19th TDF: Exhibition "John Berger: A Radical Humanist" Open Discussion

19th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival  
3-12 March 2017
 
EXHIBITION “JOHN BERGER: A RADICAL HUMANIST”
OPEN DISCUSSION

 
 
An open discussion about the work of British intellectual, writer and painter John Berger (1926-2017) took place on Wednesday, March 8th 2017 at the Contemporary Art Centre of Thessaloniki, on the occasion of the exhibition held there, titled “John Berger: A Radical Humanist”. Tom Overton (writer, curator and researcher at the British Library) and Antonis Kotidis (Professor, Department of History of Art, School of History and Archaeology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) participated in the discussion.
 
The exhibition, curated by Orestis Andreadakis and Syrago Tsiara, is held on the occasion of the 19th TDF’s tribute to the work of John Berger and is co-organised by the Contemporary Art Centre of Thessaloniki –State Museum of Contemporary Art and the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.
 
At the beginning of the event, Syrago Tsiara, director of the Contemporary Art Centre of Thessaloniki, noted that Berger is one of the top intellectuals and a multifaceted figure, a man of the visual image in many ways. The exhibition is an effort, as she said, to showcase some of the other aspects of his work too: some sketches of his are presented in public for the first time, but also some poems and books of his. Ms Tsiara added that Berger was a man who managed to unite theory and practice in his life, making the study of the visual image his everyday activity. As she highlighted, the exhibition was made possible due to the collaboration with Orestis Andreadakis and the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, which facilitated the access to the material at a minimum cost, “but with an abundance of love and professionalism from the co-operating institutions”.
 
The Director of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival Orestis Andreadakis was the next one to take the floor. He thanked the Museum, Syrago Tsiara and the Director of the State Museum of Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki Maria Tsantsanoglou, who all worked together to organize this exhibition. As he mentioned, it was two months ago when he and Syrago Tsiara almost automatically thought they should organise an exhibition, even a small one, on John Berger. “It’s difficult to describe him in a single word, but he is ultimately a storyteller, that’s what he liked to call himself and that’s how we’ll remember him.  As a Homeric-age rhapsody-teller, he would gather people around him and tell them stories. That’s what we are going to do here today too, we’ll remember some stories”, Mr Andreadakis concluded.
 
First speaker was Antonis Kotidis, who underlined that there are many words one can use to describe John Berger: poet, novelist, playwright, translator, painter, philosopher, essay writer, in short, an intellectual. There is only one label, as he mentioned, that is not quite pertinent, and that is art-critic, “because to characterise him in such a way is to describe his relation to art in a very poor manner; it’s like saying that the Beatles were a pop band when one describes their relation to music”. Mr Kotidis added that very few people managed to influence our conception of art the way John Berger did, referring to the Booker Prize he won in 1972 for his novel G, and also to BBC’s documentary series “Ways of Seeing”, which indicates his Marxist ideology about art. Mr Kotidis also said that this documentary series is of great value because in it Berger talked about Art, addressing a wider audience which is interested not in the “how” and “what”, but the “why” from a sociological and an anthropological point of view. This way he managed to broaden the audience of a narrative about Art, its use and abuse, to an unprecedented level for its time, reaching to our own times. What attracted the interest of the public, especially the young one, was the directness they saw in Berger’s approach and his axiomatic, unambiguous discourse which left no space for vagueness and doubt, concluded Mr Kotidis. “He was so passionate and rightly considered as one of the most prominent intellectuals of the 20th century”, he noted further.
 
Right after this, John Berger’s daughter Katya, thanked Antonis Kotidis and read Berger’s poem titled “28th of November 1961”.
 
Afterwards, Tom Overton took the floor, making a short reference to Berger’s life, concluding in his relation to cinema. Talking about various landmark moments in Berger’s life and artistic career, Mr. Overton mentioned a biography of Picasso written by Berger, highlighting a phrase by Picasso, who said that whenever he had something to say, he would say it the way it was meant, to be properly expressed, which describes the life-model of Berger himself. Mr Overton also talked about the great impact of both John Berger’s book G and his “Ways of Seeing” series, but also about Berger’s interest in the various forms of human dignity which is evident in many different aspects of his work. “He’d love to be a filmmaker”, concluded Tom Overton, when talking about the documentaries Berger had worked for, some of which are featured in short clips at the exhibition and the 19th TDF’s program. “One of the ways cinema is present in his work is that he envisioned his audience as cinematic: the spectator, alone in the dark, but surrounded by a community of people”, noted Mr. Overton.    
 
Closing the event, Katya Berger added that “death had been John’s partner for years, since he’d written so many beautiful things about death and the dead”, and read yet another poem of her father titled “Storytellers”, relevant to this topic.