Athens-based artist and architect Andreas Angelidakis will take over the Greek Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale, bringing an anti-fascist escape room decorated with deliberate camp flourishes. Half Greek, half Norwegian, Angelidakis studied architecture in Los Angeles and New York. His artistic work spans a wide range of disciplines, including architecture, publishing, exhibition design and planning. A self-proclaimed internet addict, he reinvents internet culture through architectural metaphors, creating spaces that explore how space and infrastructure are inseparable from power.
Using the landscape and architectural heritage of the stadium as a source material, he looks closely at the year of the site’s opening, 1934, through historical research. The year the forum began, Hitler and Mussolini met for the first time in Venice. The roots of fascism lie there, alarmingly echoed by today’s MAGA and far-right Italian government. The installation—curated by fellow Athenian George Bekirakis—draws from real life, the circles of Fire Island, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and the legacy of the Greek empire. Visitors are encouraged to engage with the soft sculptures and reflect on the exhibition’s themes, including how political turmoil carries over to the present, the marketing of tourism and ancient spectacle.
We spoke to Angelidakis about his “Byzantium goth disco”, as he called his installation, in addition to his memories of visiting two years as a young tourist, buying illegal riot protection on the Internet and what he will be doing at 4:20 pm on the day of the opening of the Biennale.
Tell me how you imagined the pavilion.
I treat the pavilion like a flying creature, and I give him the microphone. The title is the building itself, which looks like an Orthodox Church. The stadium was built in 1934—12 years later [the Lausanne convention, which recognized the sovereignty of the new Republic of Turkey]-and it’s a reminder of Greece’s MAGA moment. It’s like a Trump hat left over from that time. On the ministry’s website, they have an excellent article from a historian about the political conditions behind the Byzantine arena. The competition was canceled because they wanted to assign someone to do it in exactly the same way. I exhibited at the Greek pavilion four times at the architecture biennial, and I had never looked at what the columns were. A little digging on Google, I saw [they] copies of the columns of Hagia Sophia.
The year 1934 is also interesting because it is the year in which the egg of fascism was hatched, in a way. Mussolini wanted to meet Hitler personally, so he invited him to the Venice Biennale, where two pairs were opening: Austria and Greece. Those were the two countries that were being nominated to join the German and Italian Axis. Austria, of course, became part of the Axis; Greece did until the war started. We returned to the Allied forces.
So I was looking at the pavilion in this context, the histories. 1934 is also the year of the pink list: Hitler identifies homosexuals in his ranks and kills them. And 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 what is happening in Washington is coming from the Nazi playbook.
How do these loaded themes appear formally and spatially, in relation to the visitor’s experience?
The pavilion has a double personality; divided into two. The national part is about the country’s history and statecraft. There was a partition in 1915: Greece was divided in two for two years. There was a government in Athens and a government in Thessalonica. Greece was a colonial country. There are Greeks, but there are also natives who grew up in Ottoman territory.
The other part is the kiosk or períptero, as the arena is called in Greek. The períptero has a digital platform that collects information—basically a monitoring system in a feedback loop. There’s this big screen, and then the other side looks like a mix between a discotheque and a police station. There are neon signs with pink eggs, but behind them are riot shields with handles on opposite sides. I use anti-surge protection a lot. I buy copies from Termu, then it’s work.
There are hanging memorabilia: names of immigrants and homosexuals, T-shirts with historical paintings, Plato wearing Peggy Guggenheim glasses and military boats from the Border Patrol. The sculptures, printed in 3D, are placed in refrigerators that often sell drinks on the street. I wanted to serve drinks inside the pavilion-noma
That would be very necessary. What is your relationship with previous Venice biennials as a visitor? Does it feel particularly rewarding to be involved as an artist?
For me, it’s incredibly meaningful for that to happen at the end of my career; I am turning 60 in two years. I have been going to Venice since 1997. The first time I was with my friend who had just become a star of two years, Vanessa Beecroft, so I experienced everything. I crashed parties when I was young, and I didn’t have money for a taxi or even a vaporetto.
I visited in 2007, which was Nikos Alexiou; he was referring to Byzantium. And there were years when I was bored. But I went to Cecilia Alemani’s two years—she did only women in the center, you’d 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 are some serious political comments here, can you elaborate on the instruments you use? I mean, even Plato wearing Peggy Guggenheim glasses.
Peggy isn’t random—she’s part of the story of the field. Cecilia Alemani recently did an exhibition on how the Greek Forum was rented to Peggy Guggenheim in 1948: that’s when she first showed the Surrealists and Cubists in Europe. I’m five Peggys away from the first one, but she’s still part of the story, because it was the first time the field got art that wasn’t politically oriented—until 1948.
The title of the episode is Escape Roomwhich is the most popular form of entertainment. I mean, it’s all over the world. Venice is full of escape rooms. But the escape room is a format from video games. In 2007 in Japan, they created a physical escape room—which is the definition of Plato’s cave. You are placed in an absurd reality, and you must escape from it.
I’m still working on the trinkets zone. “Pavilion” in Greek is also yellow kiosks everywhere that sell everything from drinks to tourist souvenirs. Usually, they are near archaeological sites, full of small statues of the Parthenon. My topic is travel again, because Greece was just a land of ancient philosophy. I play between the souvenir and the bibelot—the souvenir is for the traveler, the bibelot is for the collector. I treat them both democratically. And I mean, Venice is very used to selling. I guess what I’m trying to say is that history is a toy, and we can play with it. In Greek, story and history are the same word.
The fun part is that it looks like a nightclub. There is a huge disco floor playing the most gay song of the AIDS crisis: “Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. In 1983, they arrived on the scene wearing leather jockstraps. A song about boxing. The record cover was a version of the Guernica. Then there’s the Byzantine bell used in monasteries to call the priest, which is two pieces of wood joined together, but it’s the same rhythm as “Relax.” And then there’s also a road recording from Athens that plays sometimes.
People are allowed to touch everything and can interact and chat. They can sit on soft pieces. This soft drawing is an illustration of two field columns in different sizes. They are sculpted bean bag chairs. Let them sit down a Guernica sculpted aerial yoga.
I’ve never heard those words together, ha. Do you see yourself sharpening the pavilion?
There aren’t many queer historical events inside the pavilion. I’m exploring the idea of a national platform, I think, and, if not, playing, let’s say, the idea of a memorial and a souvenir shop. I reconfigure the pavilion in a way, turning it into a house of escape: fun, fear, camp. And Peggy’s reference will also be a large sign on the door, which is Peggy’s chain-link glasses, and anti-violence lenses. But his glasses are bat wings. Fridges are full of people who turn into owls or try to fly. It’s all male statistics, because it’s a male issue, politics and war, in my opinion.
We’re doing a tribute to the party on Fire Island, which is the Tea Dance. I grew up reading descriptions of how gay people were almost on wheels there in the early 1980s, still going to Fire Island and having fun even though they were barely living. So we did the Tea Dance at 4:20 pm.
I like that.
I do it with a group called Power Dance Club, a popular Greek gay group in the basement night club. The Fire Island club was called the Pavilion; I’ve been there, and I’ve been to the Tea Dance. You can feel that these guys who are still there—they were in their 60s—had been through, like, a war. You can see it in their bodies.
Will the Tea Dance be the first?
Yes, it’s like a big gay party on a Greek paper, inside the installation. We are doing a small version. No invitation needed—however, it’s inside the Giardini, which is already an inviting place. Four o’clock is when the officials start speaking, so I give them 20 minutes to say what they have to say, and then we start the ceremony inside the installation. We don’t know if we are bothering the other pavilions, but there is a sound system. People can bring their own drinks and sleep on bean bags.
That sounds good. I love that you give the officers 20 minutes, and then you’re like, “Here we go!”
I wanted to have 4:20, that code, in the world. The flyer will have a reference to Andrew Holleran’s book about New York in the 1980s, and there is a chapter on Fire Island. It is a beautiful kind of elegy. It is very thick, but no one has to look at all the layers: it will be wild, crazy, happy, loud. Everything is allowed.
That’s right, you can participate in the work on different levels: political or spectacular.
If there happens to be someone working as a riot police in the audience, they might like that, because it would be normal.
I’m not sure how many riot police will attend the Venice Biennale.
I don’t know. ICE not moving? [With an Italian accent] Giacomo Polizia!
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