Artistic Statement:
“arostxia” is to observe a lot and to say little.
“arostxia” is the silent action, the solitary and creative action, the imposing and at the same time discreet action.
“arostxia” is the thin line between art and vandalism.
Anything thay destroys but also creates life. The attempt to express the inner-self what is happening around. Not necessarily good, not necessarily bad. An invitation to understand what one is carrying inside her/him. Optimism.
“arostxia” is not something specific but difficult to describe. Impersonal and at the same time the greatest personal expression. Fully understandable and meanwhile so difficult to the extent that it irritates / annoys. Everywhere and nowhere.
- How do you see the correlation of your tag in relation to the spatial context of Lesvos. How does it relate to the other writings and realities of the island?
“arostxia” is an inspiration that I had in 2013, having already spent two years on the island of Lesvos as a student. Then, among other things, it could perfectly describe my need for interventions in public space, and in combination with the small and relatively inactive society of Mytilene, it gave birth to a strange combination of creation and vandalism. Initially, it was the indignation towards the “wrong” conditions that existed on the island that helped to develop this part (of the interventions). Later, there were many situations that pushed me to think about it, and to start giving it a different dimension. Personally, I think it would find more suitable ground in a large urban concentration due to the volume of information and behaviors that exist around it, than in a provincial town like Mytilene.
In the part of its correlation with the other writings of Lesvos, I consider that it is somewhere in the middle, that is, it is neither the ‘strict’ form of graffiti, which is a code of communication between the creators themselves almost exclusively due to its nature, nor does it fall completely in the political part where the social message is everything. It is located right in the middle.
- Has anything changed in relation to the style or the places you “write” in relation to the change of the reality of the island (refugee crisis & what has followed)?
From my point of view, at least, I can’t see any change in either the way I choose to intervene, and that lies in the fact that there is no luxury in choosing the space, and therefore in the ‘symbolic’ choice of the point. The only thing one can notice is how timely it [the tag] has been from time to time, and the degree to which it can express the concerns of some people by relating it to specific situations they are experiencing. But I can confidently add that this identification is by no means universal, but completely personal.
- How does the process of “writing” on the streets relate to the more personal process of writing academic texts? Does the one affect the other? And if so, how?
Although the process of writing on the street with the process of writing an academic text has some correlation in terms of their structure and their end result, I don’t think it affects one another. Since of course, in order to produce a specific result (whether it is graffiti or a text), some steps and a specific order are required. Yet, graffiti does not follow the rules so strictly, as it is a form of expression and creation of a different range. One requires a strict structure and sequence of steps while the other is quite flexible and structured based on the moment, nothing is fixed. Therefore, in these two processes we can observe similarities, but in my case I do not think that they are affected in any way, as far as the process is concerned. Topics are a different chapter.
- How do you feel now, in the era of COVID-19, that your tag can be read in other ways or it can take on other dimensions?
As I mentioned before, from time to time the tag becomes relevant, and will continue to be so. Things seem to be going from bad to worse, and our job is to record this a bit (in a more humorous tone).
- Anything else you want to tell us about the style, the points/places you choose, or how the tag changes from time to time?
If I can notice something interesting, it’s the way each person translates it. It is very special that everyone can perceive it from their own point of view and translate it differently. There are cases in which some people feel offended and rush to clean it thinking that I wish them bad things, and then, there are those who identify to such an extent that they have transferred it to their body and will always carry it. There are the indifferent, the aggressive, the friendly and the skeptical. But the common denominator is everyone’s curiosity. Who; Why; What does the writer mean?
Myrto Tsilimpounidi