Tag: THE JUNTA TRAP ISSUE

Tony Iantosca

THE JUNTA TRAP ISSUE

Metrics

Are we special,
kids? Waking up
without crying, a coffee
and drill sounds
the continuous
shut up. Have we
opened the door
to our own faces?
Are the measurements
precise or imprecise?
I ask because when
even the old men
hate the police
something has
happened. Something
has happened.

Dirt Trajectory

The poem reaches
its high point
but the author doesn’t
like it. This is why
at the end, we begin
to discuss traffic laws
and the food transmuted
into sleep on the
rattling airplane
stuttering without proof
of insurance. If we lack
charisma, it’s because
the author is always
behind or in front
but never himself
being written
or moved. It is impossible
to move the author.
Otherwise, the correct
reading of the text
would be severely
undermined and we could
only give up and let other
people tell us what’s
really going on. Luckily
the way things have been
planned, with the police
in every finger used
to trace the dirt trajectory
of every nice sentence,
that will never happen.

My settings

Once I failed
at worrying,
my settings
rearranged some
explosions close
to the measured
accent placed
on what I believe
is my zone. But under
this location
is the location—
get it right
or give up thinking
the mutilated
ground or the old
skull’s sands become
wires. They will figure
out how it’s related
to being afraid
as opposed
to experiencing
explosions themselves
without mediating
their supposedly
requisite anxiety
in anything like
a poem.

Tony Iantosca is a poet and educator living in Brooklyn. He has published two books of poems–To the Attic (Spuyten-Duyvil, 2020) and Shut up, Leaves (United Artists Books, 2015). Recent poems can be found in the online journal a Glimpse of, Second Factory, Poems by Sunday, a Perimeter and Periodicities. Recent reviews, essays, and other nonfiction writing can be found in Im@go: a Journal of the Social Imaginary, Radical Philosophy Review and Tripwire Journal. He is a lecturer in the English department at Kingsborough Community College (CUNY).

IN THE ABSENCE OF DEMOCRACY

THE JUNTA TRAP ISSUE

A Rebuke to Government or a Protest Text With No Signature

We belong to the majority, which you do not serve as prescribed by the Constitution.

We belong to the 60.15% who didn’t vote for you.

We are 18 and 27 and 40 and 54 and 65 and 82 years old, people of every social gender who have the right to quality public education and health care, who refuse to work 10 hours a day or live in conditions of precarious labour and stay for years on the lists of the OAED (Manpower Employment Organization), who support egalitarianism and the promotion of equal opportunities as well as the care for vulnerable groups of the population and the protection of the natural environment, which is not destined to burn at some point, as you have the nerve to claim.

Your duty is to take care of the common things, public land, public health care, public education, contemporary culture, the vulnerable groups of the population, the quality of living of all of us. But you are indifferent to your duties. In an unprecedented disdain of the common good, you stand as the junta’s continuers and defend obsolete policies towards critical problems concerning climate change and the planet’s future.

You frequently vote on your authoritarian bills and provisions by way of urgency procedure at the last minute. This way you exclude any discussion and take the social body by surprise, before it has time to react. The mornings find us with even fewer rights. You have not the slightest intention to look after the social body. It stands in the way of policies you promote in an artificially hostile climate.

You’re strengthening the private sector like you’re strengthening hate.
You’re fabricating enemies like you’re fabricating the news.
You’re abusing human life like you’re abusing the natural environment.

You’re using the House of Parliament as your corporate headquarters.
You’re confusing the country with the private fiefdom.

When you undermine the fundamental rights of citizens, migrants and refugees, you undermine democracy. We are the social body upon which you commit frantically and shameless crimes, in order to enforce your antisocial governance measures.

YOU TOOK US BACK.

You took us back when you promoted the police state with the “law and order” doctrine.
You took us back when you reinforced the police with 31.5 million euros.
You took us back when you formed the Campus Protection Team.
You took us back when you attempted to control and censure the freedom of artistic expression.
You took us back when you abolished the General Secretariat for Gender Equality.
You took us back when you introduced compulsory joint legal custody of minor children.
You took us back when you funded the mass media to serve your communication policies.
You took us back when you devised the National Plan for Managing Public Outdoor Gatherings.
You took us back when you introduced the Glamping label to companies that carry out projects in Natura protected areas.
You took us back when you replaced the eight-hour workday by 10-hour workdays.

We’re watching you. We are the foreign body in your authoritarianism. We are disobedience itself. We are your democratic nightmare.

Your government is anachronistic, authoritarian, divisive.
Your government is abusive, misogynistic, offensive.
Your government is antisocial and unconstitutional.

You have replaced the already suffering democracy with tyranny.

We ask for your resignation.

Stefana McClure

THE JUNTA TRAP ISSUE, VISUAL POETRY

Poetry-wrapped protest stones, one for each pocket ready to be thrown.

 

No

 

No: a poem by Emily Dickinson, 2 poetry-wrapped stones, left stone: 12.5 x 12.5 x 7.5 cm, right stone: 10 x 12.5 x 5 cm, 2020.

Protest

Protest: a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 2 poetry-wrapped stones, left stone: 9 x 12.5 x 5 cm, right stone: 10 x 12.5 x 4 cm, 2020.

Riot

Riot: a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, 2 poetry-wrapped stones, left stone: 10 x 12.5 x 7.5 cm, right stone: 7.5 x 12.5 x 7.5 cm, 2020

Born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, in 1959, Stefana McClure received her BA from Hornsey College of Art in London and continued her studies at Kyoto Seika University in Japan. She lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Josée Bienvenu Gallery, New York (2018); Bartha Contemporary, London (2017); Sleeper, Edinburgh, Scotland (2017); and Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2015). McClure has been included in numerous museum exhibitions, most recently Useless: Art Machines for Dreaming, Thinking, and Seeing, curated by Gerardo Mosquera, at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (2019). Her work is included in many public collections including: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany; Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; and The Machida City International Print Museum, Tokyo, Japan.

Mez Breeze

ΤΕΥΧΟΣ Η ΧΟΥΝΤΙΚΟΠΑΓΙΔΑ, THE JUNTA TRAP ISSUE

A Place Called Ormalcy

“A Place Called Ormalcy” is a dystopian fiction comprised of seven short text Chapters combined with embedded 3D tableaus. The work is designed to be viewed on mobile devices and desktop PCs. The story of “A Place Called Ormalcy” unfolds through a series of snapshots of the life of Mr Ormal, a law-abiding citizen who resides in the aesthetically cartoonish world of Ormalcy: Ormalcy exists in an alternative universe complete with its own idiosyncratic language patterns. The world initially presents as Utopian, and full of innocent “claymationesque” contented creatures and happy denizens, but as the story creeps along it becomes apparent that in actuality, this allegorical fiction in fact traces the makings of a disruptive dystopic society, one where citizens are forced to comprehend what can happen when trapped inside their own homes for the sake of their ‘safety’. It illustrates how fascist principles can arise in the most benevolent of places – the story emphasis lies with how nefarious a process this is, and how this disrupts all.

«Ένα μέρος με το όνομα Ανονικότητα» είναι μια δυστοπική μυθοπλασία που αποτελείται από επτά σύντομα κεφάλαια στα οποία έχουν ενσωματωθεί τρισδιάστατα tableaus. Το έργο είναι σχεδιασμένο για φορητές συσκευές και ηλεκτρονικούς υπολογιστές. Στο «Ένα Μέρος με το όνομα Ανονικότητα», η ιστορία ξετυλίγεται μέσα από μια σειρά επεισοδίων στη ζωή του Κυρίου Ανονικού, ενός νομοταγή πολίτη που κατοικεί στον κόσμο της Ανονικότητας όπου όλα έχουν την αισθητική κινουμένων σχεδίων: η Ανονικότητα υπάρχει σαν ένα εναλλακτικό σύμπαν με τα δικά του ιδιοσυγκρασιακά μοτίβα γλώσσας. Ο κόσμος αρχικά μοιάζει Ουτοπικός, αλλά όπως ξετυλίγεται σταδιακά η ιστορία γίνεται σαφές ότι στην πραγματικότητα αυτή η αλληγορική μυθοπλασία ιχνηλατεί ουσιαστικά την κατασκευή μια παρεμβατικής ουτοπικής κοινωνίας, στην οποία οι πολίτες είναι υποχρεωμένοι να κατανοούν τι ενδέχεται να συμβεί αν παγιδευτούν μέσα στα ίδια τους τα σπίτια στο όνομα της «ασφάλειά» τους. Απεικονίζει τον τρόπο με τον οποίο οι φασιστικές αρχές μπορεί να αναδυθούν στα πιο καλοπροαίρετα μέρη – η ιστορία δίνει έμφαση στο πόσο φαύλη είναι αυτή η διαδικασία και πόσο αναχαιτίζει τα πάντα.
Μετάφραση: Δήμητρα Ιωάννου

Please, follow this link to watch “A Place Called Ormalcy:”

http://mezbreezedesign.com/vr-literature/a-place-called-ormalcy/

Mez first started deep diving into the Internet in the 1990’s to create digital works and she hasn’t slowed since. In 2019, Mez’s Virtual Reality Series V[R]ignettes won the 2019 QUT Digital Literature Award and Mez was awarded the 2019 Marjorie C. Luesebrink Award which: “…honors a visionary artist who has brought excellence to the field of electronic literature.”

Socrates Stamatatos

ΤΕΥΧΟΣ Η ΧΟΥΝΤΙΚΟΠΑΓΙΔΑ, THE JUNTA TRAP ISSUE

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.