F*CK THIS COP(ING) MECHANISM
This performative collage/meme depicts the dysphoria that the police brutality creates in Greece. During the pandemic, the search for coping mechanisms in order to survive is desperate. While striving for emotional balance, the government pushes our limits further by strengthening the fear of existing in public spaces. To establish their fascist agenda, they conceal police brutality as their coping mechanism for COVID-19 outbreaks.
With the government monitoring our every move, the burden of creating safe spaces and healthy coping mechanisms becomes a personal matter. Being more than 5 months locked down, getting banned several times on social media, fearing a potential attack while collectively marching, builds a solitude chamber for each subject. The need for solidarity can’t be easily approached, or when it does, it comes with great cost, and gets stripped away eventually.
The Greek government not only vilified social media, by verbally attacking them and consistently banning people’s actions there, but they spent a significant amount of money on the Greek Media( ex. Major tv networks) to promote their agenda and far-right actions. As a result there are not many spaces left to exist, create, get informed, protest.
Being Queer in Greece and taking under consideration the massive attacks on several of our rights, the fear of being present in public places no longer seems like a dystopian nightmare. The nightmare transformed into reality with the collective memory notifying us that this common experience resembles a contemporary junta.
At the same time, the need for self care and coping with this junta keeps getting bigger every day. From a personal perspective, napping is the only outlet left as it creates an embracing and caring space, free from dysphoric thoughts and from being constantly bombarded with new unpleasant information.
Socrates Stamatatos is graduate from the Athens School of Fine Arts, Department of Theory and History of Arts with research focused on contemporary and queer arts. He has worked as an art mediator and assistant curator with many art organizations, such as the non-profit cultural organization NEON. He/She was also part of “FILOTIMO” a project commissioned by the Dutch based magazine “Are We Europe”. The project was nominated as a top recommendation by “The Guardian”. As a drag artist he/she has strong presence in the arts sector and has worked in many projects commissioned by various Greek cultural institutions, such as the Athens-Epidaurus Festival and the Greek Ministry of Arts,Culture and Sports to name a few.
aglimpseof.net 