CleanSlate
June 2016
Performance PERFORMING UTOPIA: celebrating 500 years of radical thinking ASFA BBQ, Athens, Greece Organisation: Vassilis Vlastaras, Fotini Kalle, Georgios Papadopoulos and Eva Vaslamatzi Clean Slate [Noun. clean slate - an opportunity to start over without prejudice. fresh start, tabula rasa] Searching for inspiration in works like Freud’s Civilisation and its Discontents (1930), Mary Douglas’ Purity and Danger (1966) and the popular Japanese organisational consultant/guru Mary Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (2014) - so as to combine forces in order to find possible solutions to disengage from stagnant, regressive and inhibiting patterns that are keeping Europeans from the development of the new bright Athenian Utopia. Or in other words: Let’s start cleaning up! It seems that Freud and Douglas share the idea, that cleanliness is deeply connected with civilisation - as the notion of dirt seems to be coupled with uncivilised / uncultured nations, countries or individuals. |
Can one really say that hygiene is a measuring stick for culture?
And what kind of culture exactly?
Is this idea superficial? A mentality that remains in our thinking since medieval times?
Is cleanliness truly next to godliness? And what would that mean in the context of civilisation today?
Is this notion expressed somehow in the view of the current “deptocratic” countries?
What about metaphorical cleansing? is there a ritual for a nations catharsis?
How to proceed with this endeavour? Could a bestselling Japanese organisational consultant have the answer with her tidying craze, that has taken “civilised” countries by storm? And why did this happen, especially in these times?
Can the act of cleaning itself be enough action to be considered cultured/civilised?
What about the cleaning personnel - the unseen workers in plain sight, that are busy in “civilising” institutions/ public buildings / national establishments?
Why do they go unnoticed and form merely a part of the surroundings? Some kind of moving furniture one never remarks, especially in so-called civilised first world countries?
In this performance no true Utopia was scripted - it was carried out as an endeavour of experimentation, to research the above questions on social and cultural queries….
… something like a first swipe in the examination of a u-topical condition of humanity.
Photography by Eva Giannakopoulou
And what kind of culture exactly?
Is this idea superficial? A mentality that remains in our thinking since medieval times?
Is cleanliness truly next to godliness? And what would that mean in the context of civilisation today?
Is this notion expressed somehow in the view of the current “deptocratic” countries?
What about metaphorical cleansing? is there a ritual for a nations catharsis?
How to proceed with this endeavour? Could a bestselling Japanese organisational consultant have the answer with her tidying craze, that has taken “civilised” countries by storm? And why did this happen, especially in these times?
Can the act of cleaning itself be enough action to be considered cultured/civilised?
What about the cleaning personnel - the unseen workers in plain sight, that are busy in “civilising” institutions/ public buildings / national establishments?
Why do they go unnoticed and form merely a part of the surroundings? Some kind of moving furniture one never remarks, especially in so-called civilised first world countries?
In this performance no true Utopia was scripted - it was carried out as an endeavour of experimentation, to research the above questions on social and cultural queries….
… something like a first swipe in the examination of a u-topical condition of humanity.
Photography by Eva Giannakopoulou