Featured Event
DEMO2024
06/05/2024
11AM
IdeasCity Athens: Public Conference
Cover Image: IdeasCity Fellows at the Athens Conservatoire. Photo by: Panos Kokkinias
This event is free and open to the public. Click here to RSVP.
IdeasCity Athens’s Public Conference will take place September 24, 2016 and will feature acclaimed speakers from the fields of art, architecture, policymaking, and urbanism including John Akomfrah, Sophia Al-Maria, Tania Bruguera, dream hampton, George Prevelakis, Nick Srnicek, and Hito Steyerl, among others. The conference will take place at the Athens Conservatory.
Building upon discussions and collaborations initiated at the program’s Detroit conference, IdeasCity will observe Athens from the perspective of two key forces that are defining cities today: the flow of humanity and the flow of capital. As a primary flash point in the rapidly escalating refugee crisis, Athens is facing unprecedented challenges in the recent history of Western civilization, yet the city also represents a destination, a center of hope and survival, and a place where one can conceive new realities.
IdeasCity Athens will be held in partnership with NEON, a nonprofit contemporary
art organization based in Athens, Greece. Read more about the full IdeasCity Athens program at ideas-city.org.
SCHEDULE
11:00 – 11:30 AM
Welcome by Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director, New Museum, and
Elina Kountouri, NEON Director
Welcome by Giorgos Kaminis, Mayor of Athens
Introduction by Joseph Grima, IdeasCity Director
11:30 AM – 1:00 PM
Session 1. Uncertain States of Sovereignty: Art, activism, and identity in the
post-global city
Talk by Tania Bruguera
Talk by Nadina Christopoulou
Talk by Pelin Tan
Panel Discussion with Tania Bruguera, Pelin Tan, and Nadina Christopoulou
Moderated by Yašar Adanal.
1:00 – 2:00 PM
Lunch Break
2:00 – 4:00 PM
Session 2. Responding to Athens, here and beyond
Talk by dream hampton
Fellow presentations
Critique Session with Thomas Doxiadis, Rosanne Haggerty, and dream hampton
Moderated by Vere van Gool
4:00 – 4:30 PM
Break
4:30 – 6:30 PM
Session 3. Does Money Love Me Back? Art, capital, and the production of space
Talk by Hito Steyerl
Talk by Nick Srnicek
Talk by George Prevelakis
Talk by Sophia Al-Maria
Panel Discussion with Nick Srnicek, Hito Steyerl, Sophia Al-Maria,
and George Prevelakis. Moderated by Joseph Grima
6:30 – 7:00 PM
Closing Talk by John Akomfrah
PARTICIPANTS
Yaşar Adanalı is an urbanist, researcher, and lecturer based in Istanbul. He is a
cofounder of Center for Spatial Justice Beyond Istanbul, a cross-disciplinary urban
institute that works on issues of spatial justice in Turkey. Additionally, Adanalı
teaches courses in participatory planning at Technical University of Darmstadt and
in urban political ecology at Koç University in Istanbul.
John Akomfrah is an artist and filmmaker based in London. His work has been
exhibited at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Tate Britain, the Museum of
Modern Art, the Hayward Gallery, the 2015 Venice Biennale, and the 2012 Taipei
Biennial, among other presentations. Additionally, Akomfrah’s films have been
featured at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and the 2012 Toronto International
Film Festival.
Sophia Al-Maria is an artist based in London. Al-Maria has exhibited her work at
the Whitney Museum in a solo show called Black Friday. Currently, she is a finalist
for the 2016 Jarman Award. Her memoir, The Girl Who Fell to Earth, was published
by Harper Perennial. In 2015, she was guest-editor of The Happy Hypocrite for
Book Works. Al-Maria’s writing has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Triple Canopy,
e-flux, and Bidoun.
Tania Bruguera is a performance artist based in New York and Havana. Bruguera
has exhibited her work at the 2015 Venice Biennale, Tate Modern, and the Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum, among other places. In 2015, she was the artist in
residence in the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. Additionally,
Bruguera is the initiator of Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt in Havana.
Nadine Christopoulou is an anthropologist based in Athens. Christopoulou is
the cofounder of Melissa Migrant Women’s Network and serves as the General
Secretary of the Greek Council for Refugees. She earned her B.A. degree at McGill
University and her M.Phil and Ph.D. at Cambridge University.
Thomas Doxiadis is an architect and landscape designer based in Athens. He is
the founder of doxiadis+, an architecture office that works on urban interventions,
landscape restoration, and policy. Currently Doxiadis is Chair of the Natural
Environment Council of the Greek Society for Natural and Cultural Preservation.
Rosanne Haggerty is a community development leader based in New York.
Haggerty is the founder of Common Ground, a not-for-profit organization that
works with cities to design new approaches to health, housing, and community
challenges. She is a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Award and was
awarded the Jane Jacobs Medal for New Ideas and Activism from the Rockefeller
Foundation.
dream hampton is a filmmaker, writer, and organizer from Detroit.
George Prevelakis is a political scientist and geographer based in Paris. Prevelakis
is Professor of Geopolitics and Cultural Geography at the Sorbonne University
(Paris 1). Previously, he has served as the Greek Permanent Representative at the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. He is Codirector of the
French journal Anatoli and a regular contributor to the Athens daily newspaper
Kathimerini.
Nick Srnicek is a writer and educator based in London. Srnicek is Lecturer in
International Political Economy at City University London and the author of
Platform Capitalism and, with Alex Williams, _Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism
and a World Without Work_, a new manifesto for a high-tech future free from work.
Currently, he is writing After Work: What’s Left and Who Cares?
Hito Steyerl is a writer and filmmaker based in Berlin. She is Professor of New
Media Art at the Berlin University of the Arts. Steyerl’s work has been exhibited
at Artists Space, Institute of Contemporary Arts, and the Art Institute of Chicago,
among other places. Additionally, Steyerl contributes regularly to the online arts
journal e-flux.
Pelin Tan is a sociologist based in Mardin, Turkey. Tan is Associate Professor in
Architecture at the Mardin Artuklu University. In 2015, she curated “Adhocracy
– Athens” for the Onassis Cultural Center and was a board member of the Greek
Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Additionally, Tan co-runs the project Autonomous
Infrastructure for the 2017 Oslo Architecture Triennial.
Sponsors
IdeasCity Athens’s presenting partner is NEON.
Founding support for IdeasCity is provided by Goldman Sachs Gives at the recommendation of David B. Heller & Hermine Riegerl Heller.
LUMA is the Global Social Engagement Partner of IdeasCity.
International support for IdeasCity is provided by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.