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/reading-between-the-lines-gentrification-tendencies-and-issues-of-urban-fear-in-the-midst-of-athens-crisis/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:31 +0000 http://arc.local/items/reading-between-the-lines-gentrification-tendencies-and-issues-of-urban-fear-in-the-midst-of-athens-crisis/ Continued]]> In gentrifying places the middle classes come into conflict with the pre-existing spatial and social structures, as they challenge the existing order in order to impose their sense of betterment. In times of crisis, spatial contests are confronted with fears which are related to broader feelings of anxiety that turn against the unwanted ‘other’. This paper drives attention to the feelings of fear that arise in the gentrifiers’ perceptions of quotidian life in times of high liquidity in an Athenian inner city neighbourhood. The way gentrification dynamics enmesh with urban fears may provide us with more insights into the conquest of space by the middle classes, thus broadening the scope of gentrification in the context of the current crisis.

]]> 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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