Sofia Dona: Retire

“RETIRE” aims to explore the change of property and space that has been taking place in recent years in the city of Athens. The word “retire”, in addition to referring to the top floors of the typical polykatoikia apartment block, is an architectural term that describes the horizontal retraction of a building’s volume, creating escalated balconies that allow the sun to enter the interior of the lower floors of the opposite building. Resulting from an economical model based on exchange called “antiparochi”, the class order of the polykatoikia moves downwards from the privileged top floors to the basements, with upper-middle-class Greeks living at the top (retiré), middle-class people on the middle floors, and lower-income people, and namely migrants, living on the lower floors and basements. Today the change of ownership of retiré flats, either going to the new generation inheritting their family’s property, to foreign artists looking for affordable places to live and work, to buyers for golden visas, or to companies for investment, is shifting the class order of the whole city. “RETIRE” aims to document this very moment through various media, as the Greek flags will keep moving down from the verandas of the retirés to the balconies of the lower floors of the polykatoikias.

The ongoing “RETIRE” project is focusing on the domestic anthropology of the big verandas of the Athenian flats, through the lens of an “anthropology at home”, trying to capture the nostalgic past together with the radical change of the present. The project makes use of three media: 1) old photographs from the 1950s to the 1990s collected by the artist, depicting daily life and special family events taking place on balconies; 2) videos of interviews taken by the artist with the new residents on their verandas, who share stories about their connection to the flats and the city; and 3) a luminous sign made of aluminum, plexiglass, and led lights, forming the word RETIRE and using typefaces inspired by the design of old hotel and real estate signs in Athens.

Two multimedia installations have been created during the Onassis AiR Open Days, using the various qualities and architectural elements of the space. The glass window of the Galaxy Studio became a double-sided screen for projecting a slideshow of the old photographs, in an attempt to make these images public to both the Open Day audience and the passersby. The terrace with the vegetable garden was used as an open air projection space for the two-channel video installation of the interviews. The balcony on the 4th floor of the Galaxy Building overlooking the patio was chosen to host the luminous sign, which can be viewed during the everyday office activities, but is also exposed to a wider audience during the special events taking place in the building. The sign installation, a wordplay between various meanings of the word RETIRE – meaning also to “withdraw” or to “retreat” – suggests a metaphor linked both to the architectural terminology (retiré) and to the common practice of retirement in cities of the Mediterranean. It can be also read with an imperative mood: a command or request to retire.

A fourth medium that aims to complete the project is the publication of a book which will serve as an archive and documentation of an era that will soon be forgotten, in combination with stories that capture the current change of property in Athens. The book will mainly include the collection of old photographs from the 1950s to the 1990s together with links to videos of the interviews made by the artist today. The combination of this material in a publication will accompany the sign installation.

Archive of photographs: Maria Anastasiou, Foivos Sakalis, Myrto Lavda, Eliza Soroga, Theo Look, Natassa Biza, Nitsa kai Xoula Leventi, Voltnoi Brege, Elena Sarantopoulou, Anja Burse, flea market of Elaionas

Participants in videos: Anja Burse, Paul Heintz, Theo Lοοκ, Celia Strom, Anna Konjetzky, Sahra Huby, Quindell Orton, Anka Arvanitidi, Jasmin Basic