EDN Atelier in Athens

The Atelier aimed to highlight the impact that dance and the care of a garden have on the quality of our everyday life. The Atelier included lecture/performances, working sessions, installations, collective activities, discussions and more.

Organisers invited cultural professionals, artists and pedagogues from the dance field and other performing arts to experience, observe and explore a range of artistic practices shaped in a dialogue with permaculture principles and intertwined with the creation of a communal garden. Informed by talks and participatory activities this gathering opened up spaces to reflect on the garden as a metaphor of artistic practice and/or active citizenship and exchange insights from one’s encounter with it.

The Atelier took place in the Duncan House in Athens, built by the Duncan family in 1903 as a utopian eco-community embracing both contextual craft and art practices (weaving, sandal making, typography, painting, or poetry) united in an ongoing dialogue with everyday life and the art of dance. 

EDN Atelier “Moving Ground'' established a bond with this history, making us rethink our doings, revisiting the notion of the garden and its allegorical connotations.

How can we integrate the observation and interaction between human and nature’s movement? How would this challenge redirect and nourish artistic, curatorial, pedagogical and social practices? How can dance allow us to perceive the BODY as a garden and make us feel part of a larger BODY / Nature/ Planet?

“all the world's problems can be solved in a garden.” - Geoff Lawton, permaculture consultant, designer, teacher and speaker.       

Atelier was opened to EDN members and others.

Report & Video

Two different papers have been writen as reports from the Atelier. Dance theorists and dramaturgs Anastasio Koukoutas & Betina Panagiotara present an extended report, while Carmen Anne's report sums up the two-day Atelier. 

Programme

June 1, 2022

9:30 – 10:30 (Athens time) | 8:30 – 9:30 (CEST)
Meeting the Garden, Welcoming & Registration

Observe and interact

10:30 – 11:30 (Athens time) | 9:30 – 10:30 (CEST)
the Public Body- Mapping the area- a peripatetic participatory project
Anastasia Polychronidou & Anastasia Barka

11:30 – 12:30 (Athens time) | 10:30 – 11:30 (CEST)
Introduction to Permaculture Design

Elena Gogou: permaculture designer and educator
12:30 – 13:30 (Athens time) | 11:30 – 12:30 (CEST)
Lunch Break

13:30 – 14:30 (Athens time) | 12:30 – 13:30 (CEST)
Presentation of the MOVING GROUND project 
Co-curation team: Nicholas Anastassopoulos, Penelope Iliaskou, Christina Katsari, Vitoria Kotsalou, Mariela Nestora,  Dimitris Theodoropoulos, Monica Vaxevani

14:30 – 16:30 (Athens time) | 13:30 – 15:30 (CEST)
Garden of Artistic practices Part 1
various formats of artistic practices growing in the soil of Moving Ground
Dora Zoumba & Vasilis Ntouros, Iris Nikolaou & Vasiliki Tsangari, Katerina Delakoura, Mariela Nestora, Zoi Dimitriou

16:30 – 17:00 (Athens time) | 15:30 – 16:00 (CEST)
Coffee Break

17:00 – 18:30 (Athens time) | 16:00 – 17:30 (CEST)
Reconsidering our patterns through movements of thoughts, bodies and dreams
Vitoria Kotsalou & Round up discussion
Betina Panagiotara 

18:30 – 21:30 (Athens time) | 17:30 – 20:30 (CEST)
Free time (suggestions: resting, gardening, dinner at nearby tavernas, collective cooking preparations for next day’s lunch)

21:30 – 22:30 (Athens time) | 20:30 – 21:30 (CEST)
Becoming Animal (film screening): Emma Davie and Peter Bettler (after philosopher’s David Abram book Becoming Animal)
A reflection/ exploration of our human entanglement with the rest of nature.

June 2, 2022

10:00 – 11:00 (Athens time) | 9:00 – 10:00 (CEST)
In the Garden, Welcoming the Trees
Hands-on gardening

Please bring appropriate clothes and shoes for gardening work

11:00 – 11:30 (Athens time) | 10:00 – 10:30 (CEST)
Coffee Break 

11:30 – 12:30 (Athens time) | 10:30 – 11:30 (CEST)
The Smallest Part of the World and Still a Whole (lecture)
Fay Zika Ass. Professor of Philosophy and Theory of Art,
Athens School of Fine Arts

12:30 – 13:30 (Athens time) | 11:30 – 12:30 (CEST)
Survival Stories : The ecology of performative arts
Gigi Argyropoulou arts researcher, curator

13:30 – 14:30 (Athens time) | 12:30 – 13:30 (CEST)
Lunch Break

14:30 – 16:30 (Athens time) | 13:30 – 15:30 (CEST)
Garden of Artistic practices Part 2
various formats of artistic practices growing in the soil of Moving Ground
Dora Zoumba & Vasilis Ntouros, Sonia Ntova & Maria Papadopoulou & Vera Karavakou, Despoina Hatzipavlidou & Anthi Mouriadou

16:30 – 17:00 (Athens time) | 15:30 – 16:00 (CEST)
Break out rooms
group impromptus on Symbiosis

17:30 – 18:00 (Athens time) | 16:30 – 17:00 (CEST)
Coffee Break

18:00 – 19:00 (Athens time) | 17:00 – 18:00 (CEST)
The BODY as a Garden
Workshop and closing discussion
Betina Panagiotara (moderator)

19:00 (Athens time) | 18:00 (CEST)
Celebration