experiences,

of traditional Greek aesthetics, of questioning this perception of beauty, and of the concept that a human statue is a vehicle for ideas throughout the ages. So MEDEA2 was this hybrid created to draw from the energy of Butoh, but it also questions this beauty, and the idea that the body is the vehicle of it over the centuries. This play is like a visit to the Greek National Museum, to its sculpture galleries. We bathed the set in light to look like a day at a museum. The story is being told by figures who somehow vogue a series of poses taken from ancient Greek sculpture.

Do you think this cultural connection is limited to the aesthetics of Butoh and the ancient Greek plays, or are there some more general parallels between ancient Greek and ancient Japanese culture? Such as the stripping away of the unnecessary to achieve purity, which is something that I also see in your work.

It’s drama. It’s drama and tragedy. The tragic element is very evident in the expressionist dance of Butoh. Archetypes of conflict come very close to the archetypal animalistic body energy that Butoh requires. That’s why I think they are deeply connected. My connection is more illustrative, it’s more like looking through a picture book: the only thing that I use from the true core of Butoh is the way in which energy is released from the body while remaining constrained. I would say that that is the true influence. At the beginning of the classical Greek period, before realism, simplicity of form was like a manifestation of beauty. From this aesthetic point of view, I can see a connection.

The devastated Medea. Scene from MEDEA2 by Dimitris Papaioannou

To me, your MEDEA became something very timeless and universal in its final form. Is that something you seek to achieve?

I have no complaints about MEDEA. It was my biggest hit! [100,000 tickets were sold.] Perhaps for the wrong reasons, but I am sure that for at least a portion of audiences, for the right reasons. I think the power of MEDEA lies in the structure of the storytelling, the simplicity of it. But I guess it’s not for me to say.

Anyway, MEDEA is sad. I think it’s a sad play. Because it’s trying to achieve as much beauty as it can. But beauty in the simplest sense. For this reason I think it’s sad, it’s melancholic. Again, I think it evokes the sort of feeling you get when you gaze at a statue: there is a melancholic feeling that comes over you. This connection you get to a manifestation of a human being who once was. The thought of a human being standing there in time. I think MEDEA has some of this emotional impact.

Scene from MEDEA2 by Dimitris Papaioannou. Photo by René Habermacher

Well, I think it’s very zen in that regard. Your work draws heavily from Greek heritage and reflects upon it. How important is Greece, and in particular Athens to you as the backdrop to your work?

What is important is that I grew up in a city with this particular kind of life. I was walking on the ruins of another civilisation, an ancient one. I was permanently exposed to the images of nude, or semi-nude carved marble bodies. In that sense, whether I like it or not, it was very influential for me.

Theatrical trailer for "2" by Dimitris Papaioannou. Directed and produced by Athina Tsagari. 
Re-edited by Dimitris Siammas.

“2″ has many aspects that reflect on contemporary Greek life.

Definitely, and this contemporary Athenian life of course has its particularities. But then it is also a manifestation of global city life set in the Mediterranean. You could call it a semi-developed city. [laughs]

I would say it’s a little Middle Eastern, actually. Speaking of the contemporary, I’ve noticed that you work with the element of camp, for example in “2”.

In MEDEA too. I think MEDEA is also quite camp. Yes, I use the element as much as I can, and the more I use it the better it seems to become. It amuses me.

So how do you use camp as a mechanism?

When something is too much of a gesture, too reminiscent of silent movies and postcards, when something embraces the banality of beauty and at the same time tries to place it in an environment that ridicules it yet at the same time re-creates it on the other side of ridicule. Camp is very useful when you can’t say something directly, because it’s worn out and forces you have to find another way of phrasing it. I think that’s where camp is useful, at least for my work.

Scene from MEDEA2 by Dimitris Papaioannou. Photo by René Habermacher

This is another element you share with Tsarouchis.

And with many Greeks. Especially homosexual Greeks, male homosexual Greek artists. We have had a long line of men like that here, who have somehow shaped the cultural identity of contemporary Greece, as you know.

I know it very well! I’ve seen many of your rehearsals, for MEDEA2 as well as for INSIDE last week. It seems you draw a great deal from your communication with your collaborators.

The older I get, the closer I come to a universal truth: “if you have a group, work with it”.

I wasn’t that wise in the past. But, you know, many artists have been much wiser than me at a much younger age. It takes me a long time to evolve. Yes, of course I want my collaborators to be creative, and I want there to be a friendly atmosphere at rehearsals. I try to inspire this as much as I can.

Is this environment also something that keeps you in Athens?

No. What keeps me in Athens is that I have a job here and I have my friends here. And I am used to the weather. These are the things that keep me in Athens. If I were to experiment with living somewhere else, which I might do, I’d have to start from scratch. I flirt with this idea a lot.

I used the opportunity that the Fulbright Artist’s Scholarship gave me to spend some time in New York and I think I will experiment with some other cities. Not for a chance to work, but for the chance to live in a more unpredictable way than I do here in Athens. If in the end I transform myself into somebody who makes only videos or movies, maybe I can just carry my material with me and live wherever I want.

In 2005 Dimitris Papaioannou was awarded the Golden Cross of the Order of Honour by the President of the Hellenic Republic for outstanding artistic achievement. For his following shows “2″ and MEDEA2 enjoyed an unprecedented run in the Greek capital, each with over 100 000 tickets sold. This accelerated development came not without controversy. With his latest play INSIDE Dimitris returns to his experimental roots.

THE STIMULEYE met with him during a break of rehearsals in Athens, to speak about his new play and look back to his point of departure.
Following the first part of three on the conversation with Dimitris Papaioannou, accompanied with exclusive pictures by René Habermacher.

Dimitris Papaioannou on the rehearsal set for his new play INSIDE. Photo by René Habermacher

pasolinian touch

DIMITRIS PAPAIOANNOU: I’ll be right with you — I’m just making a coffee!

RENÉ HABERMACHER: You’re freshly shaven! You look very 19th-century with your moustache.

I am from the 19th century honey, I’m very old!

It’s been a while since we had time for a talk, since I left Athens and you last visited Paris. We met only briefly during the rehearsals for your new play INSIDE, which you’re currently working on. You spent last Spring in New York. Tell me about what you did there.

I was there from March until June on a Fulbright Artist’s Scholarship. A mid-career scholarship obviously… [laughs]

Actually in a way I was studying the story of performance art [with Laurie Anderson at The Kitchen NYC] and developing my Final Cut Pro skills, as well as experiencing a little more of New York life, now that I’m a mature boy and things are different!

How was it returning to Athens after that?

For me it was a blessing because I discovered that I had left New York when I was still under construction. It’s the perfect place to be when you are like that, but in this phase of my life what I found there was a little more superficial than I would have liked. The Athens I returned to was in complete economic crisis and emotionally depressed, but still I was deeply relieved to spend summer back home.

Dimitris, I know you were born in Athens, but we’ve never talked about your childhood.

I was born and grew up in Athens, in a lower-middle class family. My parents made financial sacrifices so that I could go to a very expensive school, the Athens College. Then I had to run away from home because my parents wanted me to live the life of a straight architect. But I was a gay man, and I wanted to be a painter. I became the student of the Greek painter Yannis Tsarouchis* (1) in the old fashioned way, where painters trained people in their atelier. It was there I was introduced to true art. I had been painting since I was a child, but it was when I met Tsarouchis that I realised what painting really was. Later I entered the Athens School of Fine Arts.

* (1) : Yannis Tsarouchis, 1910-1989 One of the most important twentieth-century Greek painters, Yannis Tsarouchis portrayed and helped to define modern Greek identity. The deeply sensual painter was much influenced by the French impressionists and often depicted sailors, soldiers and the nude male body in erotic situations.

The departure of Jason in reference to Yannis Tsarouchis. Scene from MEDEA2 by Dimitris Papaioannou

How did you meet Tsarouchis?

I knocked on his door. I showed him some my paintings and asked for his comments. He was not cruel, as he could have been, about those awkward early drawings — instead he was very polite. My college had organised an exhibition of my work in the building’s library, so I invited Tsarouchis to see my work up close. The next day he called me and invited me back to his house, after which he allowed me to watch him paint, and would give corrections on my paintings. I became his student.

How did this encounter shape you? Did it leave a mark on your artistic work?

Well, your first mentor leaves a strong mark on your life. I grew up in a house that had no contact with artists, there wasn’t a single painting on the walls. My parents weren’t very fond of art, it wasn’t part of their lives. I felt like an alien, wanting to enter this world. So Tsarouchis was the first artist I really saw working, and I realised that the life of an artist is possible and, to my eyes, very charming. I felt at home in a way. And he was a great painter. He had a quality that interests me a great deal: he could make magic with the humblest of materials — he could make roses out of toilet paper, use wires to make small sculptures. The thing I think I have learned from him is that you can make poetry out of garbage.

“Helios”. Scene from MEDEA2 by Dimitris Papaioannou. Photo by René Habermacher

To me you are the only true heir to Tsarouchis. There is something else I feel you both share: a certain ambiguity in your work, “the beauty and the trash”.

It is a Pasolinian touch! A touch of Pasolini existed in Tsarouchis: he could discover beauty in the humblest of environments.

Tsarouchis is a very important figure in Greece. The Greek establishment hang his work in their living rooms (if they can afford it, of course).

But there was a time when his exhibitions were censored, closed down because of the content of his paintings: erotic, homoerotic, even considered insulting to Greek national identity. Before an artist such as Tsarouchis becomes fashionable he belongs exclusively to the true lovers, but once he’s become fashionable you find conservative people who hang his works in their homes and yet are blind to their sheer homoerotic presence.

That is the funny thing: how does Greek society absorb these elements, which are also evident in your work?

It manages somehow. But one has to focus on that unknown number of people who come in contact with your work because they feel a need to. I have been “fashionable” for some years now, and I think I’ve been accepted by people who would never have accepted me had I not been cast as some sort of a social phenomenon because of the Opening Ceremony of the Athens Olympic Games.

What do you think is the difference in the way audiences perceive your work today, now that you are part of the establishment? How do your experiences compare to those of the past — let’s say when your play MEDEA*(2) was first performed, before the Olympic Games?

There was an element of surprise and of passion back then, because whatever the nature of the work itself, there was always the energy of discovering something new, the energy of promise. In the early part of my career, as my audiences grew larger and larger, there was still this dynamic of being part of a group of people who expressed some things about the nature of life and art that we all agreed on. Right now, I strongly doubt whether everybody who comes to see what I do has that same need to do so.

MEDEA theatrical poster. Photo: René Habermacher

When you started out as a dancer and choreographer, you came up from the “underground” as you say, with projects that were staged without any financial support.

Yes, we squatted illegally in an abandoned building and transformed it into a theatre. We never sent out a press release, we had no government support. We just shared the income from the 60 seats we could house.

It is very clear to me that, after my painting, my move into comics art and stage works came out of a pure and utter need for expression. And for some reason, my work has rarely been rejected. For some reason people were interested in the things I was doing. [Melina Mercouri, then Greek Minister of Culture, attended performances at the squat, reportedly sitting in the last row, legs up on another chair, chain-smoking…].

So there was a need for what you were doing, there was a gap you filled.

Well, when I first began presenting my stage works, the performing arts scene in Greece was far more conservative, so my work in contrast seemed very progressive. This is not the case nowadays.

Why do you think that is?

You know, that’s the job of the youngsters! I tend to believe that the best way to live my life is not to consciously try to make a difference, which would mean having an open conversation with an unknown public, but to try and materialise my vision as best I can. Some of my ideas are the same as those I had at the very start. Of course as I grow older I learn more about how to realise these ideas, and I hope that now I am concentrating on more essential things.

2004 Athens Olympics Opening Ceremony by Dimitris Papaioannou -  Extract