HOW WE BEGAN
In a land where not only individuals but ideas travel from the moment of their birth, it would be difficult to consecrate the security of immovability. However, transporting objects requires another systematic, actual and theoretic support. I am of course, referring to museum items, which, exactly like people, and ideas, also need the freedom to take occasional recourse in flight. They need a change in climate, an escape from the impressions they absorb every day, a change of companions and interlocutors. Indeed, I believe that not only their physical, but their mental health as well, unequivocally requires regular summer holidays, the summer sun, the coolness of the sea, the camaraderie of the island. Especially in locations where both a friendly welcome and high quality standards are assured, the Bazeos Tower on Naxos, for instance, with the companionship of the people who animate and serve it.
“Naxos, isle of the towers; the Bazeos Tower, its history. A monastery in the past; monks, seasonal changes, a pottery workshop, clay artists, soil cultivation, country folk, livestock-breeders with their animals, the people and their land.” As the recipient of the land and of its heritage, the legend of Venetian Rule in the Aegean, I wanted to seek its present-day equivalent, essentially making the most of tradition, rather than contemplating the past and reproducing it. I could not imagine a better beginning than the Benaki Museum exhibition and the cultural activities framing it. May we have a pleasant journey through space and time.
In the beginning was the word and the word is space. And space becomes image, music, movement, contact, exchange. And exchange brings about nature, voices, sounds, verses, walls, stones, houses, bodies, human beings, children, games. It was as a game that the very idea of the Festival was born, it evolved as a game and, now, it is taking place as a game and will continue here with you. A game on a real stage, the stage of time, a game beginning this year with a tribute to Georgios Cheimonas.
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