Just For Today - 28 october

The second day [of the Just for Today event] was a day of full immersion in exploring different practices; Anna Tzakou, suggested a walk to the foothill of Ymittos mountain, which delineates the East part of the city and on whose slopes Raymond Duncan built a historically accurate Mycenaean villa in 1903. However, this was not just a usual walk in nature; Tzakou's intention was to relate with things from afar, to contemplate on the gaze as a mechanism which brings together poetic, historical, colonizing or other narratives. Seeing as an embodied practice then, which doesn’t rely only on the object seen, a thing captured in its totality, but also as realising what escapes or stands-in-between the very process of looking. Back in the DDRC, breakfast was served, the entry room and courtyard humming with voices, as new faces arrived to participate in the three different workshops: a) the second part of the translation workshop by VASKOS, b) a workshop of processing felt with Julie Loi and c) a workshop bringing together dance and permaculture by Iris Nikolaou and Vassiliki Tsagkari.

As in real life, some of us were caught up in an unexpected web of emotions that day: the 28th of October [Ohi Day] is a national holiday in Greece, commemorating the beginning of Greco-Italian war in 1940 and is majorly celebrated with military and student parades across the country. Also, it was on that day that Greece was among the countries that decided to abstain in the ceasefire appeal by the United Nations to end civilian bloodshed in Gaza. Even though no one intended making a political statement, the political urgency was palpable, conflicting with our very presence and participation. Maro Pantazidou’s dialogic gathering, 'Gestures that bring us close to the things the world is made of', had landed on frail grounds. Her otherwise mindful and optimistic approach around dreams and wishes demanded a reality check, so as not to become a script of empty responses. If wishes and dreams are plural, echoing till the very foundations of modern societies, then our power to materialize them has grown weaker. A radicalization of wishful thinking would probably mean to ponder over the conflicts that constitute the matter of the world, to remain attentive to antagonistic forms of worlding, becoming, relating.