Mnemotechnics of the City / Timelessness Islets / Νησίδες α-χρονικότητας
working team: Daphne Aidoni, Elli Vassalou, Vicky Polychronopoulou
“asserting the value of incomplete built forms is a political act … it asserts … that the public realm is a process”
Richard Sennett, essay Quant
“The most attractive parts of the city are precisely those areas where no body has ever done anything. I believe a city, by definition, wants to have something done in those areas. That is the tragedy.”
Wim Wenders
Observing the contemporary city of Patras 2007, this project tries to point out the gentrification endured by a specific part of the city scape. How this practice, forced by the public authorities [city council, the state], erases collective and political memory and homogenizes the image of the city. The relics of the past that are not considered of historical value are exiled from real space, doomed to perish in the passage of time. Our intervention in the part of Agiou Georgiou street under construction, attempts to identify and intensify the intermediate condition of the space during its transformation, while at the same time touching upon issues concerning the representation and management of memory and forgetfulness. The action took place in an abandoned house structure, on the same street, built up on the traces of an older edifice. The result was an [unexpected] public event that transformed the site from a non -place [Marc Augé] to a lively, dynamic topos, widely visible by neighbours and passers-by.
This project has been published in the book “Constructing the Public Sphere”, futura editions 2007