Athens as socio-material enactments: Experiencing the city through an art walk

Abstract

In this article, I expand on the characterization of the city of Athens as a palimpsest. I embark on an analysis of the kaleidoscopic dynamics of the Greek capital, where contradictory elements can be traced. I draw on my ethnographic work on artistic practices in Athens to work towards a conceptualization of the city as multiple precarious enactments emerging simultaneously. As a way into this analysis, I follow an artistic guided walk, performed by the artist Aris Papadopoulos before an audience in the summer of 2020, throughout central parts of Athens. By describing scenes from this art walk, incoherencies emerge that, as I will argue, point to interfering and overlapping enactments of the same city. I adopt a science and technology studies approach to analyse how varying practices interweave into specific enactments. It is hoped that this approach can help us understand that no singular (and therefore reductive) representation of Athens is being sustained or promoted. Instead, it allows for inconsistencies and heterogeneous elements to come out and for silenced voices to be heard.