[-empyre-] re/claiming and unsettling / continuing artistic practices

[Antonas Office]

Dear Ana,

I do not find Johannes reaction insulting nor patronizing. I only think it is wrong strategically to underestimate a change. I propose a reading of an urban field; I think that there is a significant transformation recorded in the city of Athens and that we have to study it not as an isolated phenomenon but as a part of a changing equilibrium. Of course: no homogeneity is absolute, no change erases a past conditions but some observations are needed in order to orient our future works.

Aristide Antonas

Sent from antonas iPhone

On Mar 9, 2012, at 22:33, Johannes Birringer <Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk> wrote:

> 
> 
> dear Ana, i can empathize with you enjoying the arrival of Benjamin's Passagenwerk, 
> hmm, but i hope you share his saddened sense of irony ("we always have nostalgia of what is left behind")
> it's of course best not to indulge in sentimental nostalgia, wouldn't you agree, especially in this conversation?
> 
> i still owe you a critical synopsis of Zizek's thoughts on the failure of resistance and resilience and recalcitrance
> vis à vis totality of capitalism;  i also am finding it hard to translate the "Sparta" metaphor, but will try later;
> 
> first I wish to ask how others reacted to Aristide's evocation of Athens (Greece) , considering "it the contemporary city 
> that comes first in a series of cities that cannot anymore be included in a homogeneous European community. 
> The city changed violently during the last years......The violent changes in the city divided a homogeneous territory 
> in gated communities and ghettoes...    "a war field... indicative of the future."
> 
> You may find my reaction insulting, or as patronizing as I assume Alain Badiou et al to be ("Save the Greeks...")...
> but i do find what you write overly dramatically in tone, and you speak of what one might find a completely imaginary 
> "homogeneous European community" that I doubt existed in any way you wish to state or propose  here.
> "Europe" or the Euro-Zone never existed as a homogenous community.
> 
> respectfully
> Johannes Birringer
> 
> PS:  and the messianic side of Benjamin was probably destroyed for good in 1939-40. 
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