Mpenizelou Palaiologou 5, 10556 Athens
Opening: 12-18/12/2022
Co-organized by: htmylh and Onassis Foundation Scholars Association
Host: Flux Laboratory Athens

Memory as a form of wandering: The multimedia exhibition terri(s)tories attempts to narrate the recent history of dance in Athen within a time-frame of fifteen years (2005-2020), through some examples of cultural places, ultimately highlighting nomadism as a dominant element of the local dance community.
The advent of the financial crisis in 2008, the episodes of December, the Indignant, the occupation of the Empros Theater, the demolition of cultural sites or their commercial exploitation and transformation ―by ironic coincidence― into places of consumption, were only some of the overlapping and necessary “awakenings” of a society that was moving towards the denial of the general climate after the organization of the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004. At the same time, new spaces appeared in spite of the above cracks, spaces of culture that renewed that necessary (perhaps) shift towards a promising future.

A key question in this research was the “redesign” of the map of the center of Athens, in the context of a review of recent events, both artistic and social, a question that also led to the investigation of the relationship between urban space and memory. A garage in the heart of Metaxourgeio, a shop in Koukaki, a basement in Vathis Square are being contrasted with landmark venues for dance, such as Piraeus 260 of the Athens and Epidaurus Festival or the Stegi of Onassis Foundation, revealing not only the particularities of the era within its cultural manifestations, but above all the intensity and extent of artistic practices and contrasts.

From the historically constituted memory to the scattered traces of memory: the materiality of the spaces that hosted dance events/performances, the multiple physical and emotional inscriptions that potentially create a collective experience through which the dance community is formed and appears. In this idiosyncratic exhibition, co-organized by htmylh and the Association of Onassis Foundation Scholars, the “exhibits” take the form of maps and oral testimonies, converse with snapshots of current affairs, with publications and posters, in a multilayered and open archive for the history of the venues in Athens and by extension the history of modern Greek dance.

The aim is to imagine the spatial depictions of community as an act of empowerment, against the spirit of the modern era, of urban renewal and gentrification that erases our traces.