A passerby walking outside the Ziller building, the main stage of the National Theatre of Greece, would notice a giant banner writing “Squat.” The banner is not an eccentric poster of some play but aims to inform the public that the building has been under the occupation of drama students since February 4th.
Ziller has been transformed from the “heart” of the national theater into the “heart” of the art students’ occupation movement that has swarmed Greece since January, when drama and art students all over Greece began occupying their schools and theaters. At the moment, at least 17 buildings are under occupation.
The students are demanding that the government amend a controversial presidential decree on public sector salaries passed last December that downgraded drama school degrees, equating them with high school diplomas.
At the occupied Ziller, there are present students from various drama schools. I met Nadia, Nick, and Chrysanthi, who attend private acting schools and are members of the Drama Schools Students Coordination Body. As I walked into the building, I was surprised to find a student thoroughly cleaning a rehearsal room.
“It is the first priority for us, even before the general assembly, we have cleaning groups, and we treat the building like we are visitors,” explained Nick.
“The respect for the building came naturally to all of us; I have cleaned Ziller more times than I have cleaned my own house,” added Chrysanthi.
“The cleaning personnel are still coming so as not to lose their wages; they come one or two times a day; however, we do not let them clean, although they insist. The guards of the building are also here,” stated Nadia.
In fact, the squat is full of lists with rules and reminders. “We make sure no damage is caused to the building, everyone is responsible for cleaning,” reads a list on a bright pink piece of paper.
The only sign inside the building which indicates that it is indeed under occupation is a mattress on the stairs, used by students to sleep or rest during the night.
“Throughout the day there is a steady group of 100–120 students that is constantly renewed, depending on what activities are taking place. At night, it is not possible for the building to accommodate so many people, but it still has a large number of people in it, a few dozens for sure,” stated Nick.
For drama students, the presidential decree was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as it made an already bad situation even worse. Effectively, it means that if they ever find work in the public sector, they will be placed on the same salary scale as high school graduates. However, even before the presidential decree, drama school degrees were effectively not recognized by the state and graduates could not use them to pursue further studies or find a job outside of theater.
“It just gave us a very good reason to act. Things were already pretty bad; our degrees were not recognized, and our salary prospects were very grim,” said Chrysanthi.
“It was like putting a stamp on the problem, like a tombstone. With the degrees we will receive from our drama schools, we cannot pursue any postgraduate studies,” stated Nadia.
“However, this is not only a problem of the current government; it is a problem that has gone on for decades. The way culture is treated and the main problems regarding our sector did not appear with the current government,” she added.
Mattress inside the squat. Photograph: Aris Dimitrakopoulos
It seems that the students have already scored a small victory, as the Prime Minister met with their representatives last week and proceeded to pass some minor legislation, which did not solve the main problem.
“He did not solve the main thing, which is the amendment of the presidential decree,” highlighted Nadia.
“I feel that the government wants to listen, but I doubt it is willing to act,” added Chrysanthi.
Furthermore, Nick explained that occupying their schools was the only way to make the government take them seriously. “There were a lot of protests before the squats, but this dialogue was constantly discontinued, so we had to try to make our voices heard,” he said.
“But I also want to stress that all the squats, from their beginning, were very peaceful, as were the protests,” he added.
“The squats were started by the National Theatre students; however, the word got out to the other drama schools and we started to gather at the National Theatre squat and coordinate together. It took time; we started to gather and hold assemblies for many hours with many people,” explained Nadia.
According to the students, decisions at the squat are made by a general assembly that takes place every day and lasts several hours with over 100 participants.
“The longest assembly lasted for 12 hours and had a steady body of 100 people, but I don’t know how many people participated in total; we do assemblies every day,” stated Nick.
“Most of the time, we make our decisions with a majority vote when there is not a major disagreement. If there are 100 people and 55 vote for something and 45 vote against it, then you have to discuss it again because the difference is very small. The procedures are very democratic,” concluded Chrysanthi.
Throughout its term, the right-wing Mitsotakis government has had a zero-tolerance policy against squats, sending heavily armed police forces to raid them and arrest their occupants. In some raids, there have been incidents of police brutality. However, it has until now kept a relatively moderate stance towards the artists and students, with the police not intervening.
“Of course it exists at the back of your head,” said Chrysanthi about the possibility of a police raid against the squat.
“It would be wrong to attack and suppress young people that do not harm anyone; they are not creating problems; they protect the building and just stand up for their rights,” she added.
“At first, this thought was more intense as we did not know how the whole thing would play out; however, from the moment the Board of Directors took a (favorable) position, as it should, the fear of suppression has somewhat subsided,” said Nick.
“The National Theatre’s Board of Directors has announced that they support us, but this remains to be seen,” explained Nadia.
“There hasn’t been any incidence with the police at the squat but there have been incidents in protests. A few days ago, there was an incident during the teachers and artists protest at the Athens Concert Hall, where they (the police) used tear gas against a very peaceful protest,” added Nick.
Students sitting outside Ziller. Photograph: Aris Dimitrakopoulos
It should be noted that, besides drama schools, other art schools have also been occupied by students. The Athens School of Fine Arts, the oldest and most prestigious school of fine arts in Greece, is also under occupation since the 13th of February. Even though the presidential decree does not directly affect fine arts students, in their announcement they expressed their solidarity with the drama students and listed a number of demands.
A few hundred meters from the Ziller building is the atelier of Georgia Sagri, a visual artist, author, and Professor of Performance at the Athens School of Fine Arts. Although she is now watching from the sidelines, in 2011, Sagri was the one who did the occupying, albeit on another continent, as she was a founding organizer of the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States.
“I’m happy for my students; I was here (at the atelier) when I heard that they decided to have an occupation. They also decided that they did not want any professors at school, which is a great idea. We (the professors) are supporting them emotionally,” said Sagri regarding the occupation of her school.
“There are so many problems in the art sector and in the education of art that this particular law is just the tip of the iceberg; a law always reveals the iceberg,” added Sagri.
“This law basically tells you, ‘You don’t need a paper to do your art’, ‘You don’t need a degree to do your art.” This is a really post-war attitude; it is a moment where art is seen as something that only privileged people can do; there is complete social exclusion, and the thing is that it was already like that. Since the creation of the Greek state, art has been assumed to be something that rich people do, and by degrading the education of art it means that it is not something everyone can do,” she expounded.
Furthermore, Sagri claimed that Greece’s dependence on tourism has further diluted the quality of culture in the country.
“Culture has been given the role of playing the masquerade for tourism; they (the government) want us all to do productions for tourism, and everything is connected to the economy of tourism. How people that their lives are connected to art, not as a hobby or as a special thing, not because they are privileged and they want to express themselves, how they are going to be able to live? They won’t be able to live unless they provide a service,” she said.
“The tourists do not want only to look at zombies, they want something to happen, this is what they think that culture is, something that is happening, so people can see each other and not look like they are living dead, they want to pretend to be alive,” she added.
However, according to her, the exploitation of art by the Greek state is not a new phenomenon.
“This is not something that is happening now; this has been the cultural policy of Greece since I can remember. The state treats art and artists only as a tool,” she explained.
“Art is a matter of survival, art is not an extra. We try to explain to people that they don’t have the capacity to understand, that people may not have money to pay rent, but they prefer not to pay rent and buy paint instead. If this is not understood, how is it possible to have any conversation? The amount of gap between the elite and the people is huge. There is a humongous gap between whom this government represents and from what background this government comes and the entire population,” concluded Sagri.
At some point the discussion went towards comparing the Occupy movement in the United States and the artist’s movement taking place right now in Greece, with Sagri stressing the importance of “the moment” in politics.
“Because there is oppression, there is the need to feel a sense of togetherness, there is a need, sort of like a treatment that the social intellect formulates to re-establish its strength. There have always been occupations at that level of oppression,” she stated.
“We need to pay very close attention to the gravity of the moment, when there is no gravity, when there is no attention to the moment; something takes it, like fear, shock, anxiety for a supposed future, lethargy, etc.,” explained Sagri.
The occupied Ziller building. Photograph: Aris Dimitrakopoulos
It seems that students are also constantly fighting to retain the “moment” and keep their movement relevant and active.
“We are constantly chasing the momentum, and we are constantly feeling like we have lost it; one moment we feel that we are riding the wave, and the next we feel that it’s gone,” said Nadia.
“We suffer some crises of futility; sometimes it feels like hitting your head on the wall. They ask us what will happen in the future; how are we supposed to know? The reality, the ‘now,’ is very intense,” she added.
“From the moment that none of our demands have been fulfilled, it is very important to persist, as the presidential decree is still there. We have not been tired to a point where the continuation of this thing (the squat) is questioned,” stated Nick.
“The mental fatigue makes you want to find something even bigger, to find another solution. It is not like ‘I am tired, I quit,’ but ‘I am tired, I have to take this thing further.’ We are all thinking that we have to continue, so we did not do all this for nothing. Furthermore, we take strength from the new occupations taking place every day,” explained Chrysanthi.
So how does such a movement maintain its momentum? The students have discussed the idea of trying to expand their movement beyond the narrow realms of theater and art to wider society.
“It’s something we talk about a lot lately, how our struggle has been reshaped, where it is going, and whether it is meaningful to continue. We were discussing that we may now need a more pointed and politicized slogan,” stated Nadia.
“It’s not by accident that, especially during the last days, we approached other sectors of society; we are really trying to broaden our struggle. At the beginning, it was not like this; it was much more narrow,” she added.
But this will not be an easy task, last Friday, the National Theatre’s Board of Directors publicly called for students to end their occupation. Furthermore, it is always possible that the government will change its stance and send police forces to storm the squats.
Additionally, the longer a grassroots horizontal political movement goes on, the more likely it is for cracks and disagreements to appear amongst its members. “We are tired,” said unenthusiastically a student sitting outside the theater, before adding that he has lost his passion about the general assemblies.
However, the students do not lose hope and state that even if at the end the government does not amend the presidential decree, they will still feel that they have achieved something, as their movement has raised awareness for their cause and will improve the standing of the next generation of actors.
“This will leave awareness, and this is the most important thing. Even if we don’t receive any answer (to our demands), we have won from all this. I have seen even some of my professors change their minds; it is not easy to change the opinion of a 50-year-old person,” said Chrysanthi.
“In my opinion, we will not achieve all of our goals, but at least those coming after us will not start from zero; they will have something to build on,” she explained.
“We have in mind that this struggle is also about those that will come after us,” added Nadia.
“A potential defeat should not scare us; we have to start getting over that because a lot of people may tell us, ‘You lost.’ Of course, at some point this will end, we will not be forever at the Ziller building, but at the same time we will be, because this is the National Theatre and it should not be in the hands of anyone else but the actors,” she concluded.
As I was leaving the Ziller building, I looked across the street and saw dozens of banners from various organizations and groups supporting the drama students. It is true that the future of the movement is uncertain and its accomplishments are debatable; however, in an age of apathy, individualism, and suppression, people taking bold, collective political action to stand up for their rights is sometimes a victory in itself.
