With the above title art historian Rhea Anastas opens her article on the American artist Louise Lawler who, as she mentions, used to investigate her particular conversational strategy. The writer, as a matter of course, speaks for the mechanisms of a methodically organised interview which often serves as a kind of legitimisation for the interviewer’s interpretative approach and the way one can resist that and throw the ball back in the interviewer’s court. I have to thank Els Hanappe for accepting this invitation for an — email — discussion and for throwing the ball back.

Els Hanappe was born in Gent, Belgium, and studied Art History at the University of Gent. In 1995 she moved to Greece where she undertook various initiatives, including the organisation of three group shows at The Soap Factory (Wim Delvoye & Priscilla Monge, The Conspiracy with Swedish artists, and Loops with Greek artists), the setup of a Contemporary Art Archive (C3A), and Els Hanappe Underground, a commercial gallery. She is currently working on ITYS, a new initiative and venue for contemporary art.


Elpida Karaba: Els, I am curious about what brought you to Athens. How did you decide to come and work in a characteristically small and slow art scene with the goal to ‘introduce international artists to the Greek cultural scene and to promote young Greek artists abroad’?

Els Hanappe: It did not happen overnight. Before moving to Greece, I had already been coming here for about 10 years. So I knew more or less what I was getting into. Nevertheless, I was convinced that I wanted to contribute to the art scene, using my university education in art history and my experience gained during many travels visiting art spaces and museums. Belgium is about the same size in terms of population as Greece and it has a very rich culture and a strong presence in the arts so that did not put me off. On the contrary, it was a good background to work from. Of course, eventually I settled in Greece because of personal reasons and not because of professional ones!

EK: How do you position yourself as an art historian who does curatorial work with contemporary artists, as a gallery owner and somebody who, after all, decides to establish an institution, a ‘non-profit space for contemporary art and thought’? What are the implications and aspirations of your work?

EH: While studying art history, I moved in time from the Old Masters to contemporary art. It was a learning process. It is also the reason why I can understand that the public cannot always be ready for contemporary art. You have to be aware of its development in order to fully grasp all the implications. It requires reading, seeing, and visiting on a regular basis. I was just intrigued to live in the present and be part of what is going on around me, creatively speaking. It represented energy and inspiration. It does not really matter what function I exercise because the art I work with remains the same. It provides stability. If I had worked abroad, my career would have been steadier. In Athens, you constantly have to adapt to a situation that is difficult and in flux. Alternatively, you can develop a more logical course by moving around internationally as most curators and museum professionals do. There is always a limited amount of places available within any given country and institutions tend to change direction in order to remain innovative.

EK: Can you revisit, reflect on some of your previous projects and exhibitions, i.e., The Soap Factory and the setup of C3A, Contemporary Art Archive, a website, database and documentation centre introducing emerging Greek artists?

EH: In Greece at the time there was very little infrastructure. Furthermore, as a foreigner it would have been difficult to work in a public space and my Greek still needed improvement. To overcome these limitations I decided to use whatever was available to me and by taking initiatives. On the property where I lived and which belonged to my partner, there was an old Soap Factory, which he restored and where we put on display tools and items that came originally from the factory. I started organising some first shows in the main rooms but the buildings were part of a very unfortunate expropriation, which put an end to any plans to eventually expand into a more organised art centre. I then decided to set up a website and start a small documentation centre aimed at an international professional audience and visitors to Greece to make headway and distribute information about the local scene.

EK: During your work at Underground you collaborated with many artists, some of them established now. Who are the artists of the ’90s that interest you and are pointing your gun at now?

EH: The art world is increasingly becoming more complex as it gets more global and more commercial. A lot of research and constant monitoring are necessary to be able to follow up what is happening and mostly to figure out what is genuine, what is innovative, which artists seem consistent and who creates a lasting career. Unfortunately, it is more and more difficult to defend a position and an opinion that is not ruled by monetary values. Just a few names: Stan Douglas, James Coleman, Liam Gillick, Matt Mullican, Mark Manders, Luc Tuymans, Louise Lawler, Isa Genzken, Gary Hill, Heimo Zobernig, Andrea Fraser, Andrea Zittel, Adam Chodzko, Tony Cragg, Cerith Wynn Evans; and of the younger ones: Helen Mirra, Johanna Billing, Sean Snyder, Gerard Byrne, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Hito Steyerl, Florian Pumhoesl, Isaac Julien, Rodney Graham, Frances Stark, de Rijke/de Rooij, Gabriel Orozco, Santiago Sierra, Deimantas Narcevicius, amongst many others.

EK: What about Greek artists?

EH: Well, I am not good at lists, but I would say, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Vangelis Vlahos, Nikos Alexiou, Eleni Kamma, Eirene Efstathiou, to name just a few.

EK: I was thinking about the trans-European, trans-global context. How does Greece fit into that context, on a global art world level? More and more, in this context, there seems to be a discussion for a ‘healthy level of some autonomy’. What are your expectations or concerns about Greece, considering the very major shifts going on in Europe and the rest of the world?

EH: Even if activity in Greece has increased enormously, it does not truly participate in a European and less so, global, context. Whenever one travels to London, Paris, or Berlin, one realises how far away we are from the center. At the same time, we are missing the boat in the region, where there is a lot of ambition and discussion and we are not really taking part. If we want to build up a strong presence then first of all the artists will have to be clearer about their visions and the local scene will have to be more rooted in Greece’s history, reality, and tradition. There is still this mentality in Greece that policy makers feel they need to run behind the group in order to be invited to participate rather than establish their own strong presence in order to be invited through respect and acknowledgement.

EK: Speaking of new structures for exhibitions (a debate that almost marked 20th century art), where the exhibit is more of a medium, and more artists claim that the exhibit is the work, what would you say are the turning points to look for at the moment in organising/curating exhibitions?

EH: I tend not to agree with the idea that the artist or the work should exist through the exhibition. I feel it is an easy way out that shows the lack of passion and dedication on the part of the artists. If artists become professionals with a diploma in hand, then they cease to be artists to an extent and they become technicians, they serve a purpose. It might be romantic to believe in the autonomy of art but I do think it is a basic requirement. The artist needs to be able to create his/her own context, to take a position, to question, and to comment. Working for exhibitions erodes art; it loses power. Exhibitions should serve the art and not the other way round. This should be equally the case for site-specific work: the artist should come with prerequisites.

EK: As mentioned before, I know you have an archival interest. You organised an important archive of Greek contemporary artists that you donated to the DESTE Foundation. Is archiving still an integral part of your work? How do you organise the information you need for your work? Is that where knowledge lies?

EH: My interest does not lie with archiving. Personally, I throw away as much as possible; I do not collect and I do not accumulate; I dislike burden and wish I could live with two suitcases only. It is also one of the reasons why I tried to make C3A as much as possible Internet-based. Primarily, I am interested in communication, communicating information. It is the artists who have been intrigued with archives and their potential as a source of knowledge and self-enrichment. My interest is purely intellectual. Practically though, one always accumulates. Already, I have more books, invitations, documentation, etc., as part of the work. Fortunately, I am a very organised person and I can keep absolute order on my desk but every person has a different way of functioning and it is just a character trait. I happen to get most impatient when looking for things so I make sure everything is always in place, and as an emotionally confused mind, I want everything else straight! Knowledge exists both in physical form and purely in the mind.

EK: What are your readings, which discourse interests you most at the moment? Who are your interlocutors? And to make the question a little bit trickier has this discourse any ‘locality’?

EH: We live in fascinating but also troubling times. The issues are numerous, from globalisation and future leadership, to resources, energy, and the environment, to sustainable economic development, to overpopulation, to wars and the balance of power. At times, the world seems like a steerless ship. We plough on but many issues remain unresolved or grow out of proportion. Art is supposed to make us aware, to turn us into conscious, responsible, and critical human beings. Take the great example of the ancient Greek playwrights who held up a mirror to the people, who analysed human behavior and its consequences, whether in tragedy or in comedy. This goes beyond borders or localities. Only, because most of us are limited in what we can do, it is important that the local is alive as a simulacrum for the universal. Philosophically nothing has changed, if everybody tended their own garden, the world would be the best possible place. Contemporary art needs a lot of reflection and scrutinising but some main topics are history including national history, knowledge and its means of transfer, identity, urbanisation, social relationships beyond cultures, generations, and class hierarchies, political action and alternatives, economic development, and environmental sustainability.

EK: I know that at the moment you are preparing an exhibition focusing on issues of knowledge. Art should be ‘dependent’ or not? Would you like to tell me a little bit more about it?

EH: As I mentioned before, art should have an independent voice but of course, it interacts with the social, political, and economic reality within which it is created. Knowledge as such cannot change but our way of dealing with it, our approach changes. As knowledge expands, each one of us makes choices of what we would like to learn, retain, or involve ourselves in. There is both a sense of containment and control and one of loss and exhaustion. The artists in the show work with this idea of universal knowledge on the one hand and the need for selection on the other. The Internet is a prime example of how differently we handle information and contents.

EK: Do you believe that turning to, or even serving, other disciplines can help to sharpen our mode of discussion about works of art?

EH: Working with other disciplines is not an end in itself. It usually is enriching but only if it makes sense within the context. There is first a need and then a crossover, not in a servile manner but based on equality of purpose. If there is true collaboration, then there will be mutual respect, which allows for meaningful dialogue.

EK: What do you think about this idea of a ‘post-medium age’ — it’s a question of what you do in it? As Hal Foster observes, it seems that the field has become so entropic; the work is so ad hoc. I don’t imply that this is a bad thing — indeed — far from medium specific, work is debate specific or discourse specific or even just context specific. How one can work or develop that within the Greek art field, and what can one expect for this kind of shift in this particular momentum?

EH: I stick to my point that an artist can only be relevant if s/he builds his/her own context, medium, discourse, on the basis on which a dialogue can start and interaction can take place. Artists can work with, not for, theatre, landscape design, architecture, social realities, and so on. Art is a form of communication. Without an opinion, whether aesthetic or otherwise, a personal search, a curiosity, a viewpoint, there can be no debate to begin with. Again, this is sorely lacking within the Greek art scene and, combined with a disregard for history, identity, and tradition, forms one of its main weaknesses. I think the show organised by EMST, In Present Tense, reveals all these shortcomings. Aside from a few exceptions, any other set of artists would have produced the same results.

EK: Ten years ago we were, and still are, discussing the desire of the art field for structures that would not be so ‘idiosyncratically personal’. That’s what made thinkers like the October team, re-discuss the confessional, the traumatic, the ethnographic or the contextual, and theorists like Rosalyn Deutsche to investigate the desire to go out into the community, into other sites not identified as art spaces, to talk about art under the perspective of the public sphere. Is this some kind of way to break free from personal limits, identity and subjectivity? And how can one counter-deal the fact that these projects sometimes seem conditional, artists are planted in, with no correlation with the community. It’s more, as neatly pointed out in a text that I’ve read, ‘a self-portrait in disguise at the site’.

EH: I would not oppose art that is made in the studio as being ‘subjective’, or ‘limiting’ to art in public as being ‘open’ or even ‘public’. The fact that some artists feel like moving into the public sphere is very positive but it is just an option; whether or not it is successful or bound to criteria that are valid for any type of art and under any kind of circumstances. Studio art can be communicative, public art can be hermetic. There will always be an active role for art but artists face a lot of competition, particularly in urbanised areas and megalopolises: the amount of visual information, the activity on the streets, man’s inherent creativity and eccentricity make it difficult for any work of art or performance to make a stand. Personally, I think we have to return to small-scale events. It is better to reach 20 people than to remain anonymous among the thousands. It is a bit like story telling, another bemoaned loss of contact.

EK: There is a moment when the political, the aesthetic and the institutional come together in the work. How do you think Greek artists deal with this, is it possible to participate in a broader discourse and how does one develop that?

EH: Discourse can only take place within broader contexts, not on an individual basis. How can we talk about institutional practice when there is no vision for the long term infrastructural needs in Athens? How can we discuss aesthetics when the artists prefer to talk about their next show rather than about the nature of and problems inherent to their work? How can we consider the political if we prefer to close our eyes to society around us? We have to learn not to imitate mindlessly but to create our own conditions depending on the needs, using whatever is available to us, and thinking long term.

EK: Galleries and institutions are increasingly intent on creating a dialogue on the nature of contemporaneity, bringing together — and here I am paraphrasing you, making a reading of the history of Els Hanappe Underground — seemingly opposite sides such as the socio-political interpretations of the world, often through the use of the documentary style (I could now think off hand, the photographs of Yiannis Grigoriades, the exhibition Archeology of Today curated by Vangelis Vlahos and Despina Zefkili, and the recent screenings you have organised at Bios with documentary films), but also with strong reflections, and sometimes in coexistence with more traditional and formal approaches and media, such as painting and sculpture, drawing, video and photography. How you deal with the confrontational and the poetic?

EH: I do believe it is important to think of art as medium and form combined at all times and not to tear those apart. It points again to a form of patronizing, of reduction, and of misuse. The medium is the message, the message is the medium. The poetic can be confrontational and vice versa. So I would never oppose the two or consider a comfortable ‘co-habitation’. My quest is to keep the two together. A documentary exists in contents and in style, a painting raises aesthetic questions and it challenges, a socio-political work in contents only makes sense when communicated appropriately, and so on and so forth.

EK: So, what are the other projects that you’re working on right now? What are your ambitions for ITYS?

EH: ITYS has organised some smaller events and get-togethers but a first public event will take place with the group show Selective Knowledge that will open on 2 April in collaboration with MIET, the National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation. All the above-mentioned issues are also directly related to the concerns of ITYS but there is a lot of work to be done and ITYS is limited. Ours is a modest attempt to open up some of these issues. We are only a small part of a bigger whole and it is the various contributions to the field together that make for a scene.