Avtonomi Akadimia in the Akadimia Platonos Garden, Athens

 

by Joulia Strauss

Artists, philosophers, scientists and political activists from Athens, Berlin, and many other places gather in the public garden of Akadimia Platonos to perform a oneness of the world. We counteract the ongoing politics of war with practices of love. Avtonomi Akadimia is a free access intercultural adisciplinary university in Athens. Let’s instrumentalise the state of crisis to effect a major transformation in the educational system and in art.

The word “Akadimia”, now used to signify educational institutions, was originally just a public space in Athens. It was later given Plato’s moniker because he was teaching there. Plato’s “Politeia”, the militarised state, has pre-conditioned the Empire we still live in. Its invention of nations and borders remains the main tool of oppression. By re-writing the history of the garden we enact a surgical intervention to overcome the political ideology of binary oppositions precisely at the spot from where it all went wrong. After more than two thousand years of exclusion, art gains its role of a compass for society anew.

The exploitation of science by the military industrial complex, the abuse of art by the expansion of the global market forces, the marginalization of philosophy into neutered history, the diversion of technological developments by the state of control will all finally retreat into the distant past as we come together and form an empowering bond of art and education.

Seminars, artist talks, lectures, gatherings, screenings and spontaneous activities are instigated in the Akadimia garden, as well as within exhibitions, festivals and public space of Athens. Let’s share non-capitalist time, let’s be a self-evolving socio-cybernetic sculpture, a film set, a political model of interconnectedness and diversity, so urgent in our reLoveution!