Athens-based artist and architect Andreas Angelidakis will take over the Greek Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale, presenting an intentionally ornate anti-fascist escape room. Half Greek and half Norwegian, Angelidakis studied architecture in Los Angeles and New York. His artistic practice is multidisciplinary, spanning architecture, publishing, exhibition design and curation. A self-proclaimed internet geek, he blends internet culture with architectural logos, creating environments that explore how space and infrastructure are inseparable from power.
Using the pavilion’s national and architectural heritage as source material, he examines the venue’s opening year, 1934, through historical research. In the year the suite debuted, Hitler and Mussolini met for the first time in Venice. The roots of fascism lay there, and they have troubling resonance today with the MAGA movement and even Italy’s far-right government. This artwork – curated by fellow Athenian George Pikrakis – draws from virtual reality, Fire Island assemblages, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, and the legacy of the Greek Empire. Visitors are encouraged to handle the soft sculptures and consider the themes of the display, including the way past political turmoil carries over into the present, the marketability of tourism and ancient ruins as spectacle.
We spoke with Angelidakis about “Byzantine Gothic Disco,” as he called his installation, as well as his memories of attending the Biennale as a young visitor, buying unofficial riot shields online and what he would do at 4:20pm on the Biennale’s opening day.
Tell me about how you envisioned the suite.
I treat the ward as a being with consciousness, and I give her the microphone. The subject is the building itself which resembles an Orthodox church. The pavilion was built in 1934, 12 years later [the Lausanne convention, which recognized the sovereignty of the new Republic of Turkey]- which is literally a souvenir of the MAGA moment for Greece. It’s like a leftover Trump hat from that period. On the ministry’s website there is a fascinating text from a historian about the political maneuverings behind the pavilion being Byzantine. The contest was canceled because they wanted to hire someone to do just that. I have shown my work in the Greek Pavilion four times at the Architecture Biennale, and I have never investigated what the columns are. I realized this by searching a bit on Google [they] They are copies of the columns of Hagia Sophia.
The year 1934 is also interesting because it is the year in which the fascist egg hatched, in a way. Mussolini wanted to meet Hitler in person, so he invited him to the Venice Biennale, where two pavilions were opened: Austria and Greece. These were the two countries nominated to join the German-Italian axis. Austria, of course, became part of the Axis; Greece did until the war started. We have returned to the Allied forces.
So I was looking at the pavilion in that context, the history. 1934 is also the year of the Pink List: Hitler identified and murdered homosexuals in his ranks. And the night of the long knives [a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30-July 2, 1934, intended to consolidate Hitler’s power]…Political analysts say that what is happening in Washington is from the Nazi playbook.
How do these loaded themes manifest formally and spatially, in terms of what the visitor encounters?
The wing has a dual character. It is divided into two parts. The national part is about the country’s history and statecraft. There was a national split in 1915: Greece was divided into two parts for two years. There was a government in Athens and a government in Thessaloniki. Greece was a country that colonized itself. There are Greeks, but there are also indigenous people who grew up in the Ottoman context.
The other part is a booth or periptero, as the pavilion is called in Greek. Períptero has a digital theater that collects information, essentially a monitoring system in a feedback loop. There’s this giant screen, and the other side looks like a mix between a nightclub and a police station. There are neon signs with pink eggs, but behind them are riot shields with handles on opposite sides. I use riot shield a lot. I buy copies from Temu, and then they become a work of art.
There are souvenirs hanging: immigrant and gay lyrics, T-shirts with historical charts, Plato wearing Peggy Guggenheim glasses and Border Patrol military boats. The 3D printed sculptures are placed in refrigerators that typically sell drinks on the street. I wanted to distribute drinks inside the suite, or
That would have been very needed. What is your relationship with the previous Venice Biennale as a visitor? Do you feel it is especially important to participate as an artist?
For me, it’s very meaningful that this happened this late in my career; I will be sixty years old in two years. I’ve been going to Venice since 1997. The first time I was with a friend who had just become an interstitial star, Vanessa Beecroft, so I kind of experienced the whole thing. I attended parties when I was younger, and didn’t have the money to take a taxi or even a vaporetto.
I visited in 2007, and it was Nikos Alexiou; He was referring to Byzantium. There were years when I got bored of it. But I went to the Cecilia Alemany Biennale – I did the all-female central pavilion, where you see Nan Goldin and Leonora Carrington and Marisol. It was amazing. Now I come to Venice as someone who has been there a lot.
Although there’s serious political rhetoric here, can you elaborate on the more lighthearted elements you’re implementing? I mean, even only Plato wore Peggy Guggenheim glasses.
Peggy is not random, she is part of the ward’s story. Cecilia Alemany recently gave a presentation on how the Greek Pavilion was rented to Peggy Guggenheim in 1948: where she first showed the Surrealists and Cubists in Europe. I’m five biggies away from the original, but it’s still part of the story, because that was the first time the Pavilion experimented with art that wasn’t politically oriented—it was that way until 1948.
The title of the piece is Escape roomwhich is a very popular type of entertainment. I mean it’s global. Venice is full of escape rooms. But the escape room is a formula that came from video games. In 2007 in Japan, they created a physical escape room, which is the definition of Plato’s Cave. You have been placed in a meaningless reality, and you have to escape from it.
I still work in the Al-Hilli area. “Pavilion” in Greek is also the ubiquitous yellow stalls selling everything from drinks to tourist souvenirs. Usually, they are close to archaeological sites, filled with small Parthenon sculptures. My topic is also tourism, because Greece was really just a memorial country for the philosophy of antiquity. I play between a souvenir and a souvenir – a souvenir for the traveler, a souvenir for the collector. I deal with both in a democratic way. And I mean Venice is very marketing savvy. I guess I’m trying to say that history is a game, and we can play with it. In Greek, story and history are the same word.
The fun part is that it feels like a nightclub. There’s a huge disco hall playing a song that was very gay during the AIDS crisis: “Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. In 1983, they appeared on the scene wearing leather jockstraps. It’s a song about fisting. The cover of the record was a copy of Guernica. Then there’s a Byzantine instrument used in monasteries to call the priest, which is two pieces of wood beaten together, but it’s like a ‘relax’ rhythm. Then there are also some street recordings from Athens that are sometimes played.
People are allowed to touch everything and can spend time and have a conversation. They can sit on soft pieces. The soft statue is a replica of the two pavilion columns in different sizes. They are sculptural bean bag chairs. They’re kind of sitting on a Guernica Aerial yoga sculpting.
I’ve never heard those words together, ha. Do you see yourself as an outlier in the ward?
There were not many incidents with a queer history within the ward. I guess I’m wondering about the idea of the National Pavilion, and if not, then I’ll play with the idea of the memorial and souvenir shop. I’m resetting the suite in a way, by turning it into an escape room: fun, scary, camp. A Biggie reference will also be a big sign on the door: Biggie’s goggles are made of welded chain, and the lenses are riot shields. But her glasses are bat wings. Freezers are full of humans turning into owls or trying to fly. They are all male characters, because it is a male problem, politics and war, as far as I can see.
We’re having a party on Fire Island, a tea dance. I grew up reading descriptions of how gay men were transported there in the early 1980s, and they still went to Fire Island and partied even though they were barely alive. So we will be doing a tea dance at 4:20pm in the afternoon.
I like it.
I’m doing it with a group called Power Dance Club, which is a popular Greek gay group in the underground night scene. The club on Fire Island was called Pavilion. I’ve been there, and I went to a “tea dance” once. You could feel that those men who were still there – they were in their 60s – had been through the war. You can see it on their bodies.
The tea dance will be just for the inauguration?
Yes, it’s like a big gay party in the Greek Pavilion, inside the installation. We’re making a small version. No invitation is needed, but of course it is inside the Giardini, which is indeed a place of invitation. Four o’clock is when the officials start speaking, so I give them 20 minutes to say what they want to say, and then we start the party inside the facility. We can’t disturb the other suites, but there is a sound system. People can bring their drinks and lie down on beanbags.
This looks fun. I like to give the officials 20 minutes, then say, “Here we go!”
I wanted to get 4:20, that symbol, into the world. The flyer will contain a reference to Andrew Holleran’s book about New York in the 1980s, and there is a chapter on Fire Island. It’s a beautiful kind of elegy. It’s multi-layered, but no one has to look at every layer: it will be scary, crazy, fun and noisy. Everything is allowed.
Well, you can engage in action at different levels: political or spectacle.
If there happens to be a riot cop in the audience, they might like it, because it will be familiar.
I’m not sure how many riot police will attend the Venice Biennale.
I don’t know. Ice does not travel? [With an Italian accent] Giacomo Polizia!
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