Life Without Democracy

 

Plenty of seats

Life Without Democracy, 2009
Wood, plywood, acrylic, spray paint

South by Southeast
@emstathens @katerina.gregos

#SouthbySoutheast #sculpture #kostisvelonis #SculptureforDebate

South by Southeast

Kostis Velonis, Life Without Democracy, 2009

South by Southeast, curated by Katerina Gregos, marks a significant new chapter in the evolution of EMΣT's collection. Bringing together 50 artists from more than 20 countries, the exhibition reflects a collection policy introduced in 2021 that repositions Greece within a broader cultural geography spanning the Balkans, Turkey, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Mediterranean.

The exhibition proposes a shift away from the traditional Western European narrative that has shaped modern Greek identity since the 19th century. Instead, it presents Greece as a vital crossroads between Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Near East—a region historically defined by mobility, cultural exchange, migration, and layered identities.

The title, South by Southeast, playfully echoes Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, signaling a symbolic reorientation from an exclusively Western perspective toward a more plural and interconnected understanding of Greece's place in the world. This approach acknowledges the country's deep historical and cultural ties with its neighbouring regions while remaining firmly rooted in its contemporary European identity.

Focusing on the Mediterranean, the Balkans, North Africa, and the Near East, EMΣT's collection seeks to uncover shared histories, overlooked connections, and diverse artistic voices. Rather than attempting to be encyclopedic, the collection embraces a clear regional focus that reflects Greece's unique geopolitical and cultural position.

At a moment marked by migration, geopolitical conflict, and shifting global alliances, South by Southeast offers a timely reflection on identity, belonging, and cultural exchange. More than an exhibition of recent acquisitions, it presents a vision of the museum as a space for rethinking inherited narratives and imagining new forms of cultural dialogue in an increasingly interconnected world.

ARTISTS

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Diana Al-Hadid, Monira Al Qadiri, Athanasios Argianas, Lynda Benglis, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Chryssa, Bia Davou, Navine G. Dossos, Eirene Efstathiou, Stelios Faitakis, Apostolos Georgiou, Ivan Grubanov, Artan Hajrullahu, Mona Hatoum, Giorgos Ioannou, Emily Jacir, Sven Johne, Konstantin Kakanias, Dionisis Kavallieratos, Bouchra Khalili, Panos Kokkinias, Jannis Kounellis, Ange Leccia, Nate Lowman, Rabih Mroué, Eleni Mylonas, Jennifer Nelson, Gabriel Orozco, George Osodi, Adrian Paci, Leda Papaconstantinou, Maria Papadimitriou, Malvina Panagiotidi, Rena Papaspyrou, Antonis Pittas, Walid Raad-The Atlas Group, Thomias Radin – Alexander Brack – Matthias Meisen, Michael Rakowitz, Serban Savu, Nedko Solakov, Sphinxes, Thomas Struth, Lina Theodorou, Costas Tsoclis, Vangjush Vellahu, Kostis Velonis, Vangelis Vlahos, Eirini Vourloumis, Akram Zaatari

https://www.emst.gr/en/articles/south-by-southeast

Orchestra (Life Without Tragedy Series)

Orchestra (Life Without Tragedy Series) 2023

wood, concrete blocks, acrylic

dimensions variable

@perasmainstabul

Cur by @burcufikretoglu

#FromoffMyCountenanceTheseGlassyTears

02 02- 04 03

#orchestra #tragedy #amphitheaters #debate #sculpture #kostisvelonis #activistarchitecture #failure #modernity#concrete #slapstick

Life without Tragedy

Not yet removed ..

Life without Tragedy, 2019

Commissioned by @occny

#governorsisland #sculpture #kostisvelonis #debate #onassisfoundation #assembly #nyc

@zacharyschulmanphotography

Why Protest Tactics Spread Like Memes

When items like umbrellas and leaf blowers are subverted into objects of resistance, they become very shareable.

 

A video frame captured in Hong Kong in August 2019 shows a group of pro-democracy protesters, smoke pluming toward them, racing to place an orange traffic cone over a tear-gas canister. A video taken nine months later and 7,000 miles away, at a Black Lives Matter protest in Minneapolis, shows another small group using the same maneuver. Two moments, two continents, two cone placers, their postures nearly identical.

 

Images of protest spread on social media reveal many other matching moments from opposite sides of the world, and they often feature everyday objects wielded ingeniously.

Leaf blowers are used to diffuse clouds of tear gas; hockey sticks and tennis rackets are brandished to bat canisters back toward authorities; high-power laser pointers are used to thwart surveillance cameras; and plywood, boogie boards, umbrellas and more have served as shields to protect protesters from projectiles and create barricades.

An Xiao Mina, an author, internet researcher and alumnus of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, has studied these echoes. In the summer of 2014, when the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong and the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States that followed the police killing of Michael Brown were taking place, she noted that the protesters spoke a common language, even sharing the same hand gesture characterized by the chant “Hands up, don’t shoot.”

July 31, 2020

By Tracy Ma,

With Natalie Shutler,Written by Jonah Engel Bromwich,Video by 

Shane O’Neill

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/style/viral-protest-videos.html?smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR2e6tfmEe-K0v7RiFwrtFqXE5boHmrXCRQrlUR6vm1GmTzZ6wox6ek-FlI

Where Is the Surplus? Where Is the Poetry?

Sorkin at the Bauhaus

The extent to which collective design processes have a democratic character has not yet been answered.

The three Bauhaus directors reach out to the present: Michael Sorkin, one of today’s most distinguished architects and architecture journalists, is their guest. They want to know what people think of Bauhausian ideas 100 years after the foundation of their school. Michael is happy to answer their questions.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: “Modern buildings of our time are so huge that one must group them. Often the space between these buildings is as important as the buildings themselves.”

Continuing to drill down on your pastoralism, Mies, you are now talking about a particular modernist manner of disposing of large objects in a determinative void. But that fantasy of towers in the park (your version or Corb’s) got tire- some long ago. Not simply have other ideas come up (or been retrieved) about composing the architectural ensemble but also about the inhabition of that space in between, which you see mainly as setting. In truth, you were not a particularly great urbanist. Only when the city building was a set piece and an exception to its context – most immortally the sublime Seagram’s – you made jewels. But the generalization became a nightmare.

Walter Gropius: “A modern, harmonic, and lively architecture is the visible sign of authentic democracy.”

For those of us who were formed in the 1960s and think of ourselves as being political, the conundrum of the limits of collective design’s ability to produce good results—and good results that somehow embody a vision of the democracy that aris- es from the process of collaboration – is still very much an open question. Architecture expresses values, always. It can’t help it since it’s the home of human activities, which are never neutral. The difficulty comes when it tries to be too precise – too prescriptive – about the relationship of architectural forms and human behaviours, because it can so easily cross the line into the territory of coercion and oppression.

https://www.bauhaus100.com/magazine/understand-the-bauhaus/where-is-the-surplus-where-is-the-poetry/

Governor’s Island

Life Without Tragedy,2019 

 Picnic Point, Governor’s Island 

Developed by Christian Kotzamanis, commissioned and produced by Onassis Culture, as part of the Onassis Festival 2019: Democracy is Coming, co-presented by Onassis USA and The Public Theater, cur. by Meredith Johnson, USA

Life Without Tragedy

Life Without Tragedy by Kostis Velonis / Developed by Kostis Velonis and Christian Kotzamanis Fabrication by Youngbuk Art Services / Commissioned and produced by Onassis Culture, as part of the Onassis Festival 2019: Democracy is Coming, co-presented by Onassis USA and The Public Theater About the Onassis Festival: Onassis Festival 2019: Democracy Is Coming Co-presented by Onassis USA and The Public Theater.

photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan

Democracy is coming

Democracy is  coming 

The Public Theater andOnassis USA today announced additional FREE programming and participants for the ONASSIS FESTIVAL 2019: DEMOCRACY IS COMING, running April 10-28 at The Public Theater and also La MaMa. Actors Phylicia Rashad and André Holland, performer/singer-songwriter Diana Oh, architect Elizabeth Diller, author Siri Hustvedt, and Kostis Velonis’ art installation Life Without Tragedy join the Festival lineup. 

The 19-day Onassis Festival is a festival of arts and ideas that celebrates, evaluates, and considers anew the concept of democracy—perhaps the most renowned Greek innovation. Through a multidisciplinary program of theater, music, talks, and more, The Public Theater and Onassis USA, two agitators of public curiosity—one Greek, one American—bring together artists and thinkers from both countries to offer artistic interpretations and embodiments of democracy. The Festival is anchored by The Public’s new production of Tim Blake Nelson’s Socrates featuring Michael Stuhlbarg as Socrates and directed by Doug Hughes, running April 2-May 19. 

OnMonday, April 15 at 7:00 p.m., Public Forum will present OF, BY, AND FOR THE PEOPLE in the Anspacher Theater. Theater and democracy share a birthplace, share fundamental tenets, and provide opportunities for the people to activate and understand their own power. But in a world where both the arts and democracy are increasingly under threat, what does it mean to be a “fundamentally democratic” theater? And how can the theater continue to encourage our best hopes for democracy? Featuring The Public’s Artistic Director Oskar Eustisand The Public’s Master Writer Chair Suzan-Lori Parks in a conversation with philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah; the event will also include new announced performances from André Holland (Much Ado About Nothing, Academy Award-winning film Moonlight) and Diana Oh (24 Hour Punk at Joe’s Pub). 

 

On Monday, April 22 at 7:00 p.m. the Public Shakespeare Initiative will welcome Tony Award-winner Phylicia Rashad (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) for PUBLIC SHAKESPEARE PRESENTS: WHAT’S HECUBA TO HIM? GREEK TRAGIC WOMEN ON SHAKESPEARE’S STAGE in the Martinson Hall. Ancient Greek plays – and in particular, their titanic, tragic women – exerted a powerful and uncharted influence on Shakespeare's dramatic landscape. When Hamlet reflects on the moving power of tragic performance, he turns to the most prominent of them: “What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba/That he should weep for her?” Through commentary and readings from Euripides and Shakespeare, theater scholar Tanya Pollard and actors Isabel Arraiza, Tina Benko, and Ayana Workman, in addition to Phylicia Rashad, will illustrate how Greek plays and their towering female figures challenged Shakespeare to reimagine the affective possibilities of tragedy, comedy, and the emerging genre of tragicomedy. 

On Sunday, April 14, the Festival will present a DAY OF DEMOCRACY in the Shiva Theater at The Public. These three conversations will examine democracy's intersections with our everyday life. At2:00 p.m., DEMOCRACY IS THE CITY will include architect Alfredo Brillembourg, Onassis USA Senior Advisor Karen Brooks Hopkins, and artist/historian Kamau Ware, plus a performance from singer Morley; at 4:00 p.m., DEMOCRACY IS DIGITAL will include international public policy advisor Micaela Klein, Assistant Professor of Media Design at Parsons Katherine Moriwaki, and Buzzfeed News Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith, with a performance from Elle Winston; and at 6:00 p.m., DEMOCRACY IS COMING will feature civil and human rights lawyer Nora Benavidez, Executive Editor of The American Interest Damir Marusic, Founding Editor of Jacobin Magazine Bhaskar Sunkara, and What is Democracy filmmaker Astra Taylor, as well as remarks from architect Elizabeth Diller and a performance from Imani Uzuri. 

LIFE WITHOUT TRAGEDY, an art installation by Kostis Velonis, can be seen free of charge, at Astor Place South Plaza from April 10 through April 30. Velonis’ interest in democracy encounters ancient Greek tragedy, and the artwork consists of three sculptures, constructed of wood, that mimic an ancient Greek amphitheater. He identifies the notion of democracy with Greek tragedy, since the theater in ancient Greece was not only a form of art, but also a social institution. 

Public Theater Partner, Public Supporter, Member, and full price tickets are available now for ticketed Festival events. Tickets can be accessed by calling (212) 967-7555, visiting www.publictheater.org, or in person at the Taub Box Office at The Public Theater at 425 Lafayette Street. 

Le concept lefortien du pouvoir comme lieu vide. Paradoxes de la société démocratique moderne

LA DÉMOCRATIE EST L’UNE DES FORMES GOUVERNEMENTALES connues depuis l’émergence de l’histoire politique occidentale avec la cité athénienne du 5e siècle av. J.-C. Si la première expérience faite par les Athéniens la présentait comme un exercice direct du pouvoir par les citoyens, la république moderne institutionnalise ce dernier par le biais de la représentation, chargée d’incarner la volonté générale du peuple. Mais cette description typologique du pouvoir ne permet pas de comprendre l’expérience moderne de la démocratie. Claude Lefort reproche aux philosophes de la modernité de ne pas s’être assez attardés sur le tournant opéré à l’orée du 19e siècle dans la vie politique qui, à ses yeux, n’a pas suivi le schéma linéaire ouvert par les Grecs  La modernité ne s’est pas contentée de rendre le pouvoir au peuple en instaurant la république constitutionnelle et représentative ; elle s’est ouverte à « l’idée d’une société désormais vouée à accueillir l’irreprésentable .

  par Gaëlle Demelemestre

https://www.cairn.info/revue-raisons-politiques-2012-2-page-175.htm

From Euclid to Equality: Mathematician Lillian Lieber on How the Greatest Creative Revolution in Mathematics Illuminates the Core Ideals of Social Justice and Democracy.

Illustration by Hugh Lieber from Human Values and Science, Art and Mathematics by Lillian Lieber

An imaginative extension of Euclid's parallel postulate into life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

By Maria Popova

https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/01/16/lilian-lieber-human-values/

Haltung als Handlung - Das Zentrum für Politische Schönheit

Das Zentrum für Politische Schönheit (ZPS) ist eine Sturmtruppe zur Errichtung moralischer Schönheit, politischer Poesie und menschlicher Großgesinntheit. Das ZPS gehört zu den innovativsten Inkubatoren politischer Aktionskunst und steht für eine erweiterte Form von Theater: Kunst muss weh tun, reizen, Widerstand leisten. In eine Begriffsallianz gebracht: aggressiver Humanismus. 
Die Publikation stellt erstmals alle wichtigen Aktionen des künstlerischen Kollektivs in Buchform vor und hinterfragt deren Arbeit zudem in fünf Essays namhafter Autoren – Karen van den Berg, Florian Malzacher, Mely Kiyak, Raimar Stange, Florian Waldvogel – mit unterschiedlichen theoretischen Fragestellungen. 
Ein Interview von Raimar Stange mit Shermin Langhoff und Jakob Augstein  beleuchtet schließlich die Aktionen des ZPS gleichsam aus der Außenperspektive.
Grundüberzeugung des ZPS ist, dass die Lehren des Holocaust durch die Wiederholung politischer Teilnahmslosigkeit, Flüchtlingsabwehr und Feigheit annulliert werden und dass Deutschland aus der Geschichte nicht nur lernen, sondern auch handeln muss.

Haltung als Handlung - Das Zentrum für Politische Schönheit

hg. von Raimar Stange, Miriam Rummel, Florian Waldvogel

http://editionmetzel.de/buecher/haltung-als-handlung-das-zentrum-fuer-politische-schoenheit.html

Hannah Arendt et "atomisation de la société"

1996 | Analyse critique de la conception du totalitarisme selon Hannah Arendt. Claude Lefort, philosophe qui a notamment réfléchi sur le totalitarisme, remet en cause la distinction d'Arendt entre le social et le politique, rejetant ainsi les termes d'"atomisation de la société".

https://www.franceculture.fr/philosophie/hannah-arendt-et-atomisation-de-la-societe

For a New Liberty

Murray N. Rothbard proposes a once-and-for-all escape from the two major political parties, the ideologies they embrace, and their central plans for using state power against people. Libertarianism is Rothbard's radical alternative that says state power is unworkable and immoral and ought to be curbed and finally abolished

https://mises.org/sites/default/files/For%20a%20New%20Liberty%20The%20Libertarian%20Manifesto_3.pdf

Crumbling

Crumbling, 2016

Concrete, plaster, wood, acrylic, spray

26 x 39 x 28 cm 

Plebeian Council

Plebeian Council, 2015

Wood, acrylic, plaster

25 x 20 x 20 cm

Theaters of Democracy

In October 1943, parliament met to debate the question of how the heavily bomb-damaged Palace of Westminster should be restored. With Winston Churchill's approval, they agreed to retain its adversarial rectangular pattern instead of changing to a semi-circular or horse-shoe design favoured by some legislative assemblies. Churchill insisted that the shape of the old Chamber was responsible for the two-party system, which is the essence of British parliamentary democracy. It was at this debate that he famously noted: 'we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.'

Today a parliamentary commission is once again considering options for the urgent restoration of the Palace of Westminster. The scenarios include a proposal that MP’s decamp from the building for the 11 years of a £3.5 billion building project. If they remain in place, the project will be longer and costlier still.

At this crucial moment in the Houses of Parliament’s history, the Architecture Foundation is staging a special event at Westminster, at which panellists will address the question of whether the architecture of Pugin and Barry’s building remains fit for a twenty-first century democracy. In particular, they will ask how the imminent building works could enable a radical reinvention both of parliament’s built form and its democratic procedures.

Speakers include David Mulder and Max Cohen de Lara, of the Amsterdam-based XML Architects, whose research into the architecture of the world’s parliament buildings featured in the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale and is soon to be published in the book “Parliament”. They will be joined by Pugin’s biographer, Rosemary Hill, who will talk about the debates that led to the establishment of the Palace of Westminster in its present form and by Michael Deacon, the parliamentary sketchwriter of The Daily Telegraph, who will offer an insider’s view of the building’s successes and failures.

http://www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/programme/2015/theatres-of-democracy

26 January

Attlee Suite, Portcullis House, London