Familiarizing the City

Περίληψη

In post-covid Athens, the collective experience of forbidden common spaces initiated lots of questions on our rights as citizens and the way we participate in our cities. The need to reconnect and interact with fellow citizens and the city emerged as a necessity in my artwork. Starting off this simple, yet fundamental quest, I created two durational, participatory performances, both unfolding in public space in order to explore building altered modes of urban interaction that are connected to active citizenship practices. In the first work titled Δημόσια Ημερολόγια//Public Diaries, a live installation of a collective diary was gradually built on the pavement of the public square gathering various notes of the artist and the passers-by. Through the public action of private writing and visual choices, the behavioural limits of the personal and the public spheres tended to blur, inviting new transparent actions and spaces for personalized participation and interaction in the city.

The second work, Οδοιπόροι_City Steps, was a walking participatory performance formed as a contemporary devised ritual through the actions of escorting, wandering, and gestural imprinting within the city. Through experiential structured processes, the performance highlighted a “New Contemporary City” that emerges by the embodied action of participation through our present steps and print choices -both symbolically and realistically- signifying the person-citizens and their identity as the unique and indispensable ingredient of this rejuvenated urban loci. Both of the performances aimed to function as socio-artistic experiences but also experiments that observe, document, and possibly recharge the urban fabric in terms of space and relations, inviting the possibilities of altered ways of living together and social building into our cities, aspiring to empower a sense of community and equal belonging as well as a call on public action of freedom and creativity.