Onassis foundation roof: The word to the Roma

A performance – Romáland, a VR experience – On the road to Colonos, a film – Sam Roma: We Are Gypsies and a discussion available online for some months “Roma without mediation” ask questions and talk directly about the problems but also the dynamics of the Roma, giving the speech and the space to the individuals of the community itself.

Directors Anesti Azas and Prodromos Tsinikoris are returning to Stegi, seven years after Clean City, with a new theatrical performance that balances between documentary and fiction, Romáland. Her subject, the life of the Greek Roma. After many months of research, from Zefyri and Aspropyrgos to Thessaloniki, Larissa and Serres, Romáland aspires to tell an inverted journey through the modern history of Greece from the point of view of the Roma, with sensitivity, humor and a lot of truth.

Following the tradition of the theater-documentary genre, the show is formed with the participation of Roma protagonists, who tell their real stories live, aiming to highlight the multiple social exclusions they face and their daily efforts to overcome them. Roma who have lived in camps, who when they grew up decided to claim their rights, who were ignorant of their origin for years, who changed the course that society had predetermined for them, are taking the stage for the first time to confide, to sing, to talk about what we finally need to hear. Because as one of the heroes of the play typically says, “How do you know someone is Roma?”

According to historians, the Greek Roma community dates back to the 15th century. It is one of the oldest in Europe. Linguistic studies prove, based on the number of Greek words in the Romany language, the historical relationship with Byzantium and the Greek area. And yet, until the fall of the dictatorship in the country, the Greek Roma lived in statelessness. Despite their naturalization, in 1979, and the steps that have been taken since then, many of them still live exposed to conditions of extreme poverty and multiple vulnerability, in ghettoized areas or camps, bearing the stigma of the dangerous “Other / Foreigner”, condemned eternally in an intermediate state, in a constant “is and is not”, as the phrase with which gypsy tales are wont to begin says.

As the two creators state: “We always try to serve a theater that dialogues with the present. And in this particular performance we follow the model of the Clean City, in the sense that the theater stage is not only treated as a means of entertainment, but also as a public stage to be heard by people who are hardly represented in the public sphere or do not appear in the “many reality”. In this sense we come into conflict with a constructed reality and complement it with other narratives, aspiring with the interventions against injustice and exclusions to create a new narrative.

At the same time, at -1 of Stegis from October 11 to November 30, Loukia Alavanou with the project – On the road to Colon, which represented Greece at the 59th Venice Biennale, composes a VR installation starring members of the Roma community from Nea Zoi Aspropyrgos to follow in the footsteps of Oedipus. Documentary, fiction, drone flights, slapstick, video clips inspired by the trans-Balkan pop culture of contemporary Roma singers, sophisticated pranks, virtual reality technology, hemispherical domes and hybrid seats inspired by the modernist utopia architect Takis Zeneto make up Loukia Alavanou’s installation , “On the road to Colon”.

In the semi-lit exhibition space of Stegi at -1 and in a theatrical atmosphere, the visitors of the installation are led to the specially designed hemispherical domes, inside which are the hybrid seats, between an office chair and an anatomic TV armchair, which leave – thanks to their ergonomics – viewers free to experience the 360-degree spectrum of the film.

In addition, the sound design of the virtual reality movie is directional and, like the image, responds to the movements of the viewers creating an unprecedented experience. In her installation, Loukia Alavanou invites the public to take a journey through time, with a plot that unfolds around the themes of old age and death, human dignity and universal freedom, dominated by the current social reality of immigration, of displacement, minorities, human rights.

Loukia Alavanou notes: “During a visit to an uncharted area of ​​Western Attica, I got lost and accidentally found myself in the Roma ghetto, which is considered one of the most dangerous places in Greece. This Roma community settled there in the 1980s, coming from Thebes, just like Oedipus. There is even a hypothesis that the route followed by Oedipus, from Thebes to Colonos, passed precisely through this location, which has the interesting name Nea Zoi.

From October 31, the documentary – Sam Roma: We Are Gypsies, by Marina Danezi, will be played exclusively on the Onassis Channel on YouTube. The tour of the film crew in the camps of Attica, Ilia and Argolis and the daily contact with them broke the apparent “cover” in their “inaccessible” world and led to a sociological observation with interesting conclusions. The Roma welcome us with warmth and hospitality, opening wide their windows and hearts. “We are everything. Anything you can find. From the worst to the best we can do as humans. We are gypsies” refers to the film by Marina Danezis that has its digital premiere on Tuesday, October 31, at 9:00 p.m.

Finally, on the Onassis Channel on YouTube, since May one can see online the debate Roma speak without mediation as part of the series “Society Uncensored”, which took place in the Small Stage of the Roof, last February. Roma on stage speak openly about the problems and dynamics, the everyday and the unknown glorious moments, the frustrations and claims of their community. A moment when their history, about their everyday life and their unknown, glorious moments, about arts and culture, about sorrows and pride, about frustrations and claims.

The Onassis Foundation House proposes four actions that open a door to getting to know the Roma for a perspective of inclusion based on the recognition of linguistic and cultural differences, equality, conversation and justice.