Abstract:

The words and images in this photo-poetic essay were generated in the urban crisis-scape of Athens between July 2014 and February 2015. The work reflects on several questions: How does one evoke and conjure up the contemporary moment of crisis in the urban landscape? Can the conventional tools and methodologies of archaeology and archaeological ethnography be of any use in that endeavour? Where do these tools meet other expressive modalities such as poetry? What does it mean to "do" archaeology amidst the contemporary ruination? Is our impulse to record and to archive, the most appropriate reaction to it? The images are not meant to act as illustrations for the poems. Both components stand on their own, maintaining their autonomy. They are closely linked, however: not only do they share locality and time, but they also enact other, subtle and oblique connections, not all of them apparent to their author.

Author: Yannis Hamilakis