Kostas Ladopoulos
Kostas Ladopoulos
Kostas Ladopoulos (born in 20 April 1945) is a Greek painter, an author, a creator
and TV host for a number of Greek kid΄s shows, a puppeteer and puppet maker,
kids songwriter, researcher of Rebetiko, Greek shadow theatre player, art teacher and guide.
Early life
Childhood
Kostas Ladopoulos was borned 1945 in Thessaloniki and spent the first and basic years of his life at the 5th floor of a building in the old coast road, observing the Thermaikos sea. He was the first child of Artemis Kyrou from Thessaloniki and Leonidas Ladopoulos a refugee from Smyrna Asia Minor. Concerning his mother he will comment much later that,
” he was not present himself while she brought him into life” and also that his father “he had ¨drowned¨ irreparably in the sea of Smyrna during the days of the Catastrophe”.In any case he was loved by both of them.
He was a quite boy with a developed feeling of observation. His strongest memories from that time were the big jellyfishes in the water of the coast road, the jackdaws existing everywhere in Thessaloniki, a shooting shop with moving figures, the tin soldiers and the aroma of the freshly cut coffee at the coffee mill owned by Berberian, an Armenian man.
Also, his refugee godfather who liked to play billiards while young Kostas watching him and the visits to a different world, at the magic house of his grandmother Marika Kyrou. All those sweet memories would he carry inside him forever.
At the age of seven the family, together with his younger brother emigrated to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil where they lived for 2 years. The melancholic return to Thessaloniki up to the end of his puberty will stigmatize him, something he was not aware of then.
Photo Gallery
Adolescence
His most significant memory and influence was the friendship with Alkis Sahinis (who died 29 years old in 1973) something that opened new windows in his mind.
He was reading books incessantly, listening to Classic music, Theodorakis, Savvopoulos and Manos Hadjidakis. Hadjidakis΄ record ”Lilacs out of the Dead Land” (arrangements of rebetiko and folksongs) touched him deeply and brought him into a contact with with the English poet T.S. Eliot (¨Lilacs out of the dead land¨ is a verse of T.S. Eliot΄s poem ¨The Waste Land¨).
At the year of 1965, he left Thessaloniki and started his national service at the Greek Navy.
After his service (twenty eight months later), he felt completely confused and uncertain about his future life.
He studied for two years (1968-1970) at Doxiadis Graphic Arts school and he got the decision to burn his bridges and emigrate to Stockholm Sweden.
Living in Sweden
The two first years (1970-1972) living in Stockholm he was studying Swedish while he was working part time jobs, to be able to be financially independent.
At 1972, he started studying at the Applied School Stockholm Art Gallery (Konstfack). After two years he won a Grant-in-Aid for Development of the children's theater and a prize for painting composition which was used in 105 dental rooms at Karolinska Hospital. At the earliest 75s he started engaging with the Greek Shadow Theatre (Karaghiozis) performances and figures building.
He worked as a teacher of Greek language (1974-1976) and participated in Swedish seminars and committees dealing with problems of Greek students in Sweden. He also supervised and mentored teenagers at schools with social matters.
At 1976, he became partner of the public Swedish television and radio for children’s shows.
He studied for two years Pedagogy at Stockholm University (1977-1979) while he was working as an art teacher in Swedish schools (1976-1979).
Αt the same time periods (1977-1979) he was the general editor, writing and illustrating the children’s magazine for the Federation of Greek Associations in Sweden. At the year of 1979 he was assigned by the Swedish educational Radio, to produce educational programmes and supervisory material for Greek teachers in Sweden.
After one year he decided to go back to Greece.
Back to Greece
Returning to Greece, he decided to attend classes at the State School of Tourist Guides and worked as a tour guide for about 2 years. In 1983, Nikos Pilavios, director of the Children's Zone of the National Television Public Channel, invited him to participate in his children's show called ¨Chiliopodarousa¨ (Millipede) , as a puppeteer. He created various puppets and among them, Fondas Ladoprakopoulos, meteorologist for children, who became quickly very popular. In 1983, he started his first major T.V. production under the title ¨The Doll΄s Tales¨. The T.V. show had 52 half an hour stories, written by Kostas Ladopoulos played with different kinds of puppets. He was also the director and scenographer. The actor Olia Lazaridou voiced the show.
Few years later (1986) he published his first book for children, based on ¨The Doll΄s Tales¨. The same year he started participating in the children's show of Christos Dimopoulos, ¨Ouranio Toxo¨ (Rainbow), as a puppeteer with his famous puppet Fondas Ladoprakopoulos.
He used and played the same puppet as a host in his first children TV-game (1988), called ¨The Pictures΄ Empire¨. He continued working in the same TV channel creating two more children΄s shows, in 1993 ¨Zapatrak Vak¨ and in 1995 ¨Kolokythokotumba¨.
During that period, he cooperated with the publishing house ¨Erevnites¨ and lent his voice for a number of documentaries. Also for one year he was puppet theater teacher at ¨AKPES¨ (Greek College Center).
Few years later he decided to go back to Sweden with his wife and children.
Life between Sweden and Greece
Moving back to Sweden wasn΄t easy for him, so he was looking a ¨way out¨. Painting and writing were some of his creative activities he was usually spending time on. In 1998, Greek National Television Public Channel proposed to him to be a host on a new daily kid΄s TV show. He agreed, he moved back to Greece and the first episode of ¨Proinakia¨ was finally on air. In this show he felt more creative as he was responsible almost for everything. He was the host, played puppets, wrote the script, the music editing etc. Two of the most favorite quotes that he was using during the show was,
¨I am wishing children to gain birds΄ happiness¨ , and
¨Proinakia is a show where the mind gets air and the heart consolation¨ ..[1]
After two years he went back to Sweden and his family. He continued working as an art teacher at schools, painting and writing books.
In 2001 he published in Greek language his first book for adults, called ¨ Poor Men...¨ and it was about men during the antiquity, in Rebetiko, today and in the Future. “It was a lightweight”, as he wrote, ”critical essay on the subject of the men of our planet and in particular on the subject of Greek men”.
In 2003 he also published in Greek language a book for kids, called ¨Forgotten Countries¨.
2010 - Back to Greece and final re-establishment
His re-patriation was an achievement and a victory for him and his life.
To establish himself in Greece was something he had done even before but this very time was something else. He stopped feeling “twice a stranger”.
It was a victory against the feeling of rootlessness he always had felt and a new harmony.
At the same time he understood, without bitterness, that this was the last station of his long journey.
He did not see it as a hey-day of his creative life, he started again with a new courage and a new urge. At the same he saw that the general mentality and attitudes in every day life had not being changed but his inner mechanisms were strong enough to ignore it and he looked for new opportunities.
In 2015 he published one of his favorite books, ¨ The Meteorized Body¨ and in 2016 he delivered a series of pedagogical seminar to the Municipality of Athens, under the title "Back, at Future ".
After two years, he cooperated with his friend and kindergarten teacher, Mary Karakosta. They created and managed a Center for Creative Game in Athens under the name ¨Klimindrin¨. As he noted himself,
“it was too good to succeed”.
The experience was splendid and multiform but he realised for one more time the big gap between imagination and reality. Pandemic also appeared at that time so they decided to close their enterprise.
In 2019, his old TV partner, Christos Demopoulos, asked him to participate in his TV show for kids called ¨Christos΄ 1000 colours¨ .
With his partner Fay Morianova, they presented 3-minutes intervals of episodes of three different themes, “ Pouloudia”, ”Fondas L.” and ”Κlimindrin”.
Television
| Year | Title | Occupation |
|---|---|---|
| 1982 | ¨Chiliopodarousa¨ | (puppeteer) |
| 1983 | ¨The Doll’s tales¨ | (creator, writer, puppeteer) |
| 1986 | ¨Ouranio Toxo¨ | (puppeteer) |
| 1988 | ¨The Pictures΄ Empire¨ | (puppeteer) |
| 1993 | ¨Zapatrak Vak¨ | (creator, writer, puppeteer) |
| 1995 | ¨Kolokythokotumba¨ | (creator, writer, puppeteer) |
| 1998 | ¨Proinakia¨ | (creator, host, writer, puppeteer) |
| 2019 | ¨Christos΄ 1000 colours¨ | (puppeteer, writer, host of his mini episodes) |
In 2020 he was lucky enough to meet his new partner Fay Morianova. Using her multi talents she made a splendid work archiving thoughtfully all his prior creations and they started working together, producing even music. They created a mini studio at their home and started video recording short programs for TV. One of their creations was “Pouloudia”.
Pouloudia
Pouloudia, played by Fay Morianova, was a young witch who could not talk because a magician had stolen her voice.
She lived together with her granny Stoupitsa (puppet).
Drawing & Painting
He started drawing and painting during his early puberty.
He was not convinced that he was capable to become a painter but he kept on trying and developing himself.
Generally speaking we could say that his style is something like an amateurish naivistic surrealism.
He painted mostly on different kinds of paper or cartong and only specifically on canvas with acrylics.
In 2013 he had his first personal painting exhibition under the name ¨Swallowing Headlights¨.
His collection was about human figures that draw their origins from another perspective in the Shadow Theater and Rebetiko, creatures – hybrids, elements from the bottom of the sea and the world of insects in a delirium of brush movements.
Kostas Ladopoulos΄ drawing and painting work
¨Swallowing Headlights¨
Greek Shadow Theater
K.L. had played Shadow theater for other kids during his childhood.
That distant memory woke up during his first years in Sweden. He started constructing colorful figures and gave his first performance together with his brother Dimitris Ladopoulos 1973 in Konstfack University of Arts Crafts and Design in Stockholm where he was studying.
Though he already then believed that the Greek Shadow Theater (Karaghiozis) was obsolete(anachronic) he started searching it more, he designed a lot of figures and played several performances for the Greek immigrants.
A simple example of his need to go further was the one and only full-face figure of a woman dancing belly dance though ALL the traditional figures are drown in profile.
He was observed by a Swedish TV producer and was offered to make 6 programes for the Swedish Public TV.
One of them was the well known play “Karaghiozis and the Dragon” while the other was an experiment to present a folk greek fairy tale using the shadow theater΄s technique.
The experience of designing figures helped him to delve deeper into all parts of the Greek folk art (and music), influenced him and this experience was transformed into symbols which entered the world of his paintings. When he organized his first painting exhibition, under the title ”Swallowing Headlights” a critic wrote that ,
“it is about human figures coming from a different perspective on Shadow Theater and Rebetiko, hybrid creatures, elements from the bottom of the sea and the world of insects, through delirious movements of his brushes”[2]
He himself presented the exhibitions saying that,
¨I was born in the, during that time, calm coast road of Thessaloniki and flew through the flora and fauna of totally different landscapes. I passed through skies where phosphoric octopus were flying. I stood against winds smelling burned sugar, i collected butterflies inside volcanic craters. Only some shrapnels from those microelements are presented in this pilot exhibition¨.
K.L. as a puppeteer
He created his first puppets in Sweden when he was offered to make 6 children programs. He designed the puppets and was helped by his wife Anne Percy and Hanna Lassen, He continued with puppets years later when he started producing programs for the Greek public TV.
His most famous puppet was a meteorologist named Fondas Ladoprakopoulos where he played him and voiced him.
He continued creating puppets following other ways of construction. They were not made to be used for children shows, they started personalize thoughts, metaphors, fragments from his past. He started calling them for “roommates” and his home started looking like J.F. Sebastian’s, the genetic designer in the movie of Ridley Scott ”Blade Runner”.
Writing
| Year | Title | K.L. as... |
|---|---|---|
| 1982 | Ronia, the Robber's Daughter | translator |
| 1986 | ¨The Doll΄s Tales¨ | author, illustrator |
| 1991 | The Brothers Lionheart, Novel by Astrid Lindgren | translator |
| 2001 | ¨Poor Men...¨ | author |
| 2003 | ¨Forgotten Countries¨ | author |
| 2015 | ¨The Meteorized Body¨ | author |
His opinion about books is,
“Basically, I consider that publishing a book today is equivalent to Nothing. It means absolutely nothing. Few care, the majority of people have other things in their minds and, I totally understand that. The developments on the planet are running with incredible speeds, people cannot keep up with them, and, who cares about books, when the primary need is not to let ourselves dissolve? Another thing is that very few people in Greece read, even if the number is increasing. Simply, they admire those who do it because they think that writing is something unattainable for them. Writing is a personal catharsis and you can have a small audience which will follow you for a while”.
Though he refused to be called an artist or an author it is obvious that his main shelter was to escape in the landscape of imagination through writing.
He was happy to roam his mental landscape of thoughts, emotions, and fantasies.
“Dreamers seek a simple, worry-free life. They sometimes consider other peoples' perspectives, but mostly, they stick to their own visions. They're masterful at coming across as more confident and self-assured than they probably are in actuality”.
He started writing during his puberty, mostly novels and poetry. He continued all the coming years but his creative imagination exploded when he started with manuscripts for his children programs.
By the years passing he turned more and more to ”magic realism, ” conveying a sense of the fictional world as an authorial construct” .
¨The Meteorized Body¨ - Το Σώμα Μετέωρο
Seven NOT nostalgic stories taking place during the 30΄s where voices from today and the future visit the described persons.
“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past“.[3]
T.S. Eliot
This mixture makes the stories look like an rotating and burning bush which sweeps away from the air. Murmurings from the philosopher Jean Lois Baudrillard are heard, faces transform like in Francis Bacon’s paintings.
Angels burning with fire appear, moving stones store conversations, a wing grows on the shoulder of an old man, a young girl falls in love with an old stealthy man whom time has forgotten, the same murder takes place for a second time.
A red thread penetrates the 7 stories like a laser.
K.L. considered this book to be his most important and mature achievement. He wrote it during the last difficult period of his living in Sweden and was not planning to publish it. It was a short of a score personal settling with himself.
He noted that,
¨all these human-shadows which are moving in that small book are nowadays flowers growing in the soil. But flowers catapult seeds and inside those seeds see us falling in depressions. I am nothing more than somebody who decodes and illuminates the seeds, the stones, the dust particles low murmurings¨.
Summarizing, this book is a metafiction and K.L. a meta writer (as he has been called) when metafiction is, to highlight the dichotomy between the real world and the fictional world of a novel.
Rebetiko and K.L.
Rebetiko has been the strongest “light house” of his life. He delved deeply into this music, he wandered through the fire and Duende of Rebetiko without being burned out himself.
He examined this music through a new and different point of view, questioning generally accepted conclusions and therefore was totally ignored...
His belief in seeing even this area is Jean Lois Baudrillard’s quote,
"Since the world drives to a delirious state of things, we must drive to a delirious point of view".[4]
You can see and read his thoughts in his blog[5]
“ This music, once it gets inside a person in the right way, stays there forever and tortures, consumes, pours into the blood and changes its color. When the carrier of the bacillus bleeds and blood flows out, it has the known color for those who cannot see, those who do not have the bacillus. But those who have it, see another blood of an ultra-marine color, mixed with the color of bronze. This change in blood color makes you different. You can no longer be like the others, you find it difficult to have fun with them, with other kinds of music. The ”others” seem lukewarm, watery to you. They don't fill you up, they can't bring you to trance.
This bacillus resembles that demonic fire which the Spaniards call duende”.[6]
Kostas Ladopoulos Rebetiko Lexicon
Lexicon of the Pectoral ( Thoracic ) people 2004-2007
The meaning of the Lexicon’s title is to point out the difference between the Heart’s seat and the Mind.
That is to say, the difference between emotions and logic. The word pectoral is an indirect synonym to thorax (chest) chest wounds, seat of the heart and soul using a sample of more than 18.000 song lyrics.
An X-Ray of his character
Εvery human being is the product of early childhood memories and experiences.
As we have seen before, his family emigrated to Brazil when he was at the age of 8 and they lived there for 2 years.
The melancholic return to Thessaloniki until the end of his adolescence will stigmatize him, something he did not realize at that time.
He remembers that he felt already then a short of distance from everyday life in Greece, a feeling of not belonging. This feeling, more or less, followed him for the rest of his life and caused the building of defensive mechanisms as a shield.
( scratching out a living with teeth and claws and a heart of stone)
He had declared in different cases that he did not like reality and that drove him to a deep exploration of himself and the creation of a pluralistic personality with a rich personal Mythology which helped him in many ways.
He was transformed into a mixture of a lone wolf and an open and social person, depending on the circumstances.
Ιt is no coincidence that he really loved Kostas Nouro's mane "Houzam - Who has a black heart", the verses are:
“Who has a black heart to be partners,
to walk in deserts, not to be seen by people”[7]
Κ.L. used to say that,
” though I adore black, in this case I replaced it by ”Who has a white heart to be partners”.
Very often observant people can better understand parts of somebody΄s character through small, almost invisible signs and reactions. Ιn this case K.L.΄s preference of the adjective “λευκή” instead of ”black” declares his capacity to move backwards and forwards between his melancholic nature and a driving optimism which characterized him.
He has been called out for being an arrogant which is not so near the truth but, taking distance from a boring reality can lead either to a depression or a critical point of view. In his case was the second and that can easily be seen as an arrogance.
Two other characterizations mostly concerning his writing were, ” lunatic linguist” and ”delirious”.
Since the world drifts into delirium, we must adopt a delirious point of view. We must no longer assume any principle of truth, of causality, or any discursive norm. Instead, we must grant both the poetic singularity of events and the radical uncertainty of events.
References
- ↑ "Πρωινακια - proinakia" (in Ελληνικά). Retrieved 2023-06-19.
- ↑ "Κώστας Λαδόπουλος - Καταπίνοντας προβολείς: έκθεση στη γκαλερί του Black Duck". CultureNow.gr (in Ελληνικά). 2013-01-09. Retrieved 2023-06-19.
- ↑ "Four Quartets - Wikiquote". en.wikiquote.org. Retrieved 2023-06-19.
- ↑ D.Phil, Nicholas Zurbrugg, B. A.; Zurbrugg, Nicholas (1997-11-14). Jean Baudrillard, Art and Artefact. SAGE. ISBN 978-1-4462-3057-2. Search this book on
- ↑ https://elkibra-rebetiko.blogspot.com/
- ↑ "ΡΕΜΠΕΤΙΚΟ (REBETIKO) - KOSTAS LADOPOULOS". elkibra-rebetiko.blogspot.com (in Ελληνικά). Retrieved 2023-06-19.
- ↑ "Χουζάμ μανές ( Ποιος έχει μαύρη την καρδιά )". www.greeklyrics.de (in Ελληνικά).
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