S O C I A L G Y M

by Nikos Charalambides

Traditional monuments in the real cityscapes of the west world tended to avoid the political manifestations and sensibilities of their time. They used to contribute to the formation of state values, which was the mainstream ideological field where governors and their reflected audience of the white (mainly) middle class and super-bourgeoisie searched for a historical reaffirmation of their identity, looking for the permanent character of their decorative triumphalism.
Nikos Charalambides is calling for the sociability of the human body. By doing so, he doesn't represent a ideological victory, but only the ironic trace of these fantasies, as in the case of Hitler or in the case of legendary personalities including Duchamp and Manet. His concept for the social gym, simply declares that art must be everywhere especially when the way we experience reality celebrates violence. His social gym is made after the Greek and the neoceltic notions of Gymnasis. Their societal challenge is a point in which we can discern a kind of Deleuzian happening, in relation to the urgent potentialities of urban life after the traumatic days of September 11th.
This time, manhattanism as an ideological field which expresses cosmopolitan conservatism under the umbrella of apparent diversity is replaced by Hypermanhattanism, where we can easily find locations of social morality and optimism.
Within such dystopic monstrosities, the artist motivates the utopia, as an activist more, who questions the sophisticated Disneylands of America. So, his will to add the word hyper to manhattanism emphasizes the excess of the metropolitan model and its replacement by the sensibilities of Other(s).
In his project, architecture has no meaning any more, at least in its Cartesian and postgeometric modernistic convention. Established roles on human relationships are also useless. Nikos Charalambides fabricates the real as a place for transgression with humor and discreet irony. But his utopia is never hermetic. If his model for hypermanhattanism can never be applied to the metropolitan centres, that doesn't mean that it fails in any way. His social gym helps us understand more than ever the fundamental role of the artist to think publicly.

January 2002

Social Gym is a proposal for the revival of the sacred truce, as observed in classical Greece during the Olympic Games. As long as the games were in progress all political conflicts, such as war, were temporarily suspended, so the games could continue in peace and non-partisanship.

The "Gym" itself will be contained in a blimp, whose bullet-like shape and camouflage appearance resemble military equipment and it will hover above the sports facility for the duration of the games in Athens in 2004.

In fact it is an alternative room for physical education and political thinking.
It will be equipped with special technology and interactive links to the outside, specifically to other gyms around the world. Aboard the "Social Gym" will be a small group of artists or "politicians" who will discuss and reflect upon political issues, predetermined by a special committee, thus exercising both mind and body and evoking the ancient Greek principal of "arete" - "a sound mind in a sound body".

At the same time, the room gives the opportunity to members of minority political organisations to promote their causes internationally through special "workout meetings", therefore contributing to an effort to ease tensions and prevent acts of violence and terrorism, which have taken place during the Games in the past.

The shape of this peculiar room, is covered with a special bullet-proof material, painted in a camouflage pattern and acting as a chameleon that changes colour to match its natural surroundings.

The sarcastic, fictionalized and idealized space of "Social Gym" is open to anyone who wishes to propose his/her political project, in order to be discussed.