Urbanautica

ALEXIS VASILIKOS. MADE IN QUARANTINE

by Steve Bisson

«Sometimes all you have to do is let go of the idea that you have to do something.»

Alexis, we have been experiencing around the world something different through the so-called lockdown. How was it in Greece and how did you face it?

Alexis Vasilijos (AV): Hello dear Steve, thank you for this invitation.

In Greece it went quite smooth, relatively speaking although maybe it's a bit premature to talk about it because we don't know how it will play out. The quarantine ended a couple of weeks ago and things are coming back to their usual modes slowly-slowly. At a personal level, I didn't experience any significant change, I'm used to spending a lot of time home and we were allowed to go out for a walk, so Ι was walking for around 2 hours every day which is my regular daily walk. There was something quiet in the atmosphere that I enjoyed very much, I had never seen the city so empty before, I've been to a few silent retreats and it felt a bit like that as if the whole world was in a silent retreat.

© Alexis Vasilikos from the series 'Quarantine Walks'

AV: Well, I don't know, but I feel that we are always given opportunities to grow. In fact, this whole human experience is an opportunity to grow, to go beyond our imaginary boundaries. But I don't know if learning is what we need, do we need more knowledge? Is knowledge ever enough?

The way I see it, conventional knowledge simply perpetuates the dualistic functioning, of a knower and a known this is why it doesn't really work, we need a shift in consciousness that dissolves duality itself. Unless the consciousness functions from a higher plane of existence I'm afraid that we will keep on repeating the same old patterns of selfish behavior.

What does meditation mean to you?

AV: I wrote this note about meditation and photography a few weeks ago: «Meditation is not a denial of the world, it's the recognition of that on top of which the world arises. There is a silence, a stillness that is always here underneath all the mind activity. This under-standing silence is meditation itself, it doesn't matter what we do, it can be anything, when we are aware of the inner stillness everything we do is meditation. In my case it was introduced through photography, that's why I say sometimes that my practice is meditative photography.

© Alexis Vasilikos from the series 'Pictures from the Center'

I don't deny the political dimension of images nor the multitude of meanings that arise when we enter into the field of interpretation, quite the opposite but that is not my primary concern, my primary concern is not to tell stories or to feed the imagination through photography, it's to bring my mind back, to that place where there is no language and to see the world from that place.

On a previous conversation with Georges Salameh featured on Urbanautica you said: «I’m more interested in experiencing what is present when there is no story in the mind, when the consciousness is empty of content, and in this sense, I see my practice as a form of meditation...» How has your practice evolved during the last years? You sent me your series of works 'Made in Quarantine'? Tell us about it, how did you approach it?

AV: That response was in relation to why I don't use photography as a storytelling tool, why I tend to place my work in a non-narrative context. And even though around 5 years have passed since that conversation, I still see my practice generally based on the same principle, I still see making art mostly as a spiritual practice and by "spiritual" I simply mean a practice that helps me stop thinking and be empty. Every photograph comes from letting go the mind because when we see with whole attention the thinking naturally stops and in this seeing I feel like I'm dissolving myself.

This reminds me of something that Garry Winogrand said in a video I saw on youtube about his work: he said "I get totally out of myself, it's the closest I come to non-existing" and then he goes on and says: "which is the best!" and he is smiling.

With Georges we started using this term: "peripatetic photography" in a workshop we held together, to diversify this approach from street photography because even though they may look the same, the inner attitude is different, peripatetic photography is more about a quality of relaxed contemplative seeing, it's not so much about making spectacular images, it's more a kind of surrender to the flow, rather than trying to get something from it.

Coming to the work itself, alongside my peripatetic work which happens daily, I'm exploring a lot of abstract photography lately. In my last solo show last year at Can Christina Androulidaki Gallery in Athens I exhibited a series of digital collages called "Masks" and the new works that I make now continue this research into abstraction. 'Made in Quarantine' is a series of works I made during the quarantine which I sent via email to some friends and to people whose work I enjoy. I like to share my work via email from time to time because it is immediate while other forms of presentation take time.

Regarding the works: April 2020 - Pictures for the Web - is a series of 30 photos, the photos that I was posting on social media during the lockdown and I'd like to make a zine with these images at some point. The images came as spontaneous responses to the general as well as the personal feelings of those days and the series contains both recent and old images.

© Alexis Vasilikos from the series 'April 2020 - Pictures for the Web'

Basements is a typological series of photos from windows of basements in Athens. Pictures from the Center is a series of photos that I'd like to work more with images from the center of Athens. Quarantine Walks is a series of leafless trees that I photographed at the beginning of the quarantine. Snakes of Athens (2015-2020)- is a series I had started in 2015 and finished it during the quarantine and it is a series of lockers, found around the city.

There are many definitions of photography, much debate, and words. I still see it as a tool. As a possible way for us to measure our voice, to let it go somehow. It's also an opportunity for self-discovery. How you would comment on this...

AV: Recently I came across this beautiful saying by Anandamayi Ma: «I'm only a child and do not know how to lecture or give discourses. Just as a child, when it finds something sweet and good takes it to its mother and father, so do I place before you what is sweet and good. You take whatever pleases you.»

Ιt's not about photography or something in particular, it's all about the experience from where the activity arises. Forms are reflectors of the inner reality that creates them, so what photographs and art in general do is to tune us in the energy field that created them. Τhe important question is: does it come from the mind or does it come from the heart? Does it empty you or does it reinforce the identity in you?

© Alexis Vasilikos from the series 'Basements'

Somehow we've let this academic paradigm prevail in the art community to a large extent, and many things come from this paradigm, debates and positions, and conceptualization in general. I don't feel that we should follow this path (unless somebody enjoys it) because I don't see any happiness coming from there, it just exhausts us and makes us heavy and arrogant. I don't say that it doesn't have its place, because it plays a role in the marketing of the work, I'm just saying we shouldn't go too far with all this. We can use concepts freely but there is no need to identify with them.

Yes, there is definitely an opportunity for self-discovery, it has always been given to us but are we taking it? or are we too devoted in an idea we have of ourselves?

Dialogue is also important. Phases Magazine is also showing us different perspectives and imaginaries. What I love about virtual worlds is that I keep stumbling upon images that fascinate me. Today, at the time as I speak, it happened to me with Claudia Kraus, an artist from Austria. And this gives me hope knowing how much pollution there's in the world. Have you stumbled recently on some lovely works? Anyone to mention for our readers?

It's interesting how interconnected all is and how many intersections and mystical synapses happen in the production of art.
My work as an editor of Phases Magazine is constantly influencing my work as an artist and vice versa, it's a continuous form of dialogue around image-making and what is beyond images, into and the very nature of reality.

As I mentioned earlier the new works that I'm working on now, revolve around abstract photography and abstraction in general, some of them are already online on my website in a series called "The Power of Nothing" and because I make these works with digital technology mostly I started to look into various printing techniques as a way to add a sense of materiality to the works. Although I'm still not sure if it is actually needed, I'll have to make some tests, I also like the sense of immateriality that digital files have. So I look a lot into works that explore what is called process-based photography as well. There is something interesting in this field, a kind of an aura of craftsmanship. Here are 4 portfolios that I edited recently for Phases Magazine that move around these topics and have been a source of inspiration, for different reasons each one: Edward Dimsdale, John Lehr, Babs Decruyenaere, Janosch Jauch.

I do often feel tensions around the word "contemporary". Like a battle around who has the right to call himself contemporary. Much attitude comes from a market-driven behavior, fighting for a ridiculous record. I saw you posted today a quote from Eckhart Tolle: «If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe. What looks like weakness to the ego is, in fact, the only true strength». I found that it really matched with my previous argument. How do you feel about it?

AV: The problem is that the ego doesn't exist without some sort of validation from the world, that is because it doesn't really exist by itself, it's a ghost story and we all know it at some level, but in the so-called art world, we are venerating the artist's ego as if it's the creator and this happens because it's the actual product and so basically we create value via venerating the artistic ego. So these matters become important because we draw an identity from them, just like designer's clothes, they are not just clothes, they are parts of an identity kit, they have "me-ness" embedded in them.

What Ekchart Tolle speaks about in my view, is the possibility of not identifying oneself with anything at all, of dropping the whole idea of being a somebody, a person, to put it in the words of another master, Gurdjieff: Freedom is first of all freedom from identification. Now in our mainstream culture, we can rarely hear that there is such a possibility for human beings, to go beyond all identification, and yet the sages and the mystics speak of nothing else, isn't that a peculiar thing!

© Alexis Vasilikos from the series 'Pictures from the Center'

To come back to your question, I don't know about "contemporary" or the next new thing, for me to look for what is new in art is like looking into the pockets of a saint for money, who goes to a saint looking for money? The way I see it is this: all forms have the DNA of being and the being is timeless. The question is how to come to the direct experience of the timelessness of our being? Art can be a portal into this dimension but it can also be just another ego-trip, it's up to us to decide what we value the most, drama or peace? being what we are or being somebody?

When I look at your images, I see elements that intersect outside binary logic. Sometimes they are held together by curiosity, others by energy or perhaps a common vibration. I like to think of the wonderful sensations you find in looking at them. There's something very playful in your work. What do you think about this dimension?

AV: Thank you, Steve, I'm very happy you enjoy my work. Yes I do see it as a play and I don't mean only the image-making, it's all part of the divine play somehow, in India they call it the Lila and it's a way of describing reality as the outcome of the creative play of the absolute but also at the human level, it must be fun otherwise why do it. I'm grateful for all this, I see it as a gift and honor it as such.

At a deeper level, it's all about nothing really, it comes out of nothing goes back to nothing and for a little while only, it appears to be something. I don't think that there is another art that can manifest so powerfully the beauty of nothingness as photography does. Even to say "beauty" is projecting a quality to it, it's beyond quality. This is what is holding this whole universe together, this empty, space-like awareness. I certainly hope that the works that come through me carry some of this fragrance of emptiness because emptiness is our home, it's where we can rest and simply be without holding on to anything.

© Alexis Vasilikos from the series 'Snakes of Athens'

Sometimes I tell people approaching photography for the first time, "go and have fun". Maybe an invitation to go and surprise "yourself". What would you recommend to students aiming at finding their way through their arts?

AV: Sometimes all you have to do is let go of the idea that you have to do something.

I know you don't like to talk too much about the future, so what are you working on right now?

I don't like to talk about the future too much because it doesn't really exist but you cannot avoid a bit of planning with the lifestyle we have, so I try to plan as little as possible and to invest (emotionally) as little as possible in my plans.

I have a small plan going on for a few years now, which looks like it's about to materialize, I'm planning to move to the island of Leros, my grandmother has a small house there and I've been spending the summers since childhood. So I would like to live there, to have my studio on the island and spend as much time as possible. Let's see what life thinks ... :)

What I'm working on right now is a couple of things, one is that I'm wondering if I will continue and how, a publishing project that I started last year, Rigpa Editions, you can see some of the things we made on Instagram and the other thing is a book about my travels to India, it's been 16 years since my first travel there and I feel that now I have enough material to make a book so I'm looking into this idea and I'm trying to refine the first edit of the book.

Recently you have invited me to listen to Franco Battiato. Thank you

AV: Thank you!

I'm going back to the songs I used to listen when I was living in Italy in the '90s, I hadn't paid enough attention to Battiato at that time, I love Battiato, he is a genius. I read a few days ago that he had an interest in mysticism and it makes sense, you can feel that there is something greater than a person behind his music.

This one is my favorite, currently: 'No Time, No Space'.

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Images Courtesy of Can Christina Androulidaki and the artist.

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