Lecture as part of the WASTE/D LIVE reading and lecture performance

Abjected bodies in the crypt

Lecture by Elena Tzelepis, as part of WASTE/D LIVE, live reading and video lecture performance, hosted by PAT – Temporary Academy of Arts & Goethe-Institut Athens.

27 October 2020
EIGHT, Politechniou 8, Exarchia, Athens

Made for and shown online at the FREIRAUM PANEUROPEAN HYBRID FESTIVAL,
30-31 October & 1 November 2020

Four people from different disciplines, Elena Tzelepis (philosopher), Sofia Mavragani (dancer/choreographer), Martha Mavroidi (musician), and Aristide Antonas (architect/writer/artist) were invited last July to a “Wasted Live,” a reading of Waste/d, a publication by Temporary Academy of Arts (PAT – Elpida Karaba, Despina Zefkili, Yota Ioannidou, Vangelis Vlahos) and Omblos Editions, with the support of Goethe-Institut, Athens.

“Waste/d” is trying to define new aspects of waste/d subjects and matter (from the precarious art workers’ bodies to the new wasted subjects produced by the hygiene norms of Covid-19), as well as new sophisticated methods of ‘cleaning’ (from global environmental politics in the era of climate change to state and police methods to clean the city of Athens from refugee squats and anarchists and ensure public order). The subject raises questions of freedom, justice as well as humanitarian and ethical issues which come forth in urgent, in the contemporary condition, of the refugee crisis, the pandemic, the Anthropocene, in pragmatic and existential ways. It raises questions on the role of art as a praxis, which can create the symbolic as well as the actual and activist space for such existential and ethical dilemmas.

PAT’s experiment is looking for spaces, where new and unexpected modes of living, socializing, activating affects and powers can be proposed, discussed, thought and tried out. The guests have been asked to approach waste/d from their own perspective, each of them adding some new content, which will be presented for the first time at EIGHT space, Athens. The live reading was recorded and a video lecture performance was produced on the spot. This new, live produced material is part of Waste/d’s future forms of presenting and exhibiting. It can take the form of a video lecture performance, the form of a second, extended edition of the publication, or a panel discussion on waste/d.