The course aims at bringing the students in contact with, 1) a wider understanding of space as a process of social production that involves diverse social experiences, land, materials and techniques, 2) an understanding of art works, architectural works and objects as material products that stand as evidences of complex and engaging social activities, as evidences of knowledges for the transformation of raw materials into material cultures, as evidences of social interchange in space, of preservation and transformation of human practices in the ‘longue durée’, 3) the idea that architectural design is a social relation; it integrates into to human experiences by enabling or disabling the safeguarding of memory, the reproduction of old habits or the creation of new daily routines.
The course aims at explaining to students how architectural design can intertwine with its social context in reference to history, economy and culture.
The course combines theory, research and design composition.
Students are asked to work on various representative media such as maps, recorded oral testimonies, architectural models and videos. They are asked to document and narrate the translocations -voluntary or forced displacements- and immigration paths that their families have experienced through time and during the life of their different generations. In particular, we ask the students to provide, 1) oral recorded descriptions of the family movements, 2) maps of family translocations-migration, 3)architectural models of the buildings that seem to have determined family memories, 4) a diagram of translocations in tandem with the historical events that seem to have provoked them or determine them, 5) information that do not fall into the above categories such as collection of works of popular music, videos etc, 6) the design of a digital diary-blog-archive where the collected information (in various media) takes the form of a narrative.
Human communities move, migrate, continuously during the course of history. Seasonal translocations due to transhumance or sea travel on commercial routes, violent displacements, forced migration in remote continents, internal migration from the countryside to the city are only some of the social experiences that affect personal lives and stories, demography and geography, environmental and cultural habitats; they transform languages, arts and knowledges. Social transformations and changes take place slowly or happen abruptly. In some cases realities endure and amalgamate cultures.
Movements become possible within a complex spatial network of interchanges of material resources and means of subsistence, one that connects communities to one another and facilitates the coordination of their activities, even in very dire circumstances. At the same time, translocations produce a peculiar and very controversial perception of the present in the lives of people; they experience a rupture between how their lives were shaped before their departure and how they are reshaped within the new circumstances they encounter upon their arrival in a new place. The community network -safety network, sometimes- in reference and the way it manages to build an identity around common experiences and common perceptions of past, present and future of its members, we call it ‘diaspora’. Various (social) narratives expressed with artistic means, in both popular and, sometimes, high art, in music, in song making, in folk tales, in epic poetry, in theatre and visual arts, undertake the task of transferring the social experiences and realities to the symbolic realm in order to enable a double process: the safeguarding of memory and the overcoming the dire past events in order to envision a future.
Today, in a new historical moment of massive waves of multitudinous migration and forced displacement, due to extreme inequalities, continuous crisis, geopolitical turmoil, lack of unemployment and poverty, scarcity of means of subsistence in their places of origin, it is very important to ask ourselves if we too are children of similar historical processes, if we are carriers of similar identities as refugees, migrants or foreigners; if we too are carriers of poetic narratives of displacement.
We are going to work on art, on testimonies of migration and, in particular, on the ‘space’ of migration in all its multiplicity (geopolitical, geographical, political, social and cultural). Space exemplifies the terrain for the ‘familiar’ and the ‘foreign’. We will focus our interest on the Eastern Mediterranean area since it is part of both the present and the long history of the Greek world by being, at the same time, the encountering area between three continents and three seas.
Since the very beginning of the semester, students start to do field research and study the given bibliography.
The deliverables are shaped durng classes and finally they consist of:
1) A blog with the collected material in various media
2) Interpretative architectural models of the buildings that have determined memory within family histories.
Assessment includes the overall presence of the students, during the entire semester, on the basis of their intellectual and artistic contribution to the thematic.
Braudel, F., Duby, G. (επιμ.) (2000). Η Μεσόγειος. Άνθρωποι και πολιτισμική κληρονομιά.Αθήνα: Αλεξάνδρεια.
Braudel, F. (επιμ.) (2006). Η Μεσόγειος. Ο χώρος και η ιστορία.Αθήνα: Αλεξάνδρεια.
Hodder, I. (2014). Συνύφανση. Μια αρχαιολογία των σχέσεων μεταξύ ανθρώπων και πραγμάτων. Αθήνα: Εκδόσεις του Εικοστού Πρώτου
Sennet, R. (2015). Ο ξένος. Δύο δοκίμια για την εξορία. Αθήνα: Μορφωτικό Ίδρυμα Εθνικής Τραπέζης.
Τσίρκας, Σ. (2011). Η Λέσχη. Ακυβέρνητες Πολιτείες (πρώτο βιβλίο). Προκοπάκη, Χ. (επιμ). Αθήνα: Κέδρος.
Τσίρκας, Σ. (2012). Αριάγνη. Ακυβέρνητες Πολιτείες (δεύτερο βιβλίο). Προκοπάκη, Χ. (επιμ). Αθήνα: Κέδρος.
Τσίρκας, Σ. (2012). Νυχτερίδα. Ακυβέρνητες Πολιτείες (δεύτερο βιβλίο). Προκοπάκη, Χ. (επιμ). Αθήνα: Κέδρος.
Benveniste, R. (2001). ‘The Coming Out of the Jewish History in Greece’. Available at: http://anciensiteusagespublicsdupasse.ehess.fr/index.php?id=130
Braudel, F. (1990), La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II, tome 1. Paris: Armand Colin
Claval, P., Jourdain-Annequin, C. (2017). ‘For whom the Mediterranean Sea is ‘Our Sea’?’. In Athens Journal of Medierranean Studies, vol.3, n.2 (April 2017). Available at:https://www.athensjournals.gr/mediterranean/2017-3-2-1-Claval.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1E8UEtpKT7T87IdZs9fA8s6EYerMliVfwqdBv0Y_0vEoKHoPDViMYrHHE
Homer (2017), Odyssey. Emily Wilson (trans.), New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Horden, P. Purcell, Ν. (2000). The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell. Τhe first chapter ‘Geographical Expression’ of the first part ‘Frogs around a Pond: Ideas of the Mediterranean’. Available at:http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/content/BPL_Images/Content_store/Sample_Chapter/9780631218906/Horden.PDF?fbclid=IwAR1g8a__hXvcmBanv6myrI7GVhRC9ccDJf_7m913EdljSvmQraXFcni0v7g
Ingold, T. (1993), ‘The Temporality of the Landscape’, World Archaeology, 25(2): pp. 152-174.
Isaacs, K.A.(ed.) (2007). Immigration and Emigration in Historical Perspective. Pisa: Edizioni Plus Pisa University Press.
Khaldun, I. (1963). An Arab Philosophy of History: Selections from the Prolegomena of Ibn Khaldun of Tunis. Issawi, C. (transl.), London: John Murray (work written in 1377)
Leontidou, L. (2017), ‘Slums of Hope’. Available at: https://www.athenssocialatlas.gr/en/article/slums-of-hope/
Malkin, I.(2013). A Small Greek World Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Malkin, I. (2016). ‘Migration and Colonization: Turbulence, Continuity and the Practice of Mediterranean Space (11th-5th centuries BCE)’. In Dabag, M. et al (eds), New Horizons: Mediterranean Research in the 21stCentury, Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/28477115/Migration_and_colonization_11-5th_c.pdf
Sennet, R. (2017). The Foreigner: Two Essays on Exile. Kendal: Notting Hill Editions.
Sotiriou, D. (1996). Farewell Anatolia, Athens: Kedros.
Τζελέπης, Π.N.(2003). …στονκαιρότωνσουλτάνων… Χρονικά της Πόλης, Ιστορίες του Νταή Σταβρή, Αθήνα: Τροχαλία.
Tsirkas, S. (1996). Drifting Cities: A Trilogy, Athens: Kedros.
Τσίρκας, Σ. (2010). Η Καβάφης και η Εποχή του, Αθήνα: Κέδρος. (Πρώτη έκδοση 1958)
Τσίρκας, Σ. (2008). Ο Πολιτικός Καβάφης, Αθήνα: Κέδρος. (Πρώτη έκδοση1971)
Venezis, E. (1986). Aeolian Land [Aioliki Ge]. Montreal: McGill Companions to Modern Greek Studies.
Villing, A. et al (2015). Naukratis a city and a trading port in Egypt. British Museum online Research Catalogue. Available at: https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/online_research_catalogues/ng/naukratis_greeks_in_egypt/introduction/naukratis_a_city_and_port.aspx?fbclid=IwAR2C3g6Mr4LAP-Bn895pT9A0HenHuuZHcG3wIGf4ocHF4pE6AwxvmpmnNJc
Films
Angelopoulos Teodoros, Eternity and a Deay, 1998.
Akin Fatih, The Edge of Heaven, 2007.
Aristomenopoulou Angeliki, A Family Affair ΑριστομενοπούλουΑγγελική, 2015.
Costa-Gavras, Eden is West, 2009.
Damianos Alexis, Cornerstone (ΜέχριτοΠλοίο), 1966.
Giannaris Constantine, From the Edge of the City,1998.
Kazan Elia, America America, 1963.
leGuayPhilippe, Les Femme du 6e étage, 2010.
Pazolini Pier Paolo, Accattone, 1961
Peeva Adela, Whose is that Song?, 2003.
Satrapi Marjane, Persepolis, 2007
Voulgaris Pantelis, Brides, 2004
Music
The Secrets of Music, tv documentary series by Nikos Kypourgos from the ERT (National Radio Television) archive.
Jordi Savall, Hespèrion ΧΧΙ
Savina Giannatou, Primavera en Salonico
Rebetikο music