«And although the individual in those years seemed as powerfully obliterated behind the artifice as in the years of the most flourishing Christianity, would anyone say that he had previously had time to complete, I mean to exhaust all the resources of his psychic euphoria, so that he could cut a flower both to enjoy and to exploit it, without the slightest gap being noted anywhere.»
Od.Elytis, «The public and the private»
Preamble
Both overbuilding and the complete ban on building on our islands are two extremes due to the loss of real measure. Both take the context of the economic jungle for granted: the former with the adoption of the role of predator by business operators, the latter with the adoption of the role of prey by (usually financially secure) landscape lovers, operators and private individuals. The former derives legitimacy from the terror of losing sovereignty over the dystopian present, the latter from the terror of losing the psychological security provided by the idealized dead past. Both tendencies feed and are fed by the same antagonistic model, a condition alien to the body of local society. But what happens to those outside these extremes? Of the permanent residents who in a few years have seen their land leave their hands and become a battleground for this alien battlefield? Do they have to choose a camp or reclaim the lost measure, the right to authenticity, to the search for their real needs?;
What different message does the child who only has the prospect of becoming a bartender in a tourist monoculture Mykonos receive from the one who will become a tour guide in a Hydra of museum-like habitation? What difference does the unconditional surrender to over-tourism make to the sustainable and healthy development of the local economy than the (supposedly opposite) freezing of any development? And who is ultimately affected by a (easy for the Administration) horizontal suspension of construction work, when what it does is to prohibit the practice of the local engineer, craftsman, trader at a time when the hyperlocal business easily changes its area of activity?;
Finally, what is the position of the ever-growing community of «outsiders», the non-indigenous permanent or seasonal residents?;
In Kythera. Castles in the sand and a simple stone.
Our fellow citizens who in recent years have chosen our islands as their place of residence often come from parts of the Western world unsuspecting of the Mediterranean experience. Places where the protection of the landscape is a legal and individual obligation in the context of an understanding that any alteration of the landscape must be in accordance with the particular, specific tautological characteristics of the «place».»[i]. That every intervention in the landscape must be in line with the perceived «identity» of a people.[ii]. Identities are not fixed and immutable elements as they are mental constructs that are formed gradually, yet the appeal to identity truth is constitutive of a political and Western-style nationalism that focuses on the indistinguishable, in order to harmonize everything with itself.
However, it is a very distinct vision and an anonymous collective body that shaped the historical landscape of our island - and the vast majority of the Mediterranean coastline - as the visual perception of the sea implies.[iii]. Because the man-made Mediterranean landscape cannot be seen and interpreted as the three-dimensional product of planning and control by a historical executive will.[iv] but as a spatial result of the successive overlap of many different sediments. It is the enduring era of numerous impressions of the soul of the people who inhabited the same place.[v]. It is the proper scroll[vi], the resident function that shapes our landscape.
In no case we are not allowed to identify the function with its result, because by removing the concept of the variable[vii], there is no adaptability, no evolution. For this reason, the term «tradition» does not denote a certain staticity or attachment to a specific historical context, but movement: dynamic, continuous change through those who - according to the etymology of the term - receive, transcribe, and transmit[viii] and deliver. Respect for tradition means both interesting participation in the process and feeding this function with real and not imaginary[ix] variables of residence.
The producer of such variables is also the increasing settlement by people who come by free choice - not by family dependence or economic necessity.[x]. Because of their - until recently external - view, their contribution is beneficial to our self-consciousness, to our understanding of our importance, position and scale in the world, our real disadvantages and advantages.[xi]. But even if we share a more or less common perception of aesthetics, their participation in public life is often marked by a lack of understanding of the root cause of our island landscape. Ignorance that mathematically leads to the easy denunciation of any intervention, to the freezing of architecture, to the maintenance of a morphological «picturesqueness» in the landscape[xii].
Here we note the parallel (but by no means incompatible) development of the ideology of «Kytheraism»[xiii]. The combination of a. the more emotional relationship of the expatriates with the island, b. the percentage of retreat of the native element and c. the amateur approach to tourist activity[xiv] gave birth to the psychological need to fortify behind a supposed local identity that defends the rights of the natives against the claims of the «outsiders». What is certain is that these population subsets, both fuelled by (usually the same!) imaginary variables, may well coexist and eventually lead to the disintegration of society into a spatial competition between two asymmetrical communities.[xv]. Inevitably, as (according to the extreme narratives of the one for the other) the natives are no longer left free to «destroy the environment» and the foreigners fail to «drive out the natives so that they can be left alone», the only mutually acceptable imprint of this division on the landscape is the projection of the common myth: the unchanging picturesqueness, the preservation of which each claims for itself.
But the magnificent Mediterranean landscape was not made for us to admire from our terrace (as the last privileged people of history) in 2024, but is the tenacious and ever-changing footsteps of real life, a persistent and painful process of centuries. Strategies of «protection» that immobilize as permanent the present situation, benevolent or not, are contrary to the epigenetic code, to the very historical process in which we participate[xvi]. It is more flattering to hide the inadequacies of your course behind glorious traces and signs of the past than to face the true imprint of what you fear. It is easier to build a castle in the sand than to prepare even a simple stone for a solid foundation. But the gift we have been given is not a prize for looking backward to how worthy (or favored) we have been, it is a call to laborious participation in this ancient as well as modern becoming[xvii].
Because carving the stone requires love and faith. Like planting the vine for the child and the olive for the grandchild.
Andreas Mariatos, 06/09/2024
The Spirit of Place protects a traditional village from the invasion of modern architecture[xviii]
[i] The «Spirit of Place», the ancient animistic Genius Loci has been called upon in recent decades to give conceptual validity to decisions and policies on the landscape that were mostly anti-commercial (such as the prohibition of harmful investments in environmentally sensitive areas). But when an emotive, almost religious appeal is itself capable of influencing landscape policy decisions, it will be used strategically in more controversial measures (such as taking away freedoms in land use). Today, the phenomenological interpretation of the term as a meta-concept involves the dynamics of history in shaping the Genius Loci.
[ii] See. Convention on Landscape, Art.5: «foundation of identity» and Preamble: «... that landscape contributes to shaping local culture and that it is a key component of Europe's natural and cultural heritage, contributing to human well-being and consolidating European identity.»
[iii] The lack of understanding of its depth.
[iv] Here we should probably thank the Venetian administration for not caring about the overall development of the island: there was no homogenization in spatial planning and architecture, resulting in a less glorious but rich and highly adapted to the real needs vocabulary of the built environment.
[v] «A landscape is not, as some people understand it, just a collection of land, plants and water. It is the projection of the soul of a people onto matter» (Od.Elytis, «The public and the private»)
[vi] The word ειμαρμένη is derived from μείρομαι (which produces μέρ-ος, μερ-ίς, μερ-ίζω, μοίр-α etc.) and as a term it is consistent with the (internal) common and proper meaning of μερίζειν as well as διανέμειν (συμμερίζωμαι, συμμετέχωχω and διιpo-μοιράζω). At this time, however, the actual and publicly legislated characteristics of bourgeois society are so much inherent that they require the reformulation of the term (as a function). For only the bourgeois regime can impose a partial (external) mine and yours, i.e. a tendency to a proprietary division of the earthly world (and internal imprinting of the built) into individual-ideal worlds (and extrinsic worlds of the margin). This is a descriptive degree (of real as well as imaginary order) which is not assumed by the term immanence, nor is it transcended by a physical attitude, rather than a «mathematical» one. According to the term ειμαρμένη and the ontology of the physical stasis, knowledge or consciousness of the exterior consists in the presence of parts or traces - of one type or another - of the exteriority within the interiority. - (interpretive commentary H.M. - 09/2024)
[vii] To check the result of, say, the composition architecture, one would have to assign values to all variables (thus removing them as such and freezing them as constants of the function). The morphological rules and building regulations do nothing more than remove a number of variables by replacing them with «traditional values consistent with the character of the place» with the result that in many parts of the developed world the architectural practice has been abolished. In our country the variables (economic possibilities, climate, available crews/materials and feasible construction solutions, functional needs, custom dimensions, indoor/outdoor relationship, light & privacy grading, personal relationships, density, views, access, planting, energy, colour, texture, symbolism etc etc) still retain their dynamics - resulting in grotesque results when regulations are applied.
[viii] And not just «bear», otherwise the deliverable would be a sealed treasure and personal mediation would be unnecessary.
[ix] False values that do not correspond to historical chronology, such as selfish opinions and cries that propagate that we should become Mykonos or, on the contrary, become Monemvasia.
[x] A similar variable is, for example, the development of the Albanian community that followed their economic migration and which for many reasons is being introduced at a steady, slow pace as a variable in public life.
[xi] «When we say: to find ourselves, our Greekness, we do not mean to find an ideology, we mean to find our real needs. These needs can be met by recruiting from everywhere. Hellenism was never a ghetto, it was a crossroads open to influences from everywhere.» Chr.Giannaras interviewed by Popaganda.
[xii] The museification of the landscape is nothing less than gentrification of the countryside: persecution of local inhabitants not only because of increasing land values but also sterilization from productive uses. Here too, the newcomers to Kytheri have a responsibility to understand the perspective of the locals, as they themselves in the vast majority derive their income from elsewhere and have no need to create productive conditions for themselves.
[xiii] As much as it may cause derision, the term «Kytheraism» is used to prioritise political decision-making for the island with cultural arguments - which of course draw from the past. This symbolic and ideological use of the past is in need of an original identity - which is the basic model of the native «Cypriot».
[xiv] The deeper the ignorance of the production mechanism of the tourism industry, the more one-way it becomes to adopt the very model favoured by this ignorance, namely consumer, mass tourism. The Faturada, the Brittany, the Sembreviwa, the Myrtidiotissa, the Aphrodite bidet, etc. are sold as local versions of the ubiquitous drinks, delicacies, souvenirs, religious and archaeological bestsellers of all - but all - mass tourist destinations.
[xv] As in many tourist destinations an illusion of society consisting of the ghost of the local community that sells «fake spectacle» to survive and the parallel community of foreigners - who initially buy it and then complain about over-tourism.
[xvi] Here we note that the cohesive element of a collective of non-natives should not be this property (of «Kytherian by choice», of foreign language or of Xpat). This grouping is automatic & reflexive but it is by its very nature divisive. Perhaps the initial call may perhaps refer to those with the status of non-native resident, but that's about it. In any case a degree of agreement of perceptions about the future of the place is required, otherwise such a collective will forever be the «collective of strangers». In short, what is needed is political action that unites our society, not one that feeds the foreign-native dichotomy.
[xvii] Or, in other words, the wonderful Mediterranean landscape was not given to us, we were given to it.
[xviii] S.Kalatravas' stand at EXPO 2020 in Dubai.
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