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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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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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. 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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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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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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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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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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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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Il cammino comune. The song. Athens.

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

Il cammino commune. The Song. Rome.

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.

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Breaking the borders. Fotovolida.

Project in Mother Teresa square Tirana

Se hacer el camino par andar John Holoway.

The greek artistic architectonic collective perform an action in one of the three key points of Boulevard of Tirana, Mother Teresa square.The action consists of a one table laden with greek and Albanian food to which passerby are invited to sit and eat a meal prepared especially for them,to help the spontaneous discussion and dialogue on issues such as borders,public space and their use,ethnicity,poverty etc.. The discussion will be aided by a video made earlier in the historical center of Athens that tells of people,their stories,their experience and all the issues that can be addressed in the discussion in Tirana.

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Il cammino commune. The song. Hydra.

Walking on the path to Agios Mamas

Route: Plakes Vlychou- path-Ag. Mamas to Hydra with the sunrise.

We set off at 6 am, Eleni, Stephanos, Thalia, Evemar, from the house in Ano Hydra. We got cheese pies from the bakery, next to the Pirate, which was just closing and we got coffee from another cafe on the beach that had just opened. Stavros was waiting for us with the water taxi. By dawn we could see the sunrise over the sea.

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Situazioni Urbane. No violenza Filoxenia.

Location: Koumoundourou Square.

The issues that interested us during the workshop that preceded the action concerned the public sphere with emphasis on immigration, borders, displacement, common resources, and social ecology. The workshop focused on human condition. The ways of interaction, and the exchange of cultures and ideas, are the ones that need to be studied on the opposite side of spatial segregation and xenophobia.

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