Any Athenian who has wondered why it’s necessary to spend four years’ worth of the education budget on security for a fortnight’s sport can sign up. The true passive resister must follow this final instruction, though: “The (I-don’t-want- to) volunteer must already have his ticket for the Olympics. The resulting ‘04 fatigue has found its best expression in the burgeoning (I-don’t-want-to) volunteer movement.Becoming a non-volunteer is the latest vogue: all you have to do is agree with basic principles such as, “I don’t do unpaid work, and certainly not in August”. Second, that 2004, the year the Olympics return home, doesn’t have the customary feeling of a new arrival.The date has been omnipresent for years, blaring out from every radio, staring down from every billboard, spilling from the mouth of every public figure and lurking in the background of every conversation. Standing on a balcony high over the city as the obligatory fireworks lit the sky and signalled the arrival of 2004, I couldn’t have been the only Athens resident to be struck by two things.
First, that – like most cities that have trebled in size in less than two decades – the Greek capital looks a lot better by night. There are those who don’t like the relatively open atmosphere we have managed to build up here.”. The recent Turner Prize nominee, Anya Gallaccio, will fill a gallery with 10,000 red roses.Speaking of the tensions in Iran, Dr Sami-Azar said he “could be sacked at any moment”, adding: “Everyone looks for some excuse to take advantage of a situation and to make political capital out of it.

We didn’t reject any artist they proposed”.Five other Hirst works are in the exhibition, along with sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Anthony Caro and Eduardo Paolozzi. Given Hatoum’s Palestinian origins, said Dr Sami-Azar, the British felt “it might create a controversy due to feelings about suicide bombers”. Those feelings have been illustrated by a row last week in Sweden, where Israel’s ambassador smashed a work showing a suicide bomber’s portrait floating in a pool of red liquid.The British Council, said Dr Sami-Azar, had been “quite conservative, more so than us. It consists of four video screens showing breath misting on glass as texts sacred to the four great world religions – Islam, Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism – are recited.The British Council excluded other works from the show as “too risky”, including Hatoum’s wheelchair with knife blades for handles.

As long as it doesn’t offend against religious sensibilities or display explicit eroticism, then it can be shown.”In this respect, Breath, a new work by Shirazeh Houshiary, a London-based Iranian female artist, is particularly daring. While admitting it willbe “provocative”, he said it would not “cross the red line”, adding: “Artists should be allowed to express their own opinions. But Western culture remains a delicate issue in Iran, where political moderates are engaged in a bitter confrontation with conservatives in the run-up to the 20 February election.The British exhibition opens four days later at Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary Art, a meeting-place for young Iranians who chafe at the restrictions imposed by hard-line clerics.The museum’s director, Dr Ali-Reza Sami-Azar, who is well-practised at knowing how far to push the boundaries, plans to display Resurrection next to a large window at the entrance. But the timing of the show will be seen as an indication of warmer relations between Britain and Iran, following the theocratic regime’s agreement late last year to open its nuclear facilities to inspection.Britain and Iran restored full diplomatic relations in 1999 after a decade-long rift caused by the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses. Other works were held back by the British Council, however, including body casts by Gormley and a wheelchair with knives by Mona Hatoum.The Hirst work, called Resurrection, consists of a human skeleton glued vertically to two interlocking panels of glass.