Urban voids

01/11/2014

By Eleni Tzirtzilaki

Without a proper noun, Laura Lovatel- Federica Menin, Lupo Burtscher, Bolzano, November, 2014

The city of Athens is living in a state of exception[2], where the precarious conditions are tangible at any level in the city and where a new generation of urban voids, spaces which are abandoned on a daily basis, has increased. Abandoned plots with undefined ownership, non-utilized archaeological sites, abandoned factories, abandoned office buildings, empty shops, and abandoned public buildings such as theatres and schools are becoming more and more common. An urban void can often be an entire area, such as the one around Theatrou Square, an area called Gerani, or an entire neighbourhood like the Prosfygika buildings Complex on Alexandras Avenue. Continue reading

Ταξιδεύοντας- κατοικώντας στην πλατεία Αμερικής

Travelling -Inhabiting Amerikis Square

20/09/2014

Location: Art Area, Art Scape at Moschonision Street

During the exhibition “Topographies, escape points”, presented from Sept 18 to Oct 5 at Artscape art space, at Moschonision Street where the Network Nomadic Architecture held its action -meeting “travelling- inhabiting Amerikis Square “. In this approach, the city is seen through the polymorphic relationships of the people who inhabit it. We are interested in the historical, emotional and social dimension of the space and the multiple ways in which our body exists, moves, is exposed, dwells in it.

Μια ζωντανή κατάληψη στέγης σε κατάσταση εκτάκτου ανάγκης. Αγώνες για το δικαίωμα στην κατοικία και στην πόλη της Αθήνας. Συμμετοχικός σχεδιασμός, κατασκευή παιδικής χαράς και φυτεύσεις. 28,29 Ιουνίου 2014, ανάμεσα στα κτίρια των Προσφυγικών.

The refugee housing complex at Alexandras avenue

28/06/2014

A live occupation of a building, in an emergency situation.

Fights for the right to housing and to the city of Athens. Participatory planning, construction of playground and plantings.

Location: between the buildings of the refugee housing complex.

The refugee housing complex was built in 1933-1935 to house refugees of 1922. They are eight apartment buildings (228 apartments), arranged successively and parallel to the axis of Alexandras Avenue. They are an architectural example of organized building blocks, because the architects Kimon Laskaris and Dimitris Kyriakos (officials of the Technical Department of the Ministry of Welfare) designed them according to modern trends, without any decoration trace. They tried to meet people’s needs in an emergency, offering them in minimum space the best circumstances of light, ventilation, outdoor and public spaces. It was from the beginning a live neighborhood. The collective memory of the city of Athens is expressed in the same buildings, as they stand there as a heterotopia, as a different space-time among government buildings, apartment buildings built with antiparochi system (the owner of a plot was compensated with apartments in lieu of payment for the land that he relinquished to the contactor who built an apartment block on it) and the stadium. The memories of December ’44 are carved on them with the marks of bullets, as many fighters of ELAS found shelter there, and the buildings were hit by the bullets of the British from Lycabettus hill.

Revolution Bodies. Περπατώντας στο κέντρο της Αθήνας.

Revolution Bodies. Walking in the center of Athens.

03/04/2014

Route: Free Self-managed Theatre Embros –Aristophanous –Evripidou -Athinas -Panepistimiou- Syntagma square – National Garden.

The action was part of the ten-day Body and Politics event.

It was a silent route- wandering through fragments-traces that concern the lost memory of the city, experiences – narrative poetry from its present – narratives of uprisings. The narratives were about the Theatrou Square and the Boukoura theater, the Municipal Theatre of Athens and its habitation by refugees from Asia Minor disaster, the occupation of the refugees’ quarters and the current residents, the events of December 2008 and the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos along with Memories from the Paris Commune, the Chiapas, the crosstalk at the police station with Electra Apostolou, the events of December ‘44 in Athens, ending up at the National Garden. There were poetry excerpts from Giorgos Ioannou, Mansour, Katerina Gogou, Pie Paolo Pasolini, live narratives about Panepistimiou Street by Nikos Kazeros, Constantina Theodorou, about REX Cinema, by Diana Sabri and Vasilis Spiropoulos about the route.

Μας έδιωξαν από δω. Περπατώντας στις διαδρομές των εκτοπισμένων: Μικροί σπόροι.

They forced us out of here. Walking the routes of the displaced: Small seeds.

13/10/2013

Location: Former Stock Market, 8-10 Sofokleous St, Athens, Greece, Sunday October 13 2013, 8pm

The actions of Nomadic Architecture take place in public space and in urban voids. They connect the body with the earth of the city through actions of walking, silence, reciting of poems, songs and movement. They connect the participants with those who inhabit the city with a «bare life», as increasingly excluded by meta-capitalism.

This action entitled «small seeds» is a part of the series «They forced us out of here», an action which took place June 1 2013, which started from the free self-organized EMBROS Theater and ended up in Omonia, taking the route through Menandrou Street. The action centered around the difficult – sometimes impossible – journey of displaced people to get to the city; the center of Athens, gentrification, the chasing of immigrants and vulnerable groups, and their displacement forcing them into concentration camps, such as Amigdaleza.

They forced us out. They made us leave. Walking the route of displaced, in the center of Athens.

09/08/2013

Location: Historical Archive, Miaoulis Square, Ermoupoli Syros

Ιστορικό Αρχείο, Πλατεία Μιαούλη Ερμούπολη Σύρος

Along with the video presentation we had made in Athens. We were forced out of here. “Walking the routes of the displaced” we told stories about immigration-border displacement histories while a rope we had brought from the shipyard of Ermoupolis was around us, prevented us, it was suffocating. The action from the stairs of the historical archive was transferred to Miaoulis square where the rope, which symbolized the borders restricted us, marked us. We cut it, we got out of it, and in the end a game took place so as to occupy the area of the square.
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A Workshop on the present state of the Urban Center of Athens

28/05/2013

This paper was read at the Workshop on the Present State of the Urban Center of Athens , which was held at occupy Embros Theater on May 28, 2013. Participants included Constantina Theodorou, Encounter Athens, Nikos Kazeros, Eleni Tzirtzilaki, and Nikos Anastasopoulos. The Workshop was organized as part of an ongoing open discussion on the subject. Continue reading

Breaking the borders

05/04/2013

Route: Kotzia Square-Omonia Square – Splanzia Square, Chania-Hackney Wick in London

An event is created through a video named “Crossing the borders. Routes in the historic center of Athens.” The video is displayed simultaneously for two hours, at both squares, after the sunset.

Με μονοπάτια διασχίζοντας το Πάρκο της Ακαδημίας Πλάτωνος. Το πάρκο ως κοινό αγαθό για την Αθήνα.

Through paths, crossing the Park of Plato Academy.

31/03/2013

The park as a common good for Athens.

Route: from the entrance across the cafe following the paths of the park, up to the high school.

The action was part of two-day actions-interventions organized by the Residents Committee of Plato’s Academy “we fight-claim-demand”. Archaeological Park: Open -Free Culture area. Fight for the quality of life. We defend the common. We create communities of active solidarity”

To keep the park open -free and non-tradable, an alternative destination for Athens.

It was a unique experience through the spring landscape initially with the children who had come with small crafts they created with Ioanna and placed them on the trees at the park entrance and afterwards walking together in a unique landscape with olive trees, Judas trees, plane trees, Daphne plants, and other plants.

To θέατρο Εμπρός, η γειτονιά, τα εργαστήρια και οι ιστορίες των ανθρώπων.

Embros theater, the neighborhood, the workshops and the stories of people.

04/02/2013

Location: foyer of Embros theater, 9 Katsikogianni Str,

The once old printing house- Embros theater is a reference point for the neighborhood of Psirri and the center of city. The neighborhood of Psirri, old neighborhood of Athens, after 1950 had many crafts, workshops and craftsmen who began to leave with the presidential decree about the removal of certain land uses that produced pollution and nuisance for the center of Athens in 1998. The neighborhood quickly changed, many crafts and many workshops, which we can not say that were a particular cause of pollution, and many residents left, and the area quickly was filled with short-term life night clubs through a peculiar gentrification (“refining” the neighborhood) with no care for this precious something that already existed. Many of the workshops left because they could not pay the rent that was extremely high, especially in 2004 and the Olympic Games that aimed to give a different image to Athens and remove anything stable.

The shopping cart

07/04/2012

Route: Athinas Street-Central Market- Kotzia Square.

The action “the shopping cart“, action about the human condition, was part of the happening-conversation “Athens in Trans-IT-ion! Athens: A city in transition? ” Organized by the theorist of art and culture Eva Kekou in the CAMP (Contemporary Art Meeting Point) which is located at the square.

Memory. Kotzia Square or Loudovikos Square or National Resistance Square is a historic square in Athens, with important urban buildings such as the Mela building standing on the corner of Aeolus and Kratinos Street, where it used to be the Municipal Theatre designed by Ziller, which had hosted 150 families of refugees, and was demolished in 1933 by the Mayor Kotzia, while the trees of the square were a key element of its aesthetics.

Urban Void. Today it is just an Urban Void as there is only a gray pavement without trees, benches, or any interventions. Today’s square was formed in 2004, too hastily, without an architectural competition or study, and its architecture does not make the stay in the square pleasant. It is mainly a meeting point of immigrants, drug users and passers-by headed to the near-by shops. On Saturday, at the side of Aeolus Street a jewelry bazaar is held. Interesting and timeless elements of the square are the two cafes.

κενός χώρος στην οδό Αγίων Ασωμάτων-Ψυρρή Μία ιστορία για τα πολλά πρόσωπα της βίας και του πολέμου στο κέντρο της πόλης.

The self-managed community garden

29/03/2012

Location: empty space on the Agion Asomaton Street -Psirri

A story about the multiple faces of violence and war in the city center.

“We walk in darkness, guided by the light of the utopian star of our projections and driven by the rage of our “No” towards this present inhumanity”

John Holloway

The search for an empty space in the city center to create a self-managed Community Garden was an idea that had begun long ago, with the impact of community gardens that have existed for years in other cities, and after the trip and participation of Nomadic Architecture in an action in jardino Parajiso in Manhattan, at Lower East Side.

Navarino Street Park had a significant influence as well as other struggles for public space in Athens, such as the try of the activists to claim Filopappou hill to remain free, for the Elliniko, for the Cyprus and Patision Park, and for the park in villa Drakopoulou etc.

Communal self-managed gardens in the historic city center are a bet, an important claim and a symbolic gesture of cohabitation of diversities in an area withomnipresence of the police and its residents who were, at that time, homeless people, immigrants hiding to avoid their closure in camps, HIV-infected prostitutes that were jailed, immigrants with carts living by the things they collect and sell from the garbage. The homeless, the young unemployed, the craftsmen who are worried about the very next day are many of the center’s residents.
Continue reading

Il camino commune. To τραγούδι. Ιστορικό κεντρο Αθήνας –Ρώμη-Υδρα Ιστορικό κέντρο Αθήνας.

Il cammino comune. The song. Athens.

06/03/2012

Action of the Nomadic Architecture Network. Athens 2011-12 Derive in the historical center (Gerani, Psirri, Metaxourgeio, Gazi)

The Nomadic Architecture Network proposes a walk in a path and a mapping of the route through Songs, texts and poems and invites you to walking common.

It could be a song, a text or a poem too. The Song is a story, a narration about the path. Walking along it, we will connect to the earth, the people, and the social ecological [1]issues of the Athens.

In the walking(Along the way), there will be short events which will concern the common resources. Continue reading

Ο χώρος ως κοινό αγαθό. Ένας κήπος στη πόλη. Ένα μικρό βουνό χώμα.

A small mound of soil

06/03/2012

Location: empty plot at Sophocleous and Ampelokipon Street

A small mountain of soil. Spades on its top. Moving bodies, empty it slowly. They transfer it. A team that digs. A Hecatonchires excavator. The music embraces me, transfers me. Atzarouli, teslouri, kartouzi, svanouri. The association of Georgians in Thessaloniki ‘Georgia’ cooks khinkali for the Nomadic Architecture Network. We make a garden in Stavropouli. Architects, artists, agronomists, technicians and workers of the Municipality, residents of the neighborhood. We plant sage, sour orange trees and magnolias, benches and tables were assembled by findings of Pavlos Melas military camp warehouse: Stock of old playgrounds, tires from military vehicles, rollers, planks and boards. Next to us the kids of the football Academy of Hesperus Terpsitheas were training. Four to eight years old kids and dedicated.

Il cammino commune. The Song. Rome.

17/12/2011

Route: Piazza Sannini-via dei Piceni-via dei Volsci in the area of San Lorenzo.

It is about walking and the mapping of a route in Rome at San Lorenzo through songs, texts and poems. Small actions took place in public spaces. Actions took place at the occupied ex –Cinema Palazzo, at the alternative music place KeNako, at the craft workshop Rota-lab, at the Onde Rosse radio station, at the studio of Gianni Piacentini, and the poetess Eugenia Serafini. Radio presentations made by Luisella Carlei, Gianni Piacentini, Eleni Tzirtzilaki (Pier Paolo Pasolini), Eugenia Serafini. The video shown was made by Gianni Lauricella. The route was part of the Urban Transcripts 2011. Rome, the accidental city.