https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 20 Apr 2020 15:17:52 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/alexanders-great-treasure-wonder-and-mistrust-in-neoliberal-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:46 +0000 http://arc.local/items/alexanders-great-treasure-wonder-and-mistrust-in-neoliberal-greece/ Continued]]> This paper explores how the past is used to interrogate the present under conditions of social and economic crisis. It focuses on the ways national history and personal historicity blended in the media frenzy and public reactions generated in the summer of 2014 by archaeological discoveries in a burial mound in Northern Greece that captured the attention of the nation for many months. During a time of intense debate over the privatization of national resources, growing demands for Nazi war-crime reparations, and increasing pauperization, popular speculation over the mound as a hiding place for priceless treasures was very often informed by mistrust towards the state, its representatives, and its experts. I look into history and culture to investigate how the past in conditions of crisis and uncertainty can weigh heavy in peoples’ identity claims, social demands, and moral economies.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/a-shifting-landscape-contemporary-greek-dance-and-conditions-of-crisis/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:35 +0000 http://arc.local/items/a-shifting-landscape-contemporary-greek-dance-and-conditions-of-crisis/ Continued]]> This article introduces a framework for discussing contemporary dance’s potential for critical intervention within the context of the current socio-economic crisis in Europe, focusing on examples from Greece. In particular, it explores how the use of history in recent works proposes new engagements and relationships between past and present, inviting a reconsideration of the past while making possible the envisaging and articulation of emergent narratives, identities and social formations. It also examines the use of collaborative practices for choreographing, which depart from hierarchical dance processes that have been dominant in Greece and thus challenge the prevailing perception of danse d’auteur while exploring different modes of production. The significance of these practices lies in their questioning of previously established modes of working but also in their potential function as models of broader social practices. The works in question are analysed not as artefacts alone but as artistic practices that operate, act and interact within the social, the political and the aesthetic. It is argued that under conditions of socio-political crisis, the established social order is renegotiated and that these works, through the practices with which they engage, are significant in the reconstitution of the social. Thus, they propose a way of reclaiming the social dimension and potential of the arts in a period when their role is disputed.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/cultural-proximity-crisis-time-and-social-memory-in-central-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:13 +0000 http://arc.local/items/cultural-proximity-crisis-time-and-social-memory-in-central-greece/ Continued]]> In Trikala, central Greece, specific historical events significantly inform understandings of the present economic crisis through what is termed “cultural proximity”. This is the notion that previous times of social and economic turmoil, apparently distant points in time, are embodied within the context of the present. Some past epochs of prosperity and crisis have proved more significant than others in shaping contemporary crisis experience. As accounts of the Great Famine of 1941–1943 are brought to the fore by the current economic crisis, concepts of lineal time and the nationalization of critical events must be interrogated. Through considering theories of time as proposed by Michel Serres, this paper addresses how specific historical events can become embodied during the current economic crisis.

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