Woman case

“Woman Case”, a silent walking activity together with performances, is for the most part held along Iera Odos Avenue.

Eleni Tzirtzilaki, Urban Mythology

Curating: Bia Papadopoulou, Artemis Potamianou

Silent Walking Iera Odos-Leonidou-Filodimou

It is inspired by wild female nature; two goddesses –Demeter and Persephone; confinement in the Psychiatric Hospital (“Dromokaiteio”, which is located at 343 Iera Odos Ave.); a personal story; as well as women’s precarious-vulnerable position in general.

It derives from women suffering from mental problems, usually as a result of patriarchy and women’s place in family and society.

Exploring different conditions of women through minor incidents, poetry, movement, sound, pictures (archived material, painting) is my theme. Continue reading

The letter

Amidst the solitude and fragility of the days …the letter

 

Dearest,

I am in Sifnos. I live in a house that feels like a refuge to me, at the footpath facing the little church of Taxiarchaki. The house has colorful openings gazing at the mountains and the sea; it has cats and a garden.

I’m here alone. I miss my friends, I miss art. The news arrive here from a distance, and the only thing new here is the changing weather.

I live in the extraordinary landscape of Sifnos that endures, even in the month of January. The island is beautiful, with something poetic to it – the soft January light, the seagulls, the lush green paths, the rubble walls, the vegetable gardens, the wild flowers. Continue reading

Home as fabric | Wednesday, 31 May 2017, 17.00-20.30

Wednesday, 31 May 2017, 17.00- 20.30  Dwelling / ASFA BBQ, Pireos Street 256, Program: http://asfabarbecue2017.weebly.com/program.html

Home as fabric

Home, a place of desires, fragrances, love, memories, dreams. A home on the move, hidden, silent, disturbed, vulnerable, in debt, smuggled.

The home, vulnerable as a fabric but also made of fabric.

Beloved yarns, ropes, fabrics, given as gifts by women at their meetings, the papers with the answers to the questions, photographs from the place of exile where father lived in the island of Makronisos, a letter that he wrote from a hidden home during the first days of the dictatorship, photographs from the “homes” of the refugees in Moria, a poem, a drawing, a embroidery piece, a piece of fabric, are some of the traces that compose the home as a fabric.    Continue reading

Nomade/Topos-Athens

Silent walking 14 Mai 2017 /15 .00 Plato’s Academy

Athens is a city of southern Europe where urban planning
is unclear, where there are many unemployed and homeless
people as well as many empty apartments and closed shops,
where the city is often very reminiscent of an installation and
magic is often hidden beneath the cement.

It is a city that refugees and immigrants come to in order to leave
for the North as soon as possible, but many do not succeed as
they are blocked by the closed borders and often they end up
residing here, where squats/hospitality spaces for refugees are
in the center. Continue reading

Silent walk 13, 14 May 2017

Nomadic / Topos / Athens
13, 14 Mai 2017

Athens is a city of southern Europe where urban planning is unclear, where there are many unemployed and homeless people as well as many empty apartments and closed shops, where the city is often very reminiscent of an installation and magic is often hidden beneath the cement.

It is a city that refugees and immigrants come to in order to leave for the North as soon as possible, but many do not succeed as they are blocked by the closed borders and often they end up residing here, where squats/hospitality spaces for refugees are in the center.
Continue reading

Home as fabric 

The project is based on the notion of home as something fragile, vulnerable and precarious. It takes place online and in physical spaces through performances -actions and meetings. Participants are mainly women.

Home as a site of desires, perfumes, loves, memories, dreams. Home as hidden, silent, disturbed, vulnerable, in debt, clandestine.

We initially invite women to respond to a series of questions* and through their answers we attempt a mapping of the concept of home. Continue reading

Exile Europa – Urban Action and performance 15th Venice Biennale of Architecture

 

Exile Europa

Urban Action and performance 15th Venice Biennale of Architecture

In the context of the Greek participation #‎ThisIsACo_op, Association of Greek Architects (SADAS)/on Saturday September 17th in the Greek pavilion – Giardini.

Performance:Stefanos Chandelis,Christina Thomopoulou,Dimitris Samir,Eleni Tzirtilaki

Presentation Lena Altinoglou”Lesvos Solidarity-PIKPA: The creation and the evolution of a self-managed refugee camp”, with a video screening. An open discussion will follow, connecting the contexts of Greece and Italy.

Workshop Biennale Urbana (Andrea Curtoni, Giulia Mazzorin), Alessandra Pomarico (Free Home University), Nation 25 (Ca- terina Pecchioli), Over The Fortress, The Nationless Pavillon (Sara Alberani), S.a.l.e-Docks, Stalker (Lorenzo Romito) Σε συνεργασία με τις: Sara Alberani (Nation25, The Nationless Pavilion), Alessandra Pomarico (Free Home Univer- sity)

Nomadic Architecture,With Nails and Teeth Workshop https://menychiakaimedontiain collaboration with: Sara Alberani (Nation25, The Nationless Pavilion), Alessandra Pomarico (Free Home Univer- sity)

 

 

Exile Europa-15th Venice Biennale of Architecture

In the context of the Greek participation #ThisIsACo_op, Association of Greek Architects (SADAS) 

The performance-action Exile Europa will take place at 2pm on Saturday September 17th in the Greek pavilion – Giardini. A presentation will follow the performance entitled “Lesvos Solidarity-PIKPA: The creation and the evolution of a self-managed refugee camp”, with a video screening. An open discussion will follow, connecting the contexts of Greece and Italy.

The performance Exile Europa reflects on the notion of exile and how it is created today, as Europe closes its borders to refugees.  Continue reading

TRACES ON THE GROUND (KATO TRITOS LESVOS)

TRACES ON THE GROUND(KATO TRITOS LESVOS)

Archaiologikoi Dialogoi 2016 /Lesvos

FRIDAY, 15-4- 2016

Nowadays, the island of Mytilene can be characterized as “Ravaged shore” culminating in the agreement between the European Union and Turkey, the detention centers and the deportations.

I think about the ground as a fertile, hospitable ground that is formed through the inflows and outflows of people who come from other lands, refugees. What are the traces? I think about the bodies of the people who arrive, the camps that are constructed to house the refugees, the camp of Moria, the border guards of Frontex, the people who died and were received by this ground. A contradictory, heartbreaking, controversial and unstable ground. Continue reading

Monument, Emigrant memory. Fragments of stories. The good will come from the sea.

Monument , Emigrant memory. Fragments of stories.

The good will come from the sea.[1]

The Monument «Emigrant memory, fragments of stories – The good will come from the sea”[2] will be a changing  space-time, a monument dedicated to the refugees[3], a construction-ark  proposed to be held in three locations, by the seaside in the town of Mytilene,  [4] in Athens and in Kassel.

It is a monument regarding precarious life, vulnerability and loss which gives value to lives that are not considered as lives, that face unlimited violence during their journey and their stay as they have passed the boundary of the sea and are initially placed in Mytilene and afterwards in Athens so as to continue their journey. “Who is worthy as a human, whose lives are worthy as lives and finally what makes a life worthy of suffering?”[5]

The Monument will be a promise of solidarity and reconciliation within social limitations, exclusions and intense destructive controversies that occur now.

The materials used for its construction are related with materials from shipwrecks washed up by the sea such as reused fishing boat timbers, ropes, and colored fabrics.

It will contain memories and testimonies of immigrants and locals regarding their journey and their stay at the three locations mentioned above.

The memory for those leaving a place is something perishable which changes through their journeys. This vulnerability is intense when it deals with loss. “.. even amongst us, we do not talk about this past. Instead, we have found our own way to deal with an uncertain future. Since everyone makes plans, pray and hope, we do the same. However, besides these general human behaviors, we try to sort out the future more scientifically. After so much misfortune, we undoubtedly seek a way out. Therefore, we leave the land behind us with all its uncertainties and we look to the future.[6]

The stories-testimonies that will form the content of the Monument are fragmental because they often concern others -the co-travelers who were lost during the journey, or they refer to a journey attempted again and again (11 times Omar’s journey to Europe), testimonies regarding life in detention centers which nobody wants to remember, and when someone narrates them they acquire another dimension. But also stories of events that took place during the journey such as a shipwreck, a strike. It has the meaning of a Memory Archive.

The concept of testimony is particularly important regarding the project and is studied through contemporary international literature.

“The testimony is an absolutely unique and irreplaceable topographic position regarding an incident. The uniqueness of this position lies in its paradox link with the internal and the external.[7]

Or as Giorgio Agamben says: The testimony takes place where the speechless makes the one who has voice to speak, while the latter has inability to speak with his own voice completely, so that silence, speech, humane, inhumane to enter an indiscretion zone in which it is impossible to define…. the true witness. [8]

The testimonies which will form the content of the Monument will be collected at three locations, several already exist, and will be placed respectively in the interior of the three constructions-Monuments that will be constructed: From the journey from Turkey to Mytilene island where the  immigrants have crossed the border of the sea by stepping on the ground of Mytilene they finally arrive in Europe (Lesvos Island is chosen because it is the island with the largest influx of immigrants from Turkey) but also because the action “the good will come from the sea”, which has led to this plan-project, has already taken place on the island. Athens is the second stop of their journey, where they face many difficulties in their efforts to leave, regarding their ability to travel (usually hidden), but also difficulties in the accommodation itself, which although it may be temporary, it often lasts for years and sometimes becomes permanent. Kassel is the third place which symbolically represents, in accordance with their stories in the two previous places, the “desired place” – destination because it belongs to Northern Europe (it is studied through the testimonies).

With the testimonies it is aspired to connect the “interior” with the “exterior” as well as the “together”.

The interior of the three monuments-constructions will include mapping of routes and flows, stories–testimonies about the borders, the travel and the temporary stay in one of the three places, poems and songs as well as various objects. The material will be visual, auditory and tactile.

Stories of the locals about immigration will also be included. In Mytilene stories of the locals will be included regarding the shipwrecks, the people who were rescued, the Moria(detention center in Mytilene), the experience of the  horio oloi mazi”  (Village, all together), a solidarity network  of volunteers. [9] the wait in the port as well as immigration songs, but also testimonies of previous migrations from the Asia Minor.

In Athens, the “Monument” will also include stories about events that take place in the city like the hunger strike of Syrian refugees in Syntagma Square, narrations about the stay in the city, about Xenios Zeus in the public space and more.

In Kassel, testimonies will be collected about immigrants who stay there. Also Greek immigrants’ testimonies about their recent immigration to Germany.

The above material will be presented through projections, prints, maps, voices, images, sounds, small items. The objective is these three spaces to be hospitable, familiar and remind us the interior of a house. They will be “a shelter” giving emphasis to the broader sense of hospitality, to the unfamiliar duty of hospitality, and to the right to hospitality.[10] During the event actions-meetings will be held, where immigrants will be invited to tell their stories, as well as lectures, discussions, and film projections.

Construction Materials of the Monument: wood, screws, cloth, canvas, fiber, ropes, colorful fabrics, amulets.

In the interior there will be small everyday objects, gas stove, melodist bell, refrigerator, cooking utensils, plates, cups, teapot, cutlery, desk globe, world map.

The space will be covered with carpets and there will be a low table and pillows.

For the implementation of this project there will be collaboration with the Caravan Project and other artists.

[1] The meeting-action “The good will come from the sea” was held on November 14, 2014, in Tsamakia beach in Mytilene by the Nomadic Architecture Network in collaboration with the Caravan Project. The text for the action was published in the Inserts of Avgi on Thursday, January 1, 2015 and is posted on the website of Nomadic Architecture.

[2] About a month before the action-meeting “The good will come from the sea”, the collection of short stories by Christos Economou was published, entitled “The good will come from the sea” (Polis Publications). Although the book does not refer to refugees and immigrants but to “internal immigrants”, Greeks that have left the city and live on an island of the Aegean Sea (without specifying which, it can be a metaphor or an allegory of Greece), it is worth mentioning the stories of Economou and the quality of his writing as well as some common concerns. Polis 2014.

[3]Hannah Arendt les origins du totalitarisme. L imperialism p.239 refers to the right of asylum. The text “Decline of the State-Nation and the end of Human Rights. The nation of minorities and people without a state” suggests an analysis of the contemporary history of minorities, of those without a state, without a homeland, of refugees, of banished…

[4] eleni tzirtzilaki, Urban voids as xώρος εν δυναμει[4]. Without a proper noun, Laura Lovatel- Federica Menin, Lupo Burtscher, Bolzano, November, 2014,www.nomadikiarxitektoniki.net

 

 

[5] Judith Butler, Precarious life, The powers of mourning and violence, Nisos, 2009

[6] Hanna Arendt, “We Refugees”, published in 1943 in a small Jewish magazine, the Menorah Journal, translation Kostas Despoiniadis, from the 13th issue of Notebook of Total Confrontation, PANOPTIKON

 

[7] Shoshana Felman and  Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York and London: Routledge, 1992, The return of the voice, Claude Lanzman,s Shoap, p.232

 

[8] Giorgio Agamben , Remnants of Auschiwtz the Witness and the archive, zone books 1999

[9] horiooloimaziblogspot.com

[10] Derrida Jacques, Beyond cosmopolitanism, Kritiki publications, 2003, page 19.

Partisan Nitsa – Eleni Papayiannakis Electra

A visit to the place. Life must change.
On Revolution.

On the afternoon of September 12th, 2015 a group of women, men and two children (14 people in total) headed to the mountain village Kallikratis, situated on a plateau, mainly inhabited during the summer, with trees, sheep and goats, towards the location Sideroporti, on the Mountain. At the place where, on April 18, 1949, as it seems from the press of that period, at 3.30 in the afternoon during a conflict , partisan Nitsa-Eleni Papayiannakis, called Electra, was killed along with Athena Chandapakis and the rebels: Giorgos Manouselis (group leader originated from Kallikratis village), Andreas Kourkoumelis, Sotiris Psarrakis, Georgis Christou, Vasilis Vlassis (Lycurgus). Giorgos Miaoulis, although survived the conflict, he was later killed. Continue reading

onMAPS#0

onMAPS is collaborative project developed as a digital magazine focused on public space realized through contributions of artists, architects, urban planners, writers, thinkers. The magazine is a collection of artworks, photographs, documentation of actions, projects, frames, drawings, illustrations and texts written in the language chosen by the author. A starting point to open a discussion on what it means in general, to work / act / react / in a common space, on how to redefine what we consider public, what public space offers the community and how community access it. Continue reading

Walking on Filopappou Hill. Meeting at the abandoned kiosk of Dimitris Pikionis

“What did you do to Elefsina? What did you do to Ilissos and Kifissos rivers and to their holy waters? ‘Your sewage systems ends up in the rivers, you disposed the wastewater from your industrial plants inside them. I no longer see the altars of the gods on my mountains and hills, but only the offices and machines of your companies.” -Gaias Atimosis (1954)

Silent Walking on Filopappou Hill. Collective Reading at the abandoned kiosk of Dimitris Pikionis with a group of students from Kassel University (urban practice course) (Federica Menin, Laura Lovatel, Markus Bader, Stefania Tsigkouni). Continue reading