Joulia Strauss
Room to Bloom Athens was held at the end of the restrictions of the pandemic time. It was one of the first events in the real – after long months of sitting in front of our computers. Many rediscovered phaenomenal world as well as knowledge of life beyond the accepted. With this process, a much deeper reflections on the future role of art have become necessary, and for such reflections, new conditions and modes of encounter had to be invented.
During the preparations, existing spaces have not been able to confirm their willing to host the planned series for the ecofeminism workshops due to risks to health and unclear regulations. So, an entirely new space had to be launched: Villa Araucaria, a villa in the central part of Athens with a lush inner yard with historical tiles and thick shades.
The further venue of the workshops was Akadimia Platonos Jungle*, where the self-organised grassroots university Avtonomi Akadimia takes place to offer humanity a transition from the mode of existence from consumption to learning. This site, where once Plato has scripted Politeia, an elitist militarised state which separates art and nature, was ideal for the transformation of the education system through ecofeminist methods of sharing knowledge.
BLOOM Athens involved 5 days of workshops and an Ecofeminist Assembly, with 30 participants (approximately 10 local and 20 from other countries) on ecofeminism and postcolonial feminist practices. During the joyous and intense days of the workshops, we have been able to demonstrate that the division between the theoretical knowledge and physical experience, between theory and practice, is artificial and obsolete. The first axiom of the Athenian ecofeminism is: Practice is the new theory.
Hybridising collective participatory artworks with therapeutic practices has helped us to bring the students closer to harmonious coexistence with our (if even damaged) ecosystem and the meaning of the feminine in the cycle of life and the role of ecofeminism in overcoming Patriarcheocene.
We strive to overcome the loss of equilibrium caused by the onesidedness of Western epistemologies rooted in the discrimination of women from the socio-political domain by reconnecting art, feminism, and ecological practices.
With the program we have created a situation in which activist feminist artists and healers shared their experience. Painting happenings, performances (enhancing transcultural exchange), workshops by experienced artists were intertwined with the most advanced practices from mentors such as Alexandra Rhodius, who is a co-founder of a El-Juego community, where people see themselves only as a collective, no longer as individuals, and creolize the latest psychological techniques with spiritistic ancestor cults. With a workshop by the political feminist artist and activist who initiated Neue Nachbarschaft/Moabit, Marina Naprushkina, the participants were learning to juxtapose a collective action painting to the language of the power structures of the nation-states. Another mentor, Vassiliea Stylianidou, who employs elements from the genre of the spoken word as well as from experimental and underground music and poetry movements, has invited the young artists to experiment and embody the question “How can art pave new paths for thought and put new artistic practices to the test?“ precisely at the site from where art has been excluded 2.300 years ago. These bodily weaves were continued modulated into a collective workshop by Katerina Katsifaraki: plastic and other wasted materials were transmuted into elevating sculptures by the united hands of the participants. The lessons of the creator of Mantradhwani methods, Mayoori Mukta, invited us to create a conscious empowering experience that is realized perceptibly with the help of sound and movement in the body, Resonance in emotional faculty and alignment in soulful purpose with the help of ancient wisdom of Sanskrit based Mantra Yoga anchoring the written word, uttered sound as grammar, syntaxes of energetic patterns underlying that will be shared in an insightful module.
The workshops took in the environment my drawings, first shown during the Berliner Festspiele “Down to Earth” in the Martin-Gropius Bau in Berlin. Protagonists of these drawings are are our mentors who invented their own practices of grounding and collective trauma healing, who have stayed in their indigenous communities or have rediscovered them for themselves. Workshops in the context of these drawings and a film screening, connected and empowers several communities which hybridize indigenous wisdom and feminism: Lotus Center (Cambodia), El Juego Community (Colombia), Mari-El (Ural), Barefoot Nature (Tamil Nadu), Assembly of Desire (Assam), Plant Goddeses (Peru), Sista Girls (Tiwi Islands, Australia):
For a week, we all found ourselves in a daydreamed epistemology for an ecofeminist indigenised University in times of ‘Climate Chance‘.
With the ecofeminist assembly, as well as with a popup action of solidarity with the struggles against the ecocide of the Akadimia Platonos Jungle, we contextualized our ecofeminist practice in the local political arena. Members of direct democracy networks, sustainable solidarity infrastructures, permacultural schools and ecocommunities of Athens, as well as experts of hydrofeminism such as Eleni Riga, co-founder of the Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research Penny Travlou, have contributed to the public parts of the Room to Bloom Athens.
The Villa Araucaria has become a residency for the female Ukranean artists and is now internationalised. Room to Bloom Athens continues.
*In Greek, the gender of the word 'garden' (ο κήπος) is masculine, so Akadimia Platonos, updating itself, has now become a jungle (η ζούγκλα), which, in Greek, is feminine.