Creating deep Mediterranean melancholy with humble materials. Interview with Dimitris Papaioannou
[The Turkish translation of this interview is published and can be accessed on art.unlimited.]
On the first Sunday morning of December in a sunny and warm weather, we meet with the painter, director and visual artist Dimitris Papaioannou in a cute café in Pangrati, one of Athens’ bohemian and green neighborhoods. Dressed in a black tracksuit Papaioannou is in an emotional and sad mood. Following its 2.5-year-long world tour in 38 cities of 23 countries with more than 70,000 spectators, his last work The Great Tamer was performed for the last time on two previous sold-out evenings (29-30 November 2019) at the Megaron, Athens' largest theater of 1750 people. When I ask him about how he feels, Papaioannou describes the final performance of The Great Tamer as “the funeral, the funeral of the show” and adds: “I very much like the fact that we closed The Great Tamer, we finished it, but I’m also very emotional about this work. Every time that something ends you wonder if the future will bring anything better or if it was the best you could do. So, it’s a mixture of emotions, but I’m also relieved that I’ll start different journeys now because it is a long time and we worked in every city within the work and we changed things.” And when I ask him; “So is the journey to the new seas,” he answers: “I don’t know if anything very different could happen to an artist who has been working since 18 years old and is now 55. I always hope that I’ll make some discoveries. But I’m also tired of myself. We will see.”
The Great Tamer (2017) is the last piece of the trilogy that started with Primal Matter (2012) and continued with Still Life (2014). Seit sie (Since she) which he staged with the famous dance theatre company Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch in 2018 could be considered an addition to this trilogy. I say to him that I found some connections between these four works. “There are inevitably connections between them,” he starts and adds: “because Seit sie happened one year after the premier of The Great Tamer. For me this is too early to do something very different. I usually do one new piece every two years.” When I ask him if he planned the trilogy beforehand, he answers “No, it happened that way.”
Primal Matter represents a serious break in Papaioannou's oeuvre; in terms of creating with less elements in every aspect ranging from the number of performers in the cast to the basic materials he is using; and especially after considering his large-scale shows like the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Athens (2004) staged in a stadium with a capacity of 75.000, Nowhere (2008) with a cast of 26 performers, and his six-hours-long Inside (2011). He defines Primal Matter as “his personal work, a rediscovery of his elements”. He adds: “I went back to my source. I saw the basic elements that I worked with. And from that I could evolve Still Life and The Great Tamer.”
What and/or who are the sources of Papaioannou? I know that every time he gives an interview, he talks about the cult Greek painter Yannis Tsarouchis and describes him as “his mentor”. To my question “Who else are you inspired, influenced by?” he mentions "Yannis Kounellis, Tadeusz Kantor, Robert Wilson and Pina Bausch".
In his interviews Papaioannou also often mentions the art movement arte-povera as one of his inspirations. I tell him that in his last four works he has used tactile materials rather than digital or immaterial ones and in this sense I describe him as an artisan. “Yes,” he says “I like to use basic materials like wood, plaster, skin, fabric, water. In that sense I’m a dinosaur about to go extinct. And I became more and more low-tech, because I work with memory and that’s where my memory resides. If I could create theatre with a very few humble materials, I would be very happy. It is in my interest to be high-tech in imagination and low-tech in practice. I like things to be very complicated and very difficult to achieve but I want them to appear very simple. I’m not the artist to explore the digital possibilities. I enjoy them but it is not me.”
From here, I move unto another feature of Papaioannou’s theatre related to the context of working with less materials. He is not using words and texts in his works since the beginning, but in his latest creations, not the sound but the music has become less and less. I ask him why. He answers: “I want and I try to write interesting stories and to create my own shows. I don’t want to use other people’s works. If I use Bach, of course there will be emotions because it’s great music. Music creates emotions. In Primal Matter and Still Life I managed to have them without music at all. But sometimes it’s inevitable, like in The Great Tamer, to use music. I wanted to stage it in silence but it would be completely different. On the other hand, the kind of ironic use of music as it is in The Great Tamer, is very useful for me and I did it.” [I have to intervene and explain to our readers that in The Great Tamer Papaioannou uses only Johann Strauss' famous Blue Danube Waltz, but he distorts and deconstructs the composition.] He continues: “I’m trying to use light, sound, effects and music in such a way that as a spectator they don’t make you want to stand up and walk out of the theatre. I don’t want to attack emotions. I want to create a landscape that you either tune in or you don’t. If you tune in, I want you to have a good time. But it’s not easy to tune in. So I don’t want to use loud music and a lot of effects. That’s my way of storytelling.”
At this point, I ask Papaioannou how he creates, how he composes his works and whether his dreams play a role in them. He says: “I’m not bringing things I dreamt about into my work. I don’t have this connection. What inspires me is the methodology of dreams. The way that the stories develop in my head as I dream. I want my work to try and approach the codes that dreams communicate with us, how they manifest themselves.”
“Concerning how I compose: I collect and gather during the workshop period. I suggest some initial elements and ideas, and people start to play. Then one thing leads to another and we create a playground of ridiculous situations. I film everything and I collect whatever I find interesting. So, in the end I am left with details of movements. Then I try to combine them, for example I combine ‘a’ with ‘c’ and then try to see if it works or not. Then I end up with small constellations. Some like 10 minutes that work together well there and 5 minutes here. And I try to see what kind of universe this is. As I’m trying to combine them, I see the stories that I’m making and then I complete that.”
“So then, the piece reveals itself in the process.” I say. “Yes, it is being written in the process,” he says and adds: “Whatever is in my head before, I don’t try consciously to put it in, but I allow it to manifest itself. That’s why I don’t know what I’m doing until the end. I don’t know also what I’m talking about. Because I start with some ideas that I want to talk about, but many times; I want to talk about clay, and then I find that I’m talking about my father, I want to talk about Sisyphus, and then I find that I’m talking about working class. So, I find out in the process that I have some agendas inside me that manifest themselves through my compositions. I select my elements with my taste and with my instinct, and I try to see what I’m doing. When I see what I’m doing I try to follow it, to make it clear and as articulate as possible. I like to write my own stories. This is mainly what I really like. In the end, when I watch my work, if anything moves me it is the composition behind it, which is the writing of the story.”
I also wonder at what point in the process Papaioannou gives a title to his works. He answers: “Around 20 days – one month before the premiere. I have a very good friend that gives titles to my works for me. He comes around, sees what I’m doing, tells me what I’m doing because I don’t know and he gives the title.”
I ask him a question that has been haunting me since I read the ‘Director’s Notes’ on Papaioannou's website, about a distinction he made: “In most of your director’s notes, you divide your position in your works as ‘director’ and as ‘choreographer’, and you evaluate your works in this manner such as claiming that you failed as a choreographer but succeeded as a director. However, for me you are an artist who creates a Gesamtkunstwerk in the Wagnerian sense, and I don’t find it proper to evaluate your work by dividing your position into two distinctive ones. Why are you doing this distinction?” Papaioannou's answer is very frank: “There is an art that is called painting and it has to do with being able to paint. You could be a great visual artist without being able to paint. There is not a lot of people who can paint. Maybe David Hockney is the last painter alive who can really paint. There is also a genre that we call choreography. And in this genre, we have William Forsythe and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. And they are choreographers meaning that they create events with the human body’s movements in space. So, if we accept this definition of choreography, then I’m not satisfied with myself. As a director I arrange things and as a writer also; that’s what I’m. I’m not very satisfied with what I’m, but that’s what I’m. I can acknowledge that this is a different art and I mean I’m not a fool. I know who is around and what has been done. So, the fact that the contemporary dance world has embraced my hybrid being/form, doesn’t necessarily mean that I consider myself a choreographer like choreographers are. I can do movements but that is another thing. (Laughs) I don’t know the vocabulary and I can’t use it and I see how others are using it.” (Laughs).
My next question is “What is the spirit of theatre in your opinion?” He finds it difficult to define, still he answers: “Live art, theatre, music or dance, what is interesting about them is that they build a permanent monument through completely ephemeral things. It’s like building a monument in the air and the air is the psyche of the spectator. So, it’s a real monument but you cannot see it. That is what is interesting in live performance.”
At this point I ask him “Why did he say in one of his recent interviews that he no longer knew how long he is going to continue creating?” He answers: “That I can do many works in the future doesn’t mean that they will be creative. I’ll have to prepare myself to the day when my works are not relevant anymore. I can’t do anything that is not interesting. l don’t know how many, whether it is the next one, or two more, or three more that will and can be interesting. I still have the courage to tame the elements, but it is not easy to make a work. You have to persuade people, to organize everything. I have seen a lot of old artists giving up since they couldn’t do what they wanted. I’m very obsessive in trying to get everything as I dream them to be. But the more you grow old the more you let go. Drive, stamina, inspiration. I don’t know how many years more I will be creative.”
In response to my question "When do you work, during the day or at night?" Papaioannou emphasizes once again the conditions of creating: “Night is heaven for me to be creative without having anybody around. At these times I forget myself until dawn. I miss that since I’m a painter. Now, because I’m older, I’m working during the day. When I was young, until 30, I worked at night. Now the only thing that I do at night is editing. Because everything you saw in Vimeo is my personal edit. And this takes hours and hours. When I’m done with something, for example now when I’m done with The Great Tamer, if I wouldn’t have a new work, I would spend like a month editing.”
Fortunately, Papaioannou has not given up being a director yet and has not devoted himself only to painting in which he had his formation. Nowadays he is working on new projects that will meet their audience since he became world-popular in the last three-four years and his works are being financed by international performing arts centres even before they are created. During our interview, he delivers news about one of his most exciting new projects: The third version of Medea, his masterpiece and big hit from respectively 1993 and 2008. It is planned that this third version will be performed with live music and in three years’ time.
While the plan to restage an old piece is already on his agenda, I wonder if there are other works he would like to restage in the near future, such as Dracula (1997)? He answers: “I think I have done a lot of shows that were full of very good ideas. They were impressive in terms of their achievements but they were not good shows. I used to generate interesting ideas but sometimes I just integrated them into a show in a very easy manner. I hope that this is not happening to me right now, but it happened to me before. So, I have no interest in restaging Dracula. To take some of the ideas of Dracula and put them in future shows, I would very much like to do that. Medea is special, Medea is different. Medea has a structure of storytelling that I very much like to do this day. Its appearance is nice but this does not interest me , however its structure and way of storytelling, I was very happy that it was so. And it was very fast, in three weeks, I made it in three weeks. For some reason I’m very satisfied with what I decided and with how I decided.”
Papaioannou's another project will premiere on May 6th , 2020 at Onassis Stegi in Athens, before the third version of Medea. After an international call, performers from all over the world, from Canada to Korea, came for the audition and Papaioannou set up a cast of eight people, two of which are Greek and also his former performers. He says that he is very excited about the process of this work because he will be working with a team of international performers for the first time: “Now it seems that these talented people are willing to leave their homes and take an apartment in Athens in order to work with me. So, I’m taking advantage of the circumstances and I’m curious about what will happen. I’m enthusiastic with the cast. I wanted to experience that. I wanted to see how it would be. I have never done that before.”
So, as we get to the end of the interview, Papaioannou treats me to double Greek coffee with less honey, and I give him a box of Turkish marzipans I brought from Istanbul. We say farewell to each other just in order to meet again in May 2020 in Athens.
Dimitris Papaioannou- Portrait (Photo: Julian Mommert)
On the first Sunday morning of December in a sunny and warm weather, we meet with the painter, director and visual artist Dimitris Papaioannou in a cute café in Pangrati, one of Athens’ bohemian and green neighborhoods. Dressed in a black tracksuit Papaioannou is in an emotional and sad mood. Following its 2.5-year-long world tour in 38 cities of 23 countries with more than 70,000 spectators, his last work The Great Tamer was performed for the last time on two previous sold-out evenings (29-30 November 2019) at the Megaron, Athens' largest theater of 1750 people. When I ask him about how he feels, Papaioannou describes the final performance of The Great Tamer as “the funeral, the funeral of the show” and adds: “I very much like the fact that we closed The Great Tamer, we finished it, but I’m also very emotional about this work. Every time that something ends you wonder if the future will bring anything better or if it was the best you could do. So, it’s a mixture of emotions, but I’m also relieved that I’ll start different journeys now because it is a long time and we worked in every city within the work and we changed things.” And when I ask him; “So is the journey to the new seas,” he answers: “I don’t know if anything very different could happen to an artist who has been working since 18 years old and is now 55. I always hope that I’ll make some discoveries. But I’m also tired of myself. We will see.”
Still Life (Photos: Julian Mommert)
The Great Tamer (2017) is the last piece of the trilogy that started with Primal Matter (2012) and continued with Still Life (2014). Seit sie (Since she) which he staged with the famous dance theatre company Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch in 2018 could be considered an addition to this trilogy. I say to him that I found some connections between these four works. “There are inevitably connections between them,” he starts and adds: “because Seit sie happened one year after the premier of The Great Tamer. For me this is too early to do something very different. I usually do one new piece every two years.” When I ask him if he planned the trilogy beforehand, he answers “No, it happened that way.”
Primal Matter (Photo: Nikos Nikolopoulos)
Primal Matter (Photo: Maria Peteinaraki)
Primal Matter represents a serious break in Papaioannou's oeuvre; in terms of creating with less elements in every aspect ranging from the number of performers in the cast to the basic materials he is using; and especially after considering his large-scale shows like the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Athens (2004) staged in a stadium with a capacity of 75.000, Nowhere (2008) with a cast of 26 performers, and his six-hours-long Inside (2011). He defines Primal Matter as “his personal work, a rediscovery of his elements”. He adds: “I went back to my source. I saw the basic elements that I worked with. And from that I could evolve Still Life and The Great Tamer.”
What and/or who are the sources of Papaioannou? I know that every time he gives an interview, he talks about the cult Greek painter Yannis Tsarouchis and describes him as “his mentor”. To my question “Who else are you inspired, influenced by?” he mentions "Yannis Kounellis, Tadeusz Kantor, Robert Wilson and Pina Bausch".
In his interviews Papaioannou also often mentions the art movement arte-povera as one of his inspirations. I tell him that in his last four works he has used tactile materials rather than digital or immaterial ones and in this sense I describe him as an artisan. “Yes,” he says “I like to use basic materials like wood, plaster, skin, fabric, water. In that sense I’m a dinosaur about to go extinct. And I became more and more low-tech, because I work with memory and that’s where my memory resides. If I could create theatre with a very few humble materials, I would be very happy. It is in my interest to be high-tech in imagination and low-tech in practice. I like things to be very complicated and very difficult to achieve but I want them to appear very simple. I’m not the artist to explore the digital possibilities. I enjoy them but it is not me.”
From here, I move unto another feature of Papaioannou’s theatre related to the context of working with less materials. He is not using words and texts in his works since the beginning, but in his latest creations, not the sound but the music has become less and less. I ask him why. He answers: “I want and I try to write interesting stories and to create my own shows. I don’t want to use other people’s works. If I use Bach, of course there will be emotions because it’s great music. Music creates emotions. In Primal Matter and Still Life I managed to have them without music at all. But sometimes it’s inevitable, like in The Great Tamer, to use music. I wanted to stage it in silence but it would be completely different. On the other hand, the kind of ironic use of music as it is in The Great Tamer, is very useful for me and I did it.” [I have to intervene and explain to our readers that in The Great Tamer Papaioannou uses only Johann Strauss' famous Blue Danube Waltz, but he distorts and deconstructs the composition.] He continues: “I’m trying to use light, sound, effects and music in such a way that as a spectator they don’t make you want to stand up and walk out of the theatre. I don’t want to attack emotions. I want to create a landscape that you either tune in or you don’t. If you tune in, I want you to have a good time. But it’s not easy to tune in. So I don’t want to use loud music and a lot of effects. That’s my way of storytelling.”
The Great Tamer (Photos: Julian Mommert)
At this point, I ask Papaioannou how he creates, how he composes his works and whether his dreams play a role in them. He says: “I’m not bringing things I dreamt about into my work. I don’t have this connection. What inspires me is the methodology of dreams. The way that the stories develop in my head as I dream. I want my work to try and approach the codes that dreams communicate with us, how they manifest themselves.”
“Concerning how I compose: I collect and gather during the workshop period. I suggest some initial elements and ideas, and people start to play. Then one thing leads to another and we create a playground of ridiculous situations. I film everything and I collect whatever I find interesting. So, in the end I am left with details of movements. Then I try to combine them, for example I combine ‘a’ with ‘c’ and then try to see if it works or not. Then I end up with small constellations. Some like 10 minutes that work together well there and 5 minutes here. And I try to see what kind of universe this is. As I’m trying to combine them, I see the stories that I’m making and then I complete that.”
“So then, the piece reveals itself in the process.” I say. “Yes, it is being written in the process,” he says and adds: “Whatever is in my head before, I don’t try consciously to put it in, but I allow it to manifest itself. That’s why I don’t know what I’m doing until the end. I don’t know also what I’m talking about. Because I start with some ideas that I want to talk about, but many times; I want to talk about clay, and then I find that I’m talking about my father, I want to talk about Sisyphus, and then I find that I’m talking about working class. So, I find out in the process that I have some agendas inside me that manifest themselves through my compositions. I select my elements with my taste and with my instinct, and I try to see what I’m doing. When I see what I’m doing I try to follow it, to make it clear and as articulate as possible. I like to write my own stories. This is mainly what I really like. In the end, when I watch my work, if anything moves me it is the composition behind it, which is the writing of the story.”
I also wonder at what point in the process Papaioannou gives a title to his works. He answers: “Around 20 days – one month before the premiere. I have a very good friend that gives titles to my works for me. He comes around, sees what I’m doing, tells me what I’m doing because I don’t know and he gives the title.”
The Great Tamer (Photos: Julian Mommert)
I ask him a question that has been haunting me since I read the ‘Director’s Notes’ on Papaioannou's website, about a distinction he made: “In most of your director’s notes, you divide your position in your works as ‘director’ and as ‘choreographer’, and you evaluate your works in this manner such as claiming that you failed as a choreographer but succeeded as a director. However, for me you are an artist who creates a Gesamtkunstwerk in the Wagnerian sense, and I don’t find it proper to evaluate your work by dividing your position into two distinctive ones. Why are you doing this distinction?” Papaioannou's answer is very frank: “There is an art that is called painting and it has to do with being able to paint. You could be a great visual artist without being able to paint. There is not a lot of people who can paint. Maybe David Hockney is the last painter alive who can really paint. There is also a genre that we call choreography. And in this genre, we have William Forsythe and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. And they are choreographers meaning that they create events with the human body’s movements in space. So, if we accept this definition of choreography, then I’m not satisfied with myself. As a director I arrange things and as a writer also; that’s what I’m. I’m not very satisfied with what I’m, but that’s what I’m. I can acknowledge that this is a different art and I mean I’m not a fool. I know who is around and what has been done. So, the fact that the contemporary dance world has embraced my hybrid being/form, doesn’t necessarily mean that I consider myself a choreographer like choreographers are. I can do movements but that is another thing. (Laughs) I don’t know the vocabulary and I can’t use it and I see how others are using it.” (Laughs).
My next question is “What is the spirit of theatre in your opinion?” He finds it difficult to define, still he answers: “Live art, theatre, music or dance, what is interesting about them is that they build a permanent monument through completely ephemeral things. It’s like building a monument in the air and the air is the psyche of the spectator. So, it’s a real monument but you cannot see it. That is what is interesting in live performance.”
At this point I ask him “Why did he say in one of his recent interviews that he no longer knew how long he is going to continue creating?” He answers: “That I can do many works in the future doesn’t mean that they will be creative. I’ll have to prepare myself to the day when my works are not relevant anymore. I can’t do anything that is not interesting. l don’t know how many, whether it is the next one, or two more, or three more that will and can be interesting. I still have the courage to tame the elements, but it is not easy to make a work. You have to persuade people, to organize everything. I have seen a lot of old artists giving up since they couldn’t do what they wanted. I’m very obsessive in trying to get everything as I dream them to be. But the more you grow old the more you let go. Drive, stamina, inspiration. I don’t know how many years more I will be creative.”
In response to my question "When do you work, during the day or at night?" Papaioannou emphasizes once again the conditions of creating: “Night is heaven for me to be creative without having anybody around. At these times I forget myself until dawn. I miss that since I’m a painter. Now, because I’m older, I’m working during the day. When I was young, until 30, I worked at night. Now the only thing that I do at night is editing. Because everything you saw in Vimeo is my personal edit. And this takes hours and hours. When I’m done with something, for example now when I’m done with The Great Tamer, if I wouldn’t have a new work, I would spend like a month editing.”
The Great Tamer (Photo: Julian Mommert)
Fortunately, Papaioannou has not given up being a director yet and has not devoted himself only to painting in which he had his formation. Nowadays he is working on new projects that will meet their audience since he became world-popular in the last three-four years and his works are being financed by international performing arts centres even before they are created. During our interview, he delivers news about one of his most exciting new projects: The third version of Medea, his masterpiece and big hit from respectively 1993 and 2008. It is planned that this third version will be performed with live music and in three years’ time.
While the plan to restage an old piece is already on his agenda, I wonder if there are other works he would like to restage in the near future, such as Dracula (1997)? He answers: “I think I have done a lot of shows that were full of very good ideas. They were impressive in terms of their achievements but they were not good shows. I used to generate interesting ideas but sometimes I just integrated them into a show in a very easy manner. I hope that this is not happening to me right now, but it happened to me before. So, I have no interest in restaging Dracula. To take some of the ideas of Dracula and put them in future shows, I would very much like to do that. Medea is special, Medea is different. Medea has a structure of storytelling that I very much like to do this day. Its appearance is nice but this does not interest me , however its structure and way of storytelling, I was very happy that it was so. And it was very fast, in three weeks, I made it in three weeks. For some reason I’m very satisfied with what I decided and with how I decided.”
Dimitris Papaioannou - Portrait (Photo: Miltos Athanasiou)
Papaioannou's another project will premiere on May 6th , 2020 at Onassis Stegi in Athens, before the third version of Medea. After an international call, performers from all over the world, from Canada to Korea, came for the audition and Papaioannou set up a cast of eight people, two of which are Greek and also his former performers. He says that he is very excited about the process of this work because he will be working with a team of international performers for the first time: “Now it seems that these talented people are willing to leave their homes and take an apartment in Athens in order to work with me. So, I’m taking advantage of the circumstances and I’m curious about what will happen. I’m enthusiastic with the cast. I wanted to experience that. I wanted to see how it would be. I have never done that before.”
So, as we get to the end of the interview, Papaioannou treats me to double Greek coffee with less honey, and I give him a box of Turkish marzipans I brought from Istanbul. We say farewell to each other just in order to meet again in May 2020 in Athens.
Comments
Post a Comment