Athens, The Vernacular City - A conversation with Laure Jaffuel

Welcome to the Onassis AiR Conversations. My name is Myrto Katsimicha. I am a curator and cultural worker based in Athens and your host in this series of recorded encounters with the participants of Onassis AiR. Founded on the principles of learning and doing with others, Onassis AiR is an international research residency program in Athens initiated by the Onassis Foundation in 2019. They say that what happens in one place stays in that place. I cannot find a better way to describe all the things that have been happening inside the Onassis AiR house since I first entered as a participant of the Critical Practices Program in Fall 2019. The truth is, it is not easy to transmit an open-ended process of relationing, which is very personal and relevant to a specific place and moment in time. How can I then give you a glimpse into that process? Everything starts with a conversation. Throughout this series, I'll be speaking with the Onassis AiR participants to shed light on their artistic practices and needs, as well as to reflect on ways of being and working together.

In this conversation, I'll be speaking with Laure Jaffuel, a French independent designer and art director based in Athens. Through her multilayered practice Laure emphasizes on the design and the construction of situations surrounding her objects. In spring 2020, Laure was a participant of the Critical Practices Program of Onassis AiR, where she investigated the notion of the public space and how the different typologies of public space in Athens deploy strategies to create solidarities, social exchange and collective experiences. Today, we will discuss about her research that culminated in the publication titled "ALL DAY ALL NIGHT". On this occasion, we have also invited to our discussion one of her mentors, Olga Hatzidaki, an independent curator and co-founder of TAVROS. Laure, welcome to Pali-Room!

Hi Myrto!

It's a pleasure to talk with you today and thank you for accepting this invitation.

Thank you so much!

Where are you at the moment?

At the moment, I'm in my studio in Athens.

I remember that you've been living in Athens for more than a year, right?

Actually, it's been around three years now. I'm back and forth, but it's been three years that I've been in Athens.

How did you decide to make this move?

It was kind of an impulsive move. I was living in the northern part of Europe before and I was feeling like I needed to go back to my Mediterranean roots, as I grew up in the South of France. I was looking for this kind of ground. Athens kind of caught me, you know.

Well, I'm very happy that we met during the residency and perhaps you can briefly introduce yourself and tell us what are you working on at the moment and what you are up to in Athens.

At the moment I'm actually one hundred percent busy with finalizing a publication that is the direct outcome of the research I was doing at Onassis AiR, during the residency. This is taking most of my time as we are hopefully going to send the file to the printer at the end of next month in October. So, this is a main part of my daily activity at the moment.

I'm looking forward to take hold of this publication, because we've been discussing about it for all these past couple of months. So, I'm looking forward to see how it comes out and also to read it and to feel it, basically, because I know that you also took a lot of care on how this book is designed. Let's start from the very beginning, because I know that you're doing a lot of things. You are a designer and an art director, but —apart from objects— you produce spaces and events and you also teach.

Yes, totally. Originally I have been trained as a product designer, as an object designer, but then I completed my studies in Amsterdam with a more transversal kind of Master's degree. That was an Applied Arts Master's degree and there I kind of opened up my practice to not only design objects, but to start to include in my design the whole situation that an object can produce or to design actually the space or the events that could gather people or could host a certain situation. So, I kind of decided to open up my practice, but I also actually consider all these mediums to be completely part of my design practice and I —a bit intentionally— put all those disciplines at the same level.

How do you manage to merge all these disciplines together? Where did you start and how do all these things come together?

I believe that a practice is really particular to any designer. So, I tried in a very horizontal way to include all these kind of mediums. Somehow I always understood that what I design is actually not an object, but it's how the object is being used. It's not the space, but it's how it functions for the public. The moment that I really started to state "this is my practice as a designer", the actual physicality of the object or the look of the space or the duration of the event actually became tools for me to define situations. And I also realize, let's say, while doing more projects and seeing what I'm actually truly interested in, that my practice is really revolving around the idea of constructing collective experience and considering the objects or the space as a means of socialization. This is the kind of backbone of my practice. Therefore, I quite like the idea that a project can become a sound piece, it can become a podcast, it can become a party, it can also become the design of a bench, of a waiting situation at the entrance of an office building or the design of an art center for children and how this kind of city space can host different populations, how can they mix together in a single space and things like that.

Can you give us an example of one of your earliest projects and how this has evolved throughout your practice to constructing a more social situation, as you mentioned?

Maybe I can talk to you about a very recent project that is a public space I designed for the city of Clermont-Ferrand. I found this project quite meaningful because it was not originally part of the brief. I was invited to make a very specific custom design for the interior of this art center, that is a new art center for children, as I said before. Part of the brief was just the interior, but then, when I started to study the building —how it was functioning in the neighborhood, how they wanted to include and to invite parents to come in—, I started realizing that I had to design the space outside as well. I had to design how those people would enter the building, how we can inscribe this new space in the life of the neighborhood, but also physically in the street. Therefore, I proposed to the city that I would also design a small "parvis" —a small square—, like a "plateia", that we had to remove cars —that was quite a statement— so we could transform the pedestrian street plus the car park into a public space that would invite people to sit and to occupy the street in front of the art center. It was a way to inscribe the whole project in the public space of the city and in the social life of the neighborhood.

Talking about public space, your whole research in Athens at Onassis AiR was about that. So, let's go back to the residency and see how you approached this during your research. The Critical Practices Program was intended for artists and practitioners who were experiencing a certain kind of shift in their practice, a critical shift, and they needed the time and the space to pause and reflect and reposition themselves somehow. What was for you this critical shift at that moment in time and why did you decide to apply for the residency?

The first reason I applied for the residency is because moving to Athens I had the urge to take some time to be able to address the specific context I was living in, this new city. So, iy was very specific about Athens. The second reason was because my practice is really that of the designer, let's say. All my projects are actually commission based. So I wanted to have the space to kind of step out from this client economy or this kind of commission based practice. I found it actually very interesting that there is a project where I'm always answering a brief. I found this extremely resourceful, when you conceive a project, when you realize it, even when you produce it. But at some point, I was also missing this moment where I would have to go deeper into my own practice, my own trust, and be able to find for myself what is really a subject I could work on without having to be commissioned to do so. So basically, the very first question was: what is public space? This is, I think, something that is part of my practice and my interest in general. Then, I wanted to make it more precise: what is public space in Athens? It was very important for me that it was specific to this context. And then more precisely, I was wondering how different typologies of public space in Athens are deploying strategies to create solidarities, social exchange, but also collective experiences, collective moments. When I advanced a bit more in studying how the city of Athens was functioning, I wanted to look at how the Athenian public space could be also a form of a model for a social system to be constructed by a vernacular infrastructure. We can see that Athens is really self-built. We can see the vernacular architecture, but also objects, even vernacular gestures are everywhere and this was the first entry point for me to the research subject.

I have many questions because this is such a broad subject and we can approach it from very different perspectives. For example, being an Athenian myself, I completely understand the urge that drove you to research Athens specifically, because it's so multifaceted. What you see in the streets, the different buildings from different periods of time, how they mix with squares that are more open and accessible but at the same time not cared for or not clean enough for people to sit, as well as taking into consideration how Athens was built —I'm sure this was part of your research— and how the way that we view the city today is part of an ideological construction of other countries that was imposed to Athens. Ιn order to try to tackle all the different questions, I was wondering if we could start from the question, what is public space for you in general?

Ιn general, I would say that for me public space is a question of accessibility. Public space is a space that is accessible to everyone, regardless of anything. And of course, we can start making a list, like regardless of gender, opinion, disability, belief, religion, even socio-cultural classes. We can start making the list, but I think it's pointless, because I would say it's regardless of anything. I think it should be an actual space that is open for everyone.

You also talked about the collective experience. In this kind of typologies that you were researching what is the defining element of a collective experience for you?

Somehow, what I also wanted to study, especially in the public space, is not the question of... Of course, I informed myself and I really researched how the city was built, what was the urban infrastructure of Athens and how did it grow, as well as what is the urban planning of the city, etc. But somehow, I wanted intentionally to take the research onto a more ontological perspective and to ask why is it essential to have public space in the way people live together in cities and especially in modern cities and also how public space is truly —whether it is organized or un-organized— functioning or not. Public space is always a very essential element of the social life. So it's very important. This is where people meet, where people can mix, but also where there is a form of social exchange that can appear more informally. So, it's more this that I specifically wanted to address or to research into this subject.

You also talked about the term vernacular. Would you like to talk a bit about that?

Vernacular is actually a term that is coming from linguistics, originally. It is defining a language that is indigenous, very proper to a region, locally employed, very specific to a folk region or even to a period of time. I like also the fact that it is a term that is coming from linguistics because it's another way people exchange with each other and something that stays alive by the fact that people are maintaining it by themselves as a group. Then, it was used in architecture to define vernacular architecture as a movement of kind of a construction that has been made without expertise, most often without the intervention of a professional or, as we can say, by amateurs. And then, I use this term vernacular again as an extension not only of the architecture, but as an infrastructure, meaning that vernacular infrastructure would be an organization that is not necessarily organized or kind of legally controlled, but it is kind of coming from common sense out of a group or a society or a collective or even like several individuals just being connected by living in the same neighborhood that make gestures that are not necessarily ordered or organized by the government, for instance, or by any kind of authorities.

Again, by adding the term infrastructure you're referring to a support system, a system that supports this kind of more spontaneous experiences, even though they are unorganized.

Yes. Somehow it is exactly this kind of spontaneous initiatives, but also a kind of a communal gesture. Somehow it's something that grew very organically, because along the research I also studied the history of Athens. You can understand why the city of Athens is very hybrid, very multi-layered, but also you can see a mix of population, activity, landscape, style etc. It's very mixed and actually all this happened very organically, because somehow it was due to a lack of organization by the state of the public space and a kind of lack of zoning. It is a city that has no zoning, so the lack of urban planning kind of transformed the city organically. The city had to grow by itself. Therefore, it generated this landscape that is very specific and also very horizontal, I believe. The way people live together and the way they use and occupy the public space is very organic, very multi-layered and I think also very vernacular because it was an answer to a city that grew extremely fast. Actually the urgency of the growing of the city has not been really conceived. So, I guess, the history of modern Athens is related to this kind of vernacular infrastructure that is, of course, also representing, a lack of care from the state. It is compensating this lack of care from the state, but also —I think— it is highly problematic. So, I am trying to have the foreigner eye here and to look at what could be the kind of positive aspect of such unorganized growth or unorganized public space. But it's true. It's also good to be critical, because it is generating a lot of problem or conflict in the public space as well.

What kind of problems do you think that it causes?

For instance, the fact that the street is not very regulated is generating a lot for instance indigenous gestures that are coming from an idea of a common sense, like for example preventing the car to park where they are not allowed to, etc. But they're also actually coming from an individualistic purpose. That, for instance, is a problem. But I would say also that the biggest problem of Athens is that there is no real regulation from the state. For instance, the pavement, the pedestrian street, is most likely not accessible to disabled people.

Not even to abled, if we can say so.

Exactly! Because there's no regulation. The size of the pavement or the passages are not regulated or maybe there is a regulation, but it is not applied, let's say.

I'm very interested to hear how did you undig all these different layers. How did you work towards that? Where did you begin the research? Were there any people that you met or any other people that you worked with closely towards this question?

I decided to start the research by making interviews, because somehow that was like a double goal. I believe that this kind of artist residency in such a structure that is Onassis AiR, is kind of a business card. You can approach people that you want to get in touch with a reason, with a specific research in mind. That was nice because it was also one of the goals of this period for me, to meet new people or to meet different actors of the scene and I really needed to kind of make these interviews to get information as well, to feed my research with the perspectives or the expertise of different people from different fields on the subject of public space. So, I started to approach people that were geographers, urban planners, architects, and so on. Also, I talked to people from the former municipality that were working in the social department of the the municipality. I also did interviews with artists, curators, people who have their own practice within the field of public space. And also, I started to interview people from my hood, like my "periptero" seller, and the neighbors that I was discussing with during the project we did with my students from Amsterdam, also addressing public space. We started to talk with people in the neighborhood.

Which is your neighborhood Laure?

My neighbourhood is called Agios Pavlos. It is in between Metaxourgeio and Stathmos Larissis.

I remember that you also interviewed an astrophysicist.

Yes.

I'd be interested to hear how he could provide some insight into public space from an extraterrestrial approach.

Actually, I interviewed him at a specific moment of the research. So, I interviewed people to have information, asking questions about the Athenian public space —how it grew, how it is organized, historical questions, etc. But then, I started to also have the urge to define what is public space and especially from people having expertise in Athens, in the context of Athens. My first question would always be: what is your definition of public space? I was also encountering the problem that it's really possible to have a definition of what's the public space, because it is ever-changing. It is something that is changing according to the political context, to the historical periods, to the climate, to geography, which culture you are talking about, the size of the city, and so on. So, I thought I should start by asking all these people during the interview what was their definition and I started to make a collective definition of what is public space. I thought that this kind of fragments of all these people together was becoming a quite accurate definition, because it was actually not finished, ever-evolving and also not completely defined. It could always change. In search for the definition I thought I should start to address people that have an expertise that are not artists or architects or people from the hood. What if I ask someone with a complete different expertise what is their definition of public space as an expert into the cosmic space? That's how I actually ended up to address this person.

What did you learn from this person?

It's funny because his definition was very down to earth. It was very scientific, almost technical.

That's very funny!

Which I also found quite interesting.

Well, I would like to read a few of the quotes that you have collected so far just to get a better idea of the differences among the definitions that you just mentioned. For example, I read here "a space controlled by the public"; "It is the yard we don't have to take a breath"; "Where I pass 18 hours per day"; "The space which is in between". Another one would be: "I don't know anymore". "Since it reopens, it's a festival every day". There is this kind of openness and in-betweenness in most of the quotes that I read so far and that's why perhaps it is so difficult to pin down and to try to understand what it is. It always defies our efforts to define it. Is there a particular space, public space in Athens that you always return to?

You mean on my daily basis?

Yes, like a favorite place that for you, it is a place that you can always return to because it encapsulates in a way all the things that you would like to have.

I think it is the "plateia" of Agios Pavlos in front of the church, which is really one block away from my place. I think, for me, this is a very nice example of an actual public space that is really functioning. It is functioning not because it has been well-designed. It is not functioning because it has been well planned neither because it is especially nice. I think it is functioning just because it is being used and it is really a place where you can truly see every day all the people that don't have a balcony or yard. They are coming every day to take the sun. It is a space where you have a mix of population in terms of ages, gender, ethnicity, social classes. Everybody is mixing. You have all the grandpas and grandmas on the benches. All the kids are playing football in front of the church. You have also all the teenagers' gangs kind of mixing a bit with each other, of flirting a little bit. Then you have also all the mamas that are gathering and having their own interaction, while their kids are playing. They can have their moments together. Then, you have the "kafeneios" on both sides that have also very specific people that go, but because there are many everybody finds their crowd. And then, of course —which I find also quite nice— you have like any kind of people. People are mixing there. You have also people alone that are just enjoying the fact of being surrounded by others without having to interact with them. Obviously, there is the "periptero" that I think is really like an anchor point of any street or any public space in Athens. It is very specific and I think it is a truly social element in the life of the public space. So, there are all these elements. I think it is a very good public space, because it is functioning and it is functioning not because it has been designed. Actually, it is very problematic. You see the cars parking, actually driving on the "plateia", which is completely forbidden, so people started to put plant pots to recreate a kind of natural fence to prevent people from doing that, because it is forbidden. There is a lack of state infrastructure that actually—like the element in the pavement, for instance— it is working because of the people.

That is really interesting and also very important, under these very weird times that we are living in due to the pandemic and the lockdown and all these kind of things. I know that the residency took place for you under these particular conditions that were imposed on us and I was wondering how did you approach this? You were researching about public space in a period of time where access to public space was kind of not allowed, not permitted.

Actually, that was quite challenging. But at the end, I think, the fact that we were in this kind of social deprivation time and actually the public space was not to be accessed it was stressing even more that what I wanted to research was not at all an urban question or even a design question, but really a social and existential question, like why is it so important for a society to function, but also why is it so important to the people in their daily life? And so, it kind of stressed to me the fact that it is very primordial. Actually it was still a very relevant question, even though or actually even more because we were deprived from it in a way. Secondly, there is a positive thing about having to conduct this research at this moment of complete isolation. Because I'm a designer, I always have this tendency to make things, like physical things, and that was also kind of my intention when I entered the residency. I wanted to make, but all of a sudden I was kind of deprived from the tools, from the workshops, from the material, from the supplies, from anything. So, that kind of pushed me to consider what could be my new tools, my new mediums, and what can I do, what can I produce as a physical outcome without being able to use all the tools I have normally as a designer or the materials. That is also why I decided to make a publication, because it was a format that I could make during the time of the pandemic, of the lockdown.

So, in a way, it really meant a break within your usual practice and your habits and the designing patterns that you were following before.

Totally!

Within this context, because I know that in comparison to other residents you didn't have the chance to spend so much time in the house of Onassis AiR, I was wondering what was the most interesting part of the residency for you? What was something that stayed with you?

I would say all the people I met and interviewed. I think it was really the encounters. It is quite rare to have this time frame in a practice that generates so many encounters. I mean, of course, to start with the Onassis AiR team and the other residents. We could not see each other for a long period, but I think we really kind of created strong links. That is really nice, even with the previous participants, and, of course, continuing this dialogue, making interviews, also inviting a lot of different people to my research by asking them to contribute to my work generated numerous encounters. For me, this is reallywhat was the most valuable part of this residency. It is a human exchange. And now, of course, deciding to make a publication it generates even more by making it and I also hope it will become a tool to continue to meet more people after distributing it.

Well, we'll get back to the publication for sure before we close this conversation. We are about to welcome one of these people that you encountered during the residency, which was one of your two research mentors, Olga Hatzidaki. I think Olga is here and we can welcome her. Hi Olga!

Hi Myrto, hi Laure, how are you? Can you hear me well?

Yes, perfect. I wanted to hear from you, what is public space for you and how have you worked so far around this concept?

Before you raise the question of coining the term, my own personal term, I was about, Myrto, to suggest that this intersection of our work, of our field work is not just about public space. It is about the people, it is about the communities. It could be a very small group of people. It could be even individuals. But primarily it is about people. It is about the commons.

Laure also mentioned a lot during our conversation this aspect of the communal that is an integral element for her in the definition of space and public space more specifically and I guess this is also where you two connected.

Absolutely! There was this meeting point of collective voices that gather for Laure's book, which initially was a research that led to a book, this merging of voices, who all thought together on a common subject from very different and diverse backgrounds. This links quite well to our longstanding now practice of diverse voices who, through their practice, through their empirical knowledge, bring very different forces to our projects every time.

How did it all start? Laure, can you tell me how did you first connect with Maria-Thalia and Olga and why did you choose them to be your mentors? Or how did this mentoring scheme work?

I have been following their work for a few years and I was looking at several projects from before. We also had a common collaborator and people that I know that had worked with them. I was following them and at the moment that I was looking for this kind of other eye on my practice, but also people that would be very much inscribed in the Athenian scene, that —as Olga was saying— could also orientate me towards different people or introduce me to different voices. I thought that their work was very interesting in relation to community projects, social projects, also projects inscribed in the neighborhood, as well as art projects taking place in public space or in different locations that are not necessarily always the white cube, for instance. So, I was very interested in their practice because they are both Greek actors of the Athenian scene and I was imagining as well, knowing quite well how does a public space work. I thought they were very relevant people to work with and as I said before, when you do this kind of residency and there are people you quite like and you want to approach then you have the best reason ever to work with people you want to approach with this kind of research.

I wanted to add that the whole project and discussion and this long-standing now conversation we all of three have had since I don't remember when, because COVID-19 just disrupted our normal timeline of events... It feels like a very long time. Laure appeared out of nowhere. It was a very good moment because we had just opened our space and of course, our strategy and our agency towards our space is again towards public space, the area, the neighborhood and the locality. So, while discussing all these issues with Laure, we were constantly preoccupied with looking outside of the space towards the people, their stories, the architecture, redesigning, improving, understanding where we are and how we can all come together. So, there were two levels for us: the book, Laure and her whole perspective and who we are and how we think of TAVROS, which of course comes after "Aigaleo City", after "Geometries", and it is an accumulation of thinking and focusing on this very wide area.

So it was a conversation that actually worked kind of both ways for you. That's really nice. We've been discussing a lot and mentioning the book and I would like you both to talk a bit about this publication, which is the continuation and the culmination of the research or a space that remains open.

I think it is both, actually. It is totally a continuation of the research in the sense that it is kind of proposing an ongoing dialogue that, with the object of the book, I hope, will continue to address the subject with different people. So, the book can also become an agent to continue this conversation. But as well, because these three months of research were so rich, I had the urge to also make an outcome out of it, something tangible that could be a trace of what was the research about, and way to give a voice to others. I always had the idea that it cannot be a monologue. For me it was really something, as we said many times now, that was really a human adventure including many people and I thought a book is a format that is also a collective platform. Intentionally I decided that there would not only be my voice in there, but I would actually include the voices of many other people into the publication, titled "ALL DAY ALL NIGHT".

You referred to it before as a space for gathering, which I think is a really nice allegory to what we have been discussing before. I would like to ask you both, what are your roles in the publication and what other voices are we going to read and listen to while we read this publication?

As a publication it is actually also taking intentionally the format of more poetic or fictional objects. So, I decided to not do a kind of a theoretical essay about how Athens is constructed or a kind of social or ethnographic analysis. I really wanted to take the side of the fiction, metafiction or even actually the "poesie" into this publication as a way to address a subject that is actually highly political and critical, but with a kind of a more human vision. Obviously there are a lot of people that contribute to this stuff that have been actually introduced to me or suggested by Olga and Maria-Thalia. So I think they really contributed to make this thing, but as well, afterwards, I asked them to write the preface of the book. I thought they were the most relevant people to do so.

Olga would you like to say a few things about the publication?

I would like to mention that, first of all, I feel that this whole process is much wider than the book. It is a very long process. There are so many people, so many discussions, so many things said. It is a really difficult final task to decide what remains and what is left aside. So, the editing aspect that, of course, Laure has the full responsibility, is extremely difficult when it comes to so many interesting people coming together. At the same time, this book, this object is indeed like a poem for the city. It is like a love item. There is a relationship, an erotic relationship to the city, which could be a metaphor for any city, but it happens to be our city. Throughout the process leading to the book, I think we were trying to listen to Laure, become the audience, become the extra pair of eyes that can perhaps see a few things, but I also feel that we tried to avoid directing too much and just raise a few questions or when Laure wanted to discuss a question or an agony to give our own perspective and be broad and kaleidoscopic. Takis Katsampanis uses this description to describe Athens. This happens to be a good description also for the book and for the process.

I really like the idea of the city as a poem and I remember in your research material, Laure, there was an article titled "Cities are built with language", which I find really, really interesting. Before we close, Laure, would you like to tell us the names of the people that are contributing to the publication and how did you choose them?

Absolutely! So, the publication will be articulated in several parts. In the introduction part, we will have the preface from locus athens that would be followed by this collective definition, that I also believe it is a kind of a fragmented poem that I put together, extracting one single quote, one single phrase, even the fragment of a phrase from the numerous interviews I made. So, it is becoming this kind of collective definition. I would not cite all these people because there are around twenty that I chose at the end. After that, the book is organized in three chapters and for each chapter I decided to invite one writer that is most likely not a theoretical writer. I decided to invite people like a novel writer, a metafiction writer, even poets and for each chapter I also invited one person to make an illustration for a fictional event, like an imaginary event I designed. For each event I decided to make a poster and for each poster I invited an artist to make the visual. So, for the first chapter that is called "Togetherness", I invited Tristan Bera, who is a French writer that is based in Athens to write a text and then I invited Isabelle Mauduit, who is a graphic designer and illustrator, to make the image for the poster. Then, for the second chapter that is called "Care", the text is a poem by Dimitra Ioannou and the illustration is actually a drawing by a French artist called Marie Jacotey. The third chapter is called "Public Intimacy" and for this part I proposed to Takis Katsampanis to write a text, who is a Greek novel writer and the illustration of the poster is made by a Greek illustrator that is called Natalie Mavrota.

In your case Laure, what happened eventually is very interesting. You came up with your own methodology. I feel primarily that you raised the question: how can I make a book about all my thoughts and research around Athens, about micro-structures, about micro-interventions, about public space, Athenian, Mediteranean, etc., and once you decided about the format, then you started thinking about structuring this book and the process which would structure this book or the process made you think about the structure. It was a very interesting experiment, which is your own hybrid outcome.

I feel like Laure has been the architect of the book, the designer, the interior designer of the book, everything, and the publisher. We didn't talk about the publisher, though.

Actually, yes! It's a very good point because along the research there were moments that I also had the urge to have not a research mentor, but more of a production mentor to really address these questions of the logistics of production, the materiality of the book, but also very practical questions, like translation, because we decided that the book would be translated into Greek. So, I decided to work with Fanis Dalezios, who owns DOLCE publishing house, which is a production place that managed the whole production of the book. It was also a great moment because we started to discuss the physicality of the object, what is the agency of the object. I think all the design choices, such as the paper, cover, size, are also defining how the object is accessible, how the object is received, how it can be distributed it, which audiences it is addressing, its content, etc.. So, we started to ask all these questions together with Fanis. That was really nice, because it is a very important part of the project as well.

I'm looking forward to hold this publication, to see it printed. Thank you both so much. It has been a really fruitful conversation and I hope that you enjoyed it.

Thank you also. I am looking forward to also touching the pages, the cover, looking at the cover and placing it on my shelves.

And so do I, actually, I have to say after all this time! I am very eager to see finally this object going out. Thank you very much both for the conversation, but also for all this time working together.

Thank you too ladies!

I hope that our paths will cross soon in the Athenian streets and we meet each other soon!

Indeed, see you at the streets!

Bye, bye!

Bye!

Thank you for listening. If you want to listen to more Conversations, please subscribe to our channel. You can find more about the Onassis AiR residency program and each participant at www.onassis.org. This series is produced by Onassis AiR. Thanks to Nikos Kollias, the sound designer of the series, and to Nikos Lymperis for providing the original music intro theme.