“Depression Era: A Collective Lens on an Age of Crisis” – A collective volume tracing the journey of the artistic collective Depression Era

The MedPhoto Festival and the cultural organization KOLEKTIV8 present, on Thursday, December 18, at ROMANTSO, the bilingual collective volume “Depression Era: A Collective Lens on an Age of Crisis.”

The book examines the trajectory of the artistic collective Depression Era, which from 2011 to 2019 developed a wide range of activities through expanded photographic practices, combining image and text, exhibitions, installations, educational workshops, and performative interventions in the city’s public space. Through these practices, the collective probed alternatives to hegemonic narratives surrounding the prolonged crisis experienced by Greece during the second decade of the twenty-first century.

Edited academically by Angela Dimitrakaki and Alexander Strecker, the volume also includes texts by Eduardo Cadava, Elpida Karaba, and Myrto Tsilimpounidi, retrospective reflections by the members, and archival material. According to Greg Sholette (City University of New York), it constitutes an exemplary study of the impressive work of the Athens-based group during a period of intersecting crises, revealing what collective social practices are capable of achieving.

The publication was realized with the financial support of the Greek Ministry of Culture and the University of Edinburgh.

---

Speakers at the event:

Angela Dimitrakaki
Art historian, writer, Professor at the University of Edinburgh

Elpida Karaba
Art theorist, curator, Associate Professor at the University of Thessaly

Myrto Tsilimpounidi
Writer, researcher, member of the Theros Transfeminist Lab

Pasqua Borgia
Visual artist, curator, member of Depression Era

Pavlos Fysakis
Photographer, founding member of Depression Era, Artistic Director of MedPhoto

Moderator:

• Dimitris Kechris
  Photographer, curator, MedPhoto

---

Visual Installation: The Tourists

On the occasion of the book presentation, the first floor hosts an ephemeral visual installation that revisits the campaign The Tourists, developed by Depression Era between 2015 and 2019.

Launched in Athens in 2015 as a collective platform for research and open discussion, The Tourists evolved into public-space interventions with posters, a digital/social media campaign in spring 2017 under the slogan makeyourselvesathome, and a series of exhibitions. The campaign began with poster interventions on the streets of Athens alongside the opening of Documenta 14 (April 2017). Visual, textual, and video works from The Tourists were presented in the exhibition The Decline of Heroes at the Archaeological Museum of Basel in 2017, in dialogue with ancient Mediterranean works, while posters from the project were installed throughout the city.

In 2018, the project was presented as part of a house or tourist-kiosk installation at Unseen Amsterdam, and in 2019 in the exhibition Anatomy of Political Melancholy at the Athens Conservatoire (Odeon). That same year, a more extensive kiosk structure was designed and installed in the exhibition 13,700,000 km³ at Art Space Pythagorion of the Schwarz Foundation in Samos.

Today, new visual and textual material is added to the existing body of the work, transforming it into a palimpsest that reflects contemporary material reality as an expected continuation: the commodification of place, the tensions of everyday life, and the new forms of governance inscribed onto the landscape and the lives of people.

---

Participants:

Loukas Vasilikos, Chrysoula Voulgari, Eirini Vourloumi, Giannis Theodoropoulos, Kostas Kapsianis, Nikos Markou, Giorgos Moutafis, Giorgos Prinos, Giorgos Salame, Angeliki Svoronou, Spyros Staveris, Olga Stefatos, Vangelis Tatsis, Marinos Tsangarakis, Dimitris Tsoumplekas, Giannis Chatziaslanis, Zoi Chatzigiannaki, Pavlos Fysakis

Installation curation: Pasqua Borgia, Giannis Chatziaslanis
Graphic design: Penelope Thomaidis
Production organization / Press Office: Elena Dosa
Poster and printed material: Drettas Graphic Arts
Photographic prints: Pavlos Fysakis

The action is carried out with the financial support of the Greek Ministry of Culture and the support of the Municipality of Athens.