Prometheus in Athens

NAME: KOSTADIS KABOURAKI

AGE: 51

PLACE OF RESIDENCE: PAGRATI 

BIRTHPLACE: SAMOS 

ORIGIN: SAMOS, ODESSA AND THE BLACK SEA

ON THE NIGHT OF THE PERFORMANCE KOSTADIS KABOURAKIS WILL WALK WITH HIS SON AND WIFE FROM PAGRATI, REACH VASILEOS KOSTADINOU, CROSS THE STREET AND HEAD TO SYGGROU AVENUE.  THERE HE WILL HEAD UP THROUGH CHATZICHRISTOU STREET AND WALK UP DIONYSIOU AREOPAGITOU TO HERODION THEATRE.

 

Kostadis Kabourakis origin is half from Samos half from Odessa and Efxinos Pontosthe Black Sea and lives with the mother of his son 14, in Pagrati.  He graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Athens, studied and lived in Napoli and Vienna.  Then he returned to Greece and studied medicine and human sciences in Salonica.

Since 1987-1988 he does street intervention, offering people-who don’t have the means and the opportunity to get treated, help.  “I work on building a flexible health system to help those who don’t have access to it.” Being counselor at the ministry of public health is just one part of his job, because he offers open hours for visits and interviews at his office.  He is one of the founders of Act Up, an NGO that deals with offering free medicine to people who are in need and are excluded in some way.  “Medicine is the way you react in the street.”
He believes that you become a doctor through the way you face life “ you offer protection and support to a person and you have to make sure you don’t ever wound his dignity in front of his pain.  I’m definitely not a policeman nor a judge; my priority is to help those in need in any given situation.  I don’t consider myself to be a doctor.  Studying medicine doesn’t make you a doctor.”

Medicine and art have very close ties, it’s just that medicine escaped the limits of art and reached the limits of an idea.  He works on that relationship. Art therapy is one of the methods he uses: “I work with kids that have been through war.  We may not speak the same language but we communicate through color.  Drawing is the best thing that can ever happen.”

Prometheus builds pathways; he is a wave crasher.  Those who want to give away the fire create enemies.  “Prometheus is my favorite play, but I never thought of my identification with any of the characters.  It’s a play that speaks for the present, our time. In order to be a Prometheus one needs to own great knowledge, quality and follow a course that one can never interrupt.”