The volume you are holding consists of nine original texts that pertain to certain aspects of the work and life of Leonidas Christakis (1928-2009), as well as a previously published text that is included here as an appendix.

The nine texts address Christakis as a political subject, as a father, as a painter and gallery owner, as a poet, as a pioneer of graphic design, as the introducer of the underground scene in Greece, as a publisher, as a journalist, and as a contributor to the creation of the political Exarchia. These texts do not exhaust the totality of his facets or work.

Christakis seems to play with his various identities, flipping them and constantly deconstructing/reconstructing them, much like the polyphonic, carnival characters in Mikhail Bakhtin's analysis. How else can one interpret the case of such a colorful personality, who refuses to conform to any preconceived category of arts and letters, preferring the vivid self-identification of “Impoverished Cultivator”?

The key word is likely “curiosity,” as Christakis seems never to delve deeply into anything, preferring simply to play with whatever appears interesting to him, whether as the author of 70 books that he himself did not consider complete, as a father, or as the leader of small groups that he formed in his so-called “office-houses,” which he dissolved, possibly due to the contradiction he felt towards the power he gained from his recognition within the Exarchia space.

The main issue raised here – as an open question – is how such distinct individual cases ultimately arise in our country and whether we have lost, as a social formation, the ability to produce such unusual and much-needed individuals.