firefox-translations-models/evaluation/el-en/mtedx_test.argos.en

At the age of 12, it was the first time I had to face myself.
It was the year I started sports and changed school.
I was now a student of my city’s music school and was completely at the age of puberty.
My schoolmates were talented children with various occupations.
Others played music, others football, and others were just better than me.
Or at least I did.
I felt that in many areas I was lagging behind in relation to my peers and in relation to what I had in mind that I could be and become in the future.
Think, I was overweight, shy and not popular.
This situation I thought I didn't deserve, so I started looking for ways to change it.
My first move was to Google, as we all do today, how to be better, smarter, how to win impressions in a company, and I continued doing all sorts of similar searches.
I began reading everyday books and self - improvement articles.
At some point I thought a very good choice besides the online articles would be a book that would have condensed knowledge of me.
And I went to a bookstore.
I was learning about techniques and methods that could help me improve and I was trying to apply them.
I studied the posture of the body, the tone of voice, the speed of speech, and I sought to control the style of every conversation.
So, as you can see, it was very difficult to do all this from scratch, all of a sudden, and study all this at the same time and it was utopian to think that I would do so simply.
That's how I realized that the theory from the act was a long way away, and somewhere there I began to think that I would never get where I wanted and with disappointment in my face growing.
And then, one event was about to change my whole theory around life, and for several things, at least as I realized about myself.
It was a simple suggestion from a professor at my school to take part in a big short film competition.
We took part and distinguished ourselves in the best teams of the competition, and that was when I saw something very important.
The next day after our success I asked myself a few questions.
What made me feel happy and relieved when I made it? Why do I think I can't pursue my dreams? Why would I be afraid to lose something I never had, and why would fear defeat overshadow the fear of victory? What is it that I really seek from my life and what is my purpose? There are very strange things going on around us every day.
Millions of people are born and die at the same time with no idea that we have been co-existing or co-existing with them for a time.
Billions of people have completely different ideas and perceptions and beliefs from us.
And there are these people who we consider rare and unique and we are happy and happy to be next to us.
But they and others and we all have one thing in common.
This time between birth and death we call life.
So life, as you all know, isn't fun, right? Wrong!
Life is play, laugh, cry, claim, risk, win and lose.
So life is a very big game and has many parameters and many rules.
Some of the rules we know from the beginning and some other parameters and rules we learn them later playing this game.
A very important part of the games is to set your own framework and rules from the beginning so that you reach the desired result.
You actually have a goal you're trying to reach and succeed, and that can only happen if you move right.
But what is the right path that will lead you to the target? There's probably no right path.
There's only the road you're gonna make.
And if your path leads you to the target, then your reward comes.
Does this script ring a bell? Hmm, That's about what happens in our lives.
You see, games are connected and influenced by life.
Should this happen in our lives? Many times we have thought that this is our last chance to succeed, we live with deadlines that others define for us, and this makes us afraid of failure, and therefore do many times wrong or sometimes not do at all.
Imagine now what our lives would be like if it had been influenced by toys.
At first, there would be no fear of failure, because we all know that in games you always have a second chance.
Even when the lives and opportunities in your game are reduced, you are able to raise them and make life and game last longer.
Besides, why not do the same in our lives? Every time we fail at something, we automatically raise our success rate to the next attempt.
If you think of that, it's great!
Another important element we often detect in games is time.
If you have noticed, usually, many games do not become harder but faster.
That's what's happening, actually.
For example, today, here, I could make a better speech in my own game, but the TEDx production set me a certain time to talk, thus making the game faster, not harder.
So because we know that our time is limited to this game and the hourglass only turns once, we define our own degree of difficulty in relation to it.
Most of the time we think it's either hard enough for us, or we don't have time.
Think about that.
We are bound by the same thing, considering it two different.
This confusion often leads us to inactivity.
The way to escape this is to have a clear purpose in our game and by extension in our lives.
Time is the only property we have.
It's that hourglass that when you turn it around, you suddenly start to feel the pressure for action.
This is your key that helps you lock the door of inertia.
And you need to lock her up well because she's gonna find a lot of ways to escape in order to create confusion and lure you.
So if you manage to believe and see life as a big game, then it is very likely that you will locate your destination.
You will realize that you are the protagonist of this game and you will begin to seek out the rules you must follow and all your potential opponents.
Then you'll discover a very big void.
There are no rules to follow and there are usually no opponents who want to beat you.
It's you, deeds and time.
What there is is your time and actions.
Even time is a human invention that you will never be able to understand, and when you find that out, you will understand that you are fighting completely alone.
So the whole burden falls on you and the actions you'll do.
In decisions of secondary importance, it is useful to examine the pros and cons.
But in critical matters, decisions should come from your heart.
Success lies within you.
So listen and feel your heart and let her show you the right strategy for your game.
Depend on a target and pursue it.
If you hit him, you'll enjoy the result.
If not, you'll have enjoyed the journey.
In any case, you'll have discovered, because it's worth taking risks, because it's worth claiming, and because it's worth playing.
Those who have a "why" to live with can withstand any "how" Nietzsche has said.
That's why we all have to answer it.
The day you find out will be the most important day of your life.
Look inside you without fear and you'll find it.
I found it a few years ago after a simple contest.
Now it's your turn.
Thank you.
(Applause)
In order for our economy to get back into stable growth orbit, they'll have to change jobs half with a million people.
That's 10 to 20% of the workforce.
And when I say change jobs, I don't mean work more productive or more or more honest or smarter.
I mean change the subject.
And let's see why.
If we divide the economy, the sectors of the economy into two categories: To the left the non-marketers, i.e. those who cannot be offered from afar and therefore are not subject to international competition.
To the right, the marketers, i.e. the products that can be transferred to industrial, or agricultural, services that can be offered to foreigners.
Tourism, shipping and various forms of technology marketable such as software.
The problem of our economy, the structural, beyond the budget, is that we have very few jobs right and comparatively many left.
And to get on our feet, hundreds of thousands of jobs will have to come from there, here.
Let's see another category.
To divide them into branches that need large and organized businesses that mean capital, hierarchies etc. and those that can be made and made today by small businesses.
Those who talk about investments and hope that "investments" will come in quotes, they actually hope that the jobs will come in ready packages here, on top of the large competing companies well designed, landscaped, with their hierarchies and equipment.
And indeed, the international model of an outgoing economy is this.
The large industries, the large companies rather in the competitive industries are those that make exports or those that prevent large export penetration from outside, which defend the domestic market.
To us, this model cannot dominate.
And the reason is that our entire society, our entire institutional environment, is plotting not to have many large businesses in the competitive industries.
At the moment, not even 5% of the workforce is working in large businesses up there.
And when I say grown-ups, have over 250 employees, not huge.
Not even 5%.
About 25% work in large organizations or in the state, and especially in the state, in the non-market sectors.
And 70% is the small and medium-sized economy.
And of this 70%, at least half are self-employed and farmers.
So the great adjustment we have to make is from all the non-marketable sector and from all the unemployed's reservoir to create jobs here in the small, export, outward-looking economy.
Now, this is an orbit that is not at all common internationally.
We have no standards to copy.
We should create our own orbit quite peculiar, quite Greek.
Greek households will succeed because they have certain elements that do not exist to a very large extent in the west.
First of all, the self-employed and micro-enterprise has commerciality.
He can manage receipts and payments.
He knows how to set up new jobs that an executive of a big firm in the west who has made his career in a hierarchy doesn't necessarily know.
Then there is the famous work of the Greek family.
The different sources of income, some different assets, a field from here, some rent from there, a pension, the wife's salary in the state that's stable, etc. And that's important why? Because the research that has been done internationally, statistical research, on who are the main factors that convince someone to become a businessman, to start a new job of their own, the most important factor in statistics is to have an obituary, a small fortune, something.
This factor statistically is more important than even character elements.
That is, if we have a dangerous spirit and all. I therefore believe that Greek households have all the evidence to achieve this great shift I have spoken about.
And so I don't think it's hard to imagine a philologist leaving school and going to tourism, or an engineer going back to his native field and trying something new, a new crop, - no innovation has been found for the rock as I see - or three new technicians planning applications for the global digital economy, which some of the best have here today.
There will be too many obstacles.
And one of the biggest are the patterns we carry in our heads.
The patterns we carry in our heads will be one of the biggest obstacles, patterns for what? What, for example, is a good job.
For me, for my child.
Or what kind of business are the best businesses for the national economy.
In 1980, the model the dominant, the western model, was that growth means industry.
And we, our standards happen to... ...we're not working rationally.
As Stelios would say, we import them.
There are dominant Western accounts that match the west but may not fit us.
Well, in the '80s it said the dominant model: "development means industry".
And that's why Andrew. Papandreou, the charismatic Andreas Papandreou had said then, if you remember: "We will not become the garsons of Europe."
And he painted tourism negatively for many years.
Imagine if he had said: "We want to be the hosts of all Europe".
Coming here, meeting each other, having fun, having fun, looking.
How different a narrative there would be about tourism.
Today, a dominant model says growth is infrastructure and organization.
And that's true to some extent, some.
But for us, we must have a wise balance between infrastructure and organization on the one hand and our own particular characteristics.
And continue with an example, tourism.
The foreigners to come to our island will land at Eleftherios Venizelos.
They will contact an organized airport, which only major organizations and infrastructure and projects can have.
The top of the painting I was pointing at before.
But they're obviously not coming to the airport.
Then they'll get on a boat, which, if it's fast and clean, will make them reach their destination in good spirits and rest.
And the ship obviously only a large company can operate it properly.
But it's still not why the ship comes.
The reason they come is after they leave the ship on the island, what are they going to do there? They'll go to the small business and rent a pig and start the adventures.
And they'll get here.
And they'll lie here.
And they'll drop by after the company fund and pay here.
And in the afternoon they'll go and buy honey produced by another small business at her facility, which is them.
Well, the airport and the ship are not our product, it's the channel to reach our products.
Which is the route with the pig, the beach, the tavern, etc. And these are offered by the young.
And to explain, I'm not saying that the small 'Rooms to Let' is better than the big hotel units.
What I'm saying is that, since we either don't want or can't have many large units, the success of tourism will be judged by the small professionals.
How hospitable they are, how resourceful they are, how they care about the environment and how they convince the client to pay without feeling that they are stealing it.
I therefore believe that the airport and the pig are a good illustration of the whole development model.
We need the good infrastructure that only planning and major hierarchies and large capitals can provide, and in this we must not differ from the west.
We must have these standards.
But what will define our position in the global economy, which will not be the same as German or Chinese, will be the small entrepreneurs who have to find ways to sell their products everywhere.
What can we count on? Apart from the crops or tourism we have of course advantages? There's a cliché that says: "To our young people, their intelligence and their studies".
Because they are open-minded, they travel, they know languages and many of them even study at the best universities in the world.
This has some substance.
I mean, based on this evidence, we can have a few hits.
But I think not too many.
Where we can have more is if we combine these elements, intelligence and studies with some local peculiarities, which I must tell you, no one in the House can tell you.
Neither me nor anyone else.
That's what businessmen find out every day, the little entrepreneurs from job to job.
And to give an example.
Foreign language learning books.
The so-called foreign-language books and especially English.
I know at least 3 Greek publishers, who are very successful internationally.
One of them was bought a year ago by a multinational and the other two make significant exports.
From where, then, Greek publishers in English language learning.
We have this peculiarity.
In most countries children learn English at school and their books are taken from either the big multinationals or some domestic publishers, one or two with long-term contracts.
We here don't learn English at school.
We learn them in the school where there are six thousand in Greece and which each decides what books he will take and decides them again the following year.
Thus a very competitive market has been created for publishers for English language learning, which is about 15 right now and most are domestic, they are Greek.
The other characteristic of Greece, the peculiarity again, is that Greek students want to be finished with English, with tutorials and exams at 16.
Because then we have to start the other national tutorials.
So this gives rise to a need for teaching methods that are shorter and faster.
Faster than multinational publishers have developed.
And so the Greek publishers pressing on this particularity made products that are competitive internationally.
Pressing on an institutional peculiarity of Greece.
Careful now.
How many will admit that this form of tutorials that some contemptuously call it mischildhood created a know-how that is competitive internationally, which the official school will never create.
These are the dominant accounts, the dominant standards I was talking about before that sometimes hindering us.
And say another example? There is a Greek model, business, Internet Cafes, that go students at afternoons and play online adventure games with their company.
This model is an international prototype.
It doesn't exist in Europe.
And it is very beneficial for students because it develops a spirit of cooperation since they play together, and of course other complex abilities, things that the Greek school does not give them.
But the state faces the Internet Cafes with enormous suspicion of gambling behind it.
And he tries in various ways to shut them down.
And entrepreneurs cannot defend their jobs by citing European standards because they are not comparable.
In other words, their specificity, which could be an advantage, is a disadvantage because of the suspicion of the state.
In 1976, on my first job, I was working on a research project for the Ministry of Education and the World Bank.
And there were some foreign counselors coming to help us at work.
At one point a professor of economic history appeared from a very large, well-known American university.
We were in a building on Ermou Street.
During a break of work he asked me about my thesis - I then did a thesis - which was about monopoly concentration in the Greek industry.
I was very influenced at the time by the neo-Marxist theories of development.
The neo-Marxist theories of development that talked about the dependence and underdevelopment of the European region.
So when he asked me I started telling him about the metropolises of capitalism that are gathering all the technology there, and how underdeveloped my country is.
He listened very patiently to me, and at the end he says: "All right, but have you noticed the coffee maker's record?" and he meant... this.
He meant that.
So he explained to me how amazingly designed he is, to touch his fingers loosely and with the weight of the glass stabilizing and when the coffee maker goes up and down the stairs of the ministry not to spill the water.
And he says: "So well designed album, I, in America have not seen".
And I have to admit, it left me stunned.
I was talking to him about the big accounts and he was talking to me about the coffee maker's record.
I learned something that day.
That the real economy you don't learn by reading, you learn it by observing.
And that technology is not only what is in Intel's labs, but the choices each professional makes every day.
Will you tell me why I'm saying this? Obviously, I'm not saying this to say the records will save our economy.
I'm saying because I think he's right, Nikos Reader, the blogger who writes about technology, when he wrote in a recent post very nice: "Extroversion doesn't have to be impressive".
Competition doesn't have to be impressive.
Well, our new extrovert micro-enterprises won't fit into some big narrative, they won't have the official blessing of the state we call a pharmacy today.
They will not be considered a function nor will they have the confidence of the public, nor the glamour of careers in a large company, nor will they have copied successful models from Business Week.
They'll be improvised, they'll look like rough and Balkan and mysterious.
Owners alone should invent the narrative that will give meaning and duration to what they do.
The rest of us don't underestimate them because they're the ones who'll get us out of this.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Hello.
When I was asked to speak at TEDxAcademy this year, the first obvious question, of course, was what is the issue and I admit that the answer troubled me.
"Evolution," I was told.
What do I have to do with evolution? I can talk to you about many unpleasant developments in my country, but that is not the point.
I thought about it a little bit, I didn't mean to say no.
It was an honorable invitation, and suddenly I got what the younger "flashes" say.
An inspiration.
And I said that here Europe, 60 and more years, makes the most impressive, revolutionary, political experiment.
Well, let me talk to you about that.
Let me tell you the good news, tell you the bad news and close in a few words about Greece.
Well, my theme today is experiment Europe.
What were the goals of this experiment that began in the 1950s? First of all, the consolidation of peace in a Europe with open borders.
Remember on a small continent, fragmented, with many states carrying on their backs a long, glorious history, but full of wars and bloody conflicts.
Second objective: achieving economic prosperity by creating a large, free, competitive European market, but at the same time by creating those tools that would help the least developed countries and regions of Europe converge.
Third objective: strengthening democratic institutions, particularly in countries with a troubled political past.
And fourth objective: the application of the ancient verb: 'power in union', that is, in a world that changes very quickly, in a world that size counts, the countries of Europe, even the great and mighty ones, no longer have the special weight or size to be protagonists on the world stage, nor even usually secondary players.
These were the main goals.
What are the means we use to achieve these goals? Firstly, the establishment of a culture of cooperation and dialogue.
In Europe, we choose and negotiate to death.
Endless.
But, to tell you the truth, I prefer seventeen-hour negotiations, even after midnight, than shooting each other, as we used to do for centuries in Europe.
And a second instrument: the creation of common institutions and policies on which this culture of cooperation will be based.
Will you tell me all this sounds good in words, but in practice what can be done? My answer is simple: that too much has happened.
Europe became unrecognizable within 50 years.
And you want me to tell you differently? What is the proof of the success of the European political experiment, at least until the last few years? Think of Europe as a small shop, starting in the 1950s, it is small, poor, sells only two products, essentially coal and steel.
These were the two products with which the European Coal and Steel Community started.
And six members.
Today, this small store has been turned into a huge supermarket, selling everything, although different always quality products, and it has increased its clientele tremendously.
From six members we became 28 and many more gathered at the entrance to enter.
I don't think there's much more proof of a store's success than constantly increasing your turnover and clientele.
And add something else, and consider yourself, until relatively recently, a model for the rest of the world.
Good news, but let's get to the bad news.
And there's bad news.
Europe is in crisis.
The crisis is deep.
You will tell me crises Europe has had many before.
But my answer would be that this crisis is fundamental, it is in danger of becoming an existential crisis for the European political experiment.
So why a crisis? Let me explain.
Obviously, the list is not exhaustive.
One first reason why Europe is in crisis is because sometimes, probably, we went too fast, without enough preparation, without thinking about the consequences of our actions.
I will give you a very simple and characteristic example.
It is the example of the euro.
We decided in Europe in the early 1990s to make a common currency.
This is the height of the European political experiment.
It is the most advanced stage of political evolution.
But we have created this common currency, but we have not created either the institutional or political background on which it will be based, nor the financial instruments that will make the euro sustainable.
In other words, we tried to repeat to politics and the economy, the miracle of immaculate conception.
I mean, currency without a state.
A currency without a state does not exist in history and we learn this "the hard way", which the Turks say.
That's the first explanation.
The second is that we were unprepared, but we were also unlucky.
Because he did not have time for the euro to complete his ten years of life and the breaking of the largest international financial bubble came from 1929.
No one could predict it, that's unfortunate.
So it's also a lack of preparation and apparently unfortunate.
But there are other reasons.
The third category refers to reasons relating to the interior of our countries.
What's been going on for 20-30 years? In European countries, but also in all the developed countries of the Western world? Economic inequalities are constantly expanding.
This is much more pronounced in the United States and Britain than in most mainland European countries.
At the same time, the number of our fellow citizens who feel that they are losing, that they can no longer cope with the competition that is being created, who are losing to globalisation and European unification, is increasing constantly.
These people are turning against globalisation and against Europe.
If we do not find a way to deal with this problem, the problem will grow further over the next few years.
And the fourth reason is: it's not the best neighborhood.
Let me remind you, if you see the map of Europe, we only have a neighborhood to the east and south.
To the north there are only polar bears and in the west we have fish.
So we're dealing with neighbors in the East and the South.
These neighbors are not doing well.
Most of Europe's neighbours belong to the category of losers of globalisation.
And to all this economic problem has come to be added in recent years to war and religious conflicts.
One of the results of all these problems in our neighbourhood is the huge increase in migration flows.
The immigration crisis is in danger of becoming a crisis in Europe before which the euro crisis will pale, and a crisis that can blow Europe up.
Europe definitely needs to show solidarity with people being persecuted.
He needs to discuss a fairer distribution of weights.
But a third condition is needed.
This is the effective control of the external borders of Europe, in general, and of Greece, as it is throughout Europe.
So, with this crisis in recent years, we have come to a situation in which our partnership within the EU is becoming difficult.
Disgusting, accepting the European political experiment is constantly declining.
And that is why this sometimes seems like a symbiosis, which I called in a book I wrote last year and was released in various languages, 'the unfortunate union', namely Europe is in danger of becoming a symbiosis in a polygamous relationship in which partners stay in, not so much because they love each other, but because they fear the cost of divorce, or why they fear being left alone.
You will tell me fear holds many marriages.
But I do not think it will be enough for a successful European partnership.
And now a few words about Greece.
As you know, Greece has been an integral part of this European political experiment for many decades.
The relationship between Greece and Europe has sometimes been very epic.
I would say that people in Greece, our fellow citizens, at least those who consider our participation in the political experiment European, a positive development, can be divided into three major categories.
The first category includes our fellow citizens who believe that Europe is like a cow that you milk as much as you can.
These people, usually, have a very relaxed approach to how common rules apply.
Any rules, whether Greek or European.
A second category sees Europe as the safe anchor for a ship, the Greek, which often seems ungovernable, because crew members are constantly arguing with each other, because they don't let the captain take the wheel, because everyone has a different view of where to go.
And this often ungoverned ship is also forced to travel in very difficult seas.
Because the neighbourhood of Greece is difficult.
So, in this category, Greece offers a safe anchor.
There is also a third category, to which fewer belong, I think.
Although, I think, most of them are suspicious.
They are the ones who have considered our participation in the European political experiment from the beginning as an additional, not only, an additional instrument for achieving a goal that goes far back, in the Greek Revolution, if you like, or even before: the creation of a modern, European state in Greece, a rule of law with strong democratic institutions, with economic prosperity and social solidarity.
Obviously, these three categories have always been the vast majority of Greek and Greek women.
There were, of course, always the others.
The others, who, either for whom Europe says nothing, never meant anything, perhaps because Europe represents what they call 'urban values' and 'urban democracy' themselves, which does not satisfy them.
Either because some people fantasize about Greece in another part of the world that is not exactly clear where that will be.
And of course in recent years, with the great crisis, extreme nationalists have also come out of the caves.
So this crisis in Europe changes internal balance within the country.
Unfortunately, Greece has ended up in recent years being the most problematic member, certainly the Eurozone, probably the entire European Union.
Of course the big question is, "Who is to blame for all this?" I don't have the time, about three minutes left, to answer this question.
I'll answer it directly.
I believe that the management of the Greek crisis in recent years will already be, but much more in the future, a lesson taught at more and more universities, not only in Greece but internationally.
Because it's just the example of a crisis that says what you shouldn't do in a similar crisis.
And responsibility concerns not only, to be fair, the country's political leadership and our society in general, but also our European partners and the International Monetary Fund.
It is, in other words, a realization of a great, enormous responsibility for a failed crisis management, whose cost is certainly too high.
And I get to the end.
What are we doing from now on? Certainly, Europe must change if it wants to overcome the crisis.
I know that in TEDx the speaker or speaker who will come here is expected to deliver a positive message.
We need optimism.
If I only brought you a positive message, I think I'd make fun of you.
What is at stake today in Europe is huge.
There is, of course, the possibility that Europe will overcome this crisis with more unity and change.
But the risk of Europe getting bogged down or even having ruptures or partial dissolution is really visible.
And the first thing I wanted to say to all of you is that you think that the success of the European political experiment is a matter for all of us, it is something that directly concerns all of us and our children.
If Europe's political experiment fails, one of the biggest victims of failure will be this country.
So do your best, as active citizens of the European Union, to contribute, as far as possible, each and every one to achieve this European experiment.
And finally, something else.
Certainly, Europe must change.
But I believe that before Europe changes, we must change Greece.
We must finally be honest, look in the mirror, take responsibility, see what is wrong with this country, try to free the country from its shackles.
Only when we start changing Greece will we have a credible and good reason for how Europe will change.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Let's talk about ideas.
The ideas are alive.
They come to us through questions, images, coincidences, even dreams.
They're attractive.
[Idea] We are excited, led to wonderful streets, which are full of challenges and unexpected developments.
They give us strength, but they also have their own potential.
A dynamic that helps them evolve and affect more and more people, who feedback them and thus keeps the enthusiasm and inspiration they exude.
Although I prepared a speech and uttered it, I wish, well enough to tell you today, I am sure that the ideas and synergies that are coming will probably diverge from what I wanted to say, but let me start and see.
German philosopher Edmund Husserl had described that each man is the center of the world.
This is because he perceives the world as a starting point and a measure of comparison.
What he describes is that every man has a completely personal image of the world, which passes through his emotional or logical filter.
We could say as Greeks: between Apollonios and Dionysian self.
This balance between our two sides has gradually begun to recede.
And that's because reason begins to dominate.
Although we perceive the world mainly with experience - that is, we describe a distance, not in measures, but in how many minutes we can walk it - we are still trying to rationalize everything.
We could say: square them.
The ideas that brought me here today concern architecture, but particularly an architecture, which tries to satisfy the conditions of modern and future man, but through the bridge of emotion and reason, from the experiential to the metric space.
Modern man is active.
We understand this from intense life rates and often from the frequent change in our way of life.
The established architectural stillness does not seem to satisfy this condition.
And that is why the first idea, which I will tell you about, is flexibility.
Flexibility is nothing new - and I personally have often applied it within an architectural context, whether as research or practice.
But her true dimension I understood from another concern.
As a stage designer and assistant director in the amateur theater that I belonged to.
There, mainly due to [inconceivable], but also due to the challenge of creating the appropriate environment with the greatest impact at the lowest cost, I often made the sets with multi-functional objects.
That is, objects, which, depending on how they were placed in space and what orientation they had created a completely different sense.
The feeling that was necessary to convey this feeling that the play wanted.
This dimension, that is, how we understand the environment differently, I thought that as a key element of variability, it was something I looked for and I think I understood enough to gradually lead me to the creation of a theory that optimized the use of space in time.
I mean, we could use the space as best we can in time, so we wouldn't waste it.
This was named spatial economy or spatial economy.
But being involved in the theater, the truth is it led me to something else, which bothered me: The place of man in architecture.
The position of man, theoretically, is centered on design.
Nevertheless, what I have found is that it is more involved as dimensions.
And not as a experience.
In directing and directing, base is an action, an activity, and man is always centered on it.
The space fills it out.
It complements him as an expression, complements him as a general sense.
And here I was born another idea.
That architecture should probably be more concerned with this feeling, with this experience, coming out of activity, rather than in some other way.
So, he was born - or rather, because that was something that already worked - was activity-based design, i.e. design based on activity.
This is a design direction that has a qualitative difference from ordinary design.
That: does not understand activity as fragmentary use, which leads to ergonomics, but as a whole.
As something, which has a time print and varies experimentally depending on time.
This thing, this dimension, this perspective, means we enrich the architectural question beyond ergonomics.
With other features, so that the architectural answer is better.
Here I would like to emphasise this: The role of architecture is to give answers.
The answers are dependent on how well the questions were asked.
A well formulated question means a better answer.
And in our case: a better architectural solution.
Thus, the creation of a methodology, which was enriched with more issues, for which the space should be addressed, led to the formation of spatial needs around an activity, to be better defined, so that the architecture would come to dress them.
Thus, the logic of the dynamic building program was created, which led in turn to the creation of an online platform, where people, through an application that they already probably use, such as Google Calendar, can go through their activities and thus better understand their spatial needs or what kind of spaces they need to become better.
And in this way, in principle, evaluate the existing sites they have, but also better identify futures on the basis of their future needs.
Of course, this application could not be implemented unless we have disseminated information.
I belong to the generation that I lived through all the passage to today's digital culture, let's call it.
I was 13 years old when the first personal computers came out and I was, perhaps, one of the first to deal with it.
In fact, an activity that was hidden, as it was not very popular at the time because we had the girls.
And I lived all the way through how everyone slowly began to engage.
In fact, to such an extent that with some of my old friends we have been discussing that we should probably stop dealing with why this acceptance of mass is strange.
The point is that these two, i.e. this digital era brought to everyone two, say, basic concepts in our lives.
That of automation and that of interconnection.
[automatic + interface] Automation is something that is done for us without our assistance.
So it's something that's considered beneficial, it's programmed that way to happen without us spending time and energy. The interconnection, on the other hand, is the ability, in various ways, to communicate with remote people and parts.
These two are so intense today, so widespread, so data, that their absence really is unpleasant to us.
This means that these two technologies are perfectly logical to be integrated into the area.
That is: it is a logical next step and this leads to robotic architecture.
The robotic architecture - the research I have done and my work with it - has clearly and surely shown me that it is feasible.
That is to say, the technical problems I considered in its application seemed to be solved and really solved.
I was excited about it.
In essence, it is the height of variability in architecture.
Good? It is indeed the combination of many ideas with different beginnings that came and completed a puzzle, a puzzle, which I thought had been completed, that is, either in terms of theory, methodology or application, all the pieces had been set up so that robotic architecture could be applied.
So I thought a bigger idea had been formed and completed.
I was so excited about what I wrote and a book on it.
But the thing is, like I told you before, the ideas are alive.
And that came to prove to me something simple, a door.
Tell me, what did a door do? Open up.
Will you tell me what you expected from a door? Come on!
That's what I thought.
The point is that this door when it opened while I was working and I was absorbed, I was annoyed, I was quite annoyed.
In fact, to the extent that this began to puzzle me why it happened and suddenly I think I might have had one of the most important ideas I had in this area.
I mean, although something is considered useful, expected, even if we have asked it to happen, if it happens at the wrong time, it is unpleasant.
It doesn't matter what that is.
[the weird] And this, all of a sudden, hit me with that bell on something that, in a sense, lurked, but didn't see it.
So while robotic architecture seems to have so many benefits, why isn't it more widespread? And I figured out why she might be annoying.
What makes communication between people undisturbed and pleasant is the quality of empathy and understanding.
That is, to understand, to read a situation and adapt our behavior so that it is compatible with this situation.
If someone does not have this ability, he behaves exactly the same or similar in all possible situations, then there is a embarrassment that leads in turn to the downturn of communication.
Unfortunately robotic systems have a predicted and usually similar behavior.
And that can be excellent if we have a use with recurring duty, such as assembling something or screwing a screw 24 hours a day, but when you're dealing with people, that's problematic, because people often change both mood and behavior.
And in order to be pleasant, you have to follow it.
The incorporation of empathy and understanding into the cognitive characteristics of a robotic system, in essence gave birth to the -as- methodology of design or integration of technology into architecture, Sensponsive, derived from the word sensibility, meaning empathy with understanding, and responsive meaning response.
Such a system, then, will never react to a situation unless it first understands the mood of people in space.
Of course, a system that will really fully understand all situations is far from our potential.
But what we can do about it, we work on, is depending on the activity we want to benefit from through our architecture, we study the dominant factors.
Those factors that benefit her more directly.
Another feature of this application, that is, beyond the ability to understand man, is discretion, that is, what we said before that behavior must be such as to be appropriate in circumstances.
This means, then, that the system is trying to have the proper behavior, so that it is the least disturbing.
Minimize this dimension and be as beneficial as possible.
Now will you tell me where we're applying it? And how? Right now we have two main directions in which we work on this theory.
One is about strengthening learning.
The aim is to create an original lecture space, where the listener can keep his attention for more time and learn more from the lecture.
We do this as we monitor two critical parameters: One is of attention and the other is of alertness.
When the degree of these two has fallen enough that we understand that probably listeners get the least of this lecture, then a system of discreet interventions in the space is activated, which we have experimentally confirmed in the laboratory, that when they happen, they activate the public and rejuvenate attention.
So with this Sensponsive intervention we manage the listeners of a lecture to get the most she has to give and all that remains is the lecture itself to give.
The other direction is about something mixed.
It is about the concept of habitation and the concept of psychological balance.
The aim of this research was how we can undo the negative effects of mild stress and depression, often caused by the intense life and work rates of the modern world.
For various reasons, this research ultimately focused more on extreme environments and so we found ourselves studying and building functional prototypes of a living room for astronauts at the international space station.
[indistinctly] The aim of this system was to understand people's mood in order to change the layout and environmental conditions, so as to help them calm down, better, find themselves in a psychological balance, to rest more and to withstand the continuity of their mission.
In fact, this investigation opened another door for us.
We were invited to NASA, Houston and in particular to Human Research Program, as this is one of the few approaches that really proposes a solution to improve people's living conditions on long-term missions in space.
Which is something designed for the near future.
I think that all these ideas and especially the implementation frameworks to which they led, really describe a window in the future.
They describe the application of an interactive architecture designed to create truly beneficial environments, which are free from negative effects.
In general this should be the vision of technology.
Optimism for a tomorrow, which we think is better.
Personally, in order to keep this visual clear, I write science fiction novels.
so that I can mentally live the worlds I'd like to build.
But the key ingredient for all this is ideas.
Ideas are alive and must be diffused.
[idea] Let your ideas spread out, grow, evolve, because only through them can we live the world of tomorrow, today.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
Good evening!
(Applause) I would like to talk to you today about the value of truth in our everyday lives.
First we tell truths? Let's start with us here today, which of you remember to have told a truth, we don't need to say which, to a friend, to a companion, to yourself, in the last month, say, to raise a hand.
Who's told a truth? Well done, we tell truths!
I'm glad, because I didn't know what the public's reaction to this question would be.
But what is it that we call truth? Many have claimed that truth is a mirror of our reality to which we do not always have access, because our senses are imperfect.
Others claim that the truth is a personal matter, is subjective to each of us and changes with the becoming of our lives.
I want to refer today to the truth as Heraclitus has defined, who told us that the truth is the opposite of oblivion, that is, something that needs to be revealed and brought to light.
This truth is linked to many aspects of our everyday life, indeed, linked to reality, reveals to us aspects of it, intensifys the understanding and perception of our world, promotes the self-awareness and authenticity of our personal expression, and very often leads to honesty and decision-making.
On my own personal path the truth has always been linked to architecture and the city.
Now will you tell me what this town has to do with the truth? The theoretical architect Louis Mumford has told us that the final mission of the city is to intensify the conscious participation of man in the universal and historical process.
This proliferation of all dimensions of life, through emotional union, logical communication, technological masterpiece and above all dramatic representation, has been the most important task of the city in history.
This statement made me think that our cities function as an accelerator, that is, they speed up processes, relationships, events, within which we exist, with our values and with our way of life, that is, cities create chain reactions that increase our consciousness.
Interesting here is the way.
Mumford tells us that this is happening through emotional union, logical communication, technological masterpiece and dramatic representation.
I will today focus more on technological masterpieces and dramatic representation as I have encountered them through my work.
But before we talk about technological masterpieces, I want to take a step back and look at the tools we use.
According to theoretical architects Beatrice Colomina and Mark Wigley in their book "Are we Human?", they argue that the tools we make eventually make us.
They claim, starting with Darwin's theory, that the human hand is what was adapted to his tools, not the opposite.
So basically our relationship with technology is two-way, and they go on to say that human creations are interface surfaces, which as long as we shape them, form us.
Let's take our mobile phone, which you all know, you may have noticed that changes in the design of the device over the years have changed and the way we behave, our habits, have even changed our eyes and our walking, so a technological device can change us.
How do we reverse this process? How could we affect this relationship? What if we probably designed our cell phone and its applications? What if we planned all our technological tools? This question mark, along with many others, came to answer the Maker Movement.
Maker Movement is a movement that aims to democratise technology through the creation of free software and hardware.
About 15 years ago in venues such as hacker spaces, Maker spaces and other online communities, inventor groups, researchers, developers, began sharing technological platforms with the general public and creating new technological tools accessible to everyone.
For example, microprocessors, such as Arduino, Arduino lilypad, Raspberry Pie, were created among others, and corresponding programming languages with which we can easily plan our own applications and create our own tools.
Essentially, what did Maker Movement do with it? He managed to bring new tools into the light, get them out of the black box of technology that was to this day for most of us.
Another thing Maker Movement managed to do is change our relationship with technology, make it a game, and through easy experimentation too many of us came close to technology to play, experiment and many times create innovative applications out of nowhere.
One last and very important element that Maker Movement managed is that it brought us together.
That is through sharing knowledge, through offline and online communities brought us together to create, and taught us to work collectively, in groups.
But what is the value of open technologies in the public space, especially in the field of art that concerns me? Political scientist Chantal Muf has told us that art in public space needs to question the given order of things, the Status quo.
When technology is used in art, it therefore needs not to repeat mainstream applications, the mainstream way we use it, but to be used in a different way to create new correlations.
Because we need this pluralism in the public domain, because it promotes dialogue between us.
So open technologies lead us right in this direction, because through accessibility and experimentation they allow a large group of users, experts and amateurs, to engage, propose new meanings and new representations in the public space.
Speaking of representations, I return to Mamford's saying, who told us that the dramatic representation was important and for the first time I encountered this concept when I studied architecture here, at the School of Architecture of Patras several years ago and wondered what direction to follow.
Among the visuals, urban planning, architectural landscape, I was also a little indecisive, at some point I did a work that brought out my love for the cultural landscape, i.e. I wanted to explore the relationship of the human body and look at its immediate natural and artificial environments through small-scale architecture.
I also had a curiosity about technology and how technology can participate in these experiences, so I went to London to make a corresponding master's degree.
In one of my first works I began exploring these representations and the relationship between physicist and artificial.
For example, I created Wind chime, which is a representation of metallic melodus.
I don't know if you know this, it's this musical instrument we put on the porch and it makes a metallic melody when the air blows.
In my own case, in my version, I traded the metal pipes with the plastics the wii remote controls which I programmed to produce metallic sounds, imitate them and slowly turn them into noise.
Another representation, I explored through Fabrique, this work, in which I wanted to explore our relationship with a nature that is not natural, a mechanical nature, and essentially question the concept of nature as we know it, to see what is behind it.
This work when watering these pots with light, the chains on the roof begin to move, and in the end they coordinate into a small choreography.
At some point, in my artistic quest, I decided to follow another route, that of the game.
So in 2011 with two partners, we created Athens Plaython.
Athens Plaython is a festival of horror games and new technologies.
Then in Athens we had very often phenomena of violence through marches on the streets of Athens, accompanied by arson and destruction and we wanted to give another voice, an optimistic voice, through play and collectiveness.
And we saw our city change, we saw too many, maybe thousands of people in the last special year, come play with us for a weekend and we saw the city's space change.
How did that happen? Through the game -- why? Because the game has this quality, to introduce us magically into an inner world of fiction, that is, for example it can turn the urban space into a battlefield, where various groups may negotiate a neighborhood, or start appearing mermaids, dragons, knights and so on.
But this world of fiction is not independent of the urban space, instead it contains it.
In other words, the urban space increases through the game, acquires new properties, which are created collectively.
So at that moment I realized that for me this means of representation, the game, because it brings us all inside, and creates collectives.
Later I created my workshop Entropika along with a group of partners, and we continue to create interactive facilities in the public space, for example one of our works, Cloudscapes, creates just the representation of a natural phenomenon, cloud and rain.
It basically simulates the sound of thunder and rain, and the light of lightning, when passers by below.
It was another opportunity to explore how these representations affect urban space.
In fact, in this particular work he showed me a truth after many years, that while the first works were more theoretical, with ideas that I had worked out too much, and I particularly liked, a work such as this, simpler, with a simpler idea but with a playful mood, had much more directness with the world, we had children trying to enchant it by shouting abracabra, we had passers-by putting their hood on, believing that they would get wet and we had a teenager sitting under the cloud, and once he heard the lightning he kept shouting Thor.
( Laughter) On the same street, we continued with Playstools, where again we explored the playful dimensions of the items we were making, and created a hybrid variant of the game musical chairs.
In this particular game, these stools also have extra properties, we would not leave only the physical objects, each stool has two touch sensors, they have light, they produce sound and communicate with each other via wireless network, essentially because they facilitate and can enter any space so.
They invite players to interact with the stools in each round of the game and win the team that wins most in color.
Indeed the future of this game we want to become an open educational platform where children, perhaps wiser designers than us, can raise their own games and change the rules of the game at will.
At this point I put on a dot last January, because I decided to go to Mother of Italy, where I work at Open Design School.
Open Design School is a pilot program of the cultural capital Matera 2019.
There we are invited to design structures for the public space, which serve all cultural events for it and the following year.
These structures can be stands, stand for information, theatre sets and so on.
The interesting thing here is that again we use open design tools, that is, through the philosophy of Open Structures if you know, if you don't know what it is, it's an online platform, a website and a community where everyone can share their plans, freely without copyright, with the rest of the community, and everyone can evolve them and reshare them online.
The second interesting thing is that here too we are invited to design through play and experimentation, following me as well.
So we're not invited to design the known structures, like ramps that look like stands, that can be done by anyone.
We are invited to explore through experimentation and design mysterious, playful objects that create questions for residents and the city, not to give answers directly.
So throughout my course I've seen that I return very often to Mumford's original question, what is the technology we need, what is the technological masterpiece, and what are the representations we need in the city? And the personal answer I have given is that the technological masterpiece we need must be open and accessible to everyone.
As for representations, I have seen that many of them need to be participatory, collective and invite us to play with them.
Of course this is my answer, it is my truth, and not every one of us needs to deal with art and technology to see the value of truth within the city.
Mumford at first, if you remember, had said that the truth in the city also emerges through emotional union and reasonable communication.
So our cities are us, and regardless of each one's status, each of us can truly contribute to our collective life.
So today I'd like to invite you to share a truth with my colleague, with my partner, with a friend, but before all, I'd like to invite you to share a truth with yourself.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Because I'm old cutting, I get the microphone, not the one they put in the ear.
Needless to say, because I see too many young people and I know they've been nationwide, I feel the same way tonight, and I'm just as nervous as I have to go nationwide.
Nevertheless, I prefer as old as I am rather than to be 18 and have to spend nationwide in Greece.
( Laughter) (Applause) I'll tell you a story, a fairy tale that has many beginnings.
Many have a starting point in their lives.
I don't know why I dropped too many, and every time I started off a new road.
As far as I remember, I remember him in Samos, while I wasn't born in Samos, but I went three years old with my sister who was a year and a half older than me, because our mother had got tuberculosis and we were sent to my grandfather and her older sister.
To me the whole world was Samos, that was Greece.
The pine trees, the sea, the grandfather -- who we thought was an ancient Greek because he was a professor of ancient Greek, he was in retirement -- he was only talking to us about ancients, telling us myths, and we felt that this is a happy place that we didn't want to lose at all.
And what we mostly saw is that in life as you put your shoes in the morning so you should get a book.
Because we always saw our grandfather holding a book in his hand.
When our grandfather left I thought he took everything with him and it was a new starting point.
Soon we went to Athens, went to school and at school I felt the first thing about friendship; I became friends with Georges Shari and until her last moment, when she left forever, we stayed friends.
And that, children, to young people, I tell you, friendship plays a very big role in life.
At school I began to read and even, with my sister, we loved reading poetry and mostly poems sad: Palamas's "Afkashastic and unsolved of the Tomb I don't give you".
The War... And we were crying, reading them at night and crying.
And so something took me inside, in case I wrote a poem.
My mother had a twin brother, a beautiful - both external and internal - man.
He was a math teacher and he was engaged to a girl who very much resented us because we thought him - he was my godfather - that he belonged to us.
This girl's name was Dido on top, she had a bit of a crooked nose, but she had some burning eyes.
This Dido became our great writer Dido Sotiriou.
And many may have known her as a writer, but anyone who hasn't known her as a human has lost a lot.
At her wedding I wrote her a poem.
She smiled, but when I looked at her eyes, they looked so sad and I decided in my life I wouldn't be a poet.
( Well, I'll tell you guys the poem because it's been 82 years and in Brussels where I often live, to my daughter, it came to mind one night.
I'm going to tell you this so you can understand what poetry saved you and I from.
"At dawn with the dew, my godmother dear, where I went with the boat a little to swim I saw a white gull flying cheerfully run He told me to go to your godmother Joy, trala la, trala la" (Laughter) (Applause) You thought I lost? That I could be a poet? No, I think so, yeah.
And I'm so glad I didn't.
I forgot to tell you that at Grandpa's house in Samos, in the living room, there was a window and inside was a tiger, the "captain".
That's what they said in Samos and I thought everyone in Greece knew when I wrote the book. "The Capani (of Vitrina)".
Neither Capani knew then, nor I, what role we're both gonna play in our lives.
With Dido we learned many things, made us want to love something, to care about something, to read of course.
The war came and Dido put us in the resistance.
And our first act of resistance - and Dido told us, "Don't think it's nothing, it's something great".
While my father was away at the bank where he worked this morning and came back at noon our house became a yufka.
Dido brought the resistance women: Electra executed by the Germans, Melpo Honor, Zevgu, Svolu.
They also met when they left - because they smoked like tequilas - our resistance act with my sister was to open the balcony door, ventilate the smell of smoke so our father wouldn't come home and see it was such a situation.
We organized in EPON and the way we remember now, and many times with Living, while living, sitting and saying, "Don't tell anyone that the years of occupation were happy years."
Because we believed in something, because we had a vision, because we thought we were really helping to free Greece.
And we had a vision we were talking about, when the occupation is over, we'll live this vision.
Now if it didn't come out, it's another... In the occupation I went to the school of Aedonopoulou and we had a teacher in techniques who wanted to get us out of this sadness and blackness and hunger and go to mind thinking other things and he tells us "Children..."—she had studied in France at the art school—... We'll do a puppet show."
He tells me, "What can you do? “ I say, ‘Nothing’.
He asked me what my name is "A", he says, "Are you Alki Zei?" And I say, "Yes".
Because in the school magazine a little piece of mine had been published.
Dimitris Kalavros-Wussiou: A thousand apologies.
Alki Zei: Will you hold it for me?
( Laughter) (Applause) He tells me, "Then write works for the puppet theater".
And I sat very simply and wrote works for the puppet theater, which we were playing, and one day he says, "Now be very good because some friends will come." Because they were the school kids who saw them.
She had a very close friend with Empirikos and brought us Empirikos, Elytis, Marios Ploritis.
Marios Ploritis brought a friend of his who was, along with Koun, from the founders of the Kun Theatre, named George Sevastikoglu and became my later companion.
And my sister used to say, "Who are you going out with again with the one with the ugly last name?".
( Laughter) Empirical was thrilled with the puppet theater.
And we didn't think we were doing anything great.
We just loved that thing we did.
And when the people we had, the great people, the poets,—who were very simple and treated us very friendly—they invited us to have coffee at Lumidis', and since then we've been going to often and listening.
And there were other girls, I don't know why girls and not boys wouldn't go.
And we listened, so, with great joy and learned things.
I mean, we learned more from them than from the university.
We had a party all night because we couldn't go home late, traffic was banned.
And we put on a gramophone, we pretended to dance so we could print illegal newspapers, press, announcements and more.
Of course, in the meantime we were dancing, we were flirting.
The piano was played all night by a kid with a long scarf and we put black raisins in his mouth so he wouldn't be hungry all night.
And this child was Manos Hatzidakis.
(Applause) October 12 is a day that is neither celebrated in Greece nor learned by school, it was the day of liberation.
As far as I can remember, it was the happiest day of my life.
For being free, for believing that all our dreams will come true.
But it didn't last many days and December of '44 began, which I wish had never existed in history or in my life.
That's where I knew what civil war was.
What does it mean to split in two?
What will the friend next to me say to the desk I had when we walked to Volos, and I knocked on her door, she saw me as if she saw her great enemy.
And there I said, it is no longer possible not to love each other, the man we were close to.
And all that savagery December had, I haven't forgotten.
And now when I see the refugees walking miles to get there, I remember how we walked to get away when December was over, not sleeping bug, there was nothing then, we put newspapers and we slept for a while, we were shot from above.
That's when I realized war.
For not being scared in my life as I was afraid in December '44.
That's over.
Some liberation came, things began to go smoothly in Greece.
Meanwhile I married George Sevastikoglu, went to Drama School.
I forgot to say I wrote short stories and published them in a magazine called "Young Voice".
I was starting to write.
And because George Sevatikoglu was very much with Kun, I went to Kun's theatre, and that's the great thing, in the black occupation Kun taught the world Ibsen, the American theatre, the real theatre.
With the hunger there was, both his actors and himself were hungry, but they did what is an unforgettable theater and the roots of today are left.
So I pinched a little too and thought maybe I could go to the theater.
George said, "I think you'll write, write."
I didn't go to school where he taught at Rota's school, because he was sure not to take me.
I went to the school of the Athens Conservatory, taught by Rodiris and Veakis, and they said Roderis made a stake speak.
Looks like he did a little stake and talked and I finished school.
Meanwhile, it is slowly starting civil war again.
They start arresting people.
George is called to the army and sneaks out of Greece.
With a boat and I didn't know where he went.
And I was sent for a walk in Chios.
There I met the women of Greece, who outside Athens had not come out.
I met women from Mytilene, Northern Greece, islands, everywhere.
Women who came not for ideology, had no idea, but had caught mainly Mytilene too many, a child who was a rebel and brought them there and when they were told they were free, they cried because they understood that their son had been killed.
I learned there a year and then I came back.
For almost two years, I didn't know where George was.
Until through the Millies, who was then in Paris, I got a letter to try to get out of Greece to go find him.
At the beginning I didn't know.
They were taken after the end of the civil war to Tashkent and because I'm unwritten, my children tell me that if I knew where Tashkent was, they wouldn't have been born.
( Laughter) I managed, anyway, with the many and the big ones and I got a passport and I left.
And I went to Italy, waiting for the Soviet visa, which took two years to come, and I arrived in Moscow.
And when I got off the train and saw George wasn't expecting me, I got it.
I say, "Where am I going, where am I sent? “ It’s not that bad. ”
Anyway, they received there, I didn't know Russian or anything, a little French, a little Italian I could understand.
They put me on a train and there were these strange women in uniforms, costumes, weird people with beards.
And I was traveling five nights and four days.
And I passed Stepa, and every once in a while I asked, "Tashkent?" I say if the train passes and I go elsewhere.
Anyway, I'm here.
This time George was waiting for me.
And I learned something that immediately upset me: that he was not allowed to come.
Page Not the Soviets, ours, the Greek party.
He wasn't allowed to pick me up in Moscow.
New beginning, this time a little difficult because I had to get used to where I am, who I am, what I'm doing.
I haven't written there, I'm not writing anything, I'm trying to learn the language.
My daughter is born and, fortunately, we're going to Moscow.
Because we were completely isolated from Greece, while in Moscow we could call and the ice began to break and through the Greek- Soviet link began to come intellectuals, artists.
And one of the first to come was the Empiric, whom I hadn't seen in 20 years.
And I went to the train to welcome him and the performance that Empirikos had seen—because I was writing parodies, the whimps I was telling them, stories of Ulysses parallax—and this work he saw was the "Calypso", who was in love with Ulysses and was an intellectual surrealist.
Because then we had just learned about Surrealism.
And leaving Ulysses, she commits suicide and says, "I am a sad corn."
(Laughter) Reaching the train the first one down was Empirikos and, once he sees me, with 20 years, he says, "Here's the sad corn."
( Laughter) And it's what's left.
Why... (Applause) I didn't think I was doing anything great, and I didn't put on a carbon at least to have a copy.
I left, they put them in a basement, they ate the rats and there's nothing left.
In Moscow, fortunately, I started writing.
I wrote short stories, sent them to art inspection.
And then I wanted to, because I had given birth to my son in the meantime, when Tarkowski babysited him, because he was a student and wanted to make a allowance and through a friend who knew him baby-sit him.
(Applause) Maybe that's why he became a director, and by his father, of course, but for the cinema he wanted.
I wanted my children to know about Greece.
And what stories more real would it be to tell them my childhood with my sister in Samos.
Because those were my most beautiful memories.
And there he was born "The Capani of Vitrina".
I sent it to Greece, it was an editorial, the Foundation.
I never got an answer.
And in a short time, in a year I get a permit to go with my children for two months to Greece.
I'm going to the Foundation.
He was a friend, a very remarkable man, Dimitris Despotidis.
I say to him, "What about that Capani?" He says, "There it is, in the window."
He had published it and put it in the window.
The Capani of Vitrina, I confess, if it hadn't been for the teachers, it wouldn't have been released, it wouldn't have been in the schools.
Because too many people fought not to get into schools this book and not get in, of course.
But the teachers stubbornly put it in schools, and now it's been fifty years Capani's been in schools.
Me too, of course.
(Applause) We went back to Greece, me for ten years, my husband for 15.
Let our children learn the language again.
They were talking, but get used to Greece.
In two years she became Junta and we left in Paris.
New start.
The two years in Greece I wrote nothing.
I was only translating for livelihoods.
In France I also began writing most of my books: "The Walk of Peter", the "Move umbrella", as well as the "Achillea Engagement" there I began writing it.
Because it was the environment that gave you a chance to write.
I went to French schools and I was sorry.
I say, I go to French schools and Greek schools I can't go.
The Caplani of Vitrina was translated, received awards and this gives you an uplift.
And when we got back to Greece, that's when I realized - because when I wrote Caplani I didn't know I was writing a book about children, I wanted to tell memories of my childhood.
Now I go to schools, I go all over Greece, I talk to the kids.
And what I tell them and you tell young people, no matter how judgment there is - because many times I hear, "We have war, we have Junta"—no war, no Junta.
It's been a tough time, but neither does the hunger of possession compare to the hunger that exists now.
And in possession we hoped for something.
And I wanted to tell you that a little thing, even too small to hope, will slowly become a big puzzle.
And mostly be together, love each other and help each other.
This is the best we can do today: to stand by one another.
And materials, but also mentally.
Don't get depressed, guys.
It's very terrible to get depressed as a people.
That's why I think we should have a little flame inside us, a little bit of joy, and then you'll see that everything is lighter.
I think I've crossed the line.
(Applause)
I wake up in the morning in a warm house.
I make the family breakfast, and we all sit together to discuss the daytime schedule.
Today, of course, the programme will be different.
School bags are ready.
I say goodbye to my wife, wish her a good day, and I take my little daughter to her primary school.
I hug her, tell her whatever she needs during the day she'll have to contact her mom, because I won't be able to talk to her.
I see her passing through the school in the yard.
I leave, he greets me, in a way as we greet a man who will take years to see him.
After half an hour, I park my car in an area of Athens.
I empty out my pockets of all kinds of small objects, I only keep one book, my identity, and I turn off my cell phone.
I'm starting to head to a gate.
I press a button on this gate, and as magic, this iron door opens.
Now I'm in a place where it's full of scouts.
In a check, you know, it reminds me of airport control when we're going to travel to another country, an exotic island, if I've forgotten something in my pockets, I'll have to go through control again.
I hand over my I.D., my cell phone, they hold them, and they give me a card with a certain color and number.
This card, from now on, will be my passport on this strange island.
If I do, I might have some trouble getting out of there.
By holding the card in my hands, I feel that now I must go beyond my own personal limits.
Like I'm on a cliff, and I'm gonna have to jump into the void.
The first door opens, and then closes itself hersily behind me.
An iron noise is heard in my ears.
Successively now they sound iron doors closing and opening, passing through detectors, losing count, I don't know how many there are.
And I'm slowly beginning to get affected by something new.
It's a smell.
It's the smell of prison.
Now I'm in front of one last door, which I'm going to have to open on my own, and I'm going to have to go into a room.
Within this room, I am expected 20-25 prisoners.
I'll have to meet them.
My mouth is sick of agony.
I've seen a lot of prison movies, I've seen people looking at you with a strange look, criminals, who wouldn't have anything to say with them, you'd even be afraid to sit next to them.
All these imaginary people, they start turning into my head like a smari, pushing my thoughts inside and threatening me.
I take a deep breath, I open the door, and I walk in.
A warm, smiling face comes towards me, a warm handshake disarms me.
He tells me his first name, then 20 men come to me, they tell me their first name, they greet me with cordialness, and they ask me if I want tea or coffee.
We sit next in a circle.
I'm looking at them.
They're looking at me.
And then, I see faces thirsty, moved, hurt.
All those fantastic people I had met outside this door are slowly starting to leave my mind.
"Good morning Army", they say, "Welcome".
For a year and a half I've been in and out of Corydal Prison.
My first collaboration was with the drug treatment center.
After five months, we were able to raise with 18 participants a play entitled "The guest".
The reborn man.
The new man.
This collaboration and texts written about her, were based on Kiplig's poem "An".
Participants wrote their own "An".
Since last November I have been participating in a very important effort by Korydallus prisons, the National Theatre, the Ministry of Justice, Transparency and Human Rights, and the General Secretariat of anti-criminal policy to create the first theatre workshop within the prisons to be open to all prison wards.
This is very important.
(Applause) When they asked me if I wanted to take this project I said yes, of course!
Of course I will.
It's time to cross the line, like a human being and an artist.
Then we talked about what I'm thinking of doing in connection with this theater team, then I came to mind a play by William Shakespeare: "The storm".
I chose this writer, why? William Shakespeare has invested.
His main works are written for the bad heroes.
Shakespeare's evil heroes have committed all crimes of criminal code.
They've crossed every line.
But they're the ones we applaud in theaters.
Thousands of actors each year, all over the world, earn their wages.
In Trikymia, of course, not a single drop of blood falls, all attempts at homicide are aborted.
There are no wars, action is evolving on a deserted island, on an isolated island.
On this island lives the exiled Duke of Milan Prospero, along with his daughter Miranda.
He has been expelled from his brother who had thrown him into the sea.
Prospero, in his twelve-year stay on this island, won the greatest achievement a man can conquer.
What? To become master of himself, to acquire truly free will, and when with the help of the higher spirit Ariel calls through a storm his offenders on the island, then he can do to them whatever he wants!
To avenge them or forgive them.
Revenge and forgiveness.
Two words that have, believe me, different meanings in prison and different meanings in the outside world.
The storm is not just an external phenomenon, it is an internal phenomenon of people, choices, found in the extremes, in the boundaries, at the extremes, that seek the limits.
Now I'm back in the hall.
I'm looking at the participants.
Everyone expects me to say something.
You know, the hardest part for a director in creating a show is the first rehearsal.
And I wonder, what I came here to do, what to tell these people who haven't experienced it, who haven't experienced it? Can I talk to them about the shows I've put on? Can I talk to them about the theater? And what should I tell them about the theater? What's theater doing in prison? I'm looking at them.
I look at them and I see I know nothing about their past, I know nothing about the journey that brought them in there.
They're not actors who came to play a role, but real people, people who came here together to share something important, which we should find out together.
But I can't breathe, and I don't know what to say.
I see a watch across the street looking dangerously at me like this one looks at me.
Indicators roll, pass time, and then I say, this clock, looks at me, and I feel threatened.
We already feel very happy, and we start talking about theatre, talking to them about the basic subject of theatre, which is the study of man.
This complex machine that we keep writing its user guide, and we don't know exactly how it works.
The boundaries, the functions, we don't know yet.
But in theatre we can make that choice.
The conversation turns on, and we're already starting to talk about arts, philosophy, painting, drama, and suddenly I forget I'm in jail, and I think I'm somewhere, like here.
And then I wonder, these people here who are opposite me could well be scientists, painters, poets, and I can't figure out how they got in there.
And then I understand that the limits to being in prison are very thin: an economic debt, a dark feeling, a choice, a storm, and the limit is lost.
We immediately begin a strong improvisation.
Through the team there is a sailor.
I'm telling him to tell us the adventures he's spent in the seas.
He starts talking about the Pacific, Atlantic ocean, and all together in there, with this sailor captain, we start creating the conditions of a boat while sinking.
It was a pleasure!
I really felt, both they and I, that we escaped.
We escaped mentally and went to a distant place, an incredible island.
I could tell you too much about all those moments I lived with these people in total.
By the next June when we raise our performance within the Korydallus prisons, I will have passed the prison entrance over 80 times, and I will have worked with over 50 participants in total.
I could tell you so much.
Many touching human moments even in there.
For this meeting.
But I'll only stay in one.
When Prospero, at the beginning of the play, tells his daughter for the first time, "Now my child I will tell you who your father is, who is not a king, only in a godless cell", one of the participants approached me at the end of the rehearsal to tell me how moved those words were.
They reminded him of the first time he would meet his child in the prison visitor's room to tell him who he really is.
The rehearsal's over, time's up, I'm gonna have to get out.
I greet the participants, they greet me, we succeed, we manage for a few hours to escape our prison.
I get out, I get my ID back, my cell phone, and I take a big step out of jail.
No, I'm not going to open my cell phone, I don't want to know who called me, if I have messages, or answer an email.
No, right now I want to enjoy it, I'm out, I'm out again, and I start looking at the sky, listening to the birds, the trees, and I get the lyrics of poet George Sarantaris: "I need to go for a walk, with the trees going for a walk, In a world of yomato waters".
I'd like this experience of sharing it with the passengers walking around me.
I look, I see them, and I see sad people, bent faces, but is it possible? I was in prison now and those I see, who think they have no limit, who think they are free, have the right to be sad? To be sad, to be imprisoned in their opinions, in their attitudes, in life? No! No!
I wonder if freedom is an internal or external matter.
If they're in there, they may be locked up, but real free, let's ask ourselves if we're really free.
If freedom means reaching boundaries, then freedom is the man with boundaries.
Who seeks the limits.
Every time he sets new boundaries, so he can get over them.
I'm getting in the car.
I take out the book, open it, and I see a dedication inside: Voice: "To our director who helped us escape with theatre art, and who personally helped me remember who I am again".
Thank you.
(Applause)
I'll try not to be tempted and talk about everything that happened this morning.
So, let me tell you the moment Counterterrorism goes home...
Well, let it go.
Let's go to standard.
(voices) Let's get started.
Well, this is my school.
There's this little shop right around the corner under a working apartment building in St. Varvara.
I want the translators to be a little careful in this latter because there is often a confusion with Saint Barbara.
( Laughter) Let me tell you a story.
A few years ago I had been invited to college, only as a guest could I go, along with Dimitris Papaioannou, of the Olympic Games, to choose the best student, who makes fine speeches etc., and at some point I am caught by the American director of college, a gentleman with braces, bow ties, belly, a little red nose, too sympathetic, but American, and he says, "What school have you finished?" I try to change my conversation, he says, "No, please, which school are you finished?" I say to him: "A school in Saint Barbara".
(English): "Oh, Santa Barbara college!" he says.
( I left him with the question, I made a nod anyway, I didn't keep talking.
Well, Saint Barbara.
This is school, this is the tutorial.
It was a basement, there was a first floor, but it was more expensive classes on the first floor.
This is the ballroom, it was in a much better view.
Balloons "Cryon".
"Keravnos" was also the sports team of the Gypsies of Saint Barbara.
Unrelated information.
This is through the...
I'm not here anywhere.
Because I've always had a problem.
I liked it better to participate in the screening, take pictures, etcetera, than play.
Unscrupulously, I will tell you that Agia Varvara was a very nice area, i.e. I grew up very nicely, there were, of course, various accidents.
But there was camping, there was an alley where we played, there was Kutalian, the older ones might remember him pushing cars.
These are all my pictures.
I'm not on the engines either.
Fifteen years old, we all took a bike.
I took a Vespa, said my father left me and all, the usual lies you tell, anyway, I took the Vespa, after a week, I turned it back.
They tell me: "What happened?" I tell them, "Hey, guys, there's a problem with this Vespa."
The Vespa, remember, the old one, had the speeds at the wheel, one, two, three, four, right? I tell them, "There is a problem with this Vespa."
They tell me: "What's going on?" I say, "Look, when I put it first, I start too fast, but then I can't finish, while if I put fourth, I find it hard to start, but then it runs very quickly."
I mean, I thought at the time the manufacturer gave me a choice.
I mean, one morning, starting first, one day starting second, one to third, one fourth.
I'm saying it because that's how we learned things.
I mean, we learned, we were wrong, we kept going.
That's almost how we learned journalism.
Well, we're talking about the... Oh, because we're talking about Vespes and I want to pause, because together with our mistakes, we had the little lies, the little myths.
I'm going to the painless today.
We'll all have heard this line that Vengos first said, "Do you know Vespa?".
Well, from a very young age, I've noticed in that film the black and white that Vengos drives this or drives this.
Little to know about a machine, you know this isn't a Vespa.
And because I know more than that, I tell you it's a Zudap.
Zudap was a machine that came out in the '60s-'70s.
In '84, German Zudap went bankrupt, and it was then bought by the Chinese.
So, since then, there has been bankruptcy and German and Chinese.
In other roles, though.
Well... . (Laughter) (Applause) But we are talking about going back to our history in 1981, very old times.
Too old a time? I wonder sometimes.
Because I get the feeling that too many times, reality makes a loop.
I mean, the same faces, the same facts and just the subtitles change.
I don't know if you agree.
Careful.
PASOK, First Athens, Manolis Glezos.
1981 election.
Manolis Glezos, of course, a deputizer, then power, as the defender of power is today.
And I then with duduka, today with microphone, small variation.
Well, we're talking about 1981, dropping this, it's wrong.
We're talking about 1981 and I want to transfer to the protagonists of today, starting with my friend, the kid.
Let's go.
Stavros Theodorakis: What are we gonna talk about? Kyriakos: For school.
I thought we should talk about girls.
K: He's ahead of school, though.
Okay, school.
What class are you in?
Tuesday.
A good student I've learned, huh? AH: The favorite lesson? K: Mathematics.
ST: Isn't math hard? K: If you know preschool, not hard.
You know good preschool, right? Quick? K: Yes.
Let's say eight.
Which still makes eight hard for me.
K: Oh, eight we haven't heard, we've learned six, five.
Tell me six.
K: One or six, two or six twelve, three or six eighteen, four or six twenty-four, five or six thirty-six, seven or six forty-two, six or eight forty-eight, nine or six fifty-four.
Nice.
It's all tens, isn't it? K: A few tens, a few nines.
I got nine on top.
In mathematics, of course, ten.
So you're gonna be a mathematician? What are you gonna be? K: Teacher of mathematics.
A teacher of mathematics.
Can the younger kids hear you, though? K: Yes.
What are you telling them? K: Be quiet.
Let me ask you something difficult now.
K: Yes.
If you could change anything in your life.. What would that be? K: I would like the environment to be cleaner and to see more often my whole family, my father, my mom and my brother.
So this is my friend Kyriakos.
There is a view that the worst family is better, it is preferable to the best institution.
I personally disagree with that view.
Kyriakos lives in the House, has been abandoned by his parents in the House of Perisos, and since he was abandoned, he "flowered", hanging out with children who have been taken there by prosecutors or their parents.
Kyriakos has too many dreams, as you can see, like the other children of the House.
I mean, all the time, what they say isn't what they've been through, it's what they're going to accomplish or what they're doing right now.
Cheylan.
STH: There in Thessaloniki, did you have problems? His style is Muslim, the peasant.
Cheylan: Uh, no.
Thank God, no.
Okay, racism, there isn't, so the whole department is talking to me, talking, doing, rapping and knowing me.
What are you telling them? I tell them what's happening in the village.
And they like it.
How do you justify not knowing the language? Or anyway, you don't know her... I don't know her that well.
...with an accent.
You know her very well... Yeah.
Thank you.
You speak very well.
Thanks.
How do you justify that foreign accent? T: I tell them that I am Muslim, that my parents don't speak Greek, that I know how to read Arabic, Pomakika I speak, Turkish I know very well, and that's why I'm not so good at pronunciation and they understand me.
(Music) Cheylan: But I like the village.
Whatever I want.
Whatever crazy comes to me.
I get up, I get down Xanthi, I come down Thessaloniki, I can gather them, we can gather at home, do whatever madness we want, see a movie, get out.
No problem, no restriction.
Okay, you may be a girl who knows what you're doing. You don't do what you're forbidden to do, but you can do whatever you want.
As long as you know what you're doing.
So I like being in the village.
I'm having fun.
STH: Well, Cheylan is from the Bulgarian border, Pomakohoria.
An area so close, but so far away.
By '96, you'll know, to go to these villages you had to get special permission from the army.
Now, it's a big deal because we were afraid of these people.
The important thing is that Cheylan has found a very simple trick.
When he gets on the bus to Thessaloniki, he takes off the handkerchief and the colorful clothes, he wears some other more sports.
He studies in Thessaloniki Economics and aspires two years from now to open the first accounting office of a local woman in those villages.
Let's go see Katerina.
A dose in the morning? Katerina: Yes.
But every day.
I'm being granted, I drink it and I'm leaving.
Don't they trust you to be given home? K: I don't believe that's it.
It's the program tight.
This is one of the strongest in Greece.
They've been given up for a minute.
And there's not there to wait a minute or a half.
You're not being sponsored, you've been sick all day.
And he has more withdrawals than heroin, methadone.
Are you slowly lowering the methadone? K: I expect, in fact, a lot of things to work out in my life first before I start coming down.
I mean, if I'm back with Panayiotis and I see these things, I don't know if in the end I'll be so strong and I still have patience to go on like this.
Relationships? Panagiotis: Relationships? Do you have any? P: Nah.
My mind is somewhere else.
What? Hey, we sleep together like two friends... K: ...a long time ago.
He's elsewhere.
Humiliating, but it's somewhere else, son, okay.
Demeaning, not for manhood and well, humiliating in general.
STH: Katerina was on drugs, heroin eight years, at some point she decided it herself, entered a substitute program.
He's done it.
Of course, in a country that is much easier to find heroin on the street than replacements or medication to quit drugs.
Katerina's big bet is whether she will go back to her friend's "world" or whether her friend will return to her "world".
Let's go see Marina.
Marina: I will never forget that moment when loudspeakers shout: "Litvinova, released".
Which, say, came out, the whole wing to say goodbye.
From emotion and tears, I couldn't see, I couldn't tell faces, only when they hugged me and gave me the wish in the ear, I tried to figure out who she was.
That day I raised too many wishes.
I think so far they've been escorting me and giving me strength.
Does prison ever come back like a nightmare? M: Very often.
And in the smallest things, I often think about prison.
When I leave the house and lock the door and play with the keys in my hand and go to work or to university, I flood with joy.
And thank God.
For having keys, having a home, having a job.
It's like a dream I'm living.
STH: Marina stayed in prison about three years.
At first, he was very afraid of the life-saving women.
Then, at some point, he thought about making a handkerchief for the child of a life-saving woman who had a birthday.
Since then, he has begun to approach them.
He put them in line, at some point, he tells me, "I put them in line and made them a pedicure and I got telecards."
That's how prison works, right? You wash my clothes and I give you a pack of cigarettes.
Spare economy.
The main thing is that Marina got out of prison, went into law school, and it's one of the few cases she got a large compensation from the Greek state because she was in prison unfairly.
For every day he was in prison, about three and a half years, he took 25 euros from the Greek state.
And the last is Dimitris.
STH: So, in the morning you feel a little taller than the others who are crabby on the streets, huh? Dimitris: Because you're free.
And you're not trapped in little things.
You see them a little like God, above, from a distance.
People are looking for problems.
(Music) STH: More pedestrian plans? D: Now, we're planning with the kids for Cuba just wants me to do my therapy before I'm ready to last there.
The samba you can handle? D: No, more the heat.
Because we're in the heat.
But it's worth it.
STH: Dimitris, I met him, these days, last year.
Dimitris suffers from a very rare illness, cystic fibrosis, which is the deadliest hereditary disease of the white race.
When he was born, life expectancy was ten years.
She turned 20, turned 30, and now the doctors think she'll be 40.
Dimitris, when he learned that the boundaries are too small instead of giving up arms, entered Architecture, founded a club that changed Sismanoglio, that is, many children of cystic fibrosis dynamically changed treatment conditions in Sismanoglio and continues and, of course, I believe he will defeat all statistics.
Dimitris, who fights and defeats death, Marina, who goes against the mistakes of the state, the children who try to correct their mistakes, Cheylan who goes against the conservative environment of the country and its community and my friend who tries to defeat social exclusion.
That's what I wanted to tell you tonight.
I wanted to tell you that there is the old road.
That man has a momentum that can cause him to defeat exclusion, stillness, perhaps death.
The thirst for what we don't have can lead you against the river and take you across.
(Applause) Before, our socialization was the work of the family.
Exclusively.
Then the school was added.
Then the media was added.
Now, social media is being added slowly.
A little parenthesis.
I wonder too many times if I grew up in an environment where everything was in front of me.
If, that is, I discovered pages by pressing the key on a keyboard.
Where would my curiosity stop? Was this discovery enough for me and I wasn't going to the next discovery? Anyway, it's another matter.
What I mean, by turning off, is that television, as the most powerful means possible, must, besides, give room to this momentum.
I mean, he needs to teach people to listen to their momentum.
That's what I think I'm doing with the "Stars" or rather, to be precise, that's what I and my protagonists do, believing that momentum can successfully counter the immeasurable fate.
Thank you.
(Applause)