the city talks back

Tom Western, Penelope Papailias + George Mantzios

Circular Movements

Circular Movements – Imagining an Anticolonial Athens: A roundtable discussion

A radio conversation, an anticolonial imagination. This broadcast brings together members of the ‘Memory – Monuments’ working group of Decolonize Hellas, Penelope Papailias and George Mantzios, taking Tom Western’s ‘Παγκόσμια Ηχώ | Echos-Monde | The World is Echo’ as a jumping off point.

The piece is a remapping of Athens. It finds its cartography through an imagined conversation between Athenian poets and anticolonial theorists – who think in circles and circulations, and make a musical language that sounds out the rhythms and relations of struggle. From this imaginary, an Athens emerges that sings long histories of movement, encounter, exchange.

The radio conversation runs with these circular movements, connecting histories that are mobile and migratory, and speaking an anticolonial Athens.