Participatory action, Chalandri, 2024
Curated by Nadja Argyropoulou
Organised by Municipality of Chalandri
Performance: Dimitris Ameladiotis, Stella Varsami, Christos Vrettos, Katerina Kalentzi, Eva Koliopantou, Sofia Kourou, Emile Maigyte, Aggelos Maniatis, Manolis Michalogiannakis, Eleutherios Xidias, Ektoras Papadimitriou, kat Schiza, Stefanos Chandelis
Music by Agia Fanfara
The happening “Taramata” is a concept of artist Panos Sklavenitis implemented by himself, Nadja Argyropoullou and a broader creative team who collaborated in the completion, animation and unleashing of the monster, the beast, the strange animal that stars in this public ambulation.
On Saturday, March 9, “Taramata” will be unleashing about the city of Chalandri in Athens much more than just the monster itself. A dragon, a seahorse, a sauroid, a snail, a creature akin to the mythical dodo or vampyroteuthis infernalis, a sea elephant, a dreamy apparition, a scientific memory, an “exquisite corpse,” or a creek-bank reptile — the monster in Chalandri refrains from being identified, instead taking to the streets. It proposes the renegotiation of our relationship with the animal, the beast; the public and on-the-ground critical rethinking of customary rituals; the significance of the bridle and domestication as recorded in cases of animal exploitation and instrumentalization in folk spectacles and representations, as well as in our daily relationship with “pets” of all kinds. With urgent, unclassified and poetic slogans, with undisciplined voices, irregular dances, clumsily combined movements, troublemaking music, elements of erudition and specters of the irrational, with the untamed collectivity that co-animates the monster, the happening “Taramata” proposes a relationship with public space that denies its superficial “gentrification,” pointing to another perception of the times, places and modes of communalism, of the possibility of joyful militancy, of the euphoric tricks of resourcefulness that familiarizes with the unknown by morphing it into an animal or monster, not in order to foster it but in order to celebrate it.
Text by Nadja Argyropoulou