For the last year a typical Athenian studio on Praxitelous Street has been hosting the independent platform, Sub Rosa Space. The convergences of critical thought and action if we could even accept that they were separate in the first place and the performativity of politics are the core questions of this new space, which will likely offer an expanded focus on the Balkans and the Middle East in the future.
But how has a Californian founded a space dedicated to performance in the historical centre of Athens, while also doing his doctorate on contemporary ultra-right nationalism at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki? I came to Athens for the first time in the summer of , and I found myself returning regularly until I moved here in the fall of the following year. An academic conference brought me here for that first visit--a colloquium on dance theory held at the Hellenic Cosmos.
I came to discuss my latest research project: a query into the embodied poetics of debt in the choreography of Greek artist, Lenio Kaklea. Yet I encountered much more than I had expected: dialogue--staged within the conference and also more broadly within Athens--on political action, power, forgiveness, and grace. These dialogues were shaped by the political and cultural landscapes of the city at that time.
This was the eve of the bailout referendum, and there was a palpable, percolating energy amongst artists, activists, and intellectuals. You could feel that something was happening, that something was going to happen. I kept returning to Athens after that first visit. I wanted to see what these dialogues and these energies would give rise to.
I wanted to not only witness these processes, but participate in them as well. Knowing also that I wanted to complete a PhD, the thought occurred to me to do my doctoral work in a Greek university.
