Futuring Waters: A Speculative Manifesto Claiming the Water Rights for Elefsina is the title for the research art project by Jenny Marketou (New York /ATH) commissioned by Elefsina Cultural Capital of Europe, 2023. As part of Futuring Waters the artist invited a diverse group of international and Greek artists, activists, scientists, poets, oceanographers , academics among others to lead a series of workshops to think together and identify new material and propose solutions to serious ecological issues related to the waterworlds. Marketou invited Joulia Strauss (Berlin /Athens) founder and director of the initiative Avtonomi Akadimia in the Akadimia Platonos to lead a workshop titled Rituals of Environmental Grief which will take place from 11 m to 7pm on Tuesday, June 13 at the Old Anapsiktirio in Elefsina.It is open and free to the public and everybody is welcome to join after registration with Joulia Strauss: jouliastrauss@gmx.de
During this gathering we will learn how communities who suffered the global empire by experiencing climate catastrophy survived: Rituals of Environmental Grief, inventions of new Goddesses and Gods, practices of living with, and even appreciating the very dystopic, even poisonous environments are inspiring reactions: they stand in a continuity with indigenous cultures which have constantly broadened their epos. We will see how these creative approaches to the burning world are the Beauty of our time and will become friends with the above mentioned remote communities: we will ourselves create a ritual of mourning the ecoside of Elefsina and celebrating what is left from it.
More information: https://2023eleusis.eu/en/open-call-for-meetings-mystery-42-futuring-waters/
“Joulia Strauss” stands for a chord of artistic media, resonating in a deep bond with philosophy, technology and the ongoing reloveution for the world beyond the Empire. Joulia Strauss is an artist, activist and multimedia sculptor: http://joulia-strauss.net . She was born as Mari, one of Europe’s last indigenous cultures with a shamanic tradition, and lives and works in Athens and Berlin.
Her sculptures, paintings, performances, drawings and video works have been seen in solo and group exhibitions at the Pergamon Museum and Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, at Tate Modern, as well as at the Tirana Biennale, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Athens Biennale, the Kyiv Biennial, the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and documenta14, among others. She is the editor of Krytyka Polityczna Athens and of Götter und Schriften rund ums Mittelmeer (Gods and Writing around the Mediterranean, together with Friedrich Kittler, Peter Berz, and Peter Weibel, Wilehlm Fink, 2017). Joulia Strauss plays on a reconstruction of an Ancient Greek lyre. She is currently training to earn her fourth stripe in Việt Võ Đạo Kung Fu and writing a philosophical PHD on Transindigenous Epistemologies and Ecofeminist Practices. Strauss is the founder and organizer of Avtonomi Akadimia in Athens: www.avtonomi-akadimia.net. This durational art work and an open grassroots university in the Akadimia Platonos transforms the educational system of Europe and works on the legislative agenda of environmental personhood in relation to protection of urban biotopes from ecocide.