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.
It is a Mediterranean city where the rivers were covered over, where the memories of wars and colonialism were not discussed, where the civil war marked her as it started in the central square, where the leftist government disappointed her and managed to limit the movements that developed after 2008 and many of the commons.
Contemporary art in Athens developed through movements and demonstrations about the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, the movement of the squares, along with the Commons through actions in the city center, in neighborhoods, in places like the Lyric Opera, and the open self-run theater Embros, and then spread to many other places in the center and in the districts through various different expressions such as performances, installations, happenings, exhibitions in unexpected places, most often without a relationship to money.
The Documenta festival, even though it sought through public actions to develop a political dialogue by inviting theoreticians and activists such as Franco Berardi Bifo, did not escape from operating as a rough, particularly-introverted institution of the North within the fluid landscape of Athens, thereby violating the “Learning from Athens”.
The North-South relationship in Europe seems difficult and irreconcilable in life and in art, and Athens the cauldron boiling soul-deep. The bodies vulnerable, bowed, full of dust and sun, bodies of the South, often ready to rebel.
H Nomadic / Topos / Silent Walking in Athens, was born in the heart of the city through reflections and thoughts over the political art of nowadays traced in the financial capitalism postcolonial situation of the “left government”, and through reflections on the Documenta 14 and the rigid relationship with Athens and its artists.
The Nomadic / Topos / Athens comes to contact with the ground of Athens through the silent walking and comes to dwell in these uncertain landscapes and places associated with strong memories of the past and the present, where communities and the commons are created, and Athenian artists express themselves, paving a path in the city which draws a connection between significant historical sites.
Intending to create with these vulnerable rebellious bodies of Athens through this silent walk and the actions to be carried out by different groups of artists on sites.
- the traces of Kifissos river, river that was covered and built into a road.
- the archaeological park of the Academy of Platon and the self-run Cafe and the Association of local residents.
- the abandoned kiosk Dimitris Pikionis and at diamorphosis at the hill of Philopappou
- the traces of the ancient river Eridanus (ancient site Kerameikou- Monastiraki Square)
- DEH in Aristeidou an expression of the crisis of the “queues” starting from 5 in the morning and the crowds that daily gather to pay their bills)
- in Syntagma Square as a memory place of bloody December 1944 from where the civil war –and the unattained revolution begun and the movements of the squares,
the traces of Ilissos river - At the Refugee House Prosfigika in Alexandras avenue standard prototype refugees houses from Little Asia associated with the Resistance and the Civil War that most of them expropriated by the state to be torn down and now are inhabited by squatters that are in the majority refugees.
- Law School in Mesolongi Street in Exarcheia where Alexandro’s Grigoropoulos was killed and started the movement in 2008
- Squats where refugees live, like City Plaza and Notaras
- Green Park, occupy- self-managed space where a meeting is proposed about the commons and the transformation of the city of Athens.
Nomadic / Place / Athens
Concept: Eleni Tzirtzilaki
Curating / communication: Maria Zacharogianni