Startup Starters: Dimitris Chimonas

Dimitris Chimonas interviewed by Stella Mastorosteriou

Dimitris starts off the inteview with a joke around his name: ‘I am Dimitris Chimonas, like the season’ (Chimonas means winter in Greek). Our online talk, though, takes place on a hot summer day, amidst the preparations for his production “Where the sun never sets”, scheduled for 20 July 2024 in the Cyprus countryside. Before we go deeper into it, we discuss some relevant background on who he is and his ways of working.

Sessions – yes, and?

“I’m a director. I come from traditional theatre and my work has to do with performance and the curation of action/situations in general,” explains Chimonas. “I see myself as an artist whose medium is space and time, through the lens of dramaturgy. Perhaps what is also important for the current project is how the curation is done. Because I come from theatre, I see it all as improvisation – that’s my training. I trained in clowning and improvisation, my understanding comes from there. Something comes up and you say yes, and? With my collaborators, we also try to work like this: we don’t talk much, and after a certain point there isn’t much planning left to do and it’s time to set it in motion: we say yes, and? We do this both jokingly and in practice. It is all an unruly improvisation, where things keep coming up.”

The precursor to Chimonas’s startup project, initiated during the pandemic, was called Sessions, a series of queer happenings co-organized with Lex Gregoriou. It went from an underground affair in a low-rent basement, hosting two events a week for two and half months, to an invitation from the Ministry of Culture to do a “takeover” of the State Gallery of Contemporary Art – SPEL. “We asked for 24-hour access and the right to do whatever we wanted, within reason – and suddenly we found ourselves organizing 93 events in 6 months, with performances, workshops, screenings, a library, a kitchen, parties – but still with a punk attitude.” 

For Chimonas, learning how to communicate to different audiences was important. “At the beginning, in the basement, it was mainly the queer artistic community: visual artists, performers, actors, punks. Then in the State Gallery it widened quite a bit. We still had this first community, the ones who were defining the rules let’s say, but then we also had academics, local people who like the events of the gallery, we had everybody. A challenge – in relation to Startup as well – is how to communicate what we do to another public that is not familiar with the notion and practices of queer culture, and perhaps was never interested, never thought about queering as an action akin to world-making.”

Where the Sun Never Sets

The idea for Chimonas’s proposal of Where the Sun Never Sets connects various trains of thought: supporting the underfunded Cypriot artist community, his own experience of Spring Forward – and a significant historical occasion. “This summer is the 50th anniversary of the division of Cyprus in 1974, and all the main cultural institutions are dealing with it, while the killing of civilians and children in Gaza, only 200km away, are being ignored. Therefore, it was important that if I proposed something for this time frame, in this context, that I somehow connect to it. How do I make this relevant to our context? I entered Spring Forward with the desire to see through a work in which I could see a potential to reflect, mourn, or dream of healing. Watching Viktor Szeri’s performance Fatigue, it was like he was shouting in my face: What do you want me to say? What can I say? How can I fit it all in? It was like an indignation that he doesn’t even have inspiration any more, and somehow I identified with it – in that I have so much that I would like to shout, but even shouting would do nothing.”

The title of the event is a reference to the novel The Sleepwalker by Greek novelist Margarita Karapanou, a depiction of a dissolute world on an island. “It shocked me when I read it,” remembers Chimonas. “It dawns on a summer day and they all feel that their redemption has come because it’s summer, and we forget our problems and go drinking and dancing… and they realize that the sun doesn’t move: it is the apocalypse, and everyone is burning in this sun. I am interested in this paradox of the sun that illuminates and reveals things, but at the same time blinds. And how this happens a lot in Cyprus, how we can be so apolitical in many ways. We can be apathetic people, due to being an island where it is summer six months of the year. The events of 1974 also happened during summer, and 50 years later we still seem unable to reflect on it critically.”

So, what will happen on the 20 July is a 12-hour event, in an undisclosed place that Chimonas describes as a natural paradise with some cult value. Inspired by the book, he chose daytime for the event to take place, “almost like a punishment that contains a little pleasure. Let’s face it, let’s be present with this moment. It is the 20th of July and we are all day in the sun, trying to look for something new, to create something different. On that day in Cyprus there will be sirens sounding, tons of political speeches, and spectacles of remembrance. .” He laughs: “So, we will be searching for an alternative, in nature.” 

But there are more events scheduled both before and after that date: “We are also preparing a residency, four meetings with a group of 12 artists from different fields, invited through an open call, where they loosely responded to the theme that I proposed. That has to do on one hand with this millennial portrait proposed by Viktor and the idea of ‘​​slowness as resistance’, and on the other hand with this poetic context that Karapanou brings through the book.” The group of artists – all Cyprus-based and from both sides of the divided island, alongside Dimitris and his team – will camp on site three days in advance, proposing workshops and ideas to discover what this 12-hour piece will be. Viktor Szeri and his musician, Andras Molnar, will be with the group to reimagine Fatigue and to give two workshops, in Nicosia and in Limassol, on the concept of slowing down. The project also includes the production of three films, performances for camera that will be screened in Queer Wave: Cyprus LGBTQIA+ Film Festival in September 2024. All these events form parts of the wider curatorial vision.

“I can’t tell if it’s going to be theatre or performance or music or a party or just a gathering, and this does not direct our creative decisions,” says Chimonas. “What is important to me is the activation of a group of people who will also benefit from this structure, and the facilitation of a meaningful exchange. To feel inspired to express, to keep on screaming, to listen and be heard – as simple as that.”