FFF6 | Who is Afraid of Ideology? Part 2
Marwa Arsanios
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Exhibition: 5-19 May | Mo-Fr: 18:00-21:00 & Sa-Su: 12:00-20:00 | Free admission | The video will be displayed consecutively with Greek or English subtitles. Video duration: 30 minutes | No wheelchair access
Assembly: Thursday 9 May | 18:00-22:00 | Free admission, on a first come first served basis. Limited seats. No wheelchair access | In English with simultaneous translation into Greek.
Workshop: Tuesday 7 & Wednesday 8 May | 15:00-18:00 | Addressed to: Melissa Network of Migrant Women in Greece
Introduction
Can a women’s movement that aligns itself with nature avert the destruction of the Earth? Marwa Arsanios’ camera documents life in a village in north Syria – a commune inhabited only by woman – and draws attention to an alternative economy operating on the basis of different rules. Might it prevail as an alternative means of survival in the modern-day world?
Marwa Arsanios’ recent projects have revolved around questions of ecology, feminism, social organization, nation-building, war and economic struggle. In her film “Who is afraid of ideology? Part 1” (2017), the artist explores structures of self-governance that have been developed by the Kurdish autonomous women’s movement communes. She participated in community reading groups and workshops in order to produce the film, which focuses on practical knowledge and labor that are passed on within the movement—how to use an axe, how to harvest fish considering their lifecycles, how to decide whether to cut down a tree or let it stand—practices that “collectivize” the individual. Formal strategies used in the film, such as the separation of voice from image, lay bare the construction of the documentary and the deliberate organization of information. Unlike many other films, Arsanios’ film does not offer the appearance of seamless transparency or a depiction of “how things really are”.
Arsanios’ SB14 commissioned film, “Who is afraid of ideology? Part 2” (2019), and the accompanying installation continue her research into Jinwar, a women-only village in the north of Syria, and extend her work to a farming cooperative close to the Syrian border in the Lebanese Bekaa Valley. The Lebanese cooperative has created an informal, NGO-like structure that has become a safe space for Syrian refugee women. Through the prism of these two communities, the artist expands her investigation into the ways the land has been reappropriated by the autonomous movement in Rojava after 2011. Critiquing the top-down construction of state and party ideology, Arsanios’ study of feminist approaches to organizing a communal life with nature and non-human species proposes a way of decentralizing the role of the human mind as the primary actor in this process.
(Text originally published for Sharjah Biennial 14, courtesy Sharjah Art Foundation.)
Marwa Arsanios, “Who is Afraid of Ideology? part 2” (video still), 2019
Parallel Events
Commons between land and landnessness
Who does the land we live on belong to? What can we learn from the ways in which various communes around the world organize themselves?
Taking the question of dispossession as a starting point for this discussion, different speakers and participants will gather to think about possible common political grounds that can be activated in order to fight for a repossession of the commons today. What modes of resistance can be found in feminist approaches to the commons? What can we learn from a history of women's cooperatives and communes around the world and in Greece in Particular? What can we learn from self-organized camps in Greece? and most importantly, how can we fight mechanisms of expropriation?
Speakers that are coming from different political groups and academic backgrounds, will address these questions in short presentations and talks, leaving time for an open discussion with the audience.
PROGRAM
18:00 | Introduction by Marwa Arsanios
18:15 | Panel 1: On dispossessions
Elli Damaskou (Anti-Eldorado Campaign)
18:45 | Panel 2: The politicization and organization of landlessness
Nour Abdallah and Mervin Mohammed (Lavrio refugee camp), KHORA, Nadina Christopoulou (Melissa Network)
19:45 | Panel 3: A feminist approach to the commons
Stavriani Koutsou (International University of Greece), Natalia-Rozalia Avlona (National Technical University of Athens & ELIAMEP)
20:15-20:30 | Break
20:30-22:00 | Discussion
Curated by Marwa Arsanios
Coordinated by Marina Troupi
BIOS
- Natalia-Rozalia Avlona is a lawyer, researcher at National Technical University of Athens and a research assistant for the TARGET project at ELIAMEP (Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy) in Athens. Her expertise is on digital commons and the ways that Technology, Law and Gender intersect in this area. She has an international experience working in several Organizations and European Research Programmes in UK, Belgium and Greece. Besides her academic career, Avlona has a strong involvement as an activist in the field of digital commons and gender equality. Avlona is also a member of the DOCK Social Solidarity Economy Zone cooperative.
- Nadina Christopoulou is an anthropologist. She is the cofounder and coordinator of Melissa Network, an organization promoting the empowerment of migrant and refugee women. She studied anthropology and politics at McGill University, and did her M.Phil and Ph.D. at Cambridge University. Her research has focused on diaspora narratives, storytelling and social memory, childhood migration and migrant women’s solidarity networks.
- Stavriani Koutsou is Professor at the International University of Greece, School of Agriculture and Director of the Laboratory of Rural Economic Research and Development. She is an agro-sociologist specialized in human geography in rural areas. Her scientific interests include collective actions in rural areas and female entrepreneurship, rural development, transformation and evolution of rural societies. She has authored numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences and has coordinated and participated in several EU and national research projects.
- KHORA is a humanitarian Greek association based in Athens, Greece. Khora's Community Centre's aim is to facilitate shared ownership and active involvement by those who use the space and the local community, to create a space where people from a diverse set of backgrounds, cultures and languages can learn, work, create, socialize and relax. As well as to offering support, including but not limited to; food, dentistry, internet and computer access, information, legal support, education, a kids’ area, a women’s space, a carpentry and metal workshop and a safe space to spend the day.
- Anti-Eldorado Gold Mining Campaign has been resisting the exploitation of the gold metal resources in the North of Greece that has become a prime target for mining companies looking to do business at the expense of people and the environment. It is one of the strongest environmental resistance in Europe in the last decade.
- Lavrio self-organized autonomous refugee camp is run in a democratic manner following the practice of democratic confederalism and governed by assemblies, including women’s committees. For the past 35 years it has been mainly inhabited by Kurdish refugees.
Textile and collective sewing workshop by Marwa Arsanios along with the women of Melissa Network.
This workshop will consist of a collective sewing process bringing together different textile material that are relevant to the participants in one way or another. We will attempt at creating an image out of this process.
Addressed to: Melissa Network of Migrant Women in Greece.
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