https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 20 Apr 2020 14:25:46 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/youth-heterotopias-in-precarious-times-the-students-autonomous-collectivity/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:43 +0000 http://arc.local/items/youth-heterotopias-in-precarious-times-the-students-autonomous-collectivity/ Continued]]> Under the structural restraints of the current financial, social and political crisis, I examine the case of a collectivity of students in Greece as an alternative small-scale form of political and cultural action, and I explore its dynamics and limits. I claim that the ‘collectivity’ is a form of heterotopia, that is, a specific social and cultural space, which somehow reflects and at the same time distorts, unsettles or inverts other spaces. In particular, I seek to uncover the rituals, practices and mentalities produced by the participants of this youth cultural space, and to understand how new subjectivities and collectivities come into being. In this context, I discuss some of the relevant literature on youth political participation. Furthermore, I illustrate the debate about ‘autonomy’ and ‘hegemony’ within social and political theory today.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/to-see-and-be-seen-ethnographic-notes-on-cultural-work-in-contemporary-art-in-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:26 +0000 http://arc.local/items/to-see-and-be-seen-ethnographic-notes-on-cultural-work-in-contemporary-art-in-greece/ Continued]]> A key term in discussions on the nature of cultural work is the concept of ‘autonomy’, or ‘relative autonomy’, according to which cultural workers are capable of realizing themselves in the processes of work. This article wishes to problematize this idea by examining the quotidian reality of cultural workers in the field of contemporary art in Greece during the current economic crisis. The analysis is based on ethnographic fieldwork, focusing on how the positive characteristics of cultural work are inscribed in workers’ experiences through their participation in ReMap, a contemporary art event that takes places biannually in Athens and is tightly interwoven with processes of gentrification. I argue that relative autonomy is neither a given nor a state where the cultural worker linearly progresses. Within the context of the larger cultural and economic implications of neoliberalism and its crisis, it is rather an ideal they are striving for, often through highly alienating conditions, in a field dominated by competition, voluntarism, low salaries, precarity and absence of collective bargaining.

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