FFF6 | Pamphilos

Can one uncover a philosophical position – friendship for all (pamphilos = pan + philos = friend of all) – on a ship that sank a few years after the slave rebellion under Spartacus? What connects the Antikythera shipwreck with the notion of the commons in present-day Athens, as the city is shaped and maintained in the aftermath of the crisis? This group from New Delhi transform the Antikythera shipwreck and its finds into a metaphor for contemporary Athens – the shipwreck of the everyday.

The Raqs Media Collective visited Athens a number of times and, together with Greek collaborators, undertook deep and extensive research into both the Antikythera shipwreck and the concept of the commons. They visited archeological sites, hospitals, schools, parks, self-managed businesses, and collectives. They spoke with teachers, poets, migrants, nurses, lawyers and pharmacists – people who specialize in widely different things and yet, in the words of the artists, all are “people who tend to the shipwreck of the everyday, who dive down to the depths of each new day, and then come up for air.”

Raqs have created an immersive installation combining video, sound and light. The installation transports visitors to the depths of the sea where concepts, statues and words are brought together to create a landscape that changes our sense of the horizon, the way a dive does.

The same space will also host a parallel series of conversations that bring together the voices and thoughts of people engaged in different fields of activity. What connects the deep-sea diver with the music composer, the architect with the psychotherapist, the exiled poet with the teacher, the young migrant with the academic, the writer and volunteer with the pharmacist? How can someone become a friend to all?

The Raqs Media Collective present the Athenian public with a diving experience right in the heart of the city, with a work that brings an ancient shipwreck and the concept of pan-friendship (Pamphilos) to the fore, not so as to trouble us with the dangers of deep submergence, but so that we might jointly consider the myriad possibilities of rescue.