EDN Atelier in Athens

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

Organisers invite 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 opens 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 will take 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'' will establish 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 is opened to EDN members and others.

Programme

June 1, 2022

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

Observe and interact

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

11:30 – 13:30 (Athens time) | 10:30 – 12:00 (CEST)
Elena Gogou (permaculture teacher): Introduction to Permaculture Design
Co-curating team: MOVING GROUND (Interactive Presentation)

12:30 – 13:30 (Athens time) | 11:30 – 12:30 (CEST)
Lunch Break

13:30 – 14:30 (Athens time) | 12:30 – 13:30 (CEST)
Thomas Doxiades (landscape architect): The Snake in the Garden: Designing for Symbiosis (lecture)

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

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

17:00 – 18:30 (Athens time) | 16:00 – 17:30 (CEST)
Vitoria Kotsalau (choreographer and Moving Ground co-curator) & Betina Panagiotara (moderator): Reconsidering our patterns, through movements of thoughts, bodies and dreams (round up discussion)

18:30 – 20:45 (Athens time) | 17:30 – 19:45 (CEST)
Free Time

21:00 – 22:00 (Athens time) | 20:00 – 21:00 (CEST)
Emma Davie and Peter Bettler (after philosopher’s David Abram book Becoming Animal): Becoming Animal (film screening)

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 (hands-on sessions (watering, digging, planting))

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)
Fei Zika (Lecturer in Philosophy, Fine Arts School, Athens): The Smallest Part of the World and Still a Whole (lecture)

12:30 – 13:30 (Athens time) | 11:30 – 12:30 (CEST)
Lunch Break

13:30 – 15:30 (Athens time) | 12:30 – 14:30 (CEST)
Iris NIkolaou & Vasiliki Tsagari, Dora Zoumba & Vasilis Ntouros, Loukiani Papadaki, Despoina Hatzipavlidou & Anthi Mouriadou (various formats of artistic practices growing in the soil of Moving Ground): Garden of Artistic practices Part 2  

15:30 – 16:30 (Athens time) | 14:30 – 15:30 (CEST) 
Alexandros Mistriotis (video artist & dramaturg): Survival Stories (lecture performance)

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

17:00 – 19:00 (Athens time) | 16:00 – 18:00 (CEST)
Betina Panagiotara (moderator): The BODY as a Garden (closing session)

How to participate as an EDN member?

• You can attend live for a fee of 150€ and request a travel allowance from EDN*
• You can attend live at your own expense

*EDN will financially support the attendance of seven participants from EDN members. The EDN support consists of a 300€ travel contribution, 3 nights accommodation and 3 days per diem (30 €/day). The sending dancehouse will contribute 150€ paid directly to the EDN. 

Registration must be completed by the EDN member/sending dancehouse. 

Registration is closed. 

How to participate as a non-EDN member?

The participation at the Atelier is free of charge. Travel and accommodation are at your own expense.

Registration for the international participants is closed. 

Registration for local participants will open on May 18 (deadline May 30).

Register here: TBA