The City Talks Back
To be politically engaged is to have one’s voice “heard.” How and where, though, does this hearing happen? Whose voices are heard, in the street and on the political stage? How do architectures and technologies amplify or even silence the city’s voices?
The City Talks Back is a creative research programme led by Onassis Stegi and Theatrum Mundi, bringing together architects, urbanists, activists, artists, and anthropologists to explore the voicings of contemporary Athens.
Through two transdisciplinary residencies in Athens in early 2020 and two Assemblies in 2020 and 2021, the programme acted as a laboratory and a stage for a series of new texts, performances, and audio-visual pieces that reveal the ways the city and its inhabitants talk back.
The first research residency (January 2020) explored the city and its controversies, connecting participants with local individuals and organisations to exchange ideas and establish links. The second residency (March 2020) developed critical documentation, while sharing and reflecting on the works-in-progress.
The project resulted in the launch of a newly-commissioned online platform backtalks.city in October 2020. Assembly 01 was the first public presentation of programme, which featured new works and a schedule of live broadcasts from residents and their collaborators, across formats including films, performances, sound essays and texts. Nearly a year later, in a still uncertain and distanced world due to the pandemic, Assembly 02 hosted a set of reflections – performances, translations, films and discussions – to share and open up new ideas about how and where voices are (aren’t) heard in the city, in the form of a 2-day radio broadcast on Movement radio.
Read, watch and listen to all the works of The City Talks Back at the backtalks.city.
The digital space of “The City Talks Back”, was curated and edited by George Kafka, designed by Athens-based graphic design studio Typical Organisation, and developed and built by Bracket.
