Lecture by Jacob Moe: SIFF & Archipelago Network: Case Studies
Tuesday November 15th 2022
14:00 (GMT+2)
Mezzanine, Post Graduate Room
Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly
Pedion Areos,Volos
Lecture within the framework of the course South: Space and non hegemonic paradigms of knowledge
Tutor: Iris Lykourioti
Biography
Jacob Moeis the founder and director of the Archipelago Network. He studied Politics at Pomona College in Los Angeles (BA) and Social Documentation at the University of California, Santa Cruz (MFA). In 2013 he co-founded the Syros International Film Festival, which he directs. As a documentarian, he has produced film and radio documentaries in collaboration with local communities in Los Angeles (USA), São Paulo (Brazil) and the Cyclades islands (Greece). He is an advocate of open access to culture and a member of international networks for the preservation and accessibility of archives, including the Whole Life Academy of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2019-2022) and the Creative Commons Open Glam Initiative (ongoing).
https://syrosfilmfestival.org/
https://archipelagonetwork.org/
15/11/22 18:30 room Ζ
On Thursday 10th of November the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly opens a new series of scientific meetings Docta Spes*. The future of space is now with the scientific seminar Practices of radicalization of architectural design tools.
In a moment when the production and management of space has become a major political issue in the greek public sphere, the Department of Architecture of the University of Thessaly takes the initiative to open a public discussion on how present research can help us to imagine and apply other models of organizing the economy, the production of space and artifacts, housing, arts, everyday life and media information.
The seminar will be held at the auditorium of the Department of Architecture at Pedion Areos, Volos. The event will be partially broadcasted online at MS Teams
Opening at 11:15 am
Download the program and the press release.
Connect via MS Teams
Panel #4 ARTS AND ARTIFACTS
Guest speakers:
Saprofyta
Nadja Argyropoulou
Boulouki
Panagiotis Kostoulas
Coordination: Sophia Vyzoviti
Response: Zissis Kotionis
CV
Saprofyta (Saprophytes) is a collective artistic project that, since 2009, focuses on finding, processing and assembling pre-existing material which is in a state of conceptual decay or disparagement. The by-products of this activity are intended to form visual pastiches or/and new narrative frameworks, to multiply misreadings and recombinations by means of speculative fabulation. In this sense Saprofyta always move from and within areas of degrowth, and participate in a continuous organic feed-back processing the cultural production and its materials. Saprofyta has participated in the organization of exhibitions and projects of contemporary art, architecture, cultural communication, audiovisual documentation of art and artefacts, in Greece and abroad. The collective has participated in research projects, created new bibliographic collections and relevant archives as well as works of moving image and publications. Its founding members are, independent curator and art theorist Nadja Argyropoulou, and architect Yorgos Tzirtzilakis. People from various disciplines and of various interests participate in the projects initiated by Saprofyta.
Nadja Argyropoulou is an independent curator and art theorist. She has worked with a large number of public and private cultural and educational Institutions, Universities, art organizations and grass roots initiatives in Greece and abroad. She has written and edited texts for several art publications. She has curated many transdisciplinary events and exhibitions. She researches alternative networks of autonomous eco-activism, forms of queer anarchism, eccentric alliances of art and science. She is a founding member of the artistic/investigative collective Saprofyta, AICA (International Association of Art Critics) and IKT (International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art).
BOULOUKI is an interdisciplinary research collaborative, whose work is focused on the study of traditional building techniques and materials. In Greek Boulouki means “gaggle”, travelling group, a name evoking the tradition of travelling companies of stone masons and craftsmen. Its aim is to trace and document the living carriers of such traditional knowledge; to study and to further disseminate it through workshops and actual building projects which are organized in collaboration with local communities. Based upon these thematic axes, the group’s course of action includes conducting research, organizing workshops, conferences and cultural events; promoting projects in collaboration with local communities and their stakeholders.
Panos Kostoulas is an architect. He has graduated from University of Patras and completed his post-graduate studies in Materials Science and Technology at the NTUA, focusing on historic mortars. Since 2012, he has worked as an architect, both as an employee and collaborator with several architectural firms in India and Greece and also as a part-time lecturer in Ooty McGan’s School of Architecture in Tamil Nadu, India. He has participated and organised workshops related to natural and traditional building techniques in Greece and abroad. Panos is a co-founder of Boulouki.
Panel #3 EVERYDAY LIFE AND HOUSING
Guest speakers:
Electra Energy Co-operative:
Chris Vrettos
CoHab Athens:
Constantina Theodorou
Coordination: Anthi Kosma
Response: Giorgos Mitroulias
CV
ELECTRA ENERGY COOPERATIVE Energy is a social cooperative enterprisesince 2016. Through civil advocacy, research and consultancy Electra Energy Cooperative works for the transition to a democratic, inclusive, and sustainable energy system with citizens at its coreby supporting new and existing energy communities.
Chris Vrettos is currently conducting a traineeship at the European Parliament. He is working for Electra Energy Cooperative, a social enterprise that promotes the active engagement of citizens in renewable energy production (energy communities) in Greece, the Balkans and abroad. He holds a masters degree from Stockholm Resilience Center on Socio-Ecological Resilience for Sustainable Development. He has worked in multidisciplinary research programs (England, Sweden, Galapagos Islands, Greece, Peruvian Amazon) examining connections between different environmental and social systems. He’s interested in journalism and has co-founded the digital platform The Climate Collective hosting personal stories from around the world on the consequences of climate change.
COHAB ATHENS is an open group, an exchange platform for urban researchers, activists and anyone interested in claiming housing as a right and exploring alternative housing models through self-management and collective ownership in Greece. In collaboration with European networks CoHab Athens has organized workshops for knowledge exchange in Athens and abroad, neighborhood participatory design workshops as well as other initiatives in order to explore the possibilities for the creation of the first project of cooperative housing/collective ownership in Athens.
Constantina Theodorou is an architect and urban researcher. As a PhD candidate of Urbanism NTUA she is exploring emerging assemblages of geology-infrastructure-politics under the spectrum of climate change. Parallel to academic research, she is engaged with performative practices in urban space (walking lectures, video performances, reactivation of empty spaces). She is a founding member of CoHab Athens introducing cooperative housing in Greece and member of Counterpublics exploring artistic practices in extended public space.
Panel #2 REPRESENTATIONS AND INFORMATION
Guest speakers:
The Funambulist Magazine
Léopold Lambert
Forensic Architecture
Stefanos Levidis
Coordination: Fabiano Micocci
Response: Phoebe Giannisi
CV
The Funambulist Magazine is a printed and digital publication published once every two months. Started in September 2015, it operates in parallel of the blog The Funambulist (started in 2010) and its podcast, Archipelago (started in 2013) that has published more than 110 conversations with thinkers/creators of the world for the last three years. As the magazine's subtitle, "Politics of Space and Bodies," suggests, this publication is dedicated to examine the political relationships between the designed/built environment and bodies. In doing so, it attempts to construct bridges between the disciplines of design, those of the humanities and post colonial studies, as well as the world of political activism. In July 2016, its sixth issue was published, concluding the first year of the magazine that successively investigated "Militarized Cities", "Suburban Geographies", "Clothing Politics", "Carceral Environments", "Design & Racism" and "Object Politics".
Léopold Lambert is a Paris-based architect who also lived and worked in Hong Kong, Mumbai, and New York. He is the editor-in-chief of The Funambulist magazine, its blog, and its podcast, Archipelago. He is the author of several books: Weaponized Architecture: The Impossibility of Innocence (dpr-barcelona, 2012); The Funambulist Pamphlets, Vol. 1–11 (punctum books, 2013–15); Topie Impitoyable: The Corporeal Politics of the Cloth, the Wall, and the Street (punctum, 2016); and La politique du bulldozer (The Politics of the Bulldozer, Éditions B2, 2016). He is also the editor of The Funambulist Papers, Vol. 1–2 (punctum, 2013–15). In addition to these media (designing/writing/editing/recording), he also regularly creates cartographic work to address certain spatial political conditions in Palestine and in the French banlieues (suburbs), and occasionally publishes photographic work.
Forensic Architecture is a multidisciplinary research group led by Eyal Weizman based at Goldsmiths, University of London. Forensic Architecture was formed in 2010 as a research project and a new paradigm of architectural practice that uses spatial tools, techniques and technologies in order to investigate cases of state violence and human rights violations at an international scale. FA develops evidence based techniques and is assigned architectural and multimedia research by communities who have been severely affected by state violence. FA also collaborates with juridical bodies and international organizations that are charged with the defense of human rights and environmental justice. FA´s practices are developed as a response to several converging phenomena, such as the urbanisation of warfare, the erosion of trust in evidence in relation to state crimes and human rights violations, the emergence and proliferation of open source media (or 'image flotsam'), the increased use of smartphone footage in documenting human rights violations in urban conflict, and the need for civil society to have its own means of evidence production for application in law, politics and advocacy.
Stefanos Levidis is an architect, researcher and visual practitioner. He is a project coordinator at the research agency Forensic Architecture, where he oversees the agency’s work on borders and migration. His PhD dissertation, submitted at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University, and titled Border Natures. The Environment as Weapon at the Edges of Greece, interrogates the entanglement of border defence strategies with the natural environment at the external borders of the EU, with a focus on the Greek case. He also holds a Bachelor’s and a Master’s in Architecture from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, as well as a Master’s in Advanced Architecture from the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia. As a member of Forensic Architecture he was part of the team nominated for the Turner Prize in 2018, and has lectured and exhibited internationally. His own spatial and visual practice has also been presented and published internationally, and his investigative research has been submitted to courts in support of human rights cases. He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS (2021).
Panel #1 ECONOMY AND PRODUCTION
Welcoming speech by the President of the Department Kostas Manolidis
Introduction to the project Docta Spes* Iris Lykourioti
Guest speakers:
Research and Degrowth (RnD) Barcelona
Angelos Varvarousis
Giorgos Kallis
P2P Lab - Tzoumakers
Vasilis Kostakis
Alekos Pantazis
Coordination: Iris Lykourioti, Kostas Manolidis
Responses: Dimitris Psychogyos, Maria Vrontissi
CV
Research and Degrowth Barcelona is a research collective that is part of the an academic association Research and Degrowth (R&D) dedicated to research, awareness-raising, and events organization around the topic of degrowth. R&D defines degrowth as a multi-level voluntary path towards reduction of production and consumption aiming at ecological sustainability, good life, liberty, and social justice. For R&D, degrowth is grounded in ecology, ecological economics, anthropology, psychology, and social sciences in general. In the degrowth process, R&D is concerned with democracy, international cooperation, and understanding as opposed to societal closure, fragmentation, and authoritarianism. R&D strives to bring scientists, civil society, practitioners, and activists together to think, imagine, discuss, and create proposals for sustainable degrowth. R&D supports and aims to maintain a diversity of degrowth strategies for achieving social equity and ecological sustainability, including grass-roots action and institutional interventions, academic and practical work, building of alternatives and opposition to environmentally and socially destructive projects and policies, local and international level work. At present, R&D conducts the majority of its local activities in Spain and France, while organizing and co-organizing international events in various parts of Europe and beyond. R&D has presently about fifteen active members based in Barcelona and France. It has created an informal network with members in more than 40 countries.
Angelos Varvarousis is a researcher and educator with a background in urban studies, human geography, urban and insular political ecology. He teaches at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and he is the director of the postgraduate course Degrowth: Ecology, Economics, Policy.He is also member of the research collective Research and Degrowth a leading research body in the field of sustainable degrowth, internationally. His research focuses on issues of urban degrowth, deurbanization, postgrowth insular development, sustainable management of common pool recourses and alternative lifestyles. He has written various books and scientific articles. In his recent book Liminal Commons he deals with the transformative dynamics of temporary collective action.
Giorgos Kallis is an ecological economist, political ecologist, and Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) Professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Barcelona. He is the coordinator of the European Network of Political Ecology, founding memberof the research collective Research and Degrowthand author of four books on Degrowth such asLimits. Why Malthus Was Wrong and Why Environmentalists Should Care (Stanford University Press, 2019), The Case for Degrowth (Polity Press, 2020). His research is motivated by a quest to cross conceptual divides between the social and the natural domains, with particular focus on the political-economic roots of environmental degradation and its uneven distribution along lines of power, income, and class. His current work focuses on the hypothesis of degrowth and how we can move to a society that prospers without growth. He was previously a Marie Curie Fellow at the Energy and Resources group at UC Berkeley, and he holds a PhD in Environmental Policy from the University of the Aegean, an MSc in Economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and an MSc in Environmental Engineering and a Bachelors in Chemistry from Imperial College, London.
The P2P LAB is an interdisciplinary research collective focused on the commons. P2P lab strives for integrative insights on the open-source technologies and practices. Its members write, edit and publish articles, reports, and books on the diverse range of topics they investigate. P2P organizes events for reflection, education and action about critical and creative tools for society-changing. The P2P Lab designs and implements projects that are based on participatory, community-based methods and practices. P2P Lab disseminates research and knowledge through the creation of spaces for creative resistance and commons-based alternatives.
Vasilis Kostakis is Professor at TalTech and Faculty Associate at Harvard University, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is the founder of the P2P Lab and a founding member of the “Tzoumakers” rural makerspace.
Alekos (Alexandros) Pantazis is Assistant Professor of Peer Education at the Department of Early Childhood Education of University of Thessaly (Greece), a Core Member of the P2P Lab research collective, and a visiting lecturer at the Master's Degree "Political Ecology, Degrowth and Environmental Justice" at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is a member of the P2P Lab and the “Tzoumakers” rural makerspace.
DOCTA SPES*
The future of space is now. Αseries of scientific meetings
Scientific seminar
Practices of radicalization of architectural design tools
November 10th 2022
Auditorium, Department of Architecture UTH, Pedion Areos, Volos.
Curated and organized by:
Iris Lykourioti
Kostas Manolidis
Scientific contribution:
Yorgos Tzirtzilakis
On Thursday 10th of November the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly opened a new series of scientific meetings Docta Spes*. The future of space is now with the scientific seminar Practices of radicalization of architectural design tools.
In a moment when the production and management of space has become a major political issue in the Greek public sphere, the Department of Architecture of the University of Thessaly took the initiative to open a public discussion on how ongoing research can help us to imagine and apply other models of organizing the economy, the production of space and artifacts, housing, arts, everyday life and media information.
Docta Spes* and the Principle of Hope
If something seems to continuously transverse our contemporary era is a long-lasting agony and the eclipse of hope. Extensive environmental disasters, current and emerging pandemics, wars, the challenges of climate change, the growing social and economic inequalities that leave their indelible traces on our built environment, the resilience of corruption and even the threat for our own extinction make us confront the fragility of our world that becomes more and more inconceivable.
In reference to The Principle of Hope (Das Prinzip Hoffnung) of the German Philosopher Ernst Bloch a series of scientific meetings will be held at the Department of Architecture of the University of Thessaly. The meetings aim at the re-examination of the creative importance of docta spes, the educated or apprehended hope that emerges as a result of the assessment and scrutiny of a specific situation. Only a ‘hope through knowledge’ stops being a false desire or sentiment, a passive contemplation, and becomes the education of desire, a precise anticipation; a latent trend of the realistically possible that does not only define our future but our present as well:The future of space is now.
Practices of radicalization of architectural design tools
Architectural design of all scales and expressions is structurally related to social and productive relations and is affected by the current hegemonic productive paradigm that nowadays acquires a geo-social and eco-social character. Thus it is essential for us to re-examine the terms and conditions under which architectural design is implemented and produced when economic, social and cultural standards linked to it are being disputed and transformed at the same time.
Ideas and practices that nowadays dominate the public sphere and the official policies of space -in Greece and abroad- have intensified the phenomena of multiple crises (climate, environment, social inequalities, overexploitation of natural resources, public health) to such an extent that conventional international economic fora are opening a dialogue with more radical research plans such as “degrowth”, “post-growth”, “peer-to-peer production”, “critical zones” etc. In parallel, a series of architectural, art and media initiatives, contemporary theory and historiography and scientific research try to document possibilities for a restorative subversion of structural asymmetries between global and local conditions of design and management in the production of space. Similar is the direction followed by several practices of representation that link space to the defense of human rights, practices of cultural production, practices related to political ecology and open knowledge. All these research plans invite us and motivate us to reflect on the necessity of designing a future that will be habitable and socially inclusive in the longue durée, one that will make of the world a place worth living to the coming generations.
The Department of Architecture of the University of Thessaly, in continuation of systematic research and due to its history as an academic environment that reinforces experimentation, free expression and criticism, opens the Docta Spes: The Future of Space is Now series with a scientific meeting, in order to initiate a dialogue with research groups who are already experimenting with alternative policies and technologies of cosmo-local organization in economy, in production, in space, on labor, on cooperation and craft making, on the organization of time, on culture and art, on media information. Ones that focus their interests on alternative world making experiments as plans for the transcendence of the standoffs caused by the aforementioned, intertwined and successive crises.
Can architectural design be a critical part of such endeavors that seem to hold knowledges of hope? What kind of epistemologies, radical tools and methods are needed if we are to take part in a transition through educated desires and hopes (docta spes) toward a radical change of paradigm in the production and the reproduction of our natural and cultural habitats in order to transcend structural contradictions between the city and the countryside, between what we define as natural and artificial, between human and non-human, in the geometries of power between global centers and global peripheries? How all the above can reverse socio-spatial phenomena that are also affecting Greece within the contemporary transformations of globalised capitalism?
Can we grasp, though such critical practices, the big picture of our world with which the practice of architecture also goes hand in hand? Can we map new territories and new ways of co-existence of diverse forms of life on Earth and perceive the margins and the trajectories of our actions now and in the future? How can we weave (architectural) futures of hope and experimental practices that are able to intervene in favor of the environment, of housing, of the public sphere, of public space and the commons in order to reinforce spatial, social and productive justice by having in view the future of the coming generations on our planet?
The Department of Architecture invites the following groups:
RESEARCH AND DEGROWTH (RnD) BARCELONA
P2P LAB / TZOUMAKERS
THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE
FORENSIC ARCHITECTURE
ELECTRA ENERGY COOPERATIVE
COHAB ATHENS
ΣΑΠΡΟΦΥΤΑ
BOULOUKI
Guest speakers (according to program):
Angelos Varvarousis
Giorgos Kallis
Vasilis Kostakis
Alekos Pantazis
Léopold Lambert
Stefanos Levidis
Chris Vrettos
Constantina Theodorou
Nadja Argyropoulou
Panagiotis Kostoulas
Coordinated by the following members of arch.uth:
Phoebe Giannisi, Maria Vrontissi, Dimitris Psychogyos, Kostas Manolidis, Giorgos Mitroulias, Anthi Kosma, Zissis Kotionis, Fabiano Micocci, Sophia Vyzoviti
Technical support, media, video and post-production:
- Computer Center (online transmission, screen recording)
Ioannis Komninos
Ioannis Manis
- Laboratory of Environmental Communication & Audiovisual Documentation
(photography, sound and video recording, editing, montage and post production)
Spiros Papadopoulos
Vassilis Bourdakis
Ifigenia Charatsi
Giorgos Kalaouzis
Eleni Pispiri
Nikos Vamvakas
Student team:
Kornelia Christodoulou, Ifigeneia Karameliou, Yiannis Kounavis, Maria Nikolopoulou, Lygeia Papaioannou, Hara Papounidou
Administration, finance:
Nancy Gata
Secretarial affairs:
Sofia Koniari
9/11/22 19:00