“Undoing Monuments: A Living Working Room” 2013 is a participatory project conceptualized by Jenny Marketou interdisciplinary artist based in New York for the exhibition “Homes” at Benaki Museum in Athens. 

Marketou developed the project in collaboration with Martha Giannakopoulou, architect, based in Athens. “Undoing Monuments” takes as a point of departure the issue of violence as has manifested itself spatially in public buildings, bronze statues and continuous deterioration of the parks and monuments. Their goal is to investigate the assault as part of the dislocation created by the economic crisis, to look into the destruction as an antonym of performance and to explain it as a crowd movement against the “monuments” that are their real masters. 

As part of the project the artist Jenny Marketou and architect Martha Giannakopoulou are looking for a small group of people cultural producers to join for a workshop.

The aim of the workshop is to share knowledge and skills while working together with the artists to reflect violence from an anthropological, social and activist point of view. What if artists, architects, anthropologists, social workers, urbanism use this time of instability to imagine and to develop new possibilities for those abused monuments in order to transform them into ephemeral physical or virtual structures used as shelters or other ephemeral structures for the public. What can be the effectiveness of such an intervention in the urban space under the existing situation in Greece?

This is a special opportunity to work together with international artists who are committed to art as a means for social change. 

COST: Free but RSVP required; limited to 20 participants 

WHO: ideally, artists, art historian, architects, street artists, anthropologists, hackers, hackctivists, activists, social workers, philosophers, filmmakers, journalists, lawyers, urbanists. 

HOW: RSVP with the subject line “Undoing Monuments” and send it to: artup@athen.goethe.org 

The RSVPs will receive a confirmation by noon Thursday, October 10.