THE CITY TALKS BACK

A site broadcasting live, an online exhibition, a series of live broadcasts that give answers to city questions. Onassis Stegi and Theatrum Mundi present the project “The City Talks Back”, a program that brings together architects, urbanists, activists, artists, and anthropologists to explore the voicings of contemporary Athens. Athens has seen the birth of the deliberative processes of modern democracy, but also radical changes, movements, and protests in recent times. The program acts as a laboratory and a stage for a series of texts, performances, and audio-visual pieces that reveal the ways the city and its inhabitants talk back. Watch the projects live from September 30 until October 6 at 20:00 on backtalks.city.

“The City Talks Back” aims to present propositions that show how urban space helps stage unheard voices and transform them into political speech. The propositions are intended as provocations for cities across the world – as they are becoming infrastructures for resistance against regressive tendencies at national and global scales.

The works will be made available through both virtual and physical events. The backtalks.city site is available from September 24, 2020 to disseminate the residents’ contributions and host a program of live broadcasts and performances. These will act as a forum of performed, recorded and spoken words, and sounds found in the city. The public assembly in June 2021 will present a set of reflections – featuring installations, performances, lectures, discussions, and more – which will help start a public discussion and open up new ideas about how and where voices are heard.

“The City Talks Back” is initiated as a collaboration between Theatrum Mundi and Onassis Stegi.

backtalks.city

In 24 September 2020 Onassis Stegi and Theatrum Mundi launched backtalks.city, the digital component to The City Talks Back.

Conceived before the spread of Covid-19, as a way to broadcast the project beyond Athens, the site takes on a renewed significance in the context of the pandemic. Since its launch, the site hosts new works from The City Talks Back residents and their collaborators, across formats including video, sound, script, broadcast, and mix.

As well as these permanent pieces, the site acts as a venue for live discussions and performances.

Assembly-01

Assembly-01 is the first public presentation of "The City Talks Back" and takes the form of an online exhibition on backtalks.city, a specially-designed microsite. The site will feature new works and scheduled performances by the invited residents and additional collaborators:

“her moon is a captured object” by Ella Finer is a composition circling a spoken text as it performs an “orbital translation” from English to Greek to English. The piece considers the relations, energies and frequencies of and between different cities and the people who inhabit them. The first piece published on talksback.city introduced the work with a performed text translated from English to Greek. An accompanying live performance completes the piece by translating the text back into English in September 30, at 20:00 Produced and performed in collaboration with Eirini Amanatidou and Gigi Argyropoulou.

“Lovesong Revolution” by Urok Shirhan is a sonic essay composed of political songs and sounds, which you can watch live on backtalks.city, in October 1, at 20:00. While some of the sounds are explicitly political, expressing solidarity or speaking directly of struggle, other sounds are political only implicitly – or accidentally – politicized through their adaptation in contexts such as protests. It provokes important questions on political struggles intertwined with emotional turmoil, seeking out a place for heartbreak and exhaustion alongside courage and defiance.

“Priestess of disgrace, you bring joy into my life” by Mercedes Azpilicueta and Angeliki Tzortzakaki with Maria Sideri is a loose script informed by informal, overheard conversations between elderly women in Athenian public spaces. The piece will be performed with an intermingling of Greek and English voices, in October 2, at 20:00, accompanied by sounds derived from street recordings in Athens.

“Infrastructures for Voice” by John Bingham-Hall and Fani Kostourou is an essay laying out and developing Theatrum Mundi’s research on the political voice in urban contexts and will be available live in October 3, at midnight. It includes reflections on how the speech or language of a city is constituted, the infrastructures that produce voice and the role of the crowd in amplifying or silencing it.

“Becoming the City” by the Syrian and Greek Youth Forum is a video broadcast that presents the work of the Athens-based activist movement and their conceptions of active citizenship. It showcases perspectives from members of the team on citizenship, activism, art and the political voice – and how they are creating, building, and becoming the city. Available in October 6, at 20:00.

Assembly-01 includes other projects which are already available online.

“vox populi vox dei” by Yorgos Samantas is a sound piece studying the rhythmic structure of political slogans and church bells in Greece. Based on Samantas’s extensive archive of field recordings of demonstrations and public political commemorations in Athens, the piece considers how communities can be constituted in sonic spaces through sounds and rhythms closely connected to the Greek national imagination.

“Athens Tessellation” is a project by Stefania Gyftopoulou and Mara Petra in collaboration with artists participating in Curing the Limbo, a refugee integration programme run by the City of Athens. The project explores the notion of home as experienced during lockdown by those for whom housing is insecure, uncertain or displaced. The photographic, video and music works are arranged in a series of thematic routes which run through Athens and beyond.

“Do you hear Athens?” by Fani Kostourou with Eleanna Santorinaiou is a 24-hour sound piece which explores the balcony as a threshold space between domestic and public spheres across the city. Stitched together from over 100 recordings made on balconies in neighborhoods throughout Athens, the piece will be broadcast in real time as part of "The City Talks Back" public program.

“Route One” by Tim Ward is an audiovisual piece built from field recordings and handheld video clips. It depicts a typical commuter journey from the Athenian suburbs into the center, recorded in parts just before and just after the city’s Covid-19 lockdown. Meditative and melancholic, Ward’s video responds to the disorienting effects of the global pandemic by turning inwards to the tools and technology with which he works.

“Echos-Monde | The World is Echo” by Tom Western is a series of videos remapping Athens through rhythms, relations, circles, circulations, and echoes. It finds its cartography through an imagined conversation between two poets – Édouard Glissant and Nicolas Calas – to make an Athens that sings long histories of movement, encounter, and exchange.

Event program

Live Broadcasts take place at the page backtalks.city

30 September 2020 | 20:00

“her moon is a captured object” by Ella Finer

1 October 2020 | 20:00

“Lovesong Revolution” by Urok Shirhan

2 October 2020 | 20:00

“Priestess of disgrace, you bring joy into my life” by Mercedes Azpilicueta and Angeliki Tzortzakaki with Maria Sideri

3 October 2020 | 00:00

“Do you hear Athens?” by Fani Kostourou with Eleanna Santorinaiou (available only during the 24-hour live)

6 October 2020 | 20:00

“Becoming the City” by the Syrian and Greek Youth Forum

Read more

“The City Talks Back” consists of several stages supporting the development, creation, and presentation of new works by a group of participants from Athens, London, and Amsterdam. A research residency which took place in January 2020, explored the city and its controversies, connecting participants with local individuals and organizations to exchange ideas and establish links. The second residency, in March 2020, developed critical documentation, while sharing and reflecting on the works-in-progress. The project results in the launch of an online platform in September 2020 and a public assembly at Onassis Stegi in June 2021.

Theatrum Mundi is a research center concerned with the way urban design stages the public lives of cities. From bases in London and Paris it brings together an international network of collaborators from urbanism and the arts, as well as a team of designers, researchers and curators.

Theatrum Mundi leads transdisciplinary projects that help expand the crafts of city-making, through backstage research and creative production as well as onstage events and publications.

Credits

Curated by: John Bingham-Hall, Christos Carras, Fani Kostourou, Pasqua Vorgia, George Kafka

Organised by: Onassis Stegi & Theatrum Mundi

Residency Participants

John Bingham-Hall, Fani Kostourou, Mercedes Azpilicueta, Ella Finer, Stefania Gyftopoulou, Yorgos Samantas, Urok Shirhan, Tim Ward, Tom Western, members of the Syrian and Greek Youth Forum (Kareem Al Kabbani, Wael Habbal, Chloe Tsernovitch, Tom Western, Hussain Badran, Ilias Al Fakhizi, Becka Wolfe, Hnd Alzayat, Ayman Al Qalaa, Safi Sahyouni, Christina Magiaki, Ehab Onan), Angeliki Tzortzakaki, Mara Petra, Eleanna Santorinaiou

Residency Collaborators

Maria Sideri, Curing the Limbo City of Athens (Oikonomidis Stelios, Maria Pesli, Christos Pieridis, Anastasia Vlachaki, Evangelia Kourti, Nancy Ngoyo, Shokufa Nazari, Sourena Dinashi, Christian Nzouathom Junia, Alireza Babaie, Karimi Arab Ebrahim, Charlene Julie Oko, Mohamed Tayeb, Kambiz Isakhani, Ahmad Askaryzadeh, Yousef Abdulrahim, Kikebula Christian, Bibiche Makilutila Matondo), Niovi Zarampouka-Chatzimanou (Victoria Square Project)

Residency Program Contributors

Panos Charalampous, Stefanos Levidis (Forensic Architecture), Thomas Maloutas, Manolis Manousakis (Medea Electronique), Dimitra Siatista (Co-hab Athens), Nikos Rossis, Panagiotis Tzannetakis, Eleni Tzirtzilaki, Niovi Zarampouka-Chatzimanou (Victoria Square Project)

Graphic Design: Typical Organisation

Website Developer: bracket

All works are available on backtalks.city free of charge and time limit.

* Except for “Do you hear Athens?” by Fani Kostourou with Eleanna Santorinaiou which is only available during the 24-hour live

https://www.onassis.org/whats-on/city-talks-back