ARTISTS: Karin Van de Wiel, Marna Slappendel

Resilience in Every Direction visually examines the interplay of order and disorder within urban settings. By following the paths of activist protests from earlier this month in Thessaloniki, it ponders the remnants left behind mere days later, as life resumes its usual rhythm. 

As a protest unfolds, individuals engage in various forms of resistance. Some take to the streets, while others strategize at the table in their living rooms. Books are penned, workshops organized, silent donations made, and some challenge the system with subtle acts in public spaces. The project Stones & Cones by Karin looks at different multitudes of protest.

With the project The Stance Marna looks at the realm where unfairness is felt. How do you choose a stance? Do you radically rise and raise your voice, or does silence guide your path? Perhaps, amidst uncertainties, you linger in between.

[Exhibition text by the artists]


PHLSPH: If I were to make a diagrammatic image of your project I would see the stone in the centre and then rings around it, the undulations of a gesture or from constellations of gestures, political events to be more precise, which took place before you arrived in the city. Would this resonate with your practice?

Karin: Although the project started with thinking about the cones as little, silent plastic soldiers we obey, and graffiti as a mode of resistance, it turned out that the stone became the key image. The centre of the project. Maybe it’s because I took it out of its surroundings and isolated it. I placed it delicately on a soft pillow. It ended up receiving more attention from me than the cone, which I left where I found it. A 24-hour strike occurred a year post the nation’s deadliest train crash. Firebombs hit riot police, tractors dumped chestnuts to protest production costs. Students oppose a bill on private universities. There is a forensic dimension to the stone, and the other objects circling around it; the clues and the bits of material left behind from a moment, and how these tell the stories.

PHLSPH: If I were to make another diagrammatic image I would see that the objects you have chosen incite the extension of time, they work as props for mental images and as residues of actual facts. Are you interested in the “lanes” created or the lines depicted, as it were?

Karin: The physicality of the political events that took place before I arrived, they are places for me on a map. Mapping through movement. The objects (residues, traces) found at those locations become the mental images for those events, and they endure in time—as you call them “extensions of time”. The traces of the events at those physical locations and places almost didn’t exist anymore in the physical world when I looked for them. I can imagine now there is nothing left anymore. Can we say that these objects carry the narrative of the political events that took place? So that we remember?

I do see the objects as a network of resilience. They all together draw a line of resistance in the city, and resembling the time (different days, hours of the day and duration of the protests) the events took place. At the same time it also reflects on the future: the same objects will most likely be left behind. It will be a different stone, but its function and meaning is the same.

PHSLPH: Do you think that sometimes the line between cones and stones, metaphorically speaking, is blurry? And under some circumstances maintaining the cones or trying to find ways to shift them may be as powerful as using stones? And that stones lose their power and become cones, as it were?

Karin: There is a blurred line between the cones and the stones. You could look at it that what for someone is a stone, can be a cone for someone else. Or as you mention yourself: a stone can lose its power (by what/whom?) and it becomes a cone. Can a cone be as powerful as a stone? Depends on the goal; so I’d say yes. Maybe a stone can physically destroy more, but does that not make it more powerful but just a different “tool”? Why do we think a stone is per definite more powerful than a cone? So maybe it is better to speak of different “uses”? And not that one is more powerful than the other?

Marna: To me, the cone symbolizes a kind of gentle way to deny access. But, of course, only in relation to humans. Despite the fact that it is made of soft, compressible material and you cannot literally bash someone’s brains in with it like you can with a stone, the material it is made of is indeed deadly for the environment. So if you look at it in a literal way (from a non-human perspective), it suddenly takes on a completely different, much more aggressive meaning.

If I were to apply your shifting cone to stone idea metaphorically to my work The Stance, I do see comparisons between the shifting and the “lingering in between” phases. The phase of contemplation, hopefully without the pressure of others, can lead to a radical change of opinion, transforming a cone into a stone. Or vice versa.

PHLSPH: And in the same light if I were to look at Marna’s project, as they were coupled, I see it as an exploration of the space in between the undulations, the flexible movements happening in between. Marna, how flexible is time for you?

Marna: When someone is truly focused on either contemplating or working on something, time does not play a role at all anymore. It seems absent, or, as you might call it, “flexible”. This work aims to emphasize such a moment, the “in-between” phase. A timeless moment of concentration, truly considering all things involved in taking a stance. Is it even possible to know all the things involved? Do you have to take a stance? Does doing nothing also mean taking a stance, and is it okay not to know and linger in between? Nowadays, with the growing polarization and the strong black and white opinions, I like to shed light on the gray areas and the doubts.

PHLSPH: Marna, your project is very political and at the same time atemporal. I see this choreography of ambivalence in taking a stance also as move of slowing down to process the information with which we are bombarded.  We are so often dictated to take a stance in an absolute and very speedy way. Is this project also about reflection?

Marna: My inspiration for the work was the protests in Thessaloniki, but ultimately the work is about something else, something universal that speaks to everybody. About responding to feelings of unfairness in situations that everyone deals with every day. And taking the responsibility of thinking before acting. Even though I am not raised religious, I like the biblical connotation shown in this work Who is without sin, be the first to throw the stone.

ARTISTS: Joseph Kennel, Niside Panebianco

Looking to the western limits of Thessoliniki one is faced with an active boundary, a stark break between city and non-city. Physically reaching this border, the highway cuts through the landscape, forcing us to turn our gaze and our steps back towards the city. At the core of Thessaloniki another boundary inhabits the urban fabric, the Byzantine walls that fluidly cut through its different layers.

Sensing the western line of this wall, the details of its material composition and the surrounding cityscape provide a collapse of temporal scales. As a skeleton, the wall sustains, penetrates and confines a shapeshifting urban environment that tightly hugs its structure. Walking the western line of the wall, we began to engage with it not only through our gaze, but also with our touch in an attempt to feel the wall’s material presence.

When considering the wall as an infrastructural constant, it transcends its physicality becoming a representation of time itself. Its cracks and openings act as a portal to the past and a frame for the present. Flowing through the buildings and parks that surround it, an old border becomes absorbed by the city, no longer being able to divide.

[Exhibition text by the artists]


PHSLPH: Would you agree that what was encountered first as the skeleton of the city, as you described it in your text,  could also now be seen as some of its veins, pumping the city with memories and histories? What would you say is the relationship between stones and ruins in your project?

Joe-Niside: From the ruins of the wall new possibilities and ways of thinking through the city’s identity are possible. The wall stops being merely a ruin when it is taken as part of a larger continuum of the urban history of Thessaloniki.  Both the stones and the ruins are the constitutive elements of the contemporary urban fabric of the city, and they exist in a dialogue that articulates in every corner, square and neighborhood of the city. In this way we were not thinking of the wall as ruins per se, but rather an important infrastructural element of the city, another set of stones as opposed to the more recent buildings around it. A set of stones that are merely older but that constitute the same urban fabric we were walking. At the same time, they set the rules of accessibility with gateways and portals having been turned over time into roads and walkways. Because of this observation, the wall felt to us as a temporal constant in the urban history—and identity—of Thessaloniki.

PHLSPH: What led you into making a charcoal drawing of their materiality?

Joe-Niside: After extensive walks along the infrastructural barriers we encountered in the city, first the highway, then the old city walls, we felt we were walking in parallel with very concrete lines existing in the city but not actually interacting with them. The pace of our steps was allowing us to sense the landscape and urbanscape but not the wall alone. The charcoal prints became a strategy to record an unfiltered impression of the ubiquitous architectural element. It  then also became a means for bringing the walls and a sense of temporality into the exhibition space. This feeling of time in the drawings is reflected in the textures of the stones; textures that hold the marks of many historical moments and the slow passing of time that has weathered them. The very texture and burnt like color of the transfers is also significant as an echo of the history of the Great Thessaloniki fire of 1917. In this format the transferring of materiality becomes a metaphor for all the historial layers that are encapsulated in the wall.

PHLSPH: In many of your images the walls are in direct contact with nature, juxtaposing different temporal scales.

Joe-Niside: For us documenting this juxtaposition was an important part of our process as we feel it is an embodiment of sensing or feeling in the images of different temporal scales present with the city. Partly we see the image as a means of placing these temporalities in relation, one that is human and linear as represented in the different era’s of architectural development. The other being a more fluid circular and non-linear representation of time, the plants and soil surrounding the wall, and juxtaposed throughout the city. Documenting how nature and the wall collided and melded becomes for us an important conceptual means of thinking about how a space can hold many temporalities, many histories, non-human and human within the forms that are visible. In this sense the images are in some ways a proposition for our viewers to consider how different timescales, exist within any urban space, and tuning into these temporalities might help up better understand how urban environments are not bound to linear development but rather the past and the present exist simultaneously in the forms that we walk amongst today.

ARTISTS: Sarah-Rose Antoun, Aline Papenheim

We arrived in Thessaloniki with a Polaroid camera with the aim to discover the city from the perspectives of both a photography student and a tourist. In approaching the Greek men and kindly asking them for a picture, we found overlapping interests in this gesture: personal stories relating to a place and memory, masculinity and stereotypes. Curiosity about the responses of the photographed men and what they might do with the received image triggered us to take not one but two photographs, both of which will be kept for individual reasons.

Our gaze, influenced by a stereotypical expectation of the city and its inhabitants, Greek men in particular, guided us to three locations: the Kapani market, the seaside promenade, and the University of Aristotle. We documented almost every encounter, capturing not only the conversations but also the unspoken moments in an audio format. The use of “missing” images serves as a reflective text, allowing for interpretation on what’s absent and responding to our emotional experiences.

[Exhibition text by the artists]


PHLSPH: By using polaroids and creating this “play” of also offering them to every person you photographed, the project opens up to different directions: extending the space between the two, co-creating, operating as a trace of an experience and not just of a moment among others. What were the most important effects of this “play” for you?

Sarah-Aline: This idea is an extension of one of our modules from the first year of the master’s degree studio II: relational photography, which was meant as an invitation to collaborate with someone through the photographic medium while losing control. Adopting this collaboration method, we created a concept with a “gesture” of taking and giving back at its heart: to take one of the two taken polaroids to display and tell the individual story, offered in a matter of physicality within the medium of the polaroid. Observing how the recipient of the object-polaroid would react to this “gesture” was the most memorable part of the “play”—one significant example is the policemen we met on our way to the sea promenade. Following a conversation about his favourite parts along the seaside, or even to describe to us his attachment to Thessaloniki, we came to ask if he would agree to be part of our project when we gave him the Polaroid, he asked us how much he owed us—as funny as it sounded for us that ‘naive’ question was a drastic power ‘play’ between the masculinity of such role of being a policeman, and “responsibility” that it also implies. The first person that we took a picture with, who told us later that he wanted to keep the picture when he kissed me on the cheek to show his wife, as a trophy symbol—this play of observation but also imagination, what would the photographed person do with the image? The play served as a stage for us to engage with strangers, creating a situation where both we and the men we photographed were placed in vulnerable positions. This setup sparked curiosity about what would happen and how they would react. By reflecting on the situation and documenting it with Polaroid photos, we were able to discuss the various layers of what occurred.

PHLSPH: In your general text, you start by saying that you came to the city as tourists and photography students and then in one of your explanatory smaller texts you mention the “tourists” at the pier. Did this “play” in such a condensed time allow you to explore different terrains, and distance you after a while from being tourists or was the choice of words just a slip of the tongue, as it were? Are perhaps those encounters, offerings and exchanges one of the few ways of escaping one’s “tourist gaze”—if ever possible?

Sarah-Aline: We’ve played around with the notion of “situatedness”, first observing, imagining and then situating ourselves within the city and its different realities while being aware and transparent about having the gazes as tourists, fully embodied by the fact that we’ve discovered Thessaloniki for the first time while on the field trip. The given circumstances we navigated around at the time, a short period to pitch a project, to go on and about with its production, and finalisation with a pop-up exhibition as a conclusion became stages that we’ve also explored within our experience as tourists, first the dreamy bubble, that is reflected with the first three polaroids and its “pink” veil, made possible as the polaroid sheets travelled through the airport x-ray, and choosing to play with that: observing, as we choose three locations to work from for this project, and the rush to produce which made the “tourist” experience less traditional in that sense, as we’ve shifted toward a more “professional” approach, a business stay as might call some corporate industries. The conversation shared with us, intimate sometimes, about realities in the city opened up a new window to this “touristic” experience—for instance, when Christos from Bezesteni Ottoman the market shared with us the complexities of running such a “traditional” typer letterpress business in Thessaloniki, he told us about the unstable parameters of his everyday life, but also in his own words describing the city he knew from a very early age. Listening to Christos, give us a comprehensive understanding of his routine.

PHLSPH: Is there an emotional experience in one of your “missing” images you would like to share or has now, after some time, settled in and would be visible?

Sarah-Aline: One encounter that stayed with us was with the fisherman Illyas whom we met at the end of our project, sitting with his bike and plastic bag meagre from his catch of the day—the honesty and the time he took to answer our questions was a precious moment for us.
It was special because he was the only person we photographed who stayed in the same position, uninterrupted with his task when we encountered him. Maybe he used the missing picture we gave him to impress a woman; that’s what he told us he wanted to do. Perhaps he kept it with him during his daily fishing evenings, putting it into his sack next to the plastic bags tied to his bike as he cycled home late in the evening, through the sea promenade, where tourists were heading back to their hotels. We did appreciate his honesty.

We have had situations where a man kept an image with our faces next to his. Today, we sometimes wonder what they did with them. Do they keep it in some box, is it hanging on a wall or a fridge? Maybe they think about our encounter when they look at their polaroid (if they still have it), and maybe they wonder what we are doing with the objects with their faces that we kept. In that sense, the communication continues between thoughts and speculations that we project onto the polaroid we kept, which connects to the missing one.

ARTISTS: Andong Zhengand, Fabio Meinardi

In the contemporary landscape of social media, tourists encounter new cities with a myriad of distractions vying for their attention. What captivates their gaze, prompting them to reach for their smartphones, capturing and sharing images with friends, family, and broadcasting them across social platforms? What images can transcend the surface of the city, becoming cherished souvenirs of their experiences?

Thessalonikat endeavors to grapple with these inquiries, engaging in a critical examination of smartphone photography, meme aesthetics, and the significance of circulated images as souvenirs. Through a critical lens, Andong and Fabio examines the role of postcards—a tangible symbol of tourism memorabilia—in shaping our memories of a place. Thessalonikat challenges the prevailing notion of mass-produced souvenirs that often oversimplify our connection to a location. Each postcard crafted in Thessalonikat stands as a unique testament to the essence of the city, capturing its soul through the lens of its unseen feline inhabitants.

[Exhibition text by the artists]


PHLSPH: Cats are one of the most circulated images on social media. What happens when you keep the same theme but change its mode of circulation by printing unique postcards?

Fabio-Andong: First and foremost, the mode of dissemination of these cat photos shifts from algorithm-based radial broadcasting to a point-to-point mode. In this scenario, the propagation of the images becomes more directional and intimate (although in this context, the difference between postcards and letters lies in the fact that they are not entirely private—anyone in the postal infrastructure can access these photos and the information behind them). As a result, we no longer feel like shouting into a blurry void but must instead select a recipient and write specific messages to them on the back of the postcard. Additionally, it takes effort to have a photograph printed out and exist in the physical world. It requires effort to fold, carry, mail, and even destroy it. In this form of existence, the photograph carries more weight.

PHLSPH: Could Thessalonikat operate as a counter narrative to what we choose to photograph and share as a cherished memory of the places we visit?

Andong-Fabio: Yes, Thessalonikat relies on various counter-narrative strategies and nods to the practice of smartphone photography. The concept of souvenirs, and more specifically, postcards, just like the images captured with these portable devices, are “visual” memories that we often use either to communicate to someone that we have been in a certain place or to bring home a “piece” of the place’s magic, feeding archives that are rarely consulted afterward (just like folders on our phones). Usually, these souvenirs depict the mass-reproduced symbol of the city, be it a monument, an architectural work, or something else. Thessalonikat, on the other hand, aims to represent, with the typical naivety of tourists, the silent but widely present inhabitants on the streets.

PHLSPH: Do you feel that sometimes  the art world is over intellectualizing the act of image making and in that sense instead of empowering the artist actually making him/her more restrained and detached from his/her experience?

Fabio-Andong: As we began this project, we were mindful of the fact that our trip to Thessaloniki was embedded in an institutional structure and agenda. While we’re cautious about generalizing this to “the art world,” we do see the art academy as an integral part of the artistic landscape. Each educational program has its own focus and discourse, and we’re aware that these discourses represent a unique voice within a broader context. In our day-to-day practice, we often find ourselves grappling with the need to intellectualize and conceptualize our work. However, as artists, it’s difficult for us to generalize whether a conceptual framework is “over-intellectualizing” or not from the perspective of different specific audiences.

Therefore, we do not view our actions as a direct resistance against “an over-intellectualizing tendency”. As we mentioned in the previous response, we are aware of our own superficiality and naivety when initially exploring a new city as tourists. We particularly strive to be honest about our naivety, as it is a universal quality shared by all tourists and can thus serve as a point of connection among people.

ARTISTS: Ana Alves Francisco, Anastasia Miseyko, Benjamin Morrison, Roger Anis [group project]

This place was once a tower, a home, a garden. Now it is a square.

It remembers the comings and goings of peoples, from Turks, to Slavs, to Jews and Greeks. Time has washed away the stains, yet traces linger still. In the burst of pigeon flight, to the slow slink of the ginger cat. Amongst the blues and reds of the scrawling graffiti and in the scarred bark of the two trees. It rests on the hands and faces of the people that sit in the shade of the byzantine wall.

A central stage for small acts, the square invited us to sit and watch the shadows grow. What can be found in absence? Can dormant seeds bloom? From the physical act of placing a seed in the soil to the chance encounter of two like-minded strangers, we document these encounters. Through this artistic intervention, we have seen the ghosts of the city, hiding in the quiet whispers of the walls.

[Exhibition text by the artists]


PHLSPH: When did the place transfigure into space? How did this come about and how did that facilitate you into seeing the square as a stage?

Ana-Anastasya-Ben-Roger: As a group, we sat together trying to figure out what we could do and wanting to learn more about the city. We listened to a long voice note from a friend, summarizing the book City of Ghosts by Mark Mazower. The voice note lasted for seven minutes, and we all listened while sitting on one of the benches in the square, looking at the old walls surrounding us. People were passing by, meeting at the intersection of the square, and entering and exiting the square as if they were entering a new time, new area, and new space. Doves were also coming and going, flying in and out of the square. They were waiting for those who came every day to feed them, while more people entered the square from all different classes, each person in their own world.

As we listened to the voice note about how the city changes, we contemplated what we just heard and silently found the answer to our story. The square was the answer. It was the pot for the changes that happened in the city, a pot for the different people coming and going and inhabiting it. After sharing this idea together, the square became our pilgrimage every day and our meeting point, sometimes more than three times a day. We met on its benches to observe, discuss, unfold, and present what we had discovered.

A place transforms into a living canvas when you choose to embrace it. As you linger, observing its subtle dances and quiet whispers, it blossoms into a stage. Here, you witness life’s actors enter and exit, perhaps even finding yourself part of the performance, or contentedly watching the rehearsals unfold. Everywhere, space awaits, but place is where your attention goes. And there’s nothing as valuable as our attention.

PHLSPH: The project directs the viewer inside and outside of the image. The image seems to be the seed from which the dormant stories bloomed. Was that the case? Which stories were activated because of the image and with the image?

Ana-Anastasya-Ben-Roger: We believe that it was not just the image that triggered the dormant stories. Instead, it was a combination of several factors such as the soundscape, the voice note, the pictures of the old city, the graffiti on the wall facing the old wall, the contrasting images and people that we kept seeing flowing into and out of the square, as well as our discussions and arguments. All of these elements together activated the stories and images, and we began to view the square in a different light.

We believe the seeds of our actions were sown long before we planted them in the soil. Thus, our efforts served as both a metaphorical manifestation and a reenactment of the latent seeds—the memories, the symbols—that already resided within the space we chose to engage with. Our endeavor merely unveiled and nourished the potential for blossoming flowers.

PHLSHP: What happens when ghosts live among us? Does it weigh us down or does it have another effect?

Ana-Anastasya-Ben-Roger: Ghosts! Ghosts are a part of our history and their presence can either weigh us down or inspire us. We have the power to choose how we perceive them. Ghosts can be more of a blessing than a curse as they remind us of the past, which we can learn from and look forward to the future. They can protect us by witnessing events and reminding us of what has happened. we should not fear ghosts but instead embrace their existence as a way to preserve history and move forward.

Every corner holds echoes of the past, lingering like gentle specters. We, too, are but spectral figures, destined to leave our imprint upon the spaces we inhabit, even after our earthly departure. This does not necessarily mean that these ghostly presences weigh down the existence of the living, but should nevertheless not be forgotten. In remembering, history takes central stage, and its legacy is revered and honored.

Artists: Tina Chulo, Hana Selena Sokolovic

Coming from the Balkans, we both immigrated to Western Europe for a “better life”, like many other people from the Balkans peninsula. We wanted to explore how the young people of Thessaloniki feel about leaving their country, the ones that left, and the prospects of staying here. A common thread seems to be seemingly unsurmountable economic and political difficulties that aren’t leaving much space for growth and life that many of us
dream of. Despite this, there is a shared appreciation for the warmth of people, strong community, and warm climate, which many will miss once they leave. We agreed that people here are generous and loving, and interactions are often shared with food around the dining table. With this work, we wanted to create an echo of feelings that seemed to linger among many of us.

[Exhibition text by the artists]


PHLSPH: The “brain drain” has been a recurring issue in the public conversations in Greece. Yourprojectwith its cinematic qualities achieves to depict with a very specific gesture, an abstract idea. Howdid this metaphor of the chairs around the dining table, taken away one by one, come about?

Hana-Tina: Love shared over a meal is quite present in the Balkans and Mediterranean. The family house’s most important place is a dining table, as sharing love is tightly connected to sharing food. We often joke about how our grandmothers and mothers cook too much food and that you kind of need to eat a lot to show them love back. There is really no way to get up from the table without stuffing yourself, especially during the holidays. Nowadays, it is only then that we come home, and this becomes that one moment that the large family table shines again, as all members of the family are present. We both receive photos from our parents later, showing how the house feels empty, and it is often a photo of them having lunch alone. From this reflection, we started to perceive the family table as a symbol of unity and togetherness. With so many young people moving, the tables that once couldn’t even fit everyone are now becoming too large, leaving only the elders. The removal of chairs symbolises the young immigrant generations and the loneliness of the older generations, who stay behind and eat alone on the furniture that was initially bought to welcome many people. So, context and costumes haven’t changed, but a number of people have.

PHLSPH: Do you think that political pieces like “The Return is but a distant dream” enclosed in apoeticanalogy brings about more awareness?

Hana-Tina: We wanted to bypass the crudeness of facts and allow for a larger emotional comprehension of the current situation. There is a discrepancy between how people feel and what they see in the media. The information presented is often expressed through statistics, lacking emotional and related aspects. We hear vain promises about changing the economic situation or sad statistics about how people have already left and how regions are deserted due to heavy immigration. But we rarely hear how people feel about it and how a community can work together to change those aspects. There is a variety of sentiments towards the topic. We wanted to encourage emotional responses towards the issues by using a poetic title that can be read and understood differently depending on the person reading it. The sense of ‘the return’ is interpreted differently by the ones who leave and stay, and there is no right answer, just a variety of human experiences.

There is a sense of longing to return to a place we once knew, maybe experientially, maybe only through our imagination. Returning to the innocence of childhood to a biblical Eden is a deep-seated longing of humanity, and it seems that immigration further emphasises that feeling. We ascribe many meanings to this return, but sadly, it feels out of reach. Even if people physically return, it is still just a dream as one never returns to what was left behind since places and people evolve, and there is no coming back to what once was or who we once were.

PHLSPH: How important was it to have people living in the city as your co-creators in a way, having used their thoughts and concerns as the core of the project?

Hana-Tina: We wanted to approach the topic from an emotional point of view to make people feel heard and seen. We talked to young people from Thessaloniki to give their voices a safe space to express emotions without judgment. The idea came to create a chamber where voices from the collective consciousness are expressed and no longer just linger in the air but rather are embodied around us. Voices that are acknowledged and heard. The echoing of the voices allowed us to become aware of the emotions that are present among young people. Many people who have seen the work approached us by saying they felt seen and heard by watching the work. It was very touching to hear that they could relate to many or to some voices that were present. So, it was very important to collaborate with people from the city to embody and shape the true sentiment that exists among them.

ARTIST: Azin Nafar Haghighi

“A port is a palimpsest, the city’s skin. It is the sorrow of the city and the city’s hope.”

— Berger, John. “G.” Vintage International, 2016.

Since landing in Thessaloniki, I’ve been contemplating whether leaving is harder than returning. Through personal experience, I’ve glimpsed a story out of millions in this city. Sometimes, one chooses to return, even after being pushed out by society or when society simply doesn’t care about one’s presence. I wonder about the importance of solidarity in society. Would everything have unfolded differently if there had been solidarity? Can what is now labeled as solidarity truly prevent anything? Then, my thoughts turn to the port here in the city, where I observe people departing in solitude and arriving to confront what they have left behind.

[Exhibition text by the artists]


PHLSPH: In Adio Kerida you use visual, textual and musical poetic language. There is also a translation of the literary text in Farsi. Poetry is one of the most direct ways to grasp a truth, but is there also an underlying political gesture here?

Azin: As much as I know and have read about the history of my country Iran, poems truly came into existence to discuss the forbidden and what was banned to talk about. That is the function of metaphor for us Middle Easterners as well. I can say we really don’t speak about it; we speak around it.

PHSLPH: In your text you refer to solidarity and you wonder if the course of events would have been different had it been expressed during the annihilation of the Jewish community. This is a very astute comment about the history of Thessaloniki, something that we hadn’t had the courage even to utter let alone discuss some decades ago. In hindsight, the course of history most probably wouldn’t have changed, but a strong mark would have been made. In that light, the project apart from being historical and political, may also be existential in a sense. Does solidarity seem Sisyphian at times?

Azin: First of all, as an outsider, I do not allow myself to talk or judge the history of Greece, and specifically Thessaloniki. I can only talk about my feelings and what I have understood there in just a week. But generally, for me, solidarity can be considered a matter of consistency, much like Sisyphean. You cannot carry a different stone every time just because of popularity. It needs time and patience; otherwise, it’s just a word said out loud without any audience.

PHSLPH: How does the project touch upon the trauma of return?

Azin: I can only refer to my own experiences in life and how we cannot simply decide to go back to our same society because it’s our comfort zone. In this project, my only goal was to convey the feeling of being a survivor even on a really small scale. We all know about history and how numbers are fetishized, but what we cannot touch and relate to are the feelings. What is trauma? Can we relate to it without experiencing one?

Here are some thoughts and images that artist Gundega Strauberga shared regarding her experience of the city, this time from the role of the curator.

PHLSPH: For this project you had to operate as curators. But let’s imagine we are here offering the space for your own artistic project stemming from your experience from the city of Thessaloniki. What would that be?

Gundega: Before the intense production days, during one of our first days in Thessaloniki, I took a walk in the upper town along the city walls, going up and down the hills overlooking the sea. I had brought with me 2 rolls of film which I had the intention to fill up before heading home. I suppose what came out was my personal mini project which had to be completed within those 3–4 hours. So I ended up walking along these roughly 4-kilometer-long Byzantine walls, once a fortification and a border; now merely a Unesco heritage site which gets swallowed up by the surrounding buildings, infrastructure and daily life rhythms of the people inhabiting both sides of the wall, almost as if ignoring its presence.

On our last day in the city I stumbled upon a street market. There were boxes upon boxes of old photographs and postcards from Thessaloniki as well as the surrounding areas. Spotting these kinds of relics has always been my weakness; the boxes contained mass-produced vintage postcards for tourists, but also quite intimate family photographs from someone’s personal archives. Did they belong to the person who was selling the images? Or did he obtain the images from elsewhere? The careless “10-for-the-price-of-6” attitude of the seller did not sit well with the intimate and authentic nature of the photographs on sale. I bought a couple of postcards and photographs which I later compared to the ones I had taken with my camera. Some of them had a striking resemblance … Recently I’ve been interested in the idea of “cameraless” or “borrowed” photography. Picking out certain photographs from a pile, is, too, a form of curating, which affords the creation of a multitude of stories. If I were to create a project during this trip, or perhaps only if I had found that market sooner, I would have enjoyed working with the images I’d find in those boxes on the street. In this way I would like the city of Thessaloniki to show itself to me, alternatively to me framing it.

PHLSPH: Do you feel that the curator’s work is overrated or underrated by visual artists? Why is that so?

Gundega: For sure curating is a job as creative as making a project as an artist. Within the field trip, I believe our tasks really enveloped the core duties of a curator in a nutshell, moreover, we covered jobs that perhaps “in real life”, or within bigger institutions, might be done by someone else. Besides deciding where the works would be displayed in the gallery space (Beetroot Studio), our work involved writing a collective statement which set the tone of the exhibition, creating teams for the actual production of the exhibition, managing and supervising them, as well as being present in the daily feedback sessions with the teachers. Perhaps this was the most curatorial aspect of this experience, as we could observe all the steps taken for each project, and take part in the direction towards which those steps would proceed. The nights were long, and the physical outcome of the exhibition manifested itself incredibly fast, of a surprising quality, all thanks to the collective effort.

Overall, it’s been an insightful experience that taught us how to work with what we had (the given time, resources, intuition), without much overthinking, but with genuine care towards the place and each other.

PHLSPH

Dr Alexandra Athanasiadou works at the intersection of visual practice and philosophical inquiry. She is the founder of the PHLSPH Lab: Image Thinking Lab.

For fifteen years, she has worked with images—inside museums, galleries, and universities, but never quite contained by any of them. Her route through the photography world has taken her from the Museum of Photography in Thessaloniki to Candlestar in London, from European platforms like Transeurope PhotoProject to curating and setting up a photography award with IOM Central Asia, from a research program at the University of Crete to her current roles as a Special Scientist at the Technological University of Cyprus, an external tutor on the MA Photography and Society at the Royal Academy of the Arts in The Hague, and a teaching position at the School of Visual and Applied Arts, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Along the way, she built something between the usual categories: a practice that draws on academic training (a PhD in Aesthetics; the Courtauld; Oxford; Panteion University) but refuses to stay in its lane. The work sits at the edges—close enough to both the art world and the academy to know their rules, far enough in to move freely between them.