Intimate reflections on SESSIONS

Cyprus is perhaps most well-known for being a cheap, summer destination in the Mediterranean – and of course, Ayia Napa, a resort town which is infamous for attracting party-goers and end-of-schoolers. 

Yet only an hour away in the capital city of Nicosia, locals struggle with growing living costs on the island and a relentless housing crisis. Youth continue to become disillusioned with the false promises of a conservative government, all while support for fascism and anti-migrant violence remain steadily on the rise. 

As German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht notes, “art is not a mirror but a hammer by which to shape reality.” In the face of multiple interconnected struggles across the island, if not the Levant Region more widely, a local artistic duo devised a life-giving, contemporary art project entitled SESSIONS. Through this project, a tender reminder would echo resonantly: our interpersonal relationships; art and culture, are altogether political.

Curated and directed by Dimitris Chimonas and Lex Gregoriou, SESSIONS blossomed from a keen desire to bring queer people together; as a response to the challenges faced by a young generation of creatives, and society more widely. 

I first discovered SESSIONS in October 2022, a few months following my move back home to Cyprus from the United Kingdom. My heart yearned for a sense of queer familiarity and community. It was through the introductory activation OPENING SESSIONS: 15m2, an organic experimentation of movement, bass and queerness within the confines of a basement, that a spark would awaken in me; a wilting flower had been watered.

Born out of a response 

The first iteration of SESSIONS took place between October to December 2022 at 6 Sapfous Street (formerly known as DriveDrive) — a physical manifestation of queerness hidden away in plain sight, blooming in the underground; a safe space for queer people to gather, exchange, and encounter one another. 

Here, the world-making potential of SESSIONS (as a project, and as connective tissue) would capture the hearts of those yearning for communality in a ‘post’-pandemic era. SESSIONS’ first cycle of happenings was fluid; akin to a gentle breeze in an otherwise violent landscape engineered by the Cypriot state’s conscious, and organised abandonment of artists and ordinary people. 

At its precipice, this series of happenings was grounded in an articulation of queerness through the format of a rehearsal space – the redefinition of self-identity in relation to art and politics; life itself. 

As Dimitris and Lex write in SESSIONS’ print book, A BOOK OF QUEER HAPPENINGS, “if culture is a communal process of enactment through rehearsal and repetition, then we all have the power to reconstruct and challenge the narratives we know through action.”  

In a similar vein, it is our duty as conscientious creatives and artists to reflect the social inequalities that plague our everyday. We must be prepared, at a moment’s notice, to channel our creativity in order to make revolution irresistible.  

A playful takeover: setting the scene 

In March 2023, the controversial appointment of one of Cyprus’ most famous pop singers as the Deputy Minister of Culture reignited debates about the relationship between the arts and politics in the country. This recent development in Cypriot politics was akin to a glitch (as per local veteran artist and SESSIONS’ payments officer, Peter Eramian). 

In response, Dimitris and Lex drew up a successful sixth-month-long proposal in hopes of expanding SESSIONS’ programming from the underground space of 6 Sapfous Street to the State Gallery of Contemporary Art – SPEL. Curiously enough, SPEL currently exists as a state gallery, but has no formalised board of directors or team to manage its operations. Another glitch in the system – providing the impetus for SESSIONS to enact a playful takeover. 

With the transition from the elusive periphery of a queer, underground artist-run space, many wondered: to what extent could we celebrate the entry of something so raw and radical into the limelight of public scrutiny? 

Alongside many queer allies on the island, we often approach the state and its actions with a degree of hesitancy. While SESSIONS’ expansion was an immensely joyful and welcome development, it was not achieved without ruffling feathers throughout various spaces (political, or otherwise) in Cyprus. 

Nevertheless, and echoing Dimitris and Lex, SPEL would come to be claimed “as a public space for the queer and artistic sub-communities in Cyprus”, with the intention of transforming it “into a dynamic and transformable playground, with the capacity to act and influence.”

SESSIONS x SPEL: a series of queer happenings

In early June 2023, I met with Dimitris and Lex to discuss getting involved with future work at SESSIONS. Encouraged by a friend and fellow artist, I had a desire to cultivate kinship and community, by virtue of my own budding artistic and writing practice. 

In our conversation, I was reminded that SESSIONS was less about pointing at things hanging on the wall, and preoccupied instead with matters of collective communing; provocation; vulnerability; sidestepping the neoliberal conventions of curating an exhibition in a museum-space, and the spectacularisation of art and queer culture enmeshed therein. 

Upon each entry into SPEL’s ground floor, I was met with extravagant props, licentious garments, colourful accessories; instruments; a microphone, and a speaker podium: Welcome! This is the Pista Cacophonias (Cacophony Stage).

Queerness is unabashedly loud – an unmasking of innate panache. The Pista was a direct invitation to visitors to experiment, rehearse, or orchestrate an impromptu jam session. Better still, this introductory space beckoned for you to make noise; to create a piece of music; to have fun with the props provided, alongside friend and stranger alike. 

The second floor was home to the Theatro, an ever-changing environment. With each new happening, open discussion, visual intervention, performance, or film screening (such as for the 2023 Queer Wave Festival), the Theatro was bound to change in the most blithely of manners. The space itself kept you on your toes. 

The Theatro felt like a home away from home. A comfortable meeting place, while simultaneously electrifying – all tied together by shifts in lighting, seating arrangement, lingering aromas and smoke. 

The third floor hosted the Reading Room: an expansive library, intimately curated by Loizos Olympios. Here, visitors could enjoy a moment to indulge in a variety of publications which centred queer culture. The collection, which periodically included guest contributions, was an invigorating opportunity for the exchange of knowledge and queer history through the format of a brazen, public library. 

SPEL’s rooftop terrace, which was inaugurated by SESSIONS and accompanied by the spatial installation ‘Agora’ by Urban Gorillas, was transformed into a microcosm of what queerness encapsulates: sociality, chance encounters, debauchery, a beacon of hope. 

Every Thursday, for six months, an artist was invited to share 70% pre-recorded material and 30% live material. These happenings, otherwise known as Cloud Transmissions, were a weekly beckoning to dream; to drift; to be still. But above all, the Cloud was a celebration of unabashed queerness. 

By way of example, in November 2023 I collaborated alongside sound-artist Stelios Antoniou (Ichomagnetic Thoughts), to sonically active an intimate collection of poems as part of the Cloud Transmission series. The poems, dubbed ‘postcards’, were written during a bygone experience of heartbreak, exploring themes of grief, queerness and loss. 

Queerness and art as constituents of political life 

Contemporary art and queerness do not exist in a vacuum – they are deeply entangled with a history of radical political solidarity. Dimitris and Lex never renounced their political roots, especially on the occasion of a playful takeover of a state-owned building. 

SESSIONS, by virtue of its activities, urged the refortification of our modes of (queer) sociality, precisely because they are at stake. Visitors were encouraged to involve themselves in a plethora of social and political issues by means of direct action, workshops, and collective communing. 

Extensive collaboration with local collectives and organisations such as Accept, AFOA, HADE, Queer Collective CY and Women of Cyprus is merely a snapshot of SESSIONS’ grounding theory and praxis: the personal is political. 

Moving beyond the confines of a collaborative spirit, SESSIONS was steadfast in their political statements and praxis; recalcitrant by definition. In October 2023, SESSIONS affirmed its solidarity with the ongoing plight of Palestinians; the genocidal war on Gaza enacted by the settler-colonial state of Israel. 

On their Instagram, SESSIONS released a statement: “the artistic community should be prepared to resist artwashing, and protest against colonisation, dispossession, and violence. […] We invite the artistic and queer community of the island to organise, […] and join us in the streets.” 

Solidarity went further than social media, and SESSIONS would go on to host several film screenings related to Palestine, and unveil a huge ‘CEASEFIRE NOW’ banner from the rooftop of SPEL, with the aim to amplify the call for an immediate ceasefire in Palestine. It is precisely at this critical moment in time; through their political resoluteness that SESSIONS reminds us: art has an unrelenting role. It is altogether bound up with telling the truth, struggling and resisting evil and depravity. After all, art is an ideological reflection of the world. 

As Aimé Césaire notes, a revolution, fundamentally, is collective (poetry). It is not surprising that the activist group United for Palestine Nicosia was born on the same night AFOA hosted an extensive presentation of the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Gaza in October 2023. 

SESSIONS’ unyieldingly political nature stands the test of time; it endures as a sonorous reminder to all of us: queerness is not simply a marker of identity, but an engaged theory and practice of solidarity and community. 

Contemporary art exists to reify and reignite our relationship to activism and grassroots organising. Neoliberalism and capitalism operate through an individualising logic. This illusion must be disabused, for it is precisely at the nexus of communality and firm politicalness through which we resist the nation-states’ ongoing violences, oppression and marginalisation; we come one step closer to building new futures and modalities. 

Revolution, fundamentally, is collective poetry 

SESSIONS is indelible; it continues to prevail in the collective consciousness precisely due to the effervescent dynamism it brought to the capital, and island more widely. Colourful, ecstatic, carnal, yet safe. In the face of bigotry; a conservative-fascist-adjacent government; toxic religious values, and the unprecedented difficulty in securing funding for the arts, this curatorial duo is threading together the groundwork established by a plethora of local initiatives, collectives, organisations, and creatives over the years. 

SESSIONS exists as a keen reminder that public space can (and should) be lively, invigorating, overflowing with eccentricity; committed to reflecting the social discourses and issues of our time. After all, this is precisely when artists go to work—not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. 

On a personal note, SESSIONS awakened a newfound sense of belonging and community. I have been enlivened and inspired by my queer allies on the island. I have seen, first-hand, the efforts of queer people around me to care and nurture for one another; to support our local artistic and artisanal scene; to pave the way for those still to come. 

Queerness is collective, it is a city. Queerness is personal, and it is political. But above all, queerness is radical love. And radical love? Well, that’s sweet, unyielding labour. Building a hut in the suffocating desert. Fierce, blood, gut-wrenching, yet life-giving.
(excerpt from ‘LOTS OF LOVE ALL WAYS’ by myself, for SESSIONS x SPEL’s Monthly Texts, pub. December 2023)