This piece is a remapping of Omonoia – the circular square in the middle of Athens. It finds its cartography through an imagined conversation between two poets – Édouard Glissant and Nicolas Calas – who both think in circles and circulations, and make a musical language that sounds out the rhythms and relations of struggle. From this imaginary, an Athens emerges that sings long histories of movement, encounter, exchange. It consists of three videos. Part One, ‘Η Πάλη Η Πόλη’ (‘The Struggle The City’), finds Athens as an echo: a place that is everywhere and contains everywhere within itself. Part Two is a collective reading of Calas’s poem about Omonoia, ‘Στρογγυλή Συμφωνία’ (‘Circular Symphony’). Part Three, ‘Σαν Τόσους Πολλούς Χορούς’ (‘Like So Many Dances’), makes an open circle and an open city, and new forms of citizenship built on shared resistance and commonality.
This piece was commissioned as part of The City Talks Back, a project that brought together architects, urbanists, activists, artists and anthropologists to explore the political voices of contemporary Athens. This research residency was a collaborative project initiated by London-based urban research organisation Theatrum Mundi and hosted by Athens-based cultural foundation Onassis Stegi.
Credits
Hnd Alzayat: performance in part 2
Eirini Amanatidou: performance and co-production in part 2
Gomidas Madfouni: translation into Arabic of part 2
Eleni Methymaki: translation into Greek of parts 1 and 3
Ehab Onan: filming and direction of part 2, footage for parts 1 and 3
Grace Chilema Nwoke: performance in part 2
Safi Sahyouni: sound recording for part 2
Tom Western: texts for parts 1 and 3, translation into Greek of parts 1 and 3, readings and performance, sound recording and mixing, videos for parts 1 and 3, production.
Undercartographies 