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Watch "athens stream of pictureness" on Streamable.

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Final thoughts

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When I draw, I usually go through two different phases: starting with pseudo-randomness and refining with the usage of thought (or culture). To start with randomness, or noise, serves to break the mental models that would otherwise follow a similar structure every time. This helps me to explore the domain of possibilities in ways that I wouldn’t touch with my rationality.

Then, with this novel input, I can apply criteria that I developed throughout years of experience and perception and make it closer to what I perceive as pleasant.

Now, the two phases shouldn’t be disconnected, they should be an organic process. How I bridge them is though motion, or rhythm. When I observe the noise and try to catch any sense in it, understanding how to keep going, the hand is still moving, making this asynchronous analysis in a way impossible, resulting in these two phases to run in parallel.

To follow the topic of draft cities (and make inappropriate abstractions to urbanism), I agree that Athens feels like a hardly labelable sprawl of geometries, colors, lines and spaces. I often have this feeling when in cities that developed over the course of thousands of years, and as Diana said, the human scale and the feeling of it is very present.

A city that only develops through random spontaneous expansion will probably lack in efficiency and infrastructure. On the other hand, how is life in cities that have been planned entirely before populating them? (like “The line” in Saudi Arabia, or many cities built from scratch in the Xiong’an region in China).

Coming from uptight Estonia, it might feel like in Athens noise has taken over planning, undoubtedly in a very unique way. There is no correct path for a city to grow, the perception of order and chaos is extremely subjective, and comparing them makes little sense.

There is much beauty and suffering in Athens. Some things move slow and some fast, in every possible good or bad trajectories. But surely there is a strong motion, a rhythm that will endlessly keep shaping the city, which makes it hard to tame and hard to grasp. A rhythm that seems unstoppable to me.

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Upon arrival I did not understand why the streets were so wet. At night, that's when it starts, the rain from under the 1st floor balconies. Sprinklers are used to keep addicts away.

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legislation is like a dinosaur, moving slow. Need to be creative and work around it.

longlasting format of activism and artistic practice??

Elephant in the comfy European room - Ukrainian vs global south refugees

Maybe more for the school of life, rather than for the gray building we come from...

producing now? reminiscing and digesting for years down the line...

social dysfunction caused by commodification of experiences and amusement

borders and topdown view - war of territories. Then every other context (unfortunately) followed that format.

refugee is a distorted mirror image of the host

crisis of hospitality

homogeneous societies don't want change because that means loss (or sharing) of power

Authorship of these words is blurry, collective, morphed.
Much respect to anybody I quote or rephrase here.

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THE PHENOMENA OF THE "UNFINISHED" CITY

Aitäh nomineerimise eest, Nabeel!
I will proceed with the idea of “order”, but taking more architectural leap on it, rather than sociological. But well, isn’t it all connected?

During the last workshop, the narrative of dominance of the final piece - “order” - over the draft got into my head. To finish or enclose, to clean up and polish seems to be a conventional final result of any work, whether it is an arrangement of your living space or planning the city. Still, draft remains to be the diverse, dynamic piece capturing the whole process of search, “mistakes” and solutions, the motion of the thought -> the heartbeat of the production process.

to draft > to err > to sense

Expanding the idea of the importance of drafts and the beauty of the process - Tallinn is considered an unfinished city: “City Unfinished research project at the Faculty of Architecture of EKA takes a look at the big picture in the city of Tallinn, and the concerns and opportunities of modern urban planning.” That speaks well for Estonian perfectionism - seeking for completenance, order, closure.

During this trip I have been dropping some estonian-russian phraseologisms and legends. Well, the following ancient one in relation to the topic: why will Tallinn never be ready?

“According to a well-known legend, every autumn, on a dark midnight, a small gray man comes down from Lake Ülemiste to the city gate and asks the gatekeeper: "Is the city ready yet?"

If the man would receive the answer that there is nothing left to build in the city, Lake Ülemiste would fall with all its water from Lasnamäe into the valley and drown the city.

So the gatekeeper always says that the city is not ready yet.

Because otherwise the old town of Ülemiste would be flooded with water.”

Coming back to the unfinishedness and “drafting” I feel like Athens does represent these terms within its’ urban space. Drawing parallels between Athens and Tallinn, does it seem that the Greek capital is in any matter unfinished? Mirroring my perception of Athens - the city remains a living draft, which does not seek to be finished. So the “dirtiness”, colorite, eclectic of the city, while resulting in a complicated “organism” shows a new, unconventional type of beauty. Still I would like to balance myself out on that topic, to not romanticise the idea of The Holy Draft too much.

I propose to continue the cities without setting the goal to complete and tidy them up according to some god-mode-made masterplan. P.S this piece is not a critique of my major or urban planning per se, I still understand and appreciate the value of drawings and plans. The manifest is rather to emphasise the importance of “human scale”, not only by the measurement, but by the feeling too.

JÄRGMINE PEATUS  - PIETRO

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Thanks Chris for making a strong connection with the previous studio, though I don't know how to connect it with the topic of voids. I see the point of view of the void but I can not not see the system that subjugates people to such a state of void.

I can not not think of some humans being more equal than other humans. Why do some acquire more privilege while others are made to struggle for it. Is it even their fault that some who are born inside the political borders of one country are automatically allotted certain characteristics for which they are made to obey for the rest of their lives, unless they change something drastically about their socioeconomic circumstances. Why are freedom of mobilities controlled in a tyrannous way? And why do many of us have never seen the gleaming edge border police’s blade while others experience this inequality viscerally when crossing the borders while the majority of us are deprived from access to such resources that could enable travels across borders in the first place? And why a minority of such a majority bypassing such deprived accesses are, instead of getting incentivized, made to drown in the depths of the Mediterranean sea?

As I see it, authors of such world order, if not coming from, follow the same oppressive ideologies which enabled slavery and colonialism to happen in the first place. The sheer evidence of such could be seen in the border regime, that on one side of the globe is open to those who contribute to maintaining the status quo of those in power while on the other side is closing down and galvanising its borders to the Global South. A very tiny fraction, indeed a very tiny, that happens to cross the sharp razors of barbed wires are made to live in the edges of existences: through harassment, physical and psychological abuses, extortionate fees and kafkaesque hoops of visa processes and asylum applications.

Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, uptill now has spent $3.5 Billion in the last 15 years to fortify the borders while only 18% of the total sum has been spent as Refugee Fund (Source: Amnesty Int. Report 2021). The UK alone spends £55-65m a year running detention centres mostly run by private sector G4S (Source: Equallyours.org.uk). Hundreds of people in Europe are targeted and persecuted every year for assisting migrants and refugees specifically in Greece and Italy for assisting refugees on the shoreline and rescue organisations for saving lives on boats crossing the mediterranean sea (Source: Amnesty International 2020). Since 2021 more than 22 thousand people have died in the Mediterranean sea.  (Statistica) The US has spent $2.3 Trillion in the conflicts in Afghanistan/Pakistan war zone, while $2.1 Trillion in Iraq/Syria $355 Billion in other countries in Somalia and other handful countries in Africa (Brown.edu).

Diana pashli!

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Thanks for the tag, Luca. Disregard of inflows and outflows is something that has been on my mind lately, and it resonates a lot with the theme of this semesters' studio that we had with Helen and Leonard. The "urban void" refers to political ontology, the perceived existence and non-existence of things in discourses. Looking at and hearing about the suffering and injustice in the streets of Athens is a brutal reminder that refugees are rendered invisible, non-existent by the current political and popular discourse in this country.
But it is also an opportunity of a particularly urban nature, more specifically, an opportunity that arises from the magnetic and catalysing character of cities. They will always attract people that by inhumane and unjust regimes are viewed as unwanted and dangerous. It is easy to erase from the publics field of view occurences in the periphery, in sparsely populated areas. Dwellers of a metropolis are an audience, a critical mass, that does and will always face these unwanted circumstances, the so-perceived ugly reality of our cities.
This should remind us of something, that it is an inherent function of living in cities to be exposed to problematic realities. This exposure resembles a fundamental urban political potential. It derives from a determinism, starting off from the concentrating force of agglomerating settlements. Its potential lies in re-balancing discourse: Urban dwellers have the obligation to speak about what they see in the streets.
Of course, this argumentation has some holes that should make us suspicious: Municipal governments are actively trying to push specific groups into areas where they are less visible. We are seeing some means to these ends on the streets of Athens every day: The police and policies that fuel gentrification. These two urban phenomena are the tools of de-visibilization and de-politizisation and they have to be held accountable for that. I am hoping that the outcome of the course could go into the direction of generating some sort of accountability in this regard.

@Nabeel, I am sure you have something to answer to this, may it be a critical reflection on the arguments made or ideas on accountability. Looking forward to read your ideas.

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Thinking along the lines of small gestures. Everyone we met - Lucy, Communitism, Giorgos Tsimouris - began their enterprises from small gestures. Lucy started with a volunteer-holiday, Communitism began their small gesture by working with their immediate community and Giorgos was unpacking the word 'crisis' when he discovered a whole web of relations.

Small gestures offer so much possibilities. We make (small) gestures all the time - the jobs we choose, the jobs we leave, the shops we go to, the shops we boycott, the people we smile at, the people we ignore, the nature we step on, the nature we protect...we are gesturing all the time. With privilege, we get to be intentional in all of the gestures we make. And this intentionality is so important.

To gesture is to indicate intention. It is to utter and be heard. As such, I find it difficult to understand the phenomenon Natasha mentioned about people abstaining from voting (which she thinks led to the current right-wing government). To me, this is not gesturing, this is giving up on gesturing. And this completely lets down what the climate activists in Lützerath (thanks Paul for this!) are fighting for - the activists gesturing to force the government's hand. Even if nothing happens, it's at least a gesture that's seen and heard. A very brave gesture.

Gestures to Luca - you're next :)

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Navigating redigested European reflections of Greekness

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Navigating redigested European reflections of Greekness

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(paul:)
...getting stuck thinking about actions to somewhat improve this fucked up situation we've been hearing about the last days.

Until I/we have found our way, I chose to take the idea of the small gesture (thanks, ines!) and send some supportive words to my friends right now getting evicted from Lützerath. In the end, it's one struggle, non?

Siew, you're the next, kick it!

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I feel very privileged and very impotent at the same time. We were once again mildly exposed to the reality of refugees and it already feels overwhelming. It seems like there is no fold from where to unwrap this subject. It goes on being something beyond our individual control.
I do believe in the small gesture. Although often they do feel too small, there is a tiny bit of salvation in them.
If I feel overwhelmed I can't act; to avert that, I draw.
@Paul you got luck with the lighter, do enlighten (or not:) us with a post please

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Metaxourgeio, Migrants and Urban Regeneration

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Metaxourgeio, Migrants and Urban Regeneration

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After our walk with Natasha through Metaxourgio and her explanations of the historical developments in the neighborhood, questions about people's movements popped into my head.

The constant outflow and inflow of people. How can we ever think about urban change without thinking about the movement of people, domestic and international migration? Change is movement of matter, of bodies, of money, of political agendas that cause movement in all the categories listed before.

I feel a little naive for making that statement.

I did a little research on Metaxourgio, first to find out about the Jewish businesses Natasha mentioned and their forced migration during World War II. While I couldn't find any information about them, I did come across other accounts of the development of the area and migrants' entrepreneurialism that strengthens migrant’s presence as a significant factor in urban regeneration in Athens.

I'll post some quotes in the comments, but these were the texts:

Chrysostomos Makrakis – Karachalios, The Area of Metaxourgio in Transition; Dynamics and Actors’ Tactics, 42nd ISoCaRP Congress 2006. https://www.isocarp.net/Data/case_studies/806.pdf

Polyzou, I. (2020). Invest the city by doing businesses: Geographies of migrant entrepreneurs in the center of Athens. Επιθεώρηση Κοινωνικών Ερευνών, 153, 61-81. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.12681/grsr.22341

Chris, would you share with us what impressions have recently lodged in your brain that became memories and possibly gave rise to thoughts?

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Today we met Lucy - an activist who's also now an employed lawyer helping immigrants (from western, southern Asian countries) seeking asylum in Greece and/or residence further in Europe.

Her stories and thoughts were eye opening and I thought were incredibly dense and effective for the time we spent.

To be honest, hearing the situations that the refugees go through feels like a large, crushing weight that erodes overall faith and positivity, leading to hopelessness. Yet they were told by the person perfectly embodying meaningful action and change in such a case.

Having the finances to live comfortably as an activist and person working for NGOs is rarely easy and requires great altruism. Inês asked Lucy about how she manages it, something I was curious about as well.
...And here I am solving how to "survive" and earn while doing my artistic practice. Such a question sounds a lot less dire and relevant now...

Inês, you are next in the chain.

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Are 1M refugees in 500M people a crisis? 

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Are 1M refugees in 500M people a crisis? 

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💭 having a good time, but also considering local impact

💭 anxiting

💭 stories and impressions become more statistically representative when sourced from a group.
(1 story is just an anecdote, 3 stories is data!)

💭 things that work on maps from the top (borders) don't work so well in real world human dynamics.

Authorship is blurry or has been forgotten, feel free to edit for corrections.
- Aurelijus

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Urbanism in its neoliberal logic witnesses a structural neglect of immigrants and refugee communities who are often excluded from the most basic human rights in the city. Athens as a capital at the periphery of the EU is a place where this intersection of right to the city and migration can be observed. So-called crises, ambivalently situated between mass migration and reception produced by a flawed process of responses from the EU manifest in the urban fabric of the Greek capital.

The purpose of this student-led course is to research urban mechanisms of migration in relation to dominant modes of urban development. We are going to inquire about the ways in which migrants enter the city and the institutions that receive them, may these be organised by governmental, non-governmental entities or communities of migrants themselves. We are looking to gain insights into the production of space that goes along with these processes and thus move towards an understanding of urbanism of migration at the periphery of the European Union.

What is the urbanism of migration? What are the processes of urbanisation that affect and are effected by migrations? Can the city be perceived as a transitional artefact, rather than in terms of permanent dwelling? What different urban tactics, practices, strategies and institutions come into interaction in these existing or imagined processes? The fieldwork cultivates the understanding of in-situ observations and investigation of current developments of sites of inherent contestations.

In the course of the three weeks, the students will regularly publish their findings in this multimedia diary.

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posting notes, findings, pics and ideas is free to be done any time by anybody in our group.

However, to stimulate regular contributions and interpersonal evolution of thoughts, we also kick off a chain of linked posts.
Each stemming from a previous one in the chain, pointing to a different person to make the next one. A hot potato passed around, forming a stream of comments, reflections, reactions, counterarguments or additions.

When you're tagged next:
(in this padlet section ↑)

post anything in any form. Big or small, quick or thorough. It can be personal. You can also link stuff.

use context of previous post in any way you want. (at least mention their name)

mention the next person to post in the chain

2 posts in the chain per day, one in the morning, one in the evening.
If you need, you may choose to pass. Please tag another person then. (message them)