of Grigoris Daniel

A special calendar for the new year was the occasion for a beautiful discussion with the artist Christos Kehagioglou and the poet Sotiris Kakisis. Both excellent in the paths they have carved out in these years, and which the public has embraced with fervor, just before saying goodbye to us a difficult, admittedly, year, they collaborated again or better through the creation of the calendar In the light , an important released by the publishing house En plo, each one illuminated the other's world with their supplies. The result is the joint publication of another calendar, which the literary community, and not only, will hardly pass by.

Through the light , a separate calendar. What emotions does this new release fill you with?

H.K.: This diary has become a small institution, a very beautiful habit now. It's our eleventh since 2012. It's something we particularly enjoy every year, like a wish for the year to come, with a new proposal every year, a fresh look.

"Things always happen in their own way," you have stated, Mr. Kehagioglou. So how did this collaboration come about?

H.K.: Indeed, in her own way! I made a proposal ten years ago to Giorgos Bilalis to publish a calendar with my works, in this particular format, to be satisfying and to function as an art object. The idea came completely out of the blue from something I had seen in London. George was excited about the idea and we went ahead with it. It's as if he appeared in our lives in a magical way.

The water element is a constant that continues the months of the Calendar . What are you looking for, Mr. Kehagioglou, through this specific visual, let me use the term, search?

H.K.: Water is an element that has occupied me a lot speculatively. Its fluidity, transparency and, at the same time, its reflexivity are fields of enormous research interest. In this compared unit, whose theme is light, the water element is visually identified with light and gives the works a more abstract, I would say minimalist form.

The world around us is a constant source of inspiration for your work. Does time, how does it surround him or possibly reshape him in your thinking?

H.K.: Paintings are, in principle, timeless. In the blink of an eye you have grasped a project in its entirety. But then the movement of the eye, the wandering of the gaze within the work embraces the surface, explores it and creates time, creates a relationship. It is an idiosyncratic time-relationship produced by the meeting of the composition with the particular look and mood of the viewer.

How do you think this "cohabitation" of image-speech reaches the reader?

H.K.: The viewer initially sees the work. It combines it with the specific month it represents in the Calendar . The first associations are created automatically. Then he reads the poem, which has a very free relationship with the work, and much more complex and interesting thoughts are created there. The journey goes far, becomes more magical, more enigmatic.

SK: I always hope for that too, the most enigmatic, the most magical. That a picture and a poem can convey what their creator feels in the first place, what makes him paint or write, and what he hopes to capture with colors or words.

Extra lives are the works. Enigmatic films. Each one with its own narrative, its own way, now distanced from the creator.

The poetic composition of the Diary is a consequence of the anecdotal poetry collection Upside the Wind . Could you, Mr. Kakisis, tell us about this collection?

SK: No, of course. A sample of her as a trailer from the future is here, besides, her turn is late, and besides the twelve poems of these Diary that are here, I can't add anything. To talk about how maybe a project is done, but to analyze it, if necessary, maybe someone else will also be interested in doing it.

"My movement is all cinema, film, cinema," you write, Mr. Kakisis. I'd like you to tell me how cinematic depiction, with whatever distortions, embraces everyone's work.

SK: People have been living extra lives with cinema since its inception. So am I, how else? Perhaps each of us, as an actor or a director, invisibly re-elevates his life and thoughts, going in and out of images and foreign ones, so that a multidimensional depiction of him emerges in his work in the end, richer in this way on the one hand but also more complex on the other hand. another to be done, for better or for worse.

H.K.: That's right: Extra lives are the works. Enigmatic films. Each one with its own narrative, its own way, now distanced from the creator. We sit opposite them, in the seats of the cinema, we look at them and look at them again until we can't add anything about them and then we hear their story for the first time and discover in it a lot of strange facts and details that surprise us. I often wonder how much each work is mine, since it is impossible for me to repeat its path...

What is the creator's "obligation" to his audience?

H.K.: I wouldn't say that there is an obligation. There is a relationship and in all relationships what matters is consistency, seriousness and responsibility. These are also the elements that make an artist a "professional".

SK: I agree. But, especially in Poetry, "the elements that make a creator as a complete amateur 'professional'".

This continuity that characterizes the visual part corresponds to the continuous flow of the poetic text. Was this internal rhythm that keeps up the speech with the image tested at all, during creation, before the final result?

H.K.: Of course. This flow is the result of a shared inspiration, with tests, constant tweaks and changes. At the same time, of course, a mood for play and improvisation. With Sotiris Kakisis, we rejoice in the unexpected, the surprise produced when the visual work meets the poetic word.

SK: It's being tested more now, in the release. And we are really happy when our works seem to blend together and appear to be in dialogue. Without any effort for this dialogue to exist in advance between Christos Kehagioglou and me, but to have arisen, especially after already six Diaries together, two of his exhibitions and our books.

Every person will always look for a way to balance between reality and their imagination, let alone a painter and a writer.

When the emotion goes into its paper dimension, how much "bleeding" do you think it has undergone?

SK: What follows from the value of a poem exactly: in a failed poem more, in a good poem perhaps less, perhaps a stronger emotion emerges.

Facing a calendar before the passage of time, we unconsciously become collectors of moments, memories of the year we are parting with. What are the points that your memory holds for the year that is leaving?

H.K.: The special condition that we went through and are going through, on the whole planet, I think brought us for good into the arms of our personal space and time. I think that the works, both poetic and visual, of the Diary exude exactly this inner feeling.

SK: Yes. I hope they don't show entrenchment, but loneliness that more strongly seeks the friendship, the coexistence that we have been deprived of again, as soon as possible.

For those who are awake, it is one and a common world, and for those who are asleep, each turns to the same world - Heraclitus (For those who are awake, there is one and the same world, while those who are asleep each turn to their own, subjective world). In a world where reality tests you, is the personal space of a dream – in the broader sense of isolation – a way out?

H.K.: Anyway, these two worlds are personal and complicated. The goal is for their relationship to create harmony. And let's work internally on that. The more we consciously explore this vital relationship, the more we as individuals will learn about this strange thing called happiness and we will transfer a positive energy to those around us.

SK: The dream, like cinema, but also the rest of art as a whole, is not only a way out, but also often redemption. Every person will always look for a way to balance between reality and their imagination, let alone a painter and a writer.

Professionally, what will the new year bring? What are the baggage of your artistic continuity?

H.K.: The baggage is fortunately many and charming and for the new year I hope it brings the best!

SK: The Diary is here again, my Battle Against Time poems as well, and my lyrics so far on I Need Music are already out. I insist, of course, on what I said before: especially in Poetry, a creator hopes to always be a completely amateur "professional".

Calendar 2022: Into the light
Christos Kehagiolou
With 12 poems by Sotiris Kakisis