Loves in Athens under the stigmata of the anti-capitalist struggle
Commentary on the Philoxéinia photographic series
These photos are from a series made in spring 2017 in the heart of Exarchia, Athens.
The story begins near the Square of Exarchia, a strategic center for the contestation of power by the left and the ultra-left in Athens. After a drink in bars surrounding the square we decided to go for a walk in the heights.
The impromptu and on-the-spot result of a romantic encounter as a trio, we were walking at night in Lofos tref Park.
Of my close friends of a few nights, one is German, the second is Greek, myself I am French. This may seem unimportant, but the context that is embodied in the decor commits me to specify it.
We were overcoming the emerging and sensitive tensions in Athens, between these 3 countries, and sadly in the whole of Europe. Indeed European austerity produces in Athens a feeling of economic invasion. Germany has bought a large number of institutions, museums, Greek airports without any consideration for the citizen. To top it off, we were during Documenta, a large-scale artistic event of German origin which found its first edition in Athens. It was described to me by numerous meetings of local artists, much more as a cultural invasion, a “lesson”, than a spotlight on Greek culture, despite its friendly title “Learning From Athens”.
Far be it from me to build additional political tensions between these countries, neoliberalism deals with it very well on its own.
It is on the contrary, from the very summit that these tensions exist, by visually standardizing the environment and behaviors, that our encounter constitutes an overcoming, and it is through our philloxenia that we shake up these standards.
That evening, there was no question of politics, culture, the fight for our sovereignty. But a lot of Eros, this creative power that directed our steps, in an emotional balance of a rare quality, whose photography and the desire for the other led us to talk to each other, to meet each other, to touch each other.
The trio is remarkable in that it constantly proceeds from an emotional adjustment, from the unfailing care and attention that each must bring to the other two. It is in this perpetual search for balance that politics emerge here for there at its highest degree: the balance and harmony of several bodies in a space.
That evening, decors under the stigmata of neo-liberalism, and recent rebellions against the violence of capital led by police repression, we made love in this park, around us the anarchists our protectors, we felt free.
These photos testify to the meeting that preceded our embrace.
Focused on our desire, the ACAB inscription graffitied in white on the rack did not appear to us that evening, it structures the series, imposing itself on the gaze with almost more presence than the bodies in the foreground. ACAB not only structures this series, it structures Athens by its omnipresence, covering the ancient constructions that dot the city. But also Paris, Berlin, Hong Kong, and hundreds of cities experiencing growing police crackdowns, revealing that all of our liberal societies are at breaking point. As the inscription bursts the photo ACAB was the first title of the series before giving way to Philoxénia.
Wherever space freedom emerges, however small, popular culture is established. Will this brand go down in history as a symbol of a revolution in the style of “freedom leading the people”? If so, this suggests the violence of subsequent revolutions.
Since 2012, Exharchia has been a self-managed neighborhood controlled by anarchists. Greek propaganda passes this neighborhood off as a dangerous neighborhood, a Nogo zone.
A poor neighborhood yes, a dangerous neighborhood, these photos bear witness to our freedom.
Yet summer 2019, what pushes me to write these lines somewhat hastily, is to pay attention to the news of Exharchia:
The newly elected right-wing Greek government decided to put an end to this independence, using unprecedented repression to dislodge the anarchists, and migrants who have been welcomed in this district for many years
I am no longer there, and find little paper describing the situation.
But having looked closely at what happened to our lady of the moors or in the French revolutionary demonstrations, I can affirm without too much doubt that it is still the same violence of capital at work.
Eroticizing struggles anchors and links social demands, which can sometimes appear as ideology, on a more powerful, deeper level, to the matrix of life.
Transforming what can be discussed, debated into evidence.
Eroticizing struggles creates a link between social bodies whose aspirations are the same, but whose trajectories are parallel.
If 68 triumphed it is also partly thanks to sex, eros is the central vector of a successful revolution, it alters the limits of the social body from within and consequently rebalances the concentrations of power.
The power of eros lies in what blurs the edges of the individual and reflects this blur to the social body.
Knowledge about sex, its restriction and control is a power exercised over the individual.
That evening, the issue of these photos was not political, but much more a pretext for pleasure, a pretext for freedom, or perhaps simply a pretext for sex.
That evening, the issue of these photos was not political, it became. What makes the purpose political is life, which through eros finds itself face to face with its truth, and which with the force of evidence makes the context (the scene) political.
Eros, primordial god of love and creative power, is the way to favor the appearance of life.
A revolution whose engine is only anger following a feeling of injustice has every chance of falling into war. It is only if there is an alliance with life, with sex, with philloxenia, with loves, by questioning its knowledge, its edges, its limits, that the revolution propelled by life itself acquires the ability to overcome pre-existing institutions of power.
The sexual revolutions in particular that of 68, not only were emancipatory, but one produces drift on the bodies of women and children, through the injunction “to enjoy without hindrance”. Eros is not an injunction to sex, under penalty of reproducing the dominations that these same struggles rightly claimed to abolish, and deeply infected emancipation at its source.
Eros is much more an active word, producing perlocutionary effects, a lively poem, which arises from our bodies.
A poem marching without fear to reclaim public territory.
A poem working to build a collective that grows as the refinement of our common emotional agreement.
Because there is something subversive in the DNA of Eros, but no violence.
Eros is precisely subversive insofar as it denies and abolishes the systems of domination and violence preceding it.
He presents bodies to each other, unequal in their social trajectories (gender, ethic, social class, orientation) but equal in their encounter, he works on their equality through their differences to build their harmony.
And linking this harmony to the matrix of life, it gives it an undefeated power.
Replay your couple, replay your gender, replay your attractions, replay your modesty, replay your image and the social pressure it exerts on you
Replay the social limits of your attractions.
Replay your traumas.
Reenact your shame.
All of the knowledge on sex and more broadly of the human sciences exercising a power on social structures.