EMΣΤ is pleased to announce the symposium ‘Rethinking Social Citizenship in Greece’, which revisits issues and ideas that have been central to its curatorial and educational programmes, most specificially in the recent group exhibitions Statecraft (2022) and Modern Love (or Love in the Age of Cold Intimacies) (2023). Looking into questions such as memory and identity, the city, public space and civil rights, intersectionality, recognition, representation and political participation, this one-day discursive event aims to reflect on what it means to be “citizens together”.
The issue of citizenship is often debated in the Modern Greek public sphere in the narrow context of naturalization and state recognition (what in Greek law is referred to as “ιθαγένεια”). Rarely is it approached in its wider, inclusive and more recent connotations of social citizenship.
Starting from the recent Greek experience, the colloquium will focus on three keywords: place/city, community, and memory. The symposium aims to spark diverse conversations and exchanges and think about their intersections: from grass root community movements fighting for social inclusion to the debate on national borders and the treatment of migrants and refugees; from thinking what it means to be a citizen in today’s big data society to demanding equal access to public health; from the calls to decolonize national history and the institutions that serve master narratives to the activist antiracist and to the emancipatory identity movements in relation to gender/sexuality; and from the new ways to talk about social cohesion and mutual understanding to novel approaches to representations of personal and public memory, archives of belonging and sites of national and ethnic history.
Such a conversation will also foster new ideas regarding state in relation to new, emerging, often double, hybrid and fluid identities, and their equal place within the Greek polity and the narrative of Greekness; raise awareness on the demands of people with disabilities and the patients’ movements; and discuss the wide mobilization for the rights of refugees and the resistance to xenophobic anti-immigration rhetoric.
Organised by Dimitris Papanikolaou, Professor of Modern Greek and Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Oxford and Theophilos Tramboulis, Advisor, EΜΣT Publications.
PARTICIPANTS
Participants: Birkena Gishto, Kristina Gedgaudaite, Olga Demetriou, Daphne Dragona, Sebene Eshete, Ares Kalandides, Pafsanias Karathanasis, Erofili Kokkali, Iris Lykourioti, Sofia Dona, Anna Papaeti, Theo Prodromidis, Danae Sioziou, Christos Chryssanthopoulos, Sammy Windrose, Tonia Tzirita Zacharatou.
PROGRAMME
13.00 Welcome by Katerina Gregos, artistic director, ΕΜΣΤ
Introduction by Dimitris Papanikolaou, Professor of Modern Greek and Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Oxford
Theophilos Tramboulis, Advisor, EΜΣT Publications
13.15 Citizenship and Place
Panel Moderator: Iris Lykourioti, architect, associate professor University of Thessaly
Ares Kalandides, Urban Planner, Professor of Place Management, Manchester Metropolitan University & Academic Advisor at New York University, Berlin.
Brikena Gishto, director, poet
Sofia Dona, artist, architect
Break
15:00 Screening
Theo Prodromidis
’30yrs1d’, 2021
Growing up to the beauty of speed, 2017
Citizenship and community
Panel Moderator: Daphne Dragona, curator, author
Olga Demetriou, Associate Professor in Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Durham University
Pafsanias Karathanasis, PhD, Social Anthropology, University of the Aegean
Sebene Isete, Our Stories platform creator
Break
17:15 Performance
Danae Sioziou, poet, works in the field of education and cultural management
Tonia Tzirita Zacharatou, poet, PhD candidate at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Sammy Windrose, PhD, Literature and Gender Studies, University of Leeds
Citizenship and memory
Session Moderator: Christos Chrysanthopoulos, Historian, Institute of Historical Research/NHRF
Kristina Gedgaudaitė, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Amsterdam
Anna Papaeti, musicologist / Principle Investigator of the ERC CoG MUTE research program, Institute of Historical Research/NHRF
Erofili Kokkali, writer
ACCESS
The symposium will be held in Greek.
Entry is free with admission tickets that will be distributed on a first-come first-served basis half an hour before the event.
