“Repairing the Past, Imagining the Present Otherwise” is a three-part conversation series organized by Alexander Strecker that brings together an interdisciplinary group of artists (Stefania Strouza; Elli Papakonstantinou; Petros Moris) and scholars (Brooke Holmes; Erika Weiberg; Dimitris Plantzos) from Greece and the United States. Using the idea of repair as a point of departure, these dialogues trace how oscillatory movements between Athens’ multiple pasts and diverse presents can help us envision alternative ways of inhabiting the world together.
Each event will center around the multi-disciplinary practice of a contemporary artist, putting their work in conversation with a scholar of antiquity. The dialogic format aims to break down disciplinary boundaries, blurring the distinctions between artist, academic, and practitioner. Week by week, as these artists share their work and engage with other points of view, we will together enact the collaborative process of repair, reassembling disparate pieces into configurations unlike preexisting wholes.
Part 1 | Dialogue (Medean Remix)
September 9, 1 PM EST / 8 PM Athens
Visual artist Stefania Strouza will discuss with Prof. Brooke Holmes how she uses sculptural forms to emphasize the fluidity and mobility of fragments. Strouza’s latest project proposes an aesthetic and cultural inquiry into the current geological epoch through the archetypical myth of Medea.
Watch the conversation here
Part 2 | Performing Gender and Greek Tragedy in the Digital Agora
September 23, 1 PM EST / 8 PM Athens
Performer and director Elli Papakonstantinou will share with Prof. Erika L. Weiberg how she sets tragic figures such as Antigone and Alcestis within our contemporary digital agora to bring alive the tension between the individual and collective voice.
Watch the conversation here
Part 3 | Computing Past, Excavating Future
September 30, 1 PM EST / 8 PM Athens
Sculptor Petros Moris will talk with Prof. Dimitris Plantzos about how he mixes materials associated with the past and cutting-edge technologies of the present, thus juxtaposing stratified manifestations of memory with the pending project of the future.
Watch the conversation here
Event Sponsors: AAHVS Visiting Speaker Series; Classical Studies; Franklin Humanities Institute; FHI Social Practice Lab; Theater Studies; The Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts—Duke Arts; Dean of the Graduate School; Dean of the Humanities
“Repairing the Past, Imagining the Present Otherwise” is organized by Alexander Strecker (Duke University)
Stefania Strouza and Petros Moris are visual arts SNF ARTWORKS Fellows