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| Despina Stokou Growing up in a technocratic, urban environment and schooled in a foreign-language (German) educational and cultural system in Athens, I had the opportunity to develop and maintain a rather complex, almost adolescent revulsion for any expression of religious, national or popular tradition, both regarding my actual and my adopted homeland. The cheese at the German school fair that smelt like feet, the incense at the Easter church service that reminded me of death, the ruddy thick necks of my German professors with their flea-market sandals and white socks; the black robe our religious education teacher suddenly donned, and the spittle-covered hand we had to kiss. The trodden Greek flags at the side of the street, and the plastic orange cross at the edge broken. My fear every time German policemen check my passport at the airport. The knot in my stomach every time I see the colours of the German flag. The joy in my sister’s hoarse voice when she calls me from London to tell me we (the Greeks) won, and the uncomfortable looks Maria and I exchange in a group of Germans celebrating at the top of their voices. Thus, the image of a girls’ church choir in traditional costume appears to me as foreign and threatening as the body of those girls (boys?) appears to them. The costumes, with their lace, outrageous colours and oversized fruit remind me of the cut-out paper costumes we used to attach to painted naked girlish figures, in which you had to turn the lugs to make them stand. Then, the naked bodies remind me of the naked children in the photographs from the concentration camp we visited in Buchenwald. Which makes the girls in the photograph remind me no longer of girls but soldiers. And the instruments in their hands, of guns. Despina Stokou  Download CV |  Girls with guns |
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