Ec(h)o-Logy: Greek Returns
After centuries of idealization as the “origin” of the European culture, Greece has turned almost overnight into the emblem of Europe’s biggest fear: economic decline and political disintegration. Europe, caught in its own mirror-image, has dropped Greece like Narcissus, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, rejected the water nymph Echo. But the repressed always returns and the voice of Echo cannot be muted. In our expedition to Athens and Olympia we are interested in the echoes of history as well as in the issues of today’s economy and ecology. We will ask how the current crisis affects the every-day space and the life of the people. We will look at the way the city and its periphery was planned and shaped in the early 19th century and again in the postwar-boom. And we will visit “Arcadia”, listening to the echoes of a past age, which was never ours, but which cannot be separated from our own imagination and memory.
Programm
Our guides: Encounter Athens: Fereniki Vatavali, Evagelia Hatzikonstantinou, Pascalis Samarinis, Aspassia Kouzoupi
http://encounterathens.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/the-centre-of-athens-in-crisis-in-search-of-critical-approaches-and-alternative-practices/
Recent transformations of Athens’ city centre
Walk in Gerani district, Panepistimiou Avenue and Exarhia district
DAY 2
Ancient Athens
Acropolis (tip visit it 8h in the morning, beautiful and empty)
New Acropolis Museum (by Bernhard Tschumi)…
The Market
Visit at the former airport of Hellinikon
Olympic facilities of Hellinikon
Self-managed urban garden of Hellinikon
Metropolitan Community Clinic at Hellinikon
The Metropolitan Community Clinic at Hellinikon provides FREE medical assistance to theUNEMPLOYED and POOR civilians with NO SOCIAL SECURITY or with very little income.
The development of Athens waterfront and the occupied beach of Ag.Kosmas
Organizer: Aspasia Kouzoupi
DAY 3
Athens Biennale organised by XYZ: Poka-Yio, Xenia Kalpaktsoglou (our guides)
http://www.xyzprojects.org
CAMP Contemporary Art Meeting Point
Embros Theater (occupied theater) Omonia Group (http://embrostheater.blogspot.gr)
Romantso preview presentaion of the new venue – project space in the so called: „most dangerous area of the city“ (www.romantso.gr)
„Imagine the city“
REMAP
DAY 4
Ancient Olympia Greece (Peloponnes)
Reenactment of Allan Kaprows Happening:
ECHO-LOGY
performed during the Seminar Week FS13
of the Chair of Prof. Philip Ursprung,
ETH Zurich with the students
and members of the chair.
21.03.2013 in Olympia, Peleponnes, Greece
ECHO-LOGY is concerned with natural processes. Water flowing downstream is carried mechanically upstream, is dumped and flows back. Some is lost along the way. More water is transferred downstream mouth-by-mouth, loses oxygen, is mixed with saliva and is given back to the stream to be altered again. A word is silently formed, is recognized from a distance and is passed in that manner upstream, changing its identity, and is spoken to the trees. A word shouted from person to person, so loudly as to be misunderstood, rushes downstream similarly and is silently conveyed to the air. A gas-soaked rag is evaporated in stages on its trip upstream, becoming relatively clean as it gives its fumes to the atmosphere and further chemical change. Human breaths are collected and conducted downstream by hand. Small bits escape. The growing bagful becomes stale and the container is then released to the winds. The movement is simply back and forth.
ECHO-LOGY was carried out by a small group of persons moving the water of a stream in Far Hills, N.J: on the weekend of May 3rd and 4th, 1975. It was commissioned by the Merriewold West Gallery.
1
carring some downstream water
a distance upstream
bucket-by-bucket
pouring it into stream
transfering a mouthful of upstream water
a distance downstream
mouth-to-mouth
spitting it into stream
2
sending a mouthed silent word
a distance upstream
person-by-person
saying it aloud to the trees
propelling a shouted word
a distance downstream
person-by-person
mounting it to the sky
3
transporting a gas-soaked cloth
a distance upstream
(waving it gently in the air)
person-to-person
carrying a bagged breath
a distance downstream
each adding a breath
opening the bag to the wind
DAY 5
Corinth
Corinth Canal