Chosen Cells is a sequel to Solitary Subversives and our seventh article for Witte de With Review (an initiative of Rotterdam-based Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art) of which we, vitalspace.org and I, are their… ‘Athens Desk’). Click here for the Witte de With Review site which contains several photos missing here. Or read on… 
Solitary Subversives is about the Power of One in the face of oppression. About how one person’s refusal to succumb to authoritarian lies can make a difference. It begins with an almost forgotten Greek film, that I vividly recall having made an impression upon me along such lines, and then relates two other stories highlighting the capacity of one person to resist against all odds.
Solitary Subversives is our sixth article for the Witte de With Review (an initiative of Rotterdam-based Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art) of which we, vitalspace.org and I, are their… ‘Athens Desk’). Click here for the Witte de With Review site which contains several photos missing here. Or read on…
Stepping Out/In. Photo by Maria Papanikolaou (with the assistance of Dimitris Lazoulos), vitalspace.org
The curious tale of two actors’s arrest on the stage of a derelict, occupied, Athenian theatre offers a window into life in Athens in the shadow of its wholesale economic collapse.
This is our sixth article for the Witte de With Review (an initiative of Rotterdam-based Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art of which we, vitalspace.org and I, are party to, the ‘Athens Desk’). Click here for the Witte de With site which contains photos below. Or read on… Continue reading
This is my fifth article for the Witte de With Review (an initiative of Rotterdam-based Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art). It is a chilling tale best read in conjunction with Zoe Mavroudi’s documentary ‘Ruins’. Click here for the Witte de With site which contains photos and footnotes unavailable below. The article’s text follows… Continue reading
In this, the fourth article that vitalspace.org and I have contributed to the Witte de With Review (an initiative of Rotterdam-based Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art), I offer a short history of Golden Dawn, the Greek Nazi party. As with all my articles in WdW Review, the ‘take’ is always personal, intimate almost. In this piece on Golden Dawn, I begin with an encounter with an old, poor Peloponnesean farmer, some time in the 1990s, whose life revealed much about Greece’s Dark Side. For previous articles in WdW Review, click:
Regular readers will recall my pieces on the closure of the Greek public broadcaster. A longer and more comprehensive version, in which I took the time and the space to unfold my memories of ERT’s presence in our collective Greek experience, became our third contribution to Witte de With’s Review. For the WdW Review site, click here (it contains additional photos that are related to the story). Otherwise… Continue reading
This is the second article that vitalspace.org and I have contributed to the Witte de With Review (an initiative of Rotterdam-based Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art). Readers of this blog will recognise a theme that is close to our hearts: the globalisation of harsh divisions (for a reminder see here, here and here). The added twist here is that the story of our globalising wall, which interestingly began in the streets of Athens, in December 1944, is now coming full circle.
For the first article in the series, entitled OF PHONE BOOTHS AND BESIEGED HUMANS, click here.
Allow me proudly to announce a new collaboration with Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. Your truly and http://www.vitalspace.org are, as of now, the ‘Athens Desk’ of the Centre’s new WdW Review. For more… Continue reading
Witte de With Contemporary Art Centre, of Rotterdam, has just launched its Review, both electronically and in print. As part of this effort, WdW have established desks in Athens, Cairo, Istanbul, Jerusalem and Ramallah – five ‘ancient’ cities. vitalspace.org, founded by Danae Stratou and yours truly, was selected as WdW’s Athens desk. Our first contribution is entitled Of Public Phones and Besieged Humans, a tale of migration, dislocation and the current Greek predicament. (For the WdW site click here – it includes complete photographic documentation) Continue reading
