Participation in “Formidable Persistence” at the Athens Epidaurus Festival 2025

FORMIDABLE PERSISTENCE 
Series of public roundtables curated by Dimitris Papanikolaou

Politics of memory and mourning
29 June 2025, Peiraios 260 (B), 19:00

In tandem with the presentation of Antigone (directed by Ulrich Rasche) at Epidaurus, the cycle of “Formidable Persistence” concludes with a discussion on the long-term political processes spurred by the politics of memory and mourning. The notions of grief and attending to memory are not confined to emotion—though they may encompass exasperation, pain, or eruption. They also imply persistence, alertness, irrational courage, ingenuity, methodology, and solidarity. Mourning does not simply belong to the realm of affect — it also articulates a demand. Likewise, memory is not merely a mental process, but a constant, often persistent, creative, and collaborative process. This discussion becomes more evident and pronounced nowadays as the hard-won gains of many movements rooted in mourning and the claim to memory are being threatened. And at the same time, it is also thrust in the foreground as we witness new forms of claim — premised on memory and mourning — asserting themselves with impassioned insistence.

In conversation:
Athena Athanasiou, professor of social anthropology, culture theory, and gender studies, Panteion University of Athens
Eirini Aboumogli, actress, sociology researcher, University of Crete
Dimitra Andritsou, senior researcher, member of Forensis/Forensic Architecture Initiative Athens (FAIA)
Billie Mitsikakos, philologist, researcher, University of Oxford
Vivian Stergiou, author
Elena Tzelepis, associate professor of philosophy, University of Thessaly