Athens Report | A Collective Archive of Life and Protest in Athens

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Filed on 28 / 06 / 2017
Closed
Received
€ 1.692
Minimum
€ 6.410
Optimum
€ 13.710
13 Backers
Channel
  • Contributing € 12

    Our deepest gratitude + mentioning your name

    Our deepest gratitude + mentioning your name on the Athens Report project page on Facebook (if you agree).

    > 01 Backers
  • Contributing € 20

    e-card + mentioning your name

    A personalized “thank you” e-card with a picture from our Graffiti Route collection +our deepest gratitude + mentioning your name on the Athens Report project page on Facebook (if you agree).

    > 00 Backers
  • Contributing € 30

    Digital Photograph

    A high resolution photograph in pdf format from our Graffiti Route collection + a personalized thank you e-card + mentioning your name on the Athens Report project page on Facebook (if you agree).

    > 01 Backers
  • Contributing € 50

    Three Digital Photographs

    Three high resolution photographs in pdf format from our Graffiti Route collection + one more digital photograph a personalized thank you e-card + mentioning your name on the Athens Report project page on Facebook (if you agree).

    > 04 Backers
  • Contributing € 70

    The "making of" video

    Athens Report’s main video, the “making of” + four digital photographs+ a personalized thank you e-card + mentioning your name on the Athens Report project page on Facebook (if you agree).

    > 02 Backers
  • Contributing € 85

    Special Thanks

    Mentioning your name in the Special Thanks list on Athens Report’s credit page + the “making of” video + fourdigital photographs + a personalized thank you e-card + mentioning your name on the Athens Report project page on Facebook (if you agree).

    > 01 Backers
  • Contributing € 100

    "Escalator Games" video

    “Escalator Games” was shot by Anna Lascari in 2015 at Victoria station + mentioning your name in the Special Thanks list on Athens Report’s credit page + the “making of” video + four digital photographs + a personalized thank you e-card + mentioning your name on the Athens Report project page on Facebook (if you agree).

    > 01 Backers
  • Contributing € 150

    "Athens 2008" video

    “Athens 2008”was shot by Anna Lascari at Omonoia Square area in 2008+ the “Escalator Games” video + mentioning your name in the Special Thanks list on Athens Report’s credit page + the “making of” video + fourdigital photographs + a personalized thank you e-card + mentioning your name on the Athens Report project page on Facebook (if you agree).

    > 00 Backers
  • Contributing € 300

    E-Zine

    A unique e-zine with texts and photographs from the Athens Report platform + “Athens 2008” video+ the “Escalator Games” video + mentioning your name in the Special Thanks list on Athens Report’s credit page + the “making of” video + four digital photographs + a personalized thank you e-card + mentioning your name on the Athens Report project page on Facebook (if you agree).

    > 00 Backers
  • Contributing € 500

    Funder

    Including your name in the funders list on Athens Report’s credit page + e-zine + “Athens 2008” video + the “Escalator Games” video + mentioning your name in the Special Thanks list on Athens Report’s credit page + the “making of” video + four digital photographs + a personalized thank you e-card + mentioning your name on the Athens Report project page on Facebook (if you agree).

    > 00 Backers
  • Contributing € 1.000

    Dinner Invitation

    Invitation to have dinner with Anna Lascari and Christina Petkopoulou in Athens +including your name in the funders list on Athens Report’s credit page + e-zine + “Athens 2008” video + the “Escalator Games” video + mentioning your name in the Special Thanks list on Athens Report’s credit page + the “making of” video + four digital photographs + a personalized thank you e-card + mentioning your name on the Athens Report project page on Facebook (if you agree).

    > 00 Backers

About this project

athensreport.org is an Interactive digital platform that maps the urban space through the route of a trolley bus. It collects and archives videos, interviews, photographs and graffiti of life and protest that took place in Athens from 2008 to 2015

Needs Task Minimum Optimum
Interviews
15 additional interviews.
€ 750
Archiving
Archive documentation and research.
€ 3.240
Post Production
Video editing.
€ 1.200
Goteo Costs
necessary commission for the Goteo platform and paypal (4% and approximately 7% accordingly, of the amount raised)
€ 500
Photography
Photographs for interviews.
€ 150
Workshop
Organization of workshops to share knowledge, practice and crowdsourcing know-how.
€ 300
Performative event
Performative event of talks and discussions on trolley bus.
€ 2.850
Translation
Translation of documents and press releases.
€ 600
Dissemination material
Promotional post-cards
€ 200
Networking, Communication, Social media
promotion and creating bonds with other communities of commons in and outside of Greece
€ 2.400
GOTEO COSTS
necessary commission for the Goteo platform and paypal (4% and approximately 7% accordingly, of the amount raised)
€ 500
Needs Material Minimum Optimum
Hard Drives
4 hard drives for archival storage.
€ 320
Cost of Awards
Production and award distribution.
€ 400
Voice recorder
Voice recorder for interviews.
€ 300
Total € 6.410 € 13.710
Necessary
Supplemental

General information

December the 6th, 2008, 15-year-old student Alexandros Grigoropoulos is shot and killed by the policeman Epaminondas Korkoneas at Exarcheia, district ofAthens. This day signals the beginning of a massive wave of protests and riots against state violence and repression. While the conventional media produces conservative narratives of the struggles that take place on the streets, social movements, equipped with technology, produce live streaming of the fights,creating personal documentations. The years that followed are marked bythe “crisis”, as the contemporary sociopolitical conjuncture of southern European societies is widely described by the dominant discourse. The rage of the revolt of 2008 is now targeting the neoliberal systems of governance. Peoples’ movements, protests and riots erupt as a reaction to the political decisions and austerity measures taken from several governmental schemes, including the left wing party that won the elections for the first time. September the 20th 2015, left wing party Syriza gains victory for the second time and forms a coalition government with the conservative party of ANEL.

This crucial period serves as a timeline to the online crowdsourcing archive project, Athens Report, initiated by artist Anna Lascari. On a virtual map of the route of trolley bus no. 11, the platform maps the urban space where riots and protests took place from 2008 to 2015. The framework of the project consists of the video route of a trolley bus, audiovisual archives, interviews and a street art archive. Sewn on the video route and affixed to the area where they have been captured, videos and photographs are being continuously uploaded by individuals and collectives that were actively engaged in the public space from 2008 to 2015. Users are invited to upload their own visual material that documents street work, protests and riots. Under the same psychogeographical classification, ONLINE 11 section consists of interviews -translated into English and scripted- from people who live and work in neighborhoods reached by the trolleybus. The GRAFFITI ROUTE, is composed of graffiti thatusers have captured on building facades and other public spaces, a form of urban intervention that was at this time and still is dynamically present in the streets of Athens.

On this common web terrain visitors are invited to take part, explore the parameters of producing knowledge and content, study and question relations of power that constitute identities. Stretching the limits between the physical and the virtual, how do bodies interact and coexist? How can communities develop from the digital space to the urban environment and vice versa?

Description of the project. Main features, strengths and differentials.

For the past years, the people’s actions and presence on the streets have been holding an ambiguous position in the big narrative of the crisis. The rioter became the “person of the year” and street clashes with the police, videos and photographs had been reproduced in a voyeuristic gaze from conventional media. This imagery, a priori charged by its own context composed the portrayal of a socioeconomical dystopia, most often instrumentalized to propagate political decisions and maneuvers.Focusing on setting up preconceived notions on what defines revolt in a “society in crisis”, dominant discourse excluded a matter that emerges over and above the events, which is the reclaim of public space and the re-establishment of a new relationship between peopleand their environment. The crowdsourcing archive of Athens Report originates from this relationship, instigating from the particularity of the personal inscription to create space for the common and the shared experience.

On the open discussion and presentation of the Athens Report, November 2016, Stavros Stavridis* on his talk invited us to think of Athens Report in response to the above:

“I would like us to imagine it [Athens Report] as a tool for reflecting on the qualities of this space, which is no longer public and may already be turning into common, as they emerge out of collective actions. Collective actions that may be intense, violent, possibly destructive of certain aspects of the existing apparatus, of the existing material elements through which the former public space had been organized or through actions of emergence, of keeping track of the ways through which common space may truly exist asa space shared by certain people and, through that, as a space in which they perform certain functions that have to do with their collective life.”

*Stavros Stavridis, architect, is an associate professor at the School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens, Greece and has published several books and articles on spatial theory. “(P/B) Common Space| the City as Commons “is his latest book published by the Zed Books.

Athens Report can be conceived as a shared digital space, constructedthrough the visitors’ experience of the urban space and their participation inprotests. Stretching the limits between art and activism, the platform embraces reorganization, imbalance and deposition, brought about by the ever-changing nature of a collective archive. Indicatively classified within the urban map, the archive aims to leave space for its countless interpretations to emerge.

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Why this is important

As a common ground, constantly rearranged through the visitors’ gestures and sharing, Athens Report can be considered not only as a digital imprint of public collective actions from public space into the virtual world, but also as an online platform imbued by the processes of the commons. The platform functions as a common digital space, constructed bottom-up through the contribution of individuals and collectives that held an active role in reclaiming the public space through collective action. Athens Report includes a rich archive and has already built a network of people with whom it shares knowledge, experience and memory. Processes as such tend to grow continuously, leading to unexpected creative paths. Loyal to this credence and considering the common precious to this particular apparatus, we need your contribution to continue our operation. Athens Report wants to expand its archive and organize additional panels, events and workshops to discuss the parameters of producing a crowdsourcing archive project, and to share practices and knowledge.

Against the enclosed narratives of conventional media, Athens Report consists of material resulted from the engagement of the participants in events that attempted to redefine the public space and communal life. What has been discarded from the official discourse, the excluded, the discontinued, is here organized and reorganized through the gesture of uploading and sharing. This gesture produces a type of a ground-up knowledge that opposes the dominant narration of the crisis.The period of 2008-2015 is already under the microscope of social history, sociology and art, demonstrating that we need different approaches than the traditional media linear readings. With the expansion of the archive, through the contribution of a large number of users who uploaded their records, we have come to realize there is still a lot more to be shared.

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Goals of the crowdfunding campaign

Athens Report is an ongoing archive, constantly updated by its users. The maintenance and development of the platform, the documentation and technical support of the archives demand a respectable financial support. Up to now, the platform managed to finance the cost of research, archiving and documentation of the records, along with our continuous effort of networking with other collectives and individualsinvolved with the commons. The sum raised by your support will help the Athens Report project to evolve further.

The project aims to expand and become an active tool of research and dissemination of knowledge. Our experience on running an open source online art project under a Creative Commons license can be shared through workshops with artists and everyone else whose practice focuses on archives, activism and technology. To achieve this, Athens Report is planning a performative event of talks and discussions in motion that will activate the map of the route of the trolley bus and enhance participation. The optimum sum will enable us to actuate the potentiality of the project to provide free access to information and education.

Team and experience

Anna Lascari perceives art as a terrain in which a critical reading of the world, visually articulated, is possible. Driven by context, her interdisciplinary practice is described by her involvement in political movements and her engagement with collectives that have to do with the commons, and they are active on issues of self-management and autonomy, like the Self-managed Theatre Embros. She is interested in public space, conceptualized as a form of social relations and its production by social activities. She employs various media and practices of research to produce artworks, interactive environments and projects that encourage a critical stance towards the forms of production and presentation of cultural products. She utilizes sculpture, installation, 3D animation, Internet, video, photography, archives and archival processes to create spaces of participation, engagement, knowledge and memory.

Christina Petkopoulou is a curator and researcher based in Athens. She has collaborated with contemporary art organizations and worked as a free lance curator, focusing her research on archives, space and politics, accessibility and the commons. She has been involved in several educational and creative projects with migrant and refugee communities.

Hackerpace.gr is a physical space dedicated to creative code and hardware hacking in Athens and a dynamic community with ideas inspired by the Open Source philosophy.The main operation of Hackerspace is to promote collaboration by sharing projects, code, and ideas.

Deep Dish TV aspires to build and maintain a statewide and national network of people and grassroots organizations committed to using television and the Internet as outlets for creative independent video that addresses issues and perspectives inadequately represented by corporate media. Their goal is to strengthen and increase the visibility of movements for social and economic justice in the U.S. and around the world consciously serving communities whose images and interests are marginalized or misrepresented in the media; encouraging the awareness and use of public access TV and alternative media for local organizing; and promoting collaborations among artists, videographers, producers, editors and activists.

Athens Report is built bottom-up from all users who upload their material. We consider all creators, members of the Athens Report team.

Social commitment

Sustainable Development Goals

  • Reduced Inequalities

    To reduce inequalities, policies should be universal in principle, paying attention to the needs of disadvantaged and marginalized populations.

  • Sustainable Cities and Communities

    There needs to be a future in which cities provide opportunities for all, with access to basic services, energy, housing, transportation and more.

  • Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

    Access to justice for all, and building effective, accountable institutions at all levels.