FYTA (meaning: plants) is a conceptual audiotextual performance duo aiming at the redefinition of the 'radical' in art, as well as the wiping-out of notions of greek tradition and greekness. FYTA initially started operating as a musical duo, a “band”, producing their own brand of dyslexic messthetics. In two years, they released 5 (non-)music records, conceptually revolving around metaphors on nature, the ‘natural’ and naturalised social relations, as well as sabotaging distinctions between the traditional and the modern, exposing the self-importance of the avantgardist and mocking the white-male concept of the precious outsider artist. In their last LP, “Floweremedies”, they produced 50 tracks for 50 persons, based on a pseudo/mildly-Lacanian application that the audience had to fill in. The 50 persons varied from friends to total strangers to Greek TV celebrities.
At some point they moved on to making videos, having produced “FYTA go to the british museum”, a parody of greek nationalist Elgin marbles videos, as well as the documentary form, and caused an uproar with their video “the genes of stupidity”, in which a London laboratory claims to have found a genetic malfunction in Greek DNA. The video received 10.000 views in three days, a huge amount of complaints and the threat to sue, as well as two major TV stations requesting permission to show it. It was eventually removed when the person portrayed in it was physically threatened. Alongside their own work, FYTA are active on curation and facilitation. In October 2013, they organized a mammoth 7-day-long, 50-artist participating situationist burlesque at the Athens Biennale. Within this Bible-inspired holy week, FYTA presented work individually or in collaboration with others, in various formations, and curated others’ works on the dystopia of contemporary Greece. The centrepiece of the event was the artwork “The 100 worst Greeks” in which the audience had the chance to vote for their own worst league tables, as well as react for/against some of the edgier inclusions. Finally, in 2014, FYTA started their own record label, FYTINI, for the destablisation of Greek music cliches and creating a space for those alienated and marginalised not just by a mainstream, but by an equally suffocating - and more hypocritical - 'alternative culture' scene.