The utopia – meeting
The meeting in a place, creates a time that temporarily emerges from the different identities of the people involved. People tell their stories, testimonials, from the journey, the borders, their stay in a place. Usually we carve the stories of these journeys on maps, we discover, we map the routes of "before and after" (where we came from and where we want to go, the routes of family, friends, the routes of the neighborhood).
For a few hours, an ephemeral community is created with very different people, who permanently or temporarily are on the same place but would not have met otherwise. The borders of gender, race, religion, economic status tend to disappear through the meeting. Gifts are exchanged such as the ephemeral sculpted bread that was offered in the beginning of the action "the Good will come from the sea." The meeting is a utopia for the community to come. Utopia becomes action in the doorstep of diversity.
Amidst the solitude and fragility of the days …the letter
Dearest,
I am in Sifnos. I live in a house that feels like a refuge to me, at the footpath facing the little church of Taxiarchaki. The house has colorful openings gazing at the mountains and the sea; it has cats and a garden.
I'm here alone. I miss my friends, I miss art. The news arrive here from a distance, and the only thing new here is the changing weather.
I live in the extraordinary landscape of Sifnos that endures, even in the month of January. The island is beautiful, with something poetic to it – the soft January light, the seagulls, the lush green paths, the rubble walls, the vegetable gardens, the wild flowers. Continue reading
Public Readings. MEMORIA. Women in the Mountain. Voices in silence
Wednesday, 21 October 2020, 18.00
The Public Readings Voices in silence of the stories of women at EMST complete the work MEMORIA. Women in the Mountain, Notebook 1, Notebook 2, exhibited at the exhibition "Theorimata 2: On History," organized by AICA Hellas, at EMST (Bia Papadopoulou's curatorial proposal). Continue reading
Home as fabric
The project is based on the notion of home as something fragile, vulnerable and precarious. It takes place online and in physical spaces through performances -actions and meetings. Participants are mainly women.
Home as a site of desires, perfumes, loves, memories, dreams. Home as hidden, silent, disturbed, vulnerable, in debt, clandestine.
We initially invite women to respond to a series of questions* and through their answers we attempt a mapping of the concept of home. Continue reading
Exile Europa – Urban Action and performance 15th Venice Biennale of Architecture
Exile Europa
Urban Action and performance 15th Venice Biennale of Architecture
In the context of the Greek participation #‎ThisIsACo_op, Association of Greek Architects (SADAS)/on Saturday September 17th in the Greek pavilion – Giardini.
Performance:Stefanos Chandelis,Christina Thomopoulou,Dimitris Samir,Eleni Tzirtilaki
Presentation Lena Altinoglou"Lesvos Solidarity-PIKPA: The creation and the evolution of a self-managed refugee camp", with a video screening. An open discussion will follow, connecting the contexts of Greece and Italy.
Workshop Biennale Urbana (Andrea Curtoni, Giulia Mazzorin), Alessandra Pomarico (Free Home University), Nation 25 (Ca- terina Pecchioli), Over The Fortress, The Nationless Pavillon (Sara Alberani), S.a.l.e-Docks, Stalker (Lorenzo Romito) Σε συνεργασία με τις: Sara Alberani (Nation25, The Nationless Pavilion), Alessandra Pomarico (Free Home Univer- sity)
Nomadic Architecture,
With Nails and Teeth Workshop https://menychiakaimedontia
in collaboration with: Sara Alberani (Nation25, The Nationless Pavilion), Alessandra Pomarico (Free Home Univer- sity)
Exile Europa-15th Venice Biennale of Architecture
In the context of the Greek participation #‎ThisIsACo_op, Association of Greek Architects (SADAS)
The performance-action Exile Europa will take place at 2pm on Saturday September 17th in the Greek pavilion – Giardini. A presentation will follow the performance entitled "Lesvos Solidarity-PIKPA: The creation and the evolution of a self-managed refugee camp", with a video screening. An open discussion will follow, connecting the contexts of Greece and Italy.
The performance Exile Europa reflects on the notion of exile and how it is created today, as Europe closes its borders to refugees. Continue reading
Performance Exile –Europe 1
Performance Exile –Europe 1, 27-5-2016 padiglione greco biennale di venezia architettura, Makronissos-Moria
foto Luisella Carlei
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".
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
The entrance, NO VIOLENZA _ Ark Action
Location: Ark in the patio at Benaki Museum.
A gesture against the climate of violence and the sweep operations in the center of Athens. The action is about the displaced urban nomads who live in the inhospitable city center. As a crowd which consists of subjectivities, entering the ark with their habits and their foods. They show us their faces, they tell their story, they talk about the primary foods they love and save inside the ark, which becomes a place of hospitality. The ark becomes their shelter.
From Farsi to Greek. Crossing the borders.
Location: Monastiraki Square
The action was a comment on immigration, providing the colorful paved ground of the square, so as to welcome hospitality and cohabitation within the city.
At the colorful cobbled square which symbolizes the multiculturalism of Athens, words were spread like borders, love, hospitality etc, in different languages ​​of different nationalities to remind the need for communication and social gathering of the city's nomads in this square which becomes a crossroad. The need to overcome fear regarding the foreign and the different… The words we wrote symbolize specific meanings that are essential for the city center. The rope wrapped around us symbolizes the borders we constantly meet and the desire to cross them.
Spatial imaginary and multiple belonging. The Open House project.
Location: Byzantine Museum
The "unbuilt" may be understood as something akin to Arjun Appadurai's "imaginary" that harbors the potential to form new social realities that are envisioned by individuals or groups. A workshop stationed at the Byzantine Museum will aim to explore the" imaginary" dimension of inhabitation in the case of diasporic communities constituted across national borders, focusing on the agency of women. Populations today link themselves to wider constituencies of religious, ethnic or gender affiliation beyond national borders, and various diasporic public spheres become the crucibles of a postnational order. In fact, Saskia Sassen claims that it is precisely within the condition of globalization that disparate experiences of immigrant women acquire a "presence," obtaining the potential for new cross-bordered collectivities to emerge. If homes, neighborhoods, cities, and nations have conventionally been spatial realms of identification and belonging, such relations are now becoming unstable, and new types of consciousness, realms of operation and allegiance are being sought.
Woman case 19/09/2021
The letter 03/05/2021
Synantiseis [encountering] of bodies. 13/04/2021
Occupied Theater Embros: Designing and Maintaining the Commons in Athens under Crisis 13/04/2021
MEMORIA. Women in the Mountain. 17/11/2020
Public Readings. MEMORIA. Women in the Mountain. Voices in silence 15/10/2020
Book Presentation – "Nomadic Architecture. Walking through Fragile Landscapes" 14/10/2018