Athens / Anti-Monument: A Gathering of Political Bodies
The Department of Theatre Studies participates in and organises the Greek Student Participation in PQ23, approaching the historic centre of Athens not only as a monumental complex but as a living, polyphonic and performative field.
The overall proposal highlights the city as a “living performative archive”, through site-specific actions that connect public space with issues of identity, gender, desire, gentrification, homelessness, migrant/refugee experience and contemporary forms of protest.
A performance based on images and objects from the urban space of Athens, reconstructing the city as “our home”. The work was realised in the National Garden, highlighting the need to seek nature, balance and calm within urban life.
A public action in the National Garden, where a member of the audience is symbolically “buried” with gauze, followed by a process of mourning in front of spectators and cameras, commenting on the performance of grief and its exposure in the media.
A performance inspired by the “monument to the unknown artist”, transforming an urban trace into a political commentary on existence, art, love and the need of every body to claim space for expression and visibility.
A public intervention on Ermou Street, where five performers, tied together with a rope, attempt to move within a space dominated by images of consumption, exploring the external inscriptions of the restriction of the political and social subject.
