The idea of MedioSud was born when Marina Fokidis invited me to write a text for her new-born magazine South. That was just after my daughter Alpha was born, I was living in the South of Europe again- in Rome- after many years spend in the World's North (USA, UK, Paris etc) and I had start thinking about it.. What was this place now- the mediterranean basin- after all these years, after the internet? Who were those people such as Fokidis and other old friends and family? Most of them would cry for help -as if the sky had fallen on their heads- (the crisis! the crisis!), still, having spend a bit of time in Colombia, I wouldn't believe them. So I visited Greece and I realised that the country and its people never looked more interesting and alive, I looked around Europe and I show a Middle South rising, a new reality that isn't "South" no-more, still its not - and doesn't agree to become - a Total North either. So I wrote for Fokidis' magazine "My Family in Middle South" and when a few months later, Salvatore Lacagnina and Rome's Swiss Institute, asked me to write something about art in Rome (for their contribution to Berlin Biennial), I took that opportunity to write a little manifesto about how I imagined art in Middle South-the art in MedioSud. And then-suddenly- a miracle: Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) decide to resign! As the history of the South was always depending on Christianity, I felt that the possibility or a new Middle South Movement starts existing exactly on the day the Pope resigns and the world is left unshadowed -for a bit a least- free from that religious ghost. Therefore, on Feb 28, 2013, I introduced MedioSud at the MACRO in Rome. In 2015- Greece surprised us all the way Ratzinger did two year earlier: the SYRIZA goverment had decide to put together a Mondial Performance by asking the Greek People if they agreed to continue be exploited by Europe. They answered NO, Europe ignored them and went on exploiting them. During the Greek Summer of NO, Adam Szymczyk, announched Athens as one of the two cities that will be hosting DOCUMENTA 14, the very Northern exhibition Total North is using to teach to the World "the way to be intellectual" (the latin word "documentum" comes from "docere" -teach- and "mens" -intellect.)

I had no idea how to introduce MedioSud at MACRO, I just knew that I HAD to do so the day the Pope resigns, because God's authority in our world-that day- was loosen (at least for Catholics) and also because Mr. Ratzinger's behaviour, although he is German-was typically MedioSud. He was leaving indeed this job, because it was impossible for him to follow (too many trips, too many people, too much visibility). I read that the exact hour he would be dropping out of Christianity -because a Pope can't really leave his place and expect continue belonging to his faith- was at 8 in the evening so I decide to launch MedioSud at 20:20- the first FourFortyFour moment in the (indefinite because nobody knew how long will take to Vatican to elect a new representative of "Dios") free-time that Ratzinger was offering to all of us. That same morning, I start emailing invitations around and the first reply I received was philosopher's Antonio Rainone. "For Christianity-he wrote- Time isn't a human affair but it belongs to God. Its exactly the Pope- God's representative, the one who governs Time.. Miltos Manetas, 2013.

Non domandarci la formula che mondi possa aprirti sì qualche storta sillaba e secca come un ramo. Codesto solo oggi possiamo dirti, ciò che non siamo, ciò che non vogliamo. Ossi di seppia, Eugenio Montale, 1925.

Don't ask us for the phrase that can open worlds, just a few gnarled syllables, dry like a branch. This, today, is all that we can tell you: what we are not, what we do not want. Don’t Ask Me for Words Poem from Cuttlefish bones, 1925 by Eugenio Montale Ossi di seppia, Eugenio Montale, 1925.

Μην μου ζητάς την φόρμουλα που κόσμους θα σου ανοίξει, Ίσως μια κάποια συλλαβή στρεβλή σαν το ξερό κλαδί Δεν έχουμε άλλο τίποτα σήμερα να σου πούμε Μάνο το τι δεν είμαστε, τι δεν επιθυμούμε. (Από τη συλλογή «Κόκαλα σουπιάς», 1925) Κόκαλα σουπιάς, Eugenio Montale, 1925.

I am born and grown up in Greece: that definitely makes me a Southerner. Those days, phones were analogue and while my mother was working at the central phone station connecting phone calls as a phone operator, my father was repairing the electric circuits at the same building.

Outside that building and all over Greece, old ladies in black were everywhere, orbiting like human satellites around our life from its beginning until its end. Apart from a few politicians, no Greek would bother if he is a European and had no need to prove it either. There was a single book on the History of Modern Art, but you could go find Tsarouchis at his garden in Marousi and look at him while he was painting. Google cars would not take pictures for their maps: it was a totally PC universe (PreComputers and PreContemporary art) and I remember myself in it, excited, bored and happy

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SOUTH was published by Marina Fokidis, a lady trapped between North and South. Charismatic but not-determined, courageous but not always, dedicated still losing most of her time doing "jobs", Marina would always throw her diamonds to the dogs: after 5 amazingly "South" issues, she gave the magazine to the Northerners of DOCUMENTA with the illusion that once they are done with it, she"ll bring back somehow its originality.

Find here "South" before and after