Topic: Do you feel to comment what happened to Manifesta 6?
Vincenzo de Bellis: Last question: You are close to Cyprus and even for historical and political reasons you know better than others its situation. Do you feel to comment what happened to Manifesta 6?
POKA-YIO: It's really so cool dealing with political issues nowadays in art. As I said before, everything more or less has been exploited; therefore it is reality and hot issues that will inevitably grab our never-ending hunger for fresh themes. Playing with fire has its dangers, though.
AUGUSTINE ZENAKOS: I think it was a valid effort, instigated in a climate of hope and reconciliation, which in time changed. The thing is that all parties handled it as badly as humanly possible, and everybody was exploiting the crisis to their own end. The Greek-Cypriots are gathering votes posing as unflinching patriots, the Turkish-Cypriots are forging their politically advantageous image of the underdog, the International Foundation Manifesta is wining about being a poor cultural institution attacked by a whole evil country, and the curators make a big fuss about censorship. The real tragedy of Manifesta is that in a project supposedly based on dialogue, interconnectedness, and exchange, nobody in the end was willing to listen to anybody else.