Author: nomad

Partisan Nitsa, or Electra Papayannakis

Silent procession, Saturday, September 12, 2015, starting at 17.30 from Kallikratis village in Sfakia.

Eleni, Nitsa or Electra joined the Democratic Army (DSE) of Crete, at the mountains, when she was 17 years old.

She was “pampered” at the mountain, as a companion of her told us, because she was used to living in the city. Nevertheless she quickly adapted to life there. “We were together in the mountain” said Argiro. She was proud, beautiful, tough and brave. She was killed in a conflict while she was fighting along with other rebels in Kallikrati village in Sfakia, in April 1949. Her head, according to testimonies, was taken to the city of Chania. The local newspapers dealt extensively with the incident and called her “gang member” who fought heroically. Her relatives did not mourn for her because they were afraid. Her body was transferred by her companion to Chania much later.

I went to the location Sideroporti near the mountain village of Kallikratis, a shepherds’ village, to spend the summer, on June 19, 2015 seeking for her traces. Proud mountains touching the sky.

I wanted to make the story of Nitsa or Electra public, as a story that does not only belong to family memories, as she was my mother’s sister, and I have her name, but also belongs to the collective memory and is part of history, of that weak revolution with great social dynamics, so it is very important to go back and keep that in mind especially during the current crisis and state of exception.

The female fighters of DSE conquered equality and freedom, although a large part of society condemned them and it was considered inappropriate for a woman to be in the mountains and live alongside men. “Women today owe their position to the fights of those women,” said Argiro.

I invite you to a silent procession on Saturday, September 12, at the site she was killed where you can give away something to rebel Nitsa or Electra.

For additional information on how to get to Kallikratis from Chania contact me at nomad.etzi@gmail.com

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

Το καλό θα ’ρθει από τη θάλασσα, στην ακτή Τσαμάκια στη Μυτιλήνη, σε συνεργασία με το Caravan Project

The good will come from the sea

The meeting “The good will come from the sea” took place on November 14, 2014, on the Tsamakia beach, in Mytilene, by the Caravan Project, in collaboration with “Nomadic Architecture”

Mytilene, November. On the island, the feeling of being between East and West prevails. On the streets of the town, in the architecture and music, senses and rhythms dominate everywhere. The place is the combination of two cultures, often reminding the charm of the East.
Here is the starting point of Europe and its maritime borders. When an immigrant gets here, he is now in Europe. Frontex has established an authorized team. Although the border of the sea is not a fence, such as the one in Evros, it is dangerous and often impenetrable, while the conditions under which the journey is conducted, surrender the travelers to the vastness of the sea.
The action-meeting “The good will come from the sea” invited immigrants and locals to get together for a few hours, like a wish: through this we expressed the desire to reverse the current situation in the Aegean Sea and in other Mediterranean seas, in islands such as Mytilene and Lampedusa. The Aegean is stained with blood, as it is one of the major entrances to the Europe-fortress. In this state of exception, the bodies in the Aegean Sea lose their importance, human lives do not count, they are “naked lives”.
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Urban voids

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

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.

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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

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.

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Revolution Bodies. Περπατώντας στο κέντρο της Αθήνας.

Revolution Bodies. Walking in the center of Athens.

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.

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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.

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.

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

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

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

Breaking the borders

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.

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

Through paths, crossing the Park of Plato Academy.

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.

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

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

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.

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Το καρότσι.

The shopping cart

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.

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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

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

Ο αυτοδιαχειριζόμενος κοινοτικός κήπος. 29/03/2012 Τοποθεσία: κενός χώρος στην οδό Αγίων Ασωμάτων-Ψυρρή.

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 with​​omnipresence 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.
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