For the project ArchiveRights3, artist Mary Zygouri studied the work and the remnants of the burnt archive of Maria Karavela, a leading progressive Greek performer, and created the hybric documentary video piece :Opera Aperta:, Paedagogic Performance for Adults The work of Maria Karavela, who died in 2012 in an asylum, is connected with the revolutionary art against the Greek Junda in the 70s and with the formation of the leftish discourse in the first post-Junda years. Zygouri focuses her research on the pedagogical aspects of Karavela’s work that led to two of her notorious performances in the 80s. The archival documentary contains, documents, interviews with Karavelas’ students in Athens and Korith.
re-enactments performed by M.Zygouri and inputs from the instructed performances.
The documentary reveals the aspects of the formation of the left-wing subject in Greece lured by the condition of victim, retributive and hero. At the same time, it brings forth the riveting of the left discourse, while opting the importance of an emancipatory democratic discourse in times of crisis and displaying the freeing perspectives of a problematized pedagogy, of an ‘artistic education’.
Elpida Karaba