ISSUE #1

ΕΜΣΤ | National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, unveils the first issue of Octopus, its biannual online publication focusing on history, theory, and art criticism. It draws attention to concerns fundamental to the present social and cultural debate, which are also evident in the museum’s broader programming. Octopus keeps track of the museum’s exhibitions and public programme and stands inspired by them while enriching and broadening it.

Conjoining art with its wider artistic, cultural, and geopolitical ecosystem in Southern Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, and beyond, it showcases a particular interest in regional histories, as well as in democracy, participatory citizenship, human and non-human life, and the consequences of excessive growth and development.

The first issue is dedicated to the “Cultural and Political Memory of HIV”. We commenced work on the issue in 2023, while the major group exhibition was Modern Love (or Love in the Age of Cold Intimacies), which examined how the Internet and media -including social media- have impacted intimate social relations. The HIV/AIDS crisis was of course one of the issues that were touched upon. During the same period, more or less, the collectively curated exhibition HIV/Aids, the epidemic is not over! at Mucem in 2021–2022 and the exhibition Exposé·es at the Palais de Tokyo, curated by Élisabeth Lebovici, in 2023, have -among other such initiatives- rendered the need to once again revisit one of the direst biopolitical crises of the last century. Among the issues that were touched upon in Modern Love, this one felt particularly urgent, especially in relation to cultural and memory practices that took place in its wake.

We invited Juliet Jacques, trans writer, journalist, artist, and one of the most prominent activist voices in the United Kingdom, who participated in the Modern Love exhibition with the moving video work, You Will Be Free (2017) (a meditation on the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the Anglo-American political response, mortality and the meaning of death) to take on the role of editor-in-chief for a section of the issue. As such, Octopus constitutes itself along the lines of this joint editorship model that amplifies polyphony and collaboration.

Juliet Jacques has spread the tentacles of Octopus across five different cities, highlighting both the shared strategies of companionship that developed during the first wake of the HIV crisis and the current political dimension of memory management. In her interview with Élisabeth Lebovici, they return to Paris and New York – two key cities to the memory of the epidemic – and discuss the elements of silence and solidarity that defined Lebovici’s approach to the Palais de Tokyo exhibition. Ben Miller discusses the case of Berlin artist Jurgen Baldiga, notably his celebration of gay life against strategies of reputability. Max Fox introduces Kiyoshi Kuromiya, a pioneer civil rights activist during the 1960s in Philadelphia who contributed to the community’s self-organisation in the epidemic’s early years, and pinpoints the thread binding together movements from the Vietnam anti-war movement to those that claimed healthcare support and visibility. Juliet Jacques herself reminds us of the moral panic with which the religious right confronted the epidemic and indicates the analogy to today’s transphobia.

In addition, Ioli Tzanetaki discusses the response to the HIV crisis in New York with Lola Flash, a historical artist. Dimitris Papanikolaou, the leading scientific member of the group “HIV/AIDS in Greece: A Political Archive” that operates in collaboration with “Positive Voice”, the Association of people living with HIV/AIDS, shares his input on arcHIVing and memory along with the HIV communities as mechanisms of citizenship, while George Sabatakakis tells a story of silence and silencing in Greece and our obligation not to forget. Two younger researchers look back to the years of an epidemic, the acuteness of which they have not experienced firsthand: Mare Spanoudaki compares a performance from 1988 with one from 2023, while Panos Fourtoulakis revisits the fanzines and prints of the 1980s that proved the primary conduits for the expression of queer desire and the response to the epidemic.

Finally, “Octopus Garden” is a distinct section of Octopus featuring podcasts and videos as well as historical and previously unpublished or hard-to-find archival material. Its first issue hosts work by internationally acclaimed choreographer, director, and painter Dimitris Papaioannou and multimedia artists and feminist and queer art pioneers Katerina Thomadaki–Maria Klonaris.

At a pivotal moment, where human and political rights, freedom of speech, and, broadly, the crowning achievements of liberal democracy are under threat, it is essential to revisit the history of this biopolitical crisis, which particularly scarred a whole generation, the solidarity it gave rise to, and the imprint it left not only on art but also on social memory. Through this tribute issue of Octopus, which features texts and interviews with leading figures in the field of activism of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as younger thinkers and critics, we stand reminded that open, inclusive democracy and the cementing of contemporary art in the heart of political discourse were spearheaded, for a significant part, by the struggle for access to public health systems, further care, self-determination, and destigmatisation.

Katerina Gregos – Theophilos Tramboulis

Credits

Translations: Giannis Galiatsos, Kyriakos Karseras, Yasmine Lahjij, Katerina Spathi, Tina Staikou, Aliki Theodosiou ; Thodoris Tsapakidis, Alkiviadis Zalavras

Edited by Dora Kechagia, Matilda Skylogianni

Text Editors: Vassilis Douvitsas, Effi Yannopoulou

Octopus feels indebted to Juliet Jacques and the writers who, in addition to their inspiration and empathy, have supported us with all their patience. She would like to thank the institutions, artists and copyright holders that granted us the rights to reproduce and use their photographs. Nowhere Design for their inspiration and dedication. Everyone who had to endure some kind of spell. And of course, all those, the anonymous 15th century BC Minoan painter, H.P. Lovecraft, Hokusai, Syd Barrett, Τeo Romvos, Penny Siopis, and everyone else in the Οctopus community.