The Garden
of Dystopian Pleasures
The fourth edition of the asfaBBQ will be curated by the conceptual art duo FYTA, alongside the newly-founded think-tank 'Ministry of Post-Truth'.
The two years that have passed since asfaBBQ’s utopian second installment have brought humanity to a postmodern dead-end of unapologetic misinformation and have given birth to the alt-right, the coolest fascist movement the world has seen in decades. With the unimaginative left being unable to respond and identity politics having been appropriated by the bad guys, the world can’t help feeling that it experiences a regression to a pre-WW state or an acceleration towards an even greater catastrophe. Is there a way forward and out of this mess? Can we rethink identity politics? Can we repackage hope as sexy? Can we assist fake-news trolls to their self-destruction? Performing Dystopia looks at ways of dissecting and digesting the enemy, through overidentifying with monstrosities of post-truth society and reevaluating the politics of (guilty?) pleasure.
The two years that have passed since asfaBBQ’s utopian second installment have brought humanity to a postmodern dead-end of unapologetic misinformation and have given birth to the alt-right, the coolest fascist movement the world has seen in decades. With the unimaginative left being unable to respond and identity politics having been appropriated by the bad guys, the world can’t help feeling that it experiences a regression to a pre-WW state or an acceleration towards an even greater catastrophe. Is there a way forward and out of this mess? Can we rethink identity politics? Can we repackage hope as sexy? Can we assist fake-news trolls to their self-destruction? Performing Dystopia looks at ways of dissecting and digesting the enemy, through overidentifying with monstrosities of post-truth society and reevaluating the politics of (guilty?) pleasure.
Nina Power: Edgelords vs Edgeladies / 17 SeptemberWhere does the internet's phallus reside? Addressing the long-standing myth/desire that 'There are No Girls on the Internet', alongside the domination of lesbian/sissy and incest porn featuring step-mothers and sisters of all kinds, this talk asks: who is being fucked by the internet and why? What kind of thanatotic dance are men and women engaged in through the ether? Can we make each other laugh in increasingly perverse ways, and who might the edgelady be to compete with the edgelord? Does she, or can she, even exist?
Nina Power is a cultural critic, social theorist, philosopher and translator. She is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Roehampton University and the author of One-Dimensional Woman.[1] She served as both editor and translator (with Alberto Toscano) of Alain Badiou's On Beckett. Power received her PhD in Philosophy from Middlesex University on the topic of Humanism and Antihumanism in Post-War French philosophy, and also has an MA and BA in Philosophy from the University of Warwick. 
Clair Le C: NO TUMBLR, MAYONNAISE IS NOT A GENDER or ‘I’m just asking: if I identify as a cat, do I still have to pay taxes?’ or RACE, GENDER, AND SPECIES
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Ed Fornieles: VR and (post)human sexuality / 19 SeptemberEd Fornieles presents a talk on the new possibilities that VR opens up in the domain of (post-)human sexuality. By reflecting on his recent work on VR porn, Fornieles opens up the discussion of the new visual cultures of the virtual era, their internal tensions and political problems, violence and pleasure, new possibilities and cruel limitations. A poetic manifesto on truth, pornography and a future that is not.
Many thanks to Alex Demetriou. Ed Fornieles is an artist whose works are responsive to the movement of information. Fornieles uses film, social media platforms, sculpture, installation and performance to express the interaction of family, relationships, popular memes, language and the subcultures of 21st century experience. His work operates within the logic of immersive simulations, which construct and enact alternative political and social spaces. His projects often involve cultural, social, and infrastructural production, making interventions that reconfigure the viewer’s position and sense of self. 
Yannis Stavrakakis: The truth of post-truth / 18 SeptemberThe recent discussions around post-truth and fake news brings back into fashion the ancient quest for collectively deciding on an absolute distinction between truth and lies; a renewed craving for guaranteed and unmediated access to the real. We observe a resurfacing of a rather pre-modern question with quasi theological origins which was nevertheless secularised in various ways and still continues to fascinate. A genealogical reading of the critique of ideology, particularly in psychoanalysis and social constructivism, and a retrospect on strategies of ‘overidentification’ in political and artistic fields, can potentially strengthen a practical ‘political specialist knowledge’ capable of escaping the aforementioned simplistic position, without overlooking the need to process the functional criteria of the moral-political praxis.
Yannis Stavrakakis studied political science at Panteion University (Athens) and received his MA degree from the Ideology and Discourse Analysis Programme at the University of Essex, where he also completed his PhD. He has worked at the Universities of Essex and Nottingham before taking up his position at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2006. His research primarily focuses on contemporary political theory (with emphasis on psychoanalytic and poststructuralist approaches) and on the analysis of ideology and discourse in late modern societies (with emphasis on populism, environmentalism, nationalism and post‐democracy). 
Political theory and practice in the age of fake news (panel) 18 SeptemberWhen it comes to media and communications, contemporary western societies experience an increasing sense of discontent. The alt-right is gaining grounds in digital platforms, leading to the emergence of mainstreamised fascist discourse in countries such as the USA. Fake news have been instrumental in the emergence of these new political forces, and have been weaponised alongside the production of extreme racist and homophobic discourse that goes beyond the typical conventions of media communications taking the form of alternative media such as memes, online forum posts, anonymous blogs etc. At the same time the left and social movements try to understand this new reality and to fight in their own terms, often failing to either grasp or properly address the problem. On top of that, it is often implied that leftwing deconstruction allowed for the rise of alt right as such.
In this panel there will be a discussion on the aforementioned tensions in an attempt to investigate the complex network of relations and contradictions that define such phenomena. But besides offering an analytical framework, the panel also aspires to initiate a dialogue about how to counteract, resist and offer antagonistic narratives and political movements against post-truth regimes and their fascist proponents. But what is the best way to respond when all ‘coherent’ arguments seem to fail miserably? Shall we fortify our traditional means of resistence or can we build new counter-paradigms? Can we think outside of humanist and modernist contexts and could approaches such as the Zizekian overidentification –where one identifies with ‘evil’ in order to process its internal contradictions and eventually expose it’s bananlity– offer creative ways to deal with this mess? Panelists: Sissy Alonistiotou has studied polical sciences at the University of Athens. She works as a journalist since 1988 in publications such as Tachydromos, editor-in-chief at “Kyriakatiki Eleftherotypia” and editor of content at “Epsilon” magazine. In 2012 she started working on the filed of news & media literacy creating the web community 'Journalists about Journalism' (jaj.gr) and in 2016 she initiated the Media Literacy Institute alongside Katerina Chrysanthopoulou. Since 2014, she has been writing for “Kathimerini” . Themistoklis Pantazakos is doctorate researcher with an Onassis foundation scholarship in UCL, London. His work focuses on the relationship between truth, science and the political. His articles are published in journals and popular websites such as luben.tv, skra punk and others. Stamatis Poulakidakos teaches at the Media Lab of the department of communications and media in University of Athens, where he completed his PhD dissertation. His studied include a master’s in Neww Media, Information and Society from the London School of Economics, and his research interests include the data collection and analysis of journalistic content and the quantitative analysis of this data. Elena Psillakou is a PhD researcher in social theory and sociology at the University of Athens. She is a member of the research network for the analysis of political discourse and of the international network DiscourseNet. Her research focuses on critical methodologies of discourse analysis in media studies, contemporary politics, film and literature. She has worked as a journalist and translator. 
Spyros Petritis: Zionism and pink-washing: Reality or myth? / 18 SeptemberTaking as starting point the ban of David’s star on Chicago’s Dyke March in 2017 this lecture will examine: a. the criteria for a functional definition of antisemitism (EU) b. the history of homosexual persecution in Nazi Germany (Pink Triangle), c. The ways that modern antizionism, takes myths of the past and disguises them into theories of either rightwing (white genocide conspiracy theory) or leftist (pink washing) audiences.
Spyros Petritis is a theater scholar, with postgraduate studies at the University of Athens. During the academic year of 2017-2018 he attended Audet Baron-Basar’s seminar on the Jewish Genocide (1942-1945) and in 2016 he contributed to the collective book ‘Dodeka Erotikes Diadromes’. 
Aimee Le: A Critique of the Männerbund / 19 SeptemberAlong with the recent increase in neofascist ideas we have seen the emergence of the concept of ‘Männerbund’ – or men’s group – generally described as a group of culturally similar heterosexual men who coordinate together in an organic hierarchy. Rather than simply criticising this form of organising, I would like to briefly introduce the problems that right wing theorists of masculinity introduce as problems for the left: problems of sexual difference, of the need for structure in order to coordinate effectively, and of the potential negative impacts of relationships and sexual violence upon organising. Do we have adequate theories of organising which can respond to these right-wing critiques of liberal democracy?
Aimée Lê is a Vietnamese American writer and director/performer Her work focuses on the non-translatability and poetic forms of spoken word, specialising in unintelligible projects of fantasy. She has edited poetry collections, she holds a Ph.D. from Royal Holloway, University of London and is one of the founders of the Occupy Dartmouth movement. 
Bae Sharam: From Silence to Activism: Queering Islam / 20 SeptemberBae Sharam is a London based performance artist whose work spans the queer muslim identity and islamophobia and challenges Islamic fundamentalism. They will be sharing an intimate performance telling the true story of growing up female bodied in an Islamic military dictatorship in the 90s. This will be followed by a discussion on how to reconcile being muslim while being queer, the necessary evolution of Islam and a challenging of the white, homonormative narrative of “gay”.
Pop Tektonism: POP Shots + The Noise Skiladic Experience 15 + 21 September1. POP Shots: A performance consisted of 17 tracks less than one minute each. The prologue of every song is longer than the actual song. The 17 POP Shots are expressing Tektonism’s personal struggles praising negativity, confusion, disability, depression and despair. Some titles are “I Am In Love with a Dick, Otherwise He Is A Prick, “I am from South Albinia”, “I Am A P.C. Faggot In Front of A Nazi Maggot”, “My First Homo Dream It Was With Jesus I Admit” and more.
2. The Noise Skiladic Experience: POP Tektonism is influenced by pop music from all around the world. The Noise Skiladic Experience is Tektonism’s researches on the musical roots of his fatherland (Greece) in combination with his experiments in noise music. The performance is a fabulous marriage between the spectacular Hellenic Dionysian entertainment with the intellectual spirituality of harsh noise. POP Tektonism is a queer pop star, creating enemies in every alternative music subculture and lifestyle. POP Tektonism through the use of spicy noisy pop sounds and its notorious prone and submissive performances is seeking to destroy the cliches of alternative music scenes and their masculine stereotypes. POP Tektonism’s songs are celebrating vulnerability, disability and pansexual confusion. POP Tektonism is hated by Hardcore punks, Manarchists, Antisemites, Noise mansplainers, Black Metalheads Skaterboys, Greek tavern owners and more. 
Glam Slam! /
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O.P.A.: Alexander is not dead, long live Alexander! / 19 SeptemberThe beginning of the 21st century could be marked by the new wave of nationalistic authoritarian governments on part of the European continent, as the present stage of
neoliberalism has brought about a new type of European periphery. One of them, a particular populist xenophobic authoritarian government, through well-established propaganda machinery has succeeded in successively degrading its citizens and all aspects of human existence. Focusing on the Macedonian context, this talk will present examples of tactical media works or artworks spreading/using fake information as basis. Though selected works disseminated false information in a parodic way, a number of people believed in them. From the examples of artists using tactical media methodologies we will move on to the aestheticization of politics and the political propaganda images produced by the party that was on power during the period 2006-2016. The images we will focus on were true (the promotional images of Skopje 2014 project), but ironically, at first, nobody believed in them as they seemed too parodic and unrealistic. Great extent of appropriating art methodologies by the political happened in this period. In such atmosphere where the unbelievable is possible, a group of teenagers from the small town called Veles, earned a bunch of money creating fake pro-Trump news that were disseminated during the US election campaign by websites targeting American readers. Starting from the standpoint that art should belong, and be accessible to everyone, OPA’s practices are context based, non-collectible and either ephemeral or distributed in multiple copies. In its earlier phase (2001-2010) OPA’s focus was the art system, the art institutions and art as an institution. Thus, OPA’s works were often fused with its members’ personal lives and their body of work consists of created situations, durational performances, mockumentaries, etc. Later on, witnessing the rise of an authoritarian government OPA’s work became much more political. In the period of 2012 to 2015, OPA participated in the establishing and the intensive work of the Kooperacija Initiative, an art collective whose work was openly critical and an alternative to the controlled and decaying cultural institutions in the Republic of Macedonia. As the questions: Why art?, To whom does it serve?, Should art be useful in any way?, became much more present in OPA’s work, two new, multiple personalities/ identities parallel to OPA were created. Intrigued to analyse the logic of the market related art practice, in 2014 the “OPA Professional” entity was born. OPA Professional’s goal is producing visually appealing images and objects (sellable, collectible and visually attractive) while developing several kinds of prototypes and strategies of art production. As a result, OPA Professional’s work oscillates between the real and the mockery. The second entity founded in 2016 was named “OPA Fondacija”. It focuses on developing practical utilitarian solutions and constructive art practices as an alternative to the critical ones. It arose from the necessity for a direct contribution to the community and with a strong belief that solidarity and education are crucial for today’s world. 
Manos Bazanis: Mediterramorphosis- a masterclass in Indigenous Holistic Agriculture (IHA) 18 SeptemberIn this integrative and interdisciplinary workshop, science and politics, theory and practice, tradition and progress dissolve into each other in the eternal topos of the burgeoning but threatened Mediterranean garden-landscape. Stemming from the aporia of modern agronomic discourse, the concept of IHA will be presented as an enthusiastic attempt to finally reconcile the fragmentary and d[i/e]sparate efforts, both institutional and grassroots, aiming to protect and revitalize the failing greek agriculture and its marginalized communities. During the masterclass, participants will partake in a multitude of open-ended educational activities, which will be able to co-shape and co-direct to their needs and interests in a reimagining of the indigenous agricommons.Manos Bazanis (b. 1995) is an undergraduate student at the Agricultural University of Athens. His main research interests include botanical and agricultural sciences, ecologies of identity- and community-building, the concept of Nature, neoreactionary politics and overidentification. He has participated in the 4th Athens Biennale with the interactive installation/workshop Telauges Greece and has presented his work in various academic and artistic venues of Athens such as NTUA, IFA, Atopos CVC and AMOQA. He is a member of the FYTA board of advisors and the Mediterranean Garden Society.
Marcella Bruno & Rev Thanatos: Babe, you are perverse ;-) / 16 SeptemberFor Lacanian psychoanalysis perversion is a structure, it is the way a subject relates to the symbolic Other. Perverse practice is not to be confused with perversion as a subject’s structure. In this workshop we focus on perverse practice that can be manifest in any of the three main subjective structures, i.e. neurosis, perversion, psychosis. The workshop explores perversion as methodology and how perverse practices can lead to alternative sites of creativity and experimentation - problematising the contemporary shift towards radical identitarianisms.
Marcella Bruno holds a Masters Degree in Gender, Media and Culture and has a particular interest in experimental feminist methodologies. Most recently, she has delivered a session on methodologies to gender studies post-graduate students at Goldsmiths University, as well as co-chaired Goldsmiths’ Gender Studies Post-Graduate Conference 2018. Apart from her academic work, Marcella designs and delivers projects & training sessions in London (UK) where she is based. // Athanasios Anagnostopoulos (1989) aka Rev Thanatos is minister of the Church of Psychoanalysis, performer and video artist, art theorist and independent researcher. His work focuses on such notions as religious faith and secular belief, radical ideology and fanaticism, anxiety and love of the Other. He is the spiritual force behind the psychoanalytic persona Thanatos and has participated and co-curated popular critical projects such as Documena at the 6th Athens Biennial and the cabaret–performance art nights Glam Slam! Athens. 
Michalis Veritopoulos & Apostolos Melidis: GEMMA / 17 SeptemberNTUA engineering duo (Michalis Veritopoulos & Apostolos Melidis) present their work of utilizing technology and computer science to realize the vision of the late Classics professor, Dimitris Liantinis, of promoting the survival of Modern Greek, the true heir of Homer’s language, through the replacement of the cryptic Greek text with Latin. The key idea is that transcriptions into the Latin script, the most widely used script today (itself a direct descendant of Greek), will facilitate international audiences looking to immerse themselves in the brilliant, archaic language of indigenous feta-lovers, helping them to grasp even the most banal, yet full of ancient wisdom, parole of contemporary Greeks on the web. The technology will be presented, explained and handed over to the audience in the form of a web-browser add-on that will automatically translate Greek script into what Greeks like to - falsely - call greeklish (Greek+English), not realizing that Latin script is also essentially a form of Greek itself.
Michalis Veritopoulos studies Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the National Technical University of Athens (although his mother would have preferred that he became a doctor). He likes synthesizers and loves to explore the secrets of the Greek language. He hopes to bring the Greek text to the foreground with the use of engineering and computer science, aspiring to be a part of the tradition of the engineers of the ‘Antikythera mechanism’. Apostolos Melidis studies Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at National Technical University of Athens. Although being pressured to become a doctor during childhood, he decided to pursue a career in the field of Computer Science (probably the triggering event of his cyberchondria). The basic reason behind this decision was his epiphany of creating an Ancient Greek programming language based on complex mathematics and linguistics, a still ongoing project. He enjoys music and loves Pontic lyra, which he plays since 3 years old. His dream of making Greek language prominent in the ever evolving field of technology fuels his everyday struggle. 
Sofia Grigoriadou & Vivien Emmanouilidou: “Athens is the new Berlin”/ “Berlin is the new Athens” / 15 SeptemberDuring the past few years, the phrase “Athens is the new Berlin” can be seen or heard almost everywhere in Athens. Lately, a graffiti on the walls of Athens states: "Berlin is the New Athens". How are such statements perceived by people living in Berlin or Athens? The aim of the project which takes the form of a workshop and a facebook group is to reflect on how and why the two cities are connected in public discourses and imagery. Let's establish new, perhaps arbitrary or idiosyncratic connections between Berlin and Athens by designing a new series of souvenirs that shake relations between the two cities.
Sofia Grigoriadou is Phd candidate in Social Anthropology (Panteion University, Athens). She holds an MFA degree from the Athens School of Fine Arts (2015). She is a graduate of the A.S.F.A. (2013) and the Philosophical, Pedagogical and Psychological Department of the University of Athens (2006). She has participated in, co-curated and co-organised exhibitions, workshops, research and artistic projects in Athens, Edinburgh, Istanbul, Skopje, Berlin, and Beirut. She has taught at the A´painting workshop, ASFA (2017). She collaborates with artists and anthropologists in the framework of TWIXTlab, an art project situated in between contemporary art, anthropology and the everyday. Vivian Emmanouilidou is a visual artist who lives in Athens. She holds a BA First Class Honours Degree in “Fine Arts and Technology” from Middlesex University, London (2012) and a MA in “Visual Arts” from Athens School of Fine Arts, Athens (2014). Through her works and academic research she explores the relations between contemporary art and politics, participatory and public art, as well as the connection between art and education. She has participated in and co-organized exhibitions, conferences and artistic projects and workshops in Athens, Patras, Thessaloniki and Berlin. 
Space Manifesto feat Furry Λυκοπρόβατο: Macedonia, good luck! / 16 SeptemberWhere does Macedonia belong to? Where does Southern Japan finally belong to? Will they subjugate us and our glorious culture from the ancient times? Will a forced displacement happen to bears, wolves and rabbits and if yes, in which of the two cases: In case Macedonia is named Former Trans-Siberian Pink Space Jungle Non Greek Democracy of Macedonia or in case Greece is named as The Only Greek Alexandrian Mermaid Greekly Greek Greece? THEY WILL STEAL OUR HISTORY! Hybrids of the planet Earth, Unite, mermaids of the Moon stand up! Mixing a variety of medias, Space Manifesto along with a furry wolfsheep present a performance regarding the Macedonia naming dispute through fluffy aesthetics made of physical, drag, lecture and lipsync acts. The political dimensions of each medium, the academic aspects of expression and aesthetics, trash as a source of outburst and creativity, and the appropriation of terms is one of the few points that the artists would like to approach through this experimental performance.Sound design: Ersi Giannoulatou
Space Manifesto is a drag performer. Space is a lost alien which explores the dynamics of political expression in drag, lip-sync as a source of empowerment and trash as a conceptual art tool. Space has done lip-sync, lecture and street performances and her latest collaboration has been with Glauke and Mia Manifesto with The Trouble with Land, a video art piece which is the first project of The House of Manifesto. 
Anthi Kougia & Smaragda: Indigenous, you got talent! / 20 September’Indigenous, you got talent!’’ is a performance piece whose creation was based on the structure of a trashy TV-show/ talent show/ beauty competition. It challenges the discussion around political correctness, the role of contemporary ‘’political art’’ and its representatives by celebrating the decay of a completely disoriented society. The first installment of the piece was presented as part of the Documena Easter Resurrection performance night at Baggeion Hotel, April 2017 and this is the sequel.
Anthi Kougia is a theatre and performance maker from Athens, Greece. After graduating from the Department of Theatre Studies at the National University of Athens, she completed an MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work has been presented in the UK, Greece, Portugal, Italy and Germany. Currently, she lives and works in Athens. Smaragda is a pioneer in post-meta-alt-queer supremacist art. She is a PC-terrorist, a philosopher and most of all a proud Hellene. She installs, performs and screams pink metal. Talk shows and quality intellectual performance art is her unique way of exploring censorship and spirituality in contemporary times. 
Pedro de Senna: Aurora Dourada /
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