Living 'Free and Real' an Eco-Project's Endeavours Within

Living ‘Free and Real’ An Eco-Project’s Endeavours within and against Late Capitalism

A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities

2018

Elvira Wepfer

Social Anthropology School of Social Sciences [Contents]

Maps and Figures 5

Abstract 6

Declaration 7

Acknowledgments 9

Introduction 11

Living ‘Free and Real’ Within and Against Late Capitalism 17 Austerity and Resistance: Contemporary Greece 21 Eco-Projects in the Anthropocene 24 Dialectical Utopianism and Social Change 30 Taking Responsibility: Self-Transformation and the Will to be Otherwise 33 Methodology, Positionality, and the Field Site 35 Structure of the Thesis at Hand 39

1 ‘Modern’ Greece. Endeavours within and against late Capitalist Modernity 42 Modernity and Democracy 46 Conspiracies, Sense-Making and Social Critique: The Inception of Free&Real 51 National Politics and Citizenship 57 Cutting the Ties? Emancipatory Efforts between Family and Society 65

2 Nature and the ‘Real’. How a Consequential Ethics and Pragmatic Realism produce Radical Environmentalism 75

Urgency and Critical Time at Telaithrion Project 80 Consequential Ecological Ethics: The Permaculture of Free&Real 88 Pragmatic Realism and Radical Environmentalism 94 Contextual Veganism and Situational Ethics 98 Killings and ‘Indistinction’: Positioning Oneself within Nature 106 Nature’s Magic 108

3 School of Life. Subject Making Mechanisms at Telaithrion Project 113 Self-Transformation and Social Change 118 The School of Life 126 The Self and Society 131 Remix: Cultural Appropriation for Social Change 136 The Prefigurative Self 143

4 The Limits of Hospitality. Negotiations of Personal Space in a Temporary Place 145 A Temporary, Transitory Place 149 Friendship at Telaithrion Project 151 Hospitality and the Subversion of Urban Anonymity 157 Spatial and Temporal Negotiations 164 A Seemingly Free Gift: Discrepancies between the Virtual and the Actual 171

5 The Leisurely Life. Lived Time Experiences within and beyond the Value of Labour Time 179 Daily Work without Routine 182 Structure and Boredom 187 Just Be: Meaningful Temporalities and the Value of Existence 193 Doing Things the Right Way 199 Kinship and Relationality of Time 204

Social Time 209

6 Between Self-Determination and Authority. The Social Order of Free&Real 212 Against World Leaders and for Self-Determination 216 Hierarchy of Knowledge: Free&Real’s Social Order 221 Personified Authority: Implications of Knowledge Accumulation 229 The Scientific Decision Making Method and the Production of Technocratic Knowledge 233 (Not) Taking Decisions 238

Conclusion 245

Appendix i 250

Appendix ii 254

Appendix iii 258

References 262

Word count: 85,884

[Maps and Figures]

Map 1. Itinerary from Athens to Agios 12 Map 2. North Evia 76

Figure 1. Author entering the field site 35 Figure 2. Sitting in the living room 54 Figure 3. During a project presentation 83 Figure 4. Dug-out basin for the lake 86 Figure 5. Permaculture principles 88 Figure 6. Making bokashi in the Workshop yard 90 Figure 7. Permaculture teachings in the Workshop yard 93 Figure 8. Picking mushrooms 110 Figure 9. Gine i allagi pou thes na deis ston kosmo: Be the change you want to see in the world 118 Figure 10. Cleaning thyme 132 Figure 11. Making toothpaste 137 Figure 12. Model of the school for self-sufficiency and sustainability 149 Figure 13. Happy muddy faces 152 Figure 14. Construction work 153 Figure 16. Kitchen dance 154 Figure 17. The Hexa yurt by night 167 Figure 18. Model of the Mountain Site 175 Figure 19. The Workshop yard after a good sweeping 184 Figure 20. Turning away from the glamourous urban lifestyle 195 Figure 21. The Cuckoo yurt at the Test Site 200 Figure 22. The beach, three minutes from the Test Site 201 Figure 23. Cutting vegetables, wearing a Free&Real t-shirt 225 Figure 24. Compost toilet at the Workshop 236

[Abstract]

At the northern edge of Greece’s second-largest island Evia, a fluctuating group of people under the name Free&Real aim to build up a school for self-sufficiency and sustainability. In response to late capitalist relations, which they perceive to be exploitative, depleting, and alienating, they pose their project as a learning ground in which to recreate human-environment relations towards regenerative ends. Their environmental, political-economic, and social critique resonates with contemporary civil society initiatives in Europe and North America, where a growing number of eco-projects propose alternatives to the dominant paradigm of profit through exploitation via holistic and non- harmful socio-environmental relations. My thesis depicts, analyses, and contextualises these endeavours of social change, paying attention to the ways in which Free&Real creatively critique contemporary society from within and against late capitalism. They do so through reconfiguring their ethics and practices that aim to re-establish relations with self and other – both human and non-human. Through this, they aim to create alternative futures within the present through practice, and through this prefiguration to transform the present towards more ecologically ethical practices.

Through six chapters, I follow the group’s aspirations to situate human existence firmly within the natural environment, to transform their selves towards ethical ideals, and to recreate economic relations outside the formal economy. I further trace their grappling with contemporary expressions of modernity, the limits of altruism, and the complexities of authority. As the group occupy themselves with transformative, educational, and outreach goals, they reproduce some of the very epistemologies and relations they attempt to overcome, while at the same time proposing novel readings of and engagements with others. Through this creative remix, Free&Real generate innovative local responses to some of the pressing issues of contemporary times. Examining these, my thesis contributes to discussions of social change, environmentalism, the anthropology of Greece and Europe, and critique of capitalist relations.

[Declaration]

No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning.

[Copyright Statement]

i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright of related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given the University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. ii. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trademarks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for examples graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=24420), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, the University Library’s regulations (see http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/about/regulations/) and in The University’s police on Presentation of Theses.

[Acknowledgments]

My most heartfelt thanks go to Apostolos, Anastasia, Thodoris, Moka, Andreas, Spyros, Manthos, and Karmen. You generously shared your time and space, your thoughts and insights, and over the course of a year, your very lives with me. Sometimes it was quite difficult, and sometimes it was great fun. In any case, it was a very intense year. I am grateful for it all, and I remain your friend. This extends further to some wonderful people I met at Telaithrion Project, especially Rose, Jungmi, Giannis, Maria, Luis, Areti, Eleni, Fofi & Giorgos, and Kostas. Furthermore, the many visitors who passed by Telaithrion Project between summer 2015 and summer 2016 informed and enriched this thesis. I thank you all.

I would not have come far in my endeavours to write this thesis without the professional and caring support of my two supervisors, Dr. Michelle Obeid and Dr. Chika Watanabe. Thank you for your in-depth engagement with my work, your inspiring and precise comments, and your clarity and structure. In a similar way, cohort and academic staff at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester added much theoretical depth, critical thought, and amusing diversion to this four-year project. Stef, Soumhya, and Maia, thank you for our seminars, and for the good times we spent at Sand Bar. Letizia, Lana, José, Matt, Ahmad & Elahe, Skyler, Artur, Gudrun, Rosa, Jasmine, Jeremy, Patrick, Francesco, John and Theo – I love you all, and I hope to remain in touch with you.

I was financially supported over two years through a helpful scholarship from the University of Manchester’s School of Social Sciences, as well as through a generous fieldwork bursary from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. I am grateful for this. Finally, I was lucky to be introduced to the Greek culture through a set of lively, joyful, and engaging friends in Manchester. The many conversations I had with Faye, Korina, Ericka, Myrsini, Katerina, Andreas, Vasilis, and the whole ‘Greek community’ continue to guide me in my understanding and appreciation of what is going on at the south-eastern margins of Europe. Most of all, Tryfon’s critical engagement, refreshing insights, and caring patience are an integral part of this work.

This thesis is dedicated to all the beautiful people

who attempt to live a life free and real

Introduction

Turning my back to the Acropolis, I headed for the northern edge of Athens’ city centre: Past Exarchia’s squatted buildings and anarchist bookshops, past Omonia Square crowded by Syrian refugees and the homeless, and into Attiki, a blue collar labyrinth of 20th century manual labour. Grease- stained men on plastic chairs followed me with their eyes as I sidestepped worn-down tyres and scratched car parts on the uneven pavement. Modified exhaust pipes howled and roared, and the summer heat extended their output to lingering swathes of breath-taking fumes. I was heading for Liosion bus station, where three times a day a coach sets off to Evia Island. Evia, or Euboea, is the country’s second-largest island, lounging along the eastern coast of Central Greece. Separated by Euripus strait, Evia is connected to the mainland by a bridge at the strait’s narrowest point. But the coach I boarded that hot day in July 2015 did not cross the bridge to make its way across the island along the winding country road; instead, it sped north towards Thessaloniki, exiting the national highway after about two hours for a 45 minute ferry ride from Arkitsa to Aidipsos in the island’s north-west. With its large number of hot springs and its forested back-country, Aidipsos has long been a popular spa resort for Athenians, but its past splendour is slowly crumbling as austerity measures

11 enhance maintenance costs. Many of the stately turn-of-the-century buildings lay abandoned, only a handful of hotels still accommodate guests, and the public hot spring lido lays unmaintained with cracked concrete structures. From Aidipsos, a road leads northwards to the sleepy village of Agios, and when I disembarked the coach a street dog welcomed me enthusiastically. Counting about two thousand inhabitants, Agios is a rather large village, as its concrete houses stretch out over two hills and into the surrounding grain fields and olive groves. Three hundred meters from the bus stop, opposite the village graveyard, I found an open iron grid gate with a miniature geodesic dome stuck to one of its poles. A sloping cement yard with mulberry trees and a number of benches made from wooden pallets were visible in front of a whitewashed brick house, its corrugated metal roof expanding over a ramshackle wooden extension. I had arrived at my field site, and in good spirits I stepped into the front yard and called out “I’m here!”

Map 1. Itinerary from Athens to Agios. Hand-drawn by the author.

What I had stepped into was the Workshop, one of three spaces of an environmentalist initiative called Telaithrion Project, run by a fluctuating and

12 shifting group of people under the organisational name Free&Real. The name describes the pursuit of a free-spirited and personally meaningful lifestyle; at the same time, it is an acronym that sums up the organisation’s ideology and goals: Freedom of Resources for Everyone Everywhere and Respect, Equality, Awareness, and Learning. The name reflects the group’s point of departure when the eco-project was launched in 2008, yet it continues to serve as a guideline for the kinds of exchange and socio-environmental relations which Free&Real strive for. While their consideration of these relations is global, their project goals focus on local face-to-face interaction: On the one side, the group are building up a school or learning centre for self-sufficiency and sustainability; on the other, its members aim at a most widespread sensitisation for and dissemination of their environmental ideology. The first goal grows out of a consideration of five basic needs Free&Real identified for human life: Food, shelter, clean water and air, and energy. Aiming to contribute to universal coverage of these needs, the initiative approaches them from an ecological perspective based on the second goal of respectful, non-harmful, and regenerative engagement with both the social and ecological environment. The resulting vision of optimal living conditions is what the group aims to build up as a model settlement and learning centre on Mount Telaithrion; the piece of land that Free&Real purchased for this purpose. Funded through crowd sourcing, they call this the Mountain Site. During fieldwork, this space was a rather barren slope slowly recovering from former overgrazing through Free&Real’s systematic planting of trees and soil-fixing plants. It is envisioned to develop into a fertile food forest whose built structures will harmoniously immerse into the ecological environment. These structures will consist of round tents similar to traditional Mongolian yurts, as well as of hemispherical thin- shell structures (or geodesic domes), the largest of which constituted the only built structure on the Mountain Site during fieldwork. Both yurts and domes are designed circular for minimum power and resource consumption. Lakes and creeks will serve as water reservoirs to change the micro-climate, and self-made wind turbines and solar panels will generate renewable energy. Prior to being

13 implemented on the Mountain Site, these built features are developed and constructed on Free&Real’s second piece of land, called the Test Site. This is located in Agios’ sea side resort Agiokampos, a mere three hundred metres from the northern part of Euripus strait. During fieldwork, the Test Site featured three yurts, one triangular shed, a bathroom and a building in progress amongst a fragrant herb garden and a number of large olive and fig trees. It was there that Free&Real and their visitors slept, and the number of buildings and sleeping spaces attest to the group’s second goal of disseminating their ideology widely. Telaithrion Project is open to visitors all year round, and their monetary contributions (€ 10-14/day) run the project on a day-to-day basis. Additionally, Free&Real organise and host practical workshops every four to six weeks with an average of 25-30 participants. The workshops, conducted by external facilitators friendly with the group, range in theme from yoga retreats and mushroom picking to holistic farming and building with ecological materials1. During my fieldwork, the Test Site provided space for participants to sleep and work. The Workshop included a kitchen, electricity and hot water for the shower, as well as a large living room and a separate tool shed. Daily life was divided between the Test Site and the Workshop, while the Mountain Site was visited only when works needed to be done there, or when workshop sessions were held in the dome. I stayed at Telaithrion Project from July 2015 until July 2016. From mid-January to mid-March, the project was closed for a winter break, and participants either returned to their homes in Athens or realised long-standing travel plans. I spent these weeks on my language training in the capital. The months I lived with Free&Real provided a versatile range of experiences and insights, and the thesis at hand is the outcome of a year of intense engagement with the group, their ideology, and their practices. Yet this thesis goes beyond the immediate relations and engagements of Free&Real and aims to contribute to an understanding of how prefigurative socio-environmental change occurs in

1 Since the end of my fieldwork, Free&Real have also organised a number of DIY ‘do it yourself’ workshops on renewable energy generators and have since added a wind turbine, several solar panels, and a powerful sound system to the Test Site.

14 contemporary Southern Europe. As a Greek environmentalist civil society initiative launched in 2008, Free&Real represent some of the very interesting and important developments of early 21st century attempts to change society. Their environmental outlook is influenced by recent popular sensitisation for sustainability, yet is radical in the ways in which it translates its ideology into practice through prefigurative experiments. Prefiguration is the creation of alternatives through practice; it is a pursuit of social change through doing. This doing amounts to processes which are open-ended rather than predetermined: Theory grows out of action, and ideas are tested on the ground, so that social organisation emerges from lived everyday relations. Such processes require time, and prefigurative practices remove the temporal distinction between the struggle in the present and the goal in the future (Maeckelbergh 2011:4). This appropriation of the future through the present emerges as one of the underlying themes of the thesis at hand; the Conclusion comes back to it. At the same time, prefiguration aims to make obsolete dominant practices and epistemologies and substitute them with more just, holistic, and fair social relations by appealing for active participation in social change. Prefiguration thus is a strategic political tool growing out of anarchist and, to degrees, certain Marxist traditions (cf. van de Sande 2015) that conceptualize social change as “a continuous process for which everyone is responsible” (Maeckelbergh 2011:15). This active stance towards change is discussed at several points in the thesis. While Free&Real members did not use the word prefiguration and might not even have known it, their practices and outlooks are driven by endeavours to induce change through action and thereby create viable alternatives for the future in the present. To do so, they appeal for people’s active participation in this change (see below in Introduction). As such, the group share in the growing number of eco-projects that function as research, training, and demonstration centres that occupy themselves with finding, exploring, implementing, and publicising ecologically harmless, holistic, and replenishing socio-environmental relations. Free&Real’s inception and existence constitutes no mere reaction to the sovereign debt crisis

15 that hit Greece and Europe eight years ago, but rather signals a response to the wider effects and consequences of late capitalist relations. Everyday life within the project speaks of a reorganisation of social relations away from profit- driven commodity exchange towards cooperation outside the formal economy, and of a recreation of socio-environmental relations away from exploitative resource extraction towards ecologically harmless and replenishing coexistence. The direction of their endeavours thus grows out of an interface of environmental, political-economic, and social critique. This tripartite critique is characteristic of contemporary civil society initiatives especially in Europe and Central and North America, and it poses fundamental questions to these societies. Importantly, however, a growing number of initiatives that bring forth this kind of critique also propose alternative environmental, political, economic, and social relations, not as theoretical propositions or draft legislations, but as lived ethics and practices. These alternative relations are small-scale prefigurative experiments, simultaneously experiential and heartfelt, towards what their practitioners perceive to be an urgent yet advancing transformation of society. While civil society initiatives can create mass mobilisations through rallies and social media utilisations, small-scale initiatives like Telaithrion Project thus aim at step-wise and individual change in attitude, practices, and patterns. In order to acquaint the reader with the project, the introductory pages of this thesis present some background information on Greece’s recent turbulences and the subject of eco-projects in the current environmental climate, and situate this information in a discussion of contemporary capitalism. In its entirety, the thesis turns to the margins of early 21st century Europe, a space and time marked by fierce implementations of austerity, rapid depletion of natural resources, and a locally growing mistrust in the late capitalist project. From this vantage point, it focuses its lens on civil society initiatives that do not just reject existing systems, but experiment with alternative ways of being in the world. Specifically, the thesis concentrates on one such initiative whose aim is not only to find alternatives for its own members, but to inform and inspire

16 others to participate bin more holistic human-nature relations. As such, it follows the quest of a group of people to transform society by showcasing the ‘otherwise’ and thereby making it reality. It documents the everyday struggles of Free&Real members and visitors as they are working out different possible ways of overcoming late capitalism, and the ways in which they both recreate and reproduce social, environmental, economic, and political relations. The thesis, then, is an enquiry into the lived realities of those ‘spaces of hope’ (Harvey 2000) that prefigure possible futures through engagements in the present.

Living ‘Free and Real’ Within and Against Late Capitalism

Contemporary post-industrial society is marked by an extreme consumerism whose production, distribution, and waste management has propelled environmental depletion into devastating dimensions. Like other eco- projects across the globe, Free&Real acknowledge this situation as destructive and unsustainable and respond to it by rejecting consumerist practices and relations. They are not alone: The first two decades of the 21st century have impressively staged the political insurgencies that are products of the contemporary condition of late capitalism and its environmental troubles. Initiatives like Occupy!, Earth First!, Transition Town, Peak Oil, and others all foreground capitalism’s socially and environmentally destructive effects. For the purpose of this thesis, the term late capitalism denotes an amalgam of processes and discourses which I, following prevalent discussions in social sciences literature, relate to the post-industrial societies of contemporary Europe and North America. From this perspective, the term first of all carries a heritage of epistemological parameters. These include particular understandings of nature-culture and mind-body as dualities, individuated responsibility, and

17 endeavours towards progress and change. In particular, I understand late capitalism as based on the commodification of the natural environment for the production of private profit; as conceptualizing the individual through Cartesian separations that reify the complex expressions of the self into an ascendency and precedence of mind over body; as insisting on individuals’ freedom of choice and utilizing this argument to hold people accountable for their socio- economic realities; and as urging individuals to develop their livelihoods along specific parameters of progress. Second, still following prevalent analyses, I relate late capitalism to neoliberal policies and technocratic organisation. Structurally, these are implemented via austerity measures, while their individual expressions include extreme consumerism and technologies of the self that aim at self-improvement. Third, I use the term throughout the thesis to express a temporal positionality. ‘Late’ denotes capitalism’s advanced stage and, in a hopeful tone, the approach of a transformation of capitalist commodification to more sustainable, holistic, and meaningful relations. In this sense, the term points towards transition and change. This hopeful positionality reflects both my informants’ and my personal stance, and corresponds with voices in ethnographic, popular, and scholarly discussions that urgently point to the unsustainability of contemporary social, environmental, economic, and political relations. Free&Real express this stance by countering the 2008 ‘euro crisis’ with an insistence on a much broader “humanitarian and environmental crisis” (Apostolos) that encompasses contemporary livelihoods. For the group, this term sums up the environmental destruction, social inequalities, economic squanders, and ethical dubiousness of late capitalism. The term thus describes a conglomerate of mechanisms that, while having no agency of their own, establish their dominance through institutional bureaucratic processes as well as official, popular, and media discourses. Rather than connoting a hegemonic monolithic structure, however, late capitalism’s manifold implementations, insurrections, and reinterpretations create the productive frictions characteristic of contemporary times. My informants, their project, and their stories are part

18 of these frictions, as they arise within and against late capitalism in an endeavour towards prefigurative social change. The promise of liberty through consumption choices is a dominant feature of late capitalism. In this consumerist context, freedom is generally associated with a practice rather than a right (for discussion see Chapter 3) and commonly depicted as available to anyone choosing to live it. ‘Living free’ thus becomes a conscious lifestyle choice that, in the case of my informants, rejects and advertises against late capitalism’s mass-consumerism and environmentally degrading production, distribution, and waste management cycles, and instead embraces experiments in ecological practices outside formal labour economy. Through Telaithrion Project, my informants advocate and engage in this lifestyle. However, as a civil society initiative the project is firmly anchored in capitalist exchange relations: It generates board, lodging, and infrastructure through the financial contributions of visitors and workshop participants, and pays for land and construction resources through online crowd sourcing campaigns and small-scale NGO donations. From this vantage point, the project facilitates an experiential space for ‘free living’ not restricted to the project’s members but, in fact, open to anyone who wishes to visit or join. Enabled by and engaging in capitalist relations, the group create and maintain a space which experiments with and forges creative responses to these relations. Their initiative concentrates on relations between humans and nature. In European epistemological thought, nature has long been separated from humans and categorised into discernible entities that have become the foundation of a natural science that itself is the basis of contemporary claims to ‘objective’ or ‘scientific’ knowledge. This knowledge determines what is ‘real’ through claims to factuality (for discussion see Chapter 2), and legitimates extreme environmental depletion through its utilitarian approach. While such knowledge production is prone to harbouring norming, governing, and depoliticizing effects (for discussion see Chapter 6), in my informants’ case it also produces an environmentalist perspective that insists on a factual assessment of human impact on nature. Living ‘real’, for them, thus entails a consequentialist ethics

19 that considers this impact and takes pragmatic steps to regenerate degraded environments. Anchored in and deploying capitalist epistemologies, the group nevertheless forge a critique of and response to these epistemologies’ consequences for nature and the environment. Bringing together critique and response, Free&Real run Telaithrion Project as a grassroots environmentalist initiative that advocates socio- environmental change through transformation of personal practices and ethics. Self-conditioning is an integral part of late capitalist discourse: As ‘good neoliberal subjects’, people are animated to make fashionable, economical, ethical, or health choices based on values of autonomy, personal responsibility, and choice (Lewis & Potter 2013; Muehlebach 2012; Rose 1996; Appadurai 1986). In the context of austerity and recession in Greece and elsewhere, social expenditures are eschewed through official calls to ‘tightening one’s belt’ – an image that shifts collective measures on to personal acceptance and individual relinquishment. In a similar fashion, dominant sustainability discourses typically urge for changes in individual consumption habits. However, transformation of the self as a basis for social change has been advocated and applied long before and way beyond late capitalism (see below). What is unique about my informants’ way of living ‘free and real’ are the ways in which they re-appropriate some of late capitalism’s dominant discourses and practices for their own ends, while reproducing others unwittingly. This is less a contradiction of their endeavours than a reflection of the particular ways in which they approach social change, namely through a creative ‘remixing’ of practices and epistemologies. Remixing as a response to late capitalism, discussed in Chapter 3, emerges as Free&Real’s particular way to prefigure change. In any case, Free&Real’s socio-environmental endeavours denote an intricate interplay of self, environment, and social relations that aim to prefigure human-nature relations alternative to dominant discourses and practices.

Austerity and Resistance: Contemporary Greece

In June 2011, credit rating agencies cut Greek sovereign debt ratings down to CCC, four steps from default and the lowest for any country in the world. By that time, the ‘troika’ of financial institutions including the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Union had been involved in the country’s economy for a year, shooting out billions of euros in bailout loans and imposing, in return, ‘structural adjustment’ via policies of austerity and fiscal discipline. The sovereign debt crisis was affecting most European countries, with especially devastating effects for the weaker economies of Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Italy, and Greece. The following years saw the intensification of liberal austerity measures; their consequences of augmented precariousness for housing, health, and social care are well- documented, as are the ensuing mass-protests and actions of discontent (for the Greek case, see Rakopoulos 2014a, 2014b; Theodossopoulos 2013; Kallianos 2013; Dalakoglou 2012, 2009). In these ways, the sovereign debt crisis brought to the fore the democratic deficits fermenting across Europe in the past decades of deregulated markets and the domination of economics over politics, and forced Europeans to face profound changes in the meaning of citizenship (Hart 2013). Coping with the everyday challenges of crisis and austerity necessarily intersects with and possibly reconfigures human relations (Narotzky & Besnier 2014). Resulting from this insight, several recent anthropological research projects analyse the socio-political and economic dimensions of the ‘euro crisis’, cross-nationally (GRECO n.d.) and at the heart of the crisis, in Greece (Dalakoglou et al. 2014). In Greece, the two major political parties which had dominated state government since the overthrow of the military junta in 1974, social-democratic PASOK and liberal-conservative New Democracy, formed a coalition to face the crisis, but were replaced by left-wing party Syriza in January 2015 following general elections. In the wake of these events,

21 anthropologists working on Greece2 have examined everyday perceptions of international politics, taking in rhetoric and local discourse, as well as reactions to and implications of austerity, highlighting discontent and coping strategies (Kallianos 2013; Dalakoglou 2012, 2009; Kirtsoglou 2006; Papadakis 2004; Brown & Theodossopoulos 2003, 2000). This literature covers both macro- structural dynamics (Herzfeld 2002) and locally grounded actions in times of crisis; the latter ranging from food distribution cooperatives and solidarity networks to instances of protest and occupation in public space (Apoifis 2017; Rakopoulos 2014a, b; Kallianos 2013; Dalakoglou 2012, 2009). These ethnographic studies share a number of outlooks: They focus on urban instances of social unrest and solidarity, situating them in a decade of precariousness and violence especially for young Athenians, in the history of certain public spaces, and in a context of politicized responses to austerity. They all highlight tangible local action against the backdrop of macro-structures. Most importantly, they draw on local alternatives to austerity as these “arise in the midst and against markets in crises” (Rakopoulos 2014a:199, emphasis original), associating debt and recession with new livelihood practices in the European context. A desire to reinterpret and renegotiate responsibility seems apparent (Theodossopoulos 2013), as many of these initiatives consciously go beyond protest and extend their critical engagement to everyday ways of being. Greece’s recent history makes plausible local critiques of late capitalism. The politically critical attitude of many in Greece – anthropologically well-documented – is frequently voiced through blaming structural entities like state and supra-state institutions (Kirtsoglou &

2 Ernestine Friedl (1962) and Michael Herzfeld (1987a; 1985) pioneered the anthropology of Greece and have been joined by a number of scholars discussing diverse concepts such as gender and kinship (Loizos & Papataxiarchis 1991), religion (Hart 1992), and ethnicity and nation-building (Karakasidou 1997; Stewart 1994). The 2000s saw a rise of interest in interethnic conflict in Cyprus (Papadakis 2004; Sant Cassia 2005; Bryant 2004), along Greece’s northern borders (Green 2005; Cowan 2000) as well as in relation to migration (Lawrence 2007), resulting in a deconstruction of identities taken for granted and the acknowledgment of cultural diversity within the alleged homogeneity of the Greek-speaking world. Current research interests span from everyday practices under austerity (Knight & Stewart 2016; Knight 2015) to the state and civil society’s engagement with refugees (Papataxiarchis 2016; Rozakou 2012).

Theodossopoulos 2010a, 2010b; Theodossopoulos 2007; Sutton 1997; Herzfeld 1992). Writing before the onset of the European debt crisis, Michael Herzfeld elaborated the notion of crypto-colonialism as a structural device for understanding the historical positionality of certain states that have never been formally colonized and yet display traits of colonialism. Herzfeld states that crypto-colonies are

certain countries, buffer zones between the colonized lands and those as yet untamed, [that] were compelled to acquire their political independence at the expense of massive economic dependence, this relationship being articulated in the iconic guise of aggressively national culture fashioned to suit foreign models. Herzfeld 2002:900-1

In other words, these are countries that secured their political independence via economic dependence on, and by making major concessions to, Western powers during the Cold War in order to keep their sovereignty. As a crypto- colony, Greece3 was excluded from access to the ‘globally dominant advantages of modernity’ (2002:921). While Herzfeld’s readers are left to ponder what exactly these advantages entailed, Greek opposition to austerity dictates are indeed infused with critique of geopolitical power relations. These relations connect a relatively small number of key institutions, such as multinational firms, financial systems, techno-scientific military complexes, and the modern state and its adjuncts. Their global interconnections have produced the massive industrial, technological, demographic, lifestyle, and intellectual transformations and uneven developments of the twentieth century (Harvey 2000) and continue to form both schemes to control and mobilizations to protest (Tsing 2005). In Greece, as elsewhere, this protest increasingly entails everyday livelihood practices, and my thesis asks how such practices are strategically employed in an attempt to transform hegemonic economistic-

3 Herzfeld also suggests considering as crypto-colonies the states of former Yugoslavia, alongside Japan, Thailand, and Mexico (2002:901).

23 engineering discourses. In this way, the thesis builds on recent Greek ethnography that focuses on unrest and contestation yet reaches beyond it to investigate into the ways in which people in Greece actively prefigure the social change they demand. Additionally, the focus on an environmental initiative within the Greek context enables an ethnographic understanding that connects the social and environmental issues the country faces at the beginning of the new millennium. The thesis ads novel insights to the anthropology of Greece and Europe from the field of rapidly multiplying eco-projects. These are, generally, a fertile yet understudied category of anthropological investigation that provide a rich array of insights into social organisation based on practice and holistic socio-environmental relations (Farias 2017; Lockyer & Veteto 2013a). As such, eco-projects generate important insights into prefigurative socio-environmental change. The case of Free&Real is unique in that they explicitly embrace certain global connections (see below) while critiquing others. Particularly, their critique centres on global environmental depletion.

Eco-Projects in the Anthropocene

Free&Real’s prefigurative and transformative endeavours aim to recreate cultural practices and relations towards ecologically harmless, regenerative, and holistic human-nature relations. This is their response to what, in scientific circles, has been declared as the Anthropocene: A new epoch which succeeds the Holocene that spanned the past 10,000 years since the last glacial period. While Free&Real did not use the term and may not even have been familiar with it, it spans well the period that led to the ‘humanitarian and environmental crisis’ they perceive in the contemporary moment. With its starting date in the 1950s’ nuclear testing and the ‘great acceleration’ of unprecedented techno-physical, biogeochemical and procreating human activity, the new term accounts for the “overwhelming global evidence that

24 atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric and other earth system processes are now altered by humans” (anthropocene.info: n.d.). Popularized by ecological scientists Crutzen & Stroemer (2000), researched over an eight-year- period by the Anthropocene Working Group (Steffen et al. 2011), and finally made official by the International Geological Congress in 2016, the term accounts for expansive human impact on planet Earth, intensified since the mid-eighteenth century and dramatically accelerated in the last seventy years. The unintended outcomes of this acceleration are the environmental troubles of the 21st century. They range from hazardous pollution of waters, air, and soil to climate change’s dramatic impacts on glaciers, oceans, forests, coasts, and deserts, and rapidly advance the unprecedented elimination of biodiversity4. The effects on humans and other animals, as well as on plants, fungi, landscapes, and ecosystems are being researched by a growing body of ecological and social scientists who unanimously point to the intricate and undeniable interconnectedness of all life on the planet5. Their discourses have generated productive critique of the central role of human activity in the naming of this new epoch.

4To give the reader an idea what these impacts entail, here a few sketchy and non-exhaustive illustrations:

Pollution: Industrial farming relies on chemical soil and plant treatments and intensive water use, while commercial production and distribution chains release large amounts of exhausts and waste into atmosphere and water. At the same time, nuclear power production creates radioactive contamination, and military biochemical operations pollute entire regions.

Climate Change: As fossil fuel-based and methane-producing human activity is increasing, the warmed atmosphere melts ice caps, both arctic and other, which, in turn, changes water temperatures and levels across the globe. Draughts are expediting desertification and increasing the number of wild fires. Simultaneously, colder, wetter and stormier conditions importantly impact on regions and habitats.

Biodiversity: As ecological habitats are biochemically polluted, climatically altered, and mechanically cleared for human infrastructure development, species lose their feeding, breeding, and living environments. The Great Extinction, as scientists, scholars, and attentive media call the event, is estimated to eliminate 50 to 95 percent of existing biodiversity by 2100. While this is thought to be the sixth event of mass extinction in planetary time, it is the first in human history.

5 for anthropological discussion see Tsing 2015; Cruikshank 2010.

In the years since its popularization, the Anthropocene has initiated a thick and animated discourse including scholarly, public, and artistic expressions (for comprehensive and useful discussion see Lorimer 2017). Some welcome the multidisciplinary field of Earth System Science, from which the Anthropocene Working Group is largely drawn, for its understanding of Earth as a single system. They perceive in the naming an intellectual zeitgeist that proposes to go beyond the idea of nature as pure and untouched by humans – a construct central to 20th century environmentalism (Lorimer 2015). Others warn about the technical, managerial tenor of the Working Group’s eco-modernist vision that perceives Earth as a series of ‘coupled’ yet bounded ‘spheres’ to be manipulated through modern forms of planetary stewardship (Hamilton 2016, 2015). In particular, postcolonial, Marxist and eco-feminist scholars are critical of the term ‘anthropos’ as it not only denotes ‘human’ but, by consideration of ancient Greek politics and etymology, more closely demarcates the ‘male citizen’ or ‘he who looks up’. This, scholars argue, perpetuates exclusive colonial and patriarchal capitalist narratives that account neither for women and minorities, nor – ironically illustrated through anthropos’ upward rather than a circumspect gaze – for the multispecies existences that ‘live interconnected lives and die interconnected deaths’ on this planet (Haraway 2016:Ch.2,fn.50). Such critiques importantly “challenge the anthropocentric accounts of agency inherent within modern, Cartesian ontologies of the environment [and urge us] to rethink models of kinship and politics along ecological and multispecies lines” (Lorimer 2017:127), as they insist on recognition and acknowledgment of complexity in the myriad web of existence. Meanwhile, anthropologists point to the fact that the Anthropocene constructs an apolitical temporal concept and suggest, instead, spatial alternatives such as Gaia, the complex systemic phenomena that compose a living planet, or the Capitalocene, the product and producer of global capital and power relations (Moore 2014a, b; Latour 2013; Stengers 2015; see also Haraway et al. 2016). The latter, Donna Haraway opposes with the urgent need for an acknowledgment of the multi-faceted realities of the Chthulucene, a term that embraces all existence ‘of, in, or under

26 the earth and the seas’ (cf. Haraway 2016). The concept is attentive to the multispecies earth that exists in an ongoing temporality, meaning it recognizes the poly-dimensional layers of existence not in terms of past, present, and future, but instead as world-making entanglements of countless expressions. Haraway insists that such collaborative thinking is crucial for the continuation of ‘staying with the trouble’, of continued coexistence of life on Earth. While scholars debate the meaning and implications of this new epoch, activists in civil society initiatives are more concerned with its effects on the planet. The unintended outcomes of the ‘great acceleration’ of human activity are perceived as unjust, exploitative, and degrading mechanisms by those who disagree with late capitalism’s reduction of human-environment relations to resource extraction for maximal profit. Beginning from the ancient Greek idea that nature is independent of our perception of it (yet animist and therefore perceived as an organism), to Renaissance and especially Cartesian views of nature as a machine-like entity with axiomatic laws produced by an exogenous intelligence (a Christian God), to modernity’s emphasis on process, change, and development of nature that could be studied and defined, European historical- philosophical ontogenetic processes have produced an understanding of nature as distinct from and tamed by humans (Dickens 2004; Collingwood 1945; see also Callicott & Arnes 1989; White 1967). While these perceptions of nature were contrasted by currents of thought such as Romanticism, which focussed on the aesthetic and spiritual relationship between self and environment, the dominant discourse has long emphasised separation and domination. This view was reinforced by new production and distribution processes since the post-war period and exacerbated into unprecedented dimensions in the last three decades of the 20th century. Technological inventions rapidly intensified resource extraction, while rolled-back state interventions and globalized outsourcing strategies neglected environmental policies and regulations, and deregulated markets invited price dumping based on socially and environmentally disastrous cost reductions. These processes accelerated socio-environmental depletion and produced the social unrest that marks the first two decades of the

21st century as well as the contemporary ongoing environmental troubles. They are based on and perpetuate discourses of nature and the environment not only as distinct from and dominated by humans, but importantly as valuable only in monetary terms of resource extractions. In an attempt to alter these epistemologies, contemporary environmentalists promote more holistic engagement with the ecological environment in the form of regenerative, reciprocal, and fair relations. Environmental movements of the later decades of the 20th century tended to focus on pollution as threat to wildlife and human health and suggested that nature needs protection through legislation and conservation (Guha & Martinez-Alier 1997; Carson 1962). Against this backdrop, radical ecology suggested an environmental philosophy that centred on a perception of symbiosis of humans and nature based on interconnectedness and interdependence. Specifically, deep ecology advocated eco-centric politics of biospherical egalitarianism, diversity, resistance to resource depletion, and avocation of complexity and local autonomy (Naess 1973:97-98; for critique see Biro 2005; Sargisson 2000; Cronon 1996). More pragmatic approaches were deemed anthropocentric and thus ‘shallow’ (Naess 1973). However, in the wake of the new millennium solution-focussed environmentalism has grown in popularity, both in terms of ‘sustainable development’ and in more holistic approaches to human relations with their natural environment. In particular, since the mid-1990s a growing number of eco-projects worldwide advocate and experiment with sustainable living that foregrounds prosperity without growth and situates humans within ecosystems rather than outside of or independent from them (Lockyer & Veteto 2013b; Leonard 2007; Dobson 1998; Eckersley 1992). These eco-activists variously labelled deep, radical, or eco-centric environmentalists recognize capitalist human-nature relations as exploitative for both humans and Earth, and refute them as unjust, degrading, and alienated (Leonard 2007). Importantly, they go beyond protest and implement their beliefs into everyday practices such as growing their own food as a way to gain degrees of self-sufficiency, or building their houses from ecological materials to

28 increase their sustainable resource use. While eco-projects are a worldwide phenomenon, they are especially prevalent in North America and Europe. Many of them function as eco-communities that grow out of a long tradition of intentional communities in which people reject the norms established in the surrounding environment in favour of alternative social arrangements (Pitzer 2014; Kanter 1972). Intentional communities often aim to create an economy based on personal social relationships rather than on impersonal markets (Polanyi 2001), and focus on collective responsibility and collaboration. Of the communes established during the 1960s and 70s, several have stood the test of time and have been joined by countless initiatives especially since the 1990s. In Greece, where nearly self-sufficient lifestyles are still prevalent in some rural areas, human-nature relations are traditionally marked by struggle, toil, and efforts to order and cultivate the land (Theodossopoulos 2003; Argyrou 1997:163; Hart 1992:65-6; du Boulay 1974:56; Friedl 1962:75). The 1980s saw tentative experiments with eco-projects, yet it was only in the wake of the sovereign debt crisis that small-scale environmental initiatives sprang into life across the country. In Greece as elsewhere, eco-projects take different forms: Some function as communities or villages in which people establish long-term settlement for themselves, while others pursue goals that serve the general public instead, like creating parks, establishing community gardens, or, in the case of Free&Real, building up a learning centre. What all these grassroots initiatives have in common is a refusal of the shallow promises of sustainable development engaged throughout political and economic agendas in the wake of a realisation of the Anthropocene’s impact on the planet. Instead, they insist on individual and collaborative action that replenishes and regenerates the exploited and degraded ecological and social environment of our planet. Their take on sustainability thus typically includes social, ecological, cultural, and economic dimensions (GEN n.d.). To sensitize for and disseminate this approach, eco-projects typically assume self-defined roles as research, training, and demonstration centres (Dawson 2013); either through organising workshops and seminars in which the wider public can engage with the

29 ecological environment in physical and theoretical ways, or through hosting visitors and volunteers and including them in their daily practices. Their self- appointed social role is thus both educational and prefigurative, as they attempt to impart and put into practice what they believe to be harmonious socio- environmental relations.

Dialectical Utopianism and Social Change

Social scientists have linked intentional communities with discussions of utopia. Thomas Moore coined the term in the sixteenth century via gr. eu, good, ou, not or non; and topos, place. The question whether a good – or even perfect – society can actually exist is thus at the heart of the concept, and has been answered in literature by removing utopia from immediate reality to imagined islands, far-away planets, and fictional countries. The distance thus created allows for estrangement, a fundamental aspect of fictional utopian society, which disrupts the familiar spatio-temporally and evokes normative, ideological, social and affective distance. As such, utopia points out reality’s shortcomings by contrasting it with a society that seems somehow ‘better’ or more worthwhile (Brown 2001; Bennet 1975; Spiro 1956). In intentional communities, estrangement “permits critical distance, reflection, and new perspective. It facilitates the articulation of repressed or marginal voices. And it works by creating distant spaces whence to interrogate the now” (Sargisson 2007:396). As intentional communities consciously distance themselves from wider society, their estrangement allows for the creation of alternatives. In a similar way, eco-projects’ processual character of experimenting with and imparting knowledge about holistically sustainable practices demonstrates people’s efforts to improve themselves and their social environment (Lockyer & Veteto 2013a; Greenberg 2013). Environmentalists’ rejection of alienated, exploitative human-environment relations finds its response in eco-projects

30 where re-appropriative politics recreate socio-environmental relations and produce new and novel strategies to relate to one’s environment. As small groups scale society down to a face-to-face level, they have the potential to become mechanisms for social transformation as they strategically use prefigurative practices to enact and disseminate their values, conflating private and political spheres of life (Farias 2017; Maeckelbergh 2011, 2009; Harrington & Fine 2000). Their utopianism, then, is a processual politics of prefigurative social change. Critiquing the spatially fixed and a-temporal utopias of Thomas Moore and subsequent writers, human geographer David Harvey (2000) demands a utopianism that integrates social processes and spatial form. Such a spatiotemporal – or dialectical – utopianism is rooted in present possibilities and problematic realities, and at the same time points towards radically different trajectories: Dialectical utopianism entails a willingness to transcend and overturn the socio-environmental relations imposed by uncontrolled capital accumulation, class privileges, and inequalities of political-economic power (2000:199ff.). In a Marxist analysis, Harvey contends that it is from within the space of capitalism that alternative socialist imaginaries can grow. He evokes the image of the architect who creates space through imagination. Like architects, all humans are capable of constructing imagined spaces for new possibilities, for future forms of social life. In this imaginary and simultaneously world-making construction, the interplay of self, environment, and social relations is crucial for reaching utopic aspirations:

The kind of nature we might be in a position to produce in years to come will have powerful effects upon emergent and even new social forms. […] The basis for such a project must rest […] upon some broad agreement on how we are both individually and collectively going to construct and exercise our responsibilities to nature in general and towards our own human nature in particular. Harvey 2000:218, 223

This transformation of society and the self relies on the dialectical and metabolic relations humans develop with nature: Harvey contends that humans have responsibilities towards nature on the grounds that they belong to an overarching ‘web of life’ (Capra 1996). Radical dialectical utopians, or eco- activists, accommodate these responsibilities by altering their political person. By changing positionality and taking responsibility for the ecological environment, one changes one’s politics and transforms one’s self, social forms, and ultimately, society. Harvey implies that his dialectical utopianism constitutes a transition (or, in his words, a ‘long revolution’) towards an ecologically sustainable lifestyle. This trajectory corresponds with Free&Real’s endeavours towards social change. Telaithrion Project aims at socio-environmental change through sensitisation, dissemination, and implementation of regenerative, reciprocal, and fair engagement with the ecological environment. This response to the Anthropocene’s impact on Earth is no mere reaction to capitalist commodification, but offers something novel, and, in the eyes of Free&Real, something better instead. Their activism is driven by considerations of socio- environmental processes of capitalist resource extraction, and the spatial form of a finite planet. It is thus a dynamic, processual utopia whose ever-evolving character is grounded in a prefigurative transition from resource depletion and environmental degradation to replenishment and sustainability. In order to attain their goals, the group attempt to change their social relations, alter their ecological practices, and transform themselves into ethical beings, while offering others to participate in this change. In this way, they aim to facilitate and contribute to social change through individual self-transformation. Self- transformation is an intrinsic aspect of intentional living in which dominant practices and beliefs are abandoned to attain an improved, utopic existence (Spiro 2004; Sargisson 2000; Bennett 1975). In Greece, recent calls to ecological self-transformation coincide with opposition to austerity and geopolitical power relations. The country thus offers a unique and fertile

32 ground to examine the political-economic implications, environmental practices, and social limitations of eco-activist initiatives in the wake of the proclamation of the Anthropocene and its socio-environmental uncertainties in early 21st century Europe.

Taking Responsibility: Self-Transformation and the Will to be Otherwise

For my informants, social change was largely a matter of conscious and self-reflexive transformation of one’s own practices and ethics. As mundane everyday considerations, ethics and morality are volatile objects of analysis that are not easily located or defined (Lempert 2013; Das 2012; Lambek 2010). Scholars debate whether humans act morally based on Kantian ethics of duty or Aristotelian ethics of virtue, and the extent to which these considerations take conscious positions in people’s everyday lives (Fassin 2014; Faubion 2011; Lambek 2010; Zigon 2009; Dolezal 2009; Robbins 2007; Laidlaw 2002; Rose 1996). However, as reflexive considerations, ethics are an intrinsic part of the process of self-formation (Foucault 1983). Asking where this ‘will to be otherwise’ derives from, Elizabeth Povinelli (2012) analyses the origins and outcomes of the insurrection of knowledge which underlies ethical transformation. Either finding oneself to be ethically otherwise and persisting in being so, or seeking to be ethically otherwise and persisting on this desire, constant ethical reflection and practice generate ethical becoming that is less concerned with absolute freedom from governance and more interested in discerning how, why, and by whom one is governed. Partaking in this governance means to practice a kind of truth telling that opens and exposes truth to effects one cannot yet know (2012:456-459). Ethical reflection and practice thus embodies a commitment to world making that is risky insofar as it highlights the tensions between one’s ethics and wider perceptions of morality.

If wilful action is the outcome of intentional thought, and thought is a tendency of the mind that lies in a likely but undefined future, then the interface of future and present, of will and world, of ethical reflection and unreflective moral disposition, generates the space from whence the will to be otherwise derives (2012:465-471). Intentional thoughts about socio-environmental relations, practices, and ideals are the driving force behind my informants’ commitment to social change. The conscious ethical reflection that lies behind their environmentalist endeavours is based on observing the practices and paying attention to the moral dispositions of themselves and their social environment, and consciously and critically evaluating these against their ethical beliefs6. Their interest lies in assuming an active part in their own governance, and enabling others to do the same. This call to agency in the face of structure I refer to as self-determination, or the process by which a person controls their own life. I understand self- determination to include both personal and social relations. On a personal level, it means directing oneself and taking responsibility for one’s actions by being accountable and liable for what one does. On a social level, self-determination connotes considering one’s environment as an extension of the self and applying the same responsibility to one’s environment as one applies to oneself. As such, self-determination is essentially anti-authoritarian, but it promotes an explicitly proactive stance through its emphasis on initiative. The heartfelt belief in self-determination, responsibility, and initiative has driven my informants to radically change their everyday lives; to fathom out and take seriously what moves these lives is as crucial to this thesis as it is to consider the limitations of my informants’ practices, beliefs, and strategies that reproduce the capitalist epistemologies and relations they aim to overcome. These limitations surface in all human engagement and form an important part of endeavours towards change, as they reflect the ways in which ethical pursuits and aspirations are entangled in moral, social, economic, and political

6 I here understand ethics as conscious individual reflection and morals as normative social truths.

34 dispositions that may retain power beyond the will to be otherwise. As such, they function as an important reminder that social change is not a concrete goal that can be planned and executed through the step-wise implementation of ascertainable measures or predefined strategies, but an ever-becoming flux of possibilities whose myriad implementations exist in the imaginaries, realities, and imperfections of human life.

Methodology, Positionality, and the Field Site

When I stepped into the Workshop’s front yard and in good spirits announced my arrival, Apostolos came out of his office. Of the four original founding members of Telaithrion Project, he is the last one remaining. He greeted me warmly with a hug, a snapshot, and a kiss. “What’s up?” he asked, standing bare-chested in the hot afternoon sun. As we chatted about the latest project developments and the year to come he told me that Manthos, after two years of project life, was about to leave by the end of September. Sotiria, who had lived at the site for over a year, had already left. “So the crew only consists of me, Karmen, and you…” Apostolos sighed and smiled bravely. As if she had heard us, Karmen’s head protruded from the Workshop door. “Giasou”, she

Figure 1. Author entering the field site. Picture taken by Apostolos Sianos. smiled, and added in English, “welcome!” She joined us in the sunny yard, an airy cloth covering most of her bikini. The fume-polluted heat of Athens was long forgotten: Summer seemed more endurable, even enjoyable here. As I inquisitively pointed to a flourishingly green area in the yard whose wooden sign labelled it as Perma Garden, its leaves rustled and released a woman in bikini top and zipped-open shorts. “This is Anastasia. A visitor”, Apostolos announced. Anastasia came to hug and kiss me, before taking me by the hand to show me the garden she had just emerged from. While Free&Real constitute a fluctuating and shifting group of people, Apostolos’ presence is irrevocably connected to it. Having co-founded both the group and the project, Apostolos’ influence, guidance, and management is integral to Free&Real and Telaithrion Project. Around him cluster a changing group of people who, like him, live at the project site. This group is called the crew, and crew members have unrestricted access to the project and most of its resources. During fieldwork, a new crew assembled and dissolved, and its members are the main protagonists of this thesis. Manthos, 28, Karmen, 53, Anastasia, 21, Thodoris, 23, Moka, 35, Andreas, 24, Spyros, 22, and I, 27, lived together with Apostolos, 35, at Telaithrion Project between July 2015 and July 2016. Together, Apostolos and the crew ran Telaithrion Project. Visitors, both first-time and returning, were an almost constant addition to this small group, generating a bustling air in summer when 15 to 25 people stayed at the project, and a more laid-back atmosphere with lower numbers in the colder months. While these people did not form part of the crew, their ideas, practices, and beliefs stood in constant dialogue with the group and importantly inform the ethnography and analysis of this thesis. Moreover, workshops with up to 50 people on site further added to a holistic understanding of the group’s endeavours, both through the composition of its participants and the contents imparted on them. In its widest sense, Free&Real includes all these people, voices, and practices, as the motives that brought them to Telaithrion Project rest on similar inclinations and beliefs. The perceived need for socio- environmental change and the willingness to individually and collectively

36 participate in it form as much part of these motives as an interest to experiment with meaningful and ecologically harmless human-nature relations. To varying degrees these people all engaged with the question of what it means to live free and real, and the thesis picks up and reflects on this engagement.

Everyday life at Telaithrion Project was intimately shared through communal sleeping, living, working, and eating arrangements. While these arrangements wove tight the social fabric of my field site, my positon as crew member further increased my immersion into the lives of my informants. This immersion unfolded as a process, my double role as researcher and crew member generating changing and at times conflicting positionalities. These shifting positionalities inform Chapters 3 and 6 to make accessible analytically crucial processes that are not easily observable outside the self. Apart from these snippets of auto-ethnography, participant observation proved the ideal method, as it combined the engagement of the crew member with the scrutiny of the researcher. At the same time, my field site’s sensuous aspects stimulated an array of experiences beyond the narrowly social. From the revitalizing effects of cooling-off in the sea during the heat of the Mediterranean summer, to a good night’s rest by a wood-fuelled stove after a winter’s day of physical labour, project life generated an array of physical experiences. A rural life lived predominantly outdoors provided irritating mosquito bites and tickling sweet- grass, smelly manure and flowery scents, gruesome sites of roadkill and beautiful views of sunsets. The joys of eating figs and pomegranates from butterfly laden trees form as much part of my field experience as the stinging pain inflicted by alcohol-based tinctures used for dressing wounds. Taking in my field site’s sensory aspects and their physical, emotional, and social effects crucially broaden and complement my analysis (Pink 2009). Finally, the time I spent in Athens during the project’s winter break enabled distancing from and reconsideration of preliminary insights, while allowing for partial immersion in everyday life in Greece’s capital. However, once back in Evia, the language training undertaken proved to be insufficient to strategically engage with the

37 local population in order to fathom their impressions of Free&Real. At Telaithrion Project, Greek and English coexisted in creative and supportive ways, as international visitors and I relied on the latter and picked up snippets of the former. While my engagement with the local population remained superficial if more relaxed, improving my Greek language skills helped to follow and broaden my understanding of everyday processes on site. Taken together, the methods employed in my fieldwork amount to classic anthropological tools and their limitations. They generated a rich ethnography on which this thesis draws.

Following crew members’ explicit request, I use their real names throughout the thesis, altering, however, visitors’ names for reasons of anonymity. The group’s online and especially social media presence broadly publicizes names and personal images, yet photographs used in the thesis focus on practices and places. They are reproduced with consent of both photographers and individuals depicted. Finally, the thesis’ ethnography is consequentially written in past tense. The project’s proclaimed temporariness, expressed in its ever-changing social composition and its conceptualization as non-permanent residence, account for this grammatical choice as much as the topic of social change itself. Eco- projects’ processual character builds on a dynamic conceptualization of utopia whose ever-becoming flux of possibilities generates transition through the imaginaries and realities of human life. Their re-appropriative politics of prefigurative social change speedily turns ethnographic present into past. This, however, does not devalue the findings at hand. Rather, it underscores the fact that the dynamics and developments of Telaithrion Project are as much transforming as transformative. As most crew members have left and others have joined, the group aspire to social change in ever-evolving and dialectical ways.

Structure of the Thesis

The first chapter traces crew members’ redefinition of citizenship though the lens of a particular reading of the concept of modernity, one that accounts for the dichotomous conceptualizations of human existence as well as for the impetus for change along more fluid paths. As the group engage their environmentalism from within and against late capitalist modernity, they simultaneously desire and denounce its implications. The chapter thus dissects how endeavours for social change get tangled up in the discursive and social realities they attempt to overcome, yet nevertheless importantly point to necessary changes in the conceptualization and expression of citizenship for the 21st century. The following chapter delves into an analysis of these changes along the lines of human-nature relations. Starting from an ethnographic understanding of nature as a real, objectively existing unity whose ongoing temporality is critically threatened by environmental degradation, the chapter presents the present moment as a period of transition from late capitalist unsustainability to other, as of yet undetermined human-nature relations. Within this present, Free&Real advocate ecological ethics that assess the consequences of human impact on the environment. They apply these consequential ethics situationally, balancing them with a pragmatic approach to the environment. While this arrangement at times compromises their endeavours, it allows the group to continue their project in practical terms and thus to contribute to the present in environmentally regenerative ways. The third chapter investigates this transitional period’s individual implications by dissecting Free&Real’s subject making mechanisms. The group advocate self-transformation through autonomous education. This endeavour is grounded in liberal conceptualizations of knowledge as derived from an objective, independent, and transparently accessible reality, and of personhood as guided by reason and altruism. While such conceptualizations necessarily

39 reproduce some of the dominant epistemologies the group aim to transform, they also generate space for creative considerations of different kinds of personhood. Particularly, it is Free&Real’s interpretation of global connections along the lines of tech creativity and IT remix culture that allows for a broad diversity of concepts and practices surrounding personhood to mix, mingle, and flourish at Telaithrion Project. The resulting combinations are fluctuating and processual, and point to the transformative qualities of ever-becoming selves. Shifting focus from the individual to the collective, Chapter 4 is concerned with Free&Real’s communal living arrangements. At Telaithrion Project, negotiations of space and time take the shape of a gift economy whose obligations bring to the fore the limits of hospitality. While the group’s online appearance constructs hospitality as an altruistic, free gift, the place’s structural configuration as a temporary project with a constant flux of passers-by creates scarcity of time and space that have to be divided between the self and the other. This situation at times forecloses the creation of community in the sense of a feeling of togetherness; however, it nevertheless points to the importance of hospitality as de-commodifying exchange that has the potential to counter late capitalist commercial exchange relations. Deepening the critique of capitalist exchange relations into a rejection of waged labour in the formal economy, Free&Real aim for the leisurely life discussed in Chapter 5. This lifestyle dismisses structure and routine for more self-directed engagements which, however, clash with conceptualizations of responsibility expressed through kinship relations. For some, the merging of work and leisure frames time as continuous, fragmented, and interruptible. However, it also brings to the fore time’s relational character. As a social relation freed from formal economy’s structures, Free&Real’s concept of time has the potential to recreate everyday life into a pleasurable and productive experience, thereby powerfully critiquing hegemonic discourses of labour relations. Finally, the last chapter picks up the question of responsibility in a discussion of Free&Real’s social order. Refuting contemporary democratic

40 practices as unjust and dysfunctional, the group base their decision making on what they construct as disinterested, objective knowledge. As this knowledge is, in effect, highly place-specific and technocratic, it creates hierarchy and favours authority. Rather than attempting to fundamentally change their social order towards a sharing of responsibility, the group accept and thereby reinforce hierarchical structures. Free&Real’s reproduction of authoritative decision making and undemocratic practices provides an important reminder of the complexities of social change within and against late capitalism, as grassroots initiatives both recreate and perpetuate relations they wish to overcome.

1 ‘Modern’ Greece

Endeavours within and against late Capitalist Modernity

It was high noon on a scorching August day when Manthos decided the Workshop’s living room needed deep cleaning. He summoned three visitors and an anthropologist to the task, as everybody else was unavailable: Anastasia was at the Test Site with Apostolos, Karmen had retreated with an avocado face mask, and the other visitors had stayed at the beach. Quietly bemoaning our fate, we chosen ones followed Manthos into the living room to face what was awaiting us. The central lamp rarely lit the room: Apostolos did not like its bright bulb and preferred the dim lights of the floor lamps. With Apostolos away and the lamp switched on, the living room revealed itself to our little broom-armed brigade. The tiered chill-out area with its mattresses, plaids, and pillows had a fusty air, the chunky square table with stools featured bread crumbs and food left-overs, the shelves that hosted seeds, books, speakers, and stationary items were covered in nebulous layers of dust, and the dinnerware stacking and tea shelves looked messy and untidy. Oversized black curtains lined the two windows, a ceiling fan gently rocked the sticky fly traps, and battered pieces of stained marine blue carpet held the room together. Soon enough we were immersed in sweat and dust as we throbbed mattresses, waved plaids, shook out pillows, beat carpets and vacuum-cleaned, swept, and dusted the living room in its entirety. The corrugated metal roof groaned under the stinging sun and the cicadas chirped ever louder. Working side by side with us, Manthos seemed grimly determined to deliver the deepest deep cleaning the space had ever seen. A couple of weeks before quitting the project, cleaning and tidying seemed a noble way of saying his good-byes, and so we did not really mind supporting him in this enterprise. But by the end of the cleaning session, none of us was sure how to recreate the order of the chill-out area, and how to fit the rugs onto the floor. A surprisingly clean oriental rug caught my attention: It had not been visible in the old order. We decided to place it on top of the worn pieces of carpet that previously dominated the floor and carried the heavy table around the room to make space for the rug. When we finally finished, we felt tired but satisfied, and Manthos drove us to the beach where we bathed with blithe pleasure. In the evening, Apostolos returned from the

Test Site, glanced at the living room and asked what we had done. Manthos was not in sight, and so I happily exclaimed, by way of explanation: “Isn’t that rug nice?! We discovered it as we deep cleaned the entire space, and we decided to put it here.” – “Why did you do that?” Apostolos questioned. “This is a modern place! There’s a reason this rug was covered: It’s a grandma’s rug. It’s so old- fashioned no-one wants to see it! And in the chill-out area all the colours are confused: There was a system. This is supposed to be a modern place, and now it looks like a gipsy place! Change it back.” This took me by surprise. Others had described the Workshop’s seemingly care-free colour combinations as one more aspect of the tsigani, or gipsy lifestyle they perceived the project to celebrate. Over the next few days, as we pushed and pulled to hide the rug once more under the carpet and re-ordered the purple, red, orange, green, black, and yellow plaits and pillows, I came to realize that at Telaithrion Project, people held deep concerns about what it meant to be ‘modern’.

This chapter dissects some of Free&Real’s beliefs and practices in order to anchor, situate, and silhouette the project within and against wider society. Engaging with both national and international politics, it chisels out an array of criticisms the group brings forth against late capitalist norms and policies, and portrays a number of ways in which they attempt to counter these. In order to make sense of the paradoxical outcomes of these endeavours, I engage the concept of modernity as a theoretical lens through which to view the group’s struggles to overcome some of the socially repressive and environmentally destructive mechanisms of their times. In so doing, I follow Paxson in her observation that Greeks “make use of the tradition/modernity division to explain to themselves the contradictions they face within an historically specific instance of […] Greek modernity” (2004:9), meaning that they speak, think, believe, act, and endeavour from within and, at the same time against, an intricate amalgam of late capitalist modernity. This is a kind of modernity which pits a traditional past against a modern future to induce a complex present. Thereby, the present becomes an attempt to disentangle those processes

44 which perpetuate unequal power relations from others whose potential to initiate more just, holistic, and equal social and environmental relations inspire the impetus for change. Enmeshed in this situation, Free&Real find themselves unwittingly positioned between the promising narratives of modernity and the sceptical attitudes of post-modernism. The group members inevitably employ some of the very outlooks, arguments, and practices they attempt to overcome, leading to unintended consequences. Nevertheless, their endeavours, meaning their industrious, earnest, and heart-felt attempts to contribute to fairer relations between people and their environments, display fundamentally significant ways to engage with late capitalism from within and against its encompassment. The question this chapter poses, then, is the following: How did Free&Real participants engage their activism from within and against late capitalist modernity to attain a socially more just and ecologically more sustainable society, and what are the limits of this engagement? This question tackles the complexities of human relationality and social change intrinsic to much of social sciences’ investigation and offers novel insights from a Greek environmentalist perspective. It combines local critique of geopolitical events and struggles of emancipation with ecological concerns and questions of political positionality in order to show how hegemonic assumptions about social and power relations are both recreated and reproduced through environmentalist engagement at the borders of contemporary Europe. In order to do so, I explore modernity through a discussion of the intersections of state, citizenship, family, and society as my informants saw them. Throughout this chapter I argue that, while Free&Real participants’ critique of capitalism carries significant and locally novel approaches to politics and citizenship, their application of this critique into everyday practices is imbued with modernity’s dichotomous juxtapositions which function to depoliticize their activist endeavours and to expand existing power relations.

Modernity and Democracy

Apostolos’ contrasting of ‘tsigani’ and ‘modern’ objects and orders reads like a text book example of Michael Herzfeld’s ‘cultural intimacy’ (1997). As a private, unmodern aspect of cultural identity that generates embarrassment, ‘gipsy’ is a term frequently used by Greek people to relate to those aspects of everyday life that seem to identify with their Eastern, Ottoman, or traditional heritage. In this sense, ‘tsigani’ relates to those things that are untidy, dirty, or unordered, while ‘modern’ expresses tidiness, cleanness and order7. This dichotomous categorisation of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ aspects of Greek culture has its roots in historical narratives of nation building. In the nineteenth century, Greece’s independence wars with the Ottoman Empire were supported by a western-educated Greek intelligentsia and a substantial European circle of Hellenophiles who saw in Greece’s liberation the first step to the restoration of Europe’s glorious past (St. Clair 1972). In line with western colonialist-orientalist worldviews of the time, modern Greece was equated with classic Hellenic ideals and deemed the ‘cradle of democracy and civilization’. The Greek Orthodox Church joined the struggle for national independence and fostered Christian values that opposed Ottoman Muslim rule. While Europe’s focus on nation states opposed ‘The Greeks’ with ‘The Turks’, and more generally, the ‘West’ with the ‘East’, Greece’s socio-geographic position as the eastern border of the western Christian world made it of strategic interest to international politics. After the ruptures of the World Wars, the dualism continued in the second half of the twentieth century in the form of the ‘free West’ versus the ‘repressive East’. Once more, Greece’s socio-geographic

7 At the same time, this private, traditional, Eastern, or ‘unmodern’ part of Greek identity constitutes a source of pride. This is why people frequently used the term ‘tisgani’ to relate positively to the project’s topsy-turvy and motley make-up: The ram-shackled Workshop shed, the DIY pallet benches, and the hand-me-down linen flapping in the wind conveyed a sense of jolly unruliness that visitors and crew members enjoyed. The ‘disemic’ ambivalence thus created has been deemed an intrinsic aspect of Greek cultural identity (Paxson 2004:20; Herzfeld 1987a).

46 position – this time as the only non-communist country of the Balkans – invited geopolitical attention. In line with international narratives, national politics constructed western Europe as modern and progressive. After the civil war (1946-49) and a period of nationalist dictatorship Greek public and political discourse from the mid-1970s on habitually debated whether ‘modern’ western or ‘traditional’ Balkan features best represented the country’s cultural assets. While conservative voices located ‘Greek culture’ in its heritage, progressive, liberal narratives painted a picture of its modern aspirations. In line with the latter, Anglo-American and European political insistence of Greece’s belonging with the West found concrete socio-political expressions in international development grants from the US, the country’s NATO and EU accessions and admission to the Eurozone. The narrative of progress, out of traditional past into a modern future, dominated Greece’s political and media discourses between the end of the dictatorship and the onset of the sovereign debt crisis. As the latter initiated the country’s current austerity, the narrative of progress has become ever more caricatured, yet its basic dichotomist essentialism lingers in both local and public discourse. As elsewhere, the Greek narratives about the modern West entail such features as democracy, rational government, scientific and technological inventiveness, individualism, and certain ethical and cultural commitments along the lines of a claimed humanist-Enlightenment heritage (Theodossopoulos 2007; Kirtsoglou 2007; 2006; Herzfeld 2001, 1992; Clogg 1992; St. Clair 1972). While Greek discourse exhibits fundamental mistrust of the modernist promise of progressive development (see following section), its dichotomous assessment of modern versus traditional/backward social relations substantially guides local outlooks.

I use the term modernity in its widest sense to encompass those expressions of contemporary existence whose epistemologies have, for roughly one and a half centuries, dominated Euro-American societies through particular discourses of social order and policies of governmentality (Foucault 2004 [1977]). As such, modernity accounts for the solid conceptualizations of

47 industrialization into categories of ‘either – or’ (Beck 1997), that is, into dichotomous dualities through which to consider human existence. They have found their expression, among others, in nature-culture dualities, mind-body contrasts, rivalries of secular and spiritual worldviews, or left- and right-wing political affiliations. At the same time, I consider modernity’s expressions that emphasise simultaneous, fragmentary, or ‘liquid’ (Bauman 2000) traits. These underlie contemporary technological inventions, international financial procedures, and globalization narratives. The manifold aspects of modernity, including postmodernist critique, are part of the productive frictions of our times. As my informants sought to position themselves within this particular instance of modernity, the term appears as a discursive idiom which denotes more closely a sense of modern-ness (Deeb 2006), meaning a combination of material and immaterial progress8. Aiming for technological, social, and economic advancement as material expressions of modernity, they simultaneously proclaimed the need for immaterial progress through new and novel conceptualizations of human-nature relations. To attain this two-fold aim and, at the same time, rid themselves from an ‘unmodern’ past, they engaged a varied and at times conflicting array of discourses and practices, anchored in both dichotomous and liquid expressions of modernity. While the question of the product of such an endeavour forms the basis of the following chapter, here I trace the reproduction of modernity through emancipatory efforts. As such, modernity in these pages includes both ethnographic and theoretical conceptualizations. The concept of progress is intrinsic to the project of modernity. Whether as economic growth, socio-economic development, social welfare, political stability, or ecological ‘greening’, modernity’s narrative follows a continuous path of improvement. While progress undoubtedly means different things to different people, underlying this path is a dichotomous conceptualization of

8 In the context of Deeb’s (2006) ethnography on pious Shi’i women in Lebanon, modern-ness denotes a combination of material and spiritual progress. While the former includes technological, social, and economic advancement, the latter is expressed through public piety. Despite obvious differences, the secular context of Free&Real’s environmentalism combines endeavours to material and immaterial progress.

48 time: As I have illustrated for the Greek case, a ‘traditional’, ‘backward’ and generically undesirable past opposes a ‘progressive’, ‘modern’, and desirable future. In order to reach this future, the present is cast as a continuous state of progress. As time passes and future becomes present, the narrative of change allows modernity to continuously reproduce itself through unremitting promises of progress. The present thus induced perpetuates modernity, and many of its dominant discourses proliferate. At the same time, however, social change is both endeavoured and perceptible: I argue that this change is part of contemporary modernity. Thus far I have allegorised modernity as a rather discrete entity. This portrayal needs rectification: While it proves useful as a shorthand throughout the thesis and serves to express temporal mechanisms, it reifies complex social realities into an abstract, intangible unit. Beginning to unravel this reification, this chapter picks but a few threads from the complex fabric of modernity. These, however, scale up to the introductory discussions of environmental depletion and social-economic troubles in late capitalism which my informants call the ‘humanitarian and environmental crisis’ of the 21st century. I argue that this ‘crisis’ is a particular manifestation of the contemporary instance of modernity, challenged and tackled by social change equally embedded within this modern moment. In this sense, modernity is less a period in history than an attitude, a disposition that has been cultivated (Scott 2017:7). This attitude of modernity, “the heightened value of the present, is indissociable from a desperate eagerness to imagine it otherwise than it is and to transform it not by destroying it but by grasping it in what it is” (Foucault 2007 [1997]:108, in Scott 2017:10). The narrative of transformation, or change, that this thesis traces, thus is firmly embedded in modernity. Tracing it, the thesis attempts to contribute to answering one of social science’s most reoccurring questions: Why is there no Marxist revolution? How can the subaltern speak? What does the art of resistance entail? And where can we locate the spaces of hope? (cf. Spivak 2010 [1988]; Harvey 2000; Scott 1990; Gramsci 1971). In the widest sense: How does social change come about? While the thesis tackles these questions from a European environmentalist

49 perspective, the chapter at hand occupies itself with carving out the ways in which my informants propose to oppose those modernist discourses that they perceive the most destructive. At the same time, I engage the perpetuation of modernity’s dichotomous dualism to make sense of the seemingly paradoxical outcomes of their endeavours, namely the fact that they engage some of the very discourses that underlie what they aim to overcome.

At Telaithrion Project, modernity was both desired and denounced. The aspect most vehemently decried was, somewhat surprisingly, democracy, itself canonically portrayed as one of the fundamental achievements of modernity. A few days after the deep cleaning episode, I teased Apostolos about his behaviour, charging that the way he had ordered the rug to be covered had been very undemocratic. In an attempt to explain the foundations of the project, Apostolos declared: “This place is not about democracy: Democracy doesn’t work. Eleven billion people will never be at the same spot, never. Because of your beliefs, your religion, your personal life – this will affect you. Democracy doesn’t work: A system of accumulating power, land, stuff, has never worked and will never work. It ‘worked’ in ancient Greece because of the fucking slaves9. The slaves were working and the Greeks were scratching their balls and philosophising.” Apostolos denounced democracy as non-inclusive domination maintained by unequal power relations. This declaration seems puzzling within a project that aims to create harmonious, non-harmful cohabitation of all species, even more so when pronounced by a founding member whose beliefs fully concur with the project’s outlook. Of course, the question about which aspects and realms of democracy are perceived unjust inevitably follows such a proclamation, as many of Free&Real’s endeavours are fundamentally built on democratic social relations. For this purpose, the following section discusses Free&Real’s understanding of geopolitical power relations as intrinsically

9 The term ‘slave’ to refer to part of the ancient Greek – especially Athenian – population has been challenged, as evidence suggests that these people were paid (yet nevertheless unequally treated) workers within a strictly hierarchical society. However, the term continues to be used commonly in popular discourse in and outside of Greece.

50 undemocratic, unjust, and violent instances of modern governmentality. The group’s counter-proposal, namely their formalised decision making method, is discussed in Chapter 6.

Conspiracies, Sense-Making and Social Critique: The Inception of Free&Real

Free&Real emerged from a series of meetings organised by early followers of the Zeitgeist Movement in 2008. The Zeitgeist Movement is a US- based NGO which advocates a transformation of society via its economic system, based on the understanding that geopolitics are governed by a small number of profit and power oriented people. Growing out of Peter Joseph’s documentary feature trilogy (Zeitgeist: The Movie 2007; Zeitgeist: Addendum 2008, and Zeitgeist: Moving Forward 2011), the Movement’s members have been involved in a range of forums and direct action, supported by book releases (McLeish et al. 2014) and symposia. Both the documentaries and the movement discuss how Judaeo-Christian religious institutions, governments, and finance corporations have for centuries executed structural violence over populations by strategically continuing poverty, deception, and inequality through a scarcity-based economic system. This system is to be replaced by Jacque Fresco’s10 definition of a ‘resource-based’ economy, wherein techno- scientific solutions guarantee an abundance of resources for ‘all Earth’s inhabitants’, without the need for means of exchange (Venus Project n.d.). In order to achieve this, the Zeitgeist Movement is organized into regional projects, chapters, and teams. Claiming to have been one of the first one hundred users of the Greek chapter, Apostolos narrated the inception of

10 Jacque Fresco is the founder of the Venus Project, a futuristic design project for sustainable city planning based on cybernetics, technocratic governmentality, and automation. In 2016, Fresco was awarded with the NOVUS Summit award for City Design / Community, a summit supported by the United Nation’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Free&Real and Telaithrion Project at the beginning of every workshop the group hosted. Clothed in a black t-shirt, black cargo bermudas and black safety boots, with his long dark hair bound up in a cone-shaped chignon, and an air of defensive vulnerability and agitated goodwill, Free&Real’s last remaining founding member described the revelation of the financial-corporate governance depicted in the documentary as deeply troublesome. Luckily, the second part of Joseph’s trilogy ends with the suggestion to follow a link to the then newly created Zeitgeist Movement webpage: This is how Apostolos got involved with the group out of which Free&Real developed. The early years, 2008 to 2010, included regular meetings in Athens and several small-scale sustainability projects. During this time the group also achieved NGO status11 and, finally, decided to leave Athens and start a project in North Evia, where Apostolos had a small land holding signed over by his aging grandmother.

As we were sitting around the dinner table one evening in September 2015, a Spanish visitor in his early twenties somewhat naïvely suggested that “things are improving all the time. No-one expected the Arab spring, and it happened: So things can change”. Apostolos replied critically: “So you don’t see a plan, when you look around you? The one percent? From the nineteen hundreds, they have thousands of contingency plans. They do have a plan, it’s very clear, and it’s happening. If you see the financial system or the idea to have microchips in everyone…”12 Apostolos referred directly to topics discussed in the Zeitgeist trilogy, where an elitist group of bankers and their offspring are described to have been influencing geopolitical events that will eventually lead to a ‘new world order’ where individual life will be based and dependent on implanted microchips. Having long been pejoratively called ‘conspiracy theories’, such explanations of geopolitical events have of late

11 later changed to a not-for-profit company due to tax reasons

12 Such fragmented, suggestive, and somewhat cryptic comments were typical for Apostolos, who often did not bother explaining or contextualizing them further. Their perplexing air is part of the ethnographic image I aim to convey.

52 earned more attention by scholars interested in local strategies of sense-making (Butter & Reinkowski 2014; Sapountzis & Condor 2013; Byford 2011; Fenster 2008). Anthropologists working on Greece have linked conspiracy theories to the country’s historical and contemporary lack of geopolitical influence13 (Kirtsoglou & Theodossopoulos 2010a, 2010b; Sutton 2003; Brown & Theodossopoulos 2003; Herzfeld 2002). More importantly, they ascribe them a crucial role in Greeks’ longstanding scepticism with and challenge of liberal modernization projects (Rakopoulos 2014b; Kallianos 2014; Dalakogloou 2009). As such, conspiracy theories constitute attempts to make sense of the world in the midst of complex and uneven processes of modernization, calling attention to contradictions and proposing alternative understandings to those asserted by hegemonic discourses (West & Sanders 2003). Part of their appeal arises from the fact that they make public and personal life seem less subject to random forces, as they constitute “an attempt to explain – and through explaining decode and make less threatening – [what] is beyond one’s control” (Theodossopoulos 2013). The loss of control underlies Apostolos’ argument about elitist contingency plans and intended micro chipping, as such scenarios imply serious restrictions of civic discretion and democratic choice. The loss of control sparked by national austerity provoked a particularly targeted critique on capitalist modernity. As the sovereign debt crisis unfolded and international pressure for structural adjustments compromised Greece’s sovereignty, Free&Real incorporated national concerns into their conspiratorial narrative. Apostolos, spokesman and doyen of the group, put it thus:

13 Sutton (2003:196) mentions the role of England, France, and Russia in influencing the early shape of the Greek state, among others; Kirtsoglou & Theodossopoulos (2010a:117) include US support for the Greek political right against the Communists in the 1950s civil war, as well as America’s (alleged) reluctance to prevent the Turkish annexation of Cyprus in 1974. As discussed in the Introduction, Herzfeld (2002) categorises Greece as a ‘crypto-colony’, never formally colonised yet made to succumb to economic and political decisions of the USA and its allies. More recent examples may be found in Greece’s role during the European sovereign debt crisis (for discussion see Anton 2011).

The so-called crisis is nothing; it’s a sub-division of a sub-division of the problem. It’s really a humanitarian crisis, and an environmental crisis. The environment is collapsing, and we are talking about these pieces of paper [money] and make it sound important. Greece, basically, is a test-run by the IMF and these elitist forces to see whether what they have been doing in Africa, Latin America, and Asia can be implemented in Europe, too. They’re checking how much Europeans will take, so they’re running tests in Greece, Portugal, Ireland… But in Greece, as usual, nothing really works. Apostolos

Figure 2. Sitting in the living room. Picture taken by Eleni Frantzi.

According to Apostolos, austerity dictates from international financial institutions formed yet another layer of elitist governance: In several conversations it became clear that he understood the ‘elitist forces’ to have created or infiltrated every policy making entity of global proportion. Linking austerity dictates to conspirational scheming, Apostolos understood financial institutions to play an active part in the global ordering of society into hegemonically governmentalized, docile subjects. As the narrative of national

54 modernization linked with a loss of civic choice, Apostolos perceived democracy as advocated and implemented by late capitalism’s geopolitics as unjust and non-inclusive. Of course, he does not stand alone in this: Leaving aside orchestration and scheming intentions, scholars continue to point out how international money lenders employ the narrative of ‘modernisation’ and ‘democratization’ to justify structural adjustments and thereby obscure deeply depoliticizing, undemocratic processes of austerity and privatisation (e.g. Rose 2012; Ferguson 1994; for the Greek case, see Dalakoglou et al. 2014). Apostolos was outright suspicious of hegemonic discourses that promoted progress through structural, financial, or social adjustments, but he was also deeply concerned with the state of the natural environment. Rather than the monetary problems created by the Eurozone crisis, he urged others to recognize and act upon the ‘humanitarian and environmental’ problems that, for him, form source and symptom, respectively, of what is truly at stake in the early 21st century. While Chapter 2 discusses in depth Free&Real’s environmentalist practices and beliefs, the present chapter explores the connections of the group’s ecological engagement with what Apostolos called ‘humanitarian crisis’, i.e. the unjust, exploitative, and degrading mechanisms of late capitalist modernity. For this purpose, it is important to note that Free&Real’s attention to geopolitical events not only tapped into conspiracy theories and local sense-making traditions, but also engaged a critical outlook promoted by international social observers. Comedians like George Carlin, Bill Hicks, John Oliver, and Stephen Colbert, as well as authors and scholars such as Aldous Huxley, Richard Alpert, and Carl Sagan influenced the group from the onset and, during fieldwork, extended their influence across the Workshop yard as Apostolos habitually turned up the volume of his office speakers when listening to their lectures and sketches. The comedians’ sarcastic and cautionary comments on global social, political, and economic issues were complemented by the authors’ invocations of spiritual, social, and environmental harmony. Especially Alpert and Sagan, whose voice-overs are featured at the endings of

55 the Zeitgeist trilogy, advocate holistic, non-harmful interaction of humans and their environment for spiritual purposes. The connection between a critique of geopolitics and the advocacy of personal development forms the basis of Free&Real’s engagement with capitalist modernity – not through spiritual, but through activist endeavours. Before joining the Zeitgeist Movement and Free&Real, Apostolos grappled with serious psychological issues. “I was very upset and freaked out. That’s why I did so many drugs: To get to terms with reality”, he told me once. The gloomy worldview promoted by conspiracy theories afflicted Apostolos substantially. “So, was it kind of a lifesaver for you to find this [Free&Real]?” I asked him. “Yes. Becoming an environmental activist stopped me from destroying myself. It was like a revelation: You can create, instead of destroy.” Countering the emotionally heavy outlook of global governmentality with activism enabled Apostolos to escape self-destructive mechanisms. He was not the only one: Andreas reported that “when you see the fucked-up-ness of the world, it drives you crazy. The banks, the corporations, the governments… And you understand you have to do something, but what can you do? Where do you start? This is why I came here, because there are people who try to do something about it”. Andreas was a 24-year-old chef and formerly active anarchist with a broad smile and an energetic attitude. A few days after he first arrived at the project, we went bathing in the natural hot springs in Aidipsos. It was a starry night and we both enjoyed the relaxing waters and the friendly company. I asked him why he came here. “I did all the anarchist bullshit that everyone does when growing up in Athens. My biggest dream was that I would see the Greek flag burning – imagine!” He laughed in reminiscence of his youthful ignorance. “But come on, after a while you realize that burning trash bins and fighting with the police is not the real thing. That’s when you realize you don’t just want to destroy, you want to create something.” The wish to contribute constructively to change was what drove Andreas to join Free&Real. Alienated by the seemingly orchestrated powers of global actors, both Apostolos and Andreas felt an initial urge to destroy, which subsequently turned into the will to create.

A growing number of ideological movements balance the emotionally heavy outlook of conspiracy theories with activism-promoting optimism. Conspirituality, the fusion of conspiracy theories with loosely defined New Age spirituality calls on individuals to assume personal responsibility through changing oneself and thereby changing wider society (Asprem & Dyrendal 2015; Ward & Voas 2011). Whether psycho-spiritually or socio-politically, conspirituality finds ways to engage with geopolitical realities that otherwise lie out of the reach of ordinary citizens. Ward & Voas, who coined the term, place the Zeitgeist Movement among such synergic cosmologies, as it combines geopolitical observations with a spiritualized call to action. From the onset, Free&Real has been based on a combination of geopolitical critique and activism, held together by a will to create. This will, both for the group’s last remaining founding member and for crew members during my fieldwork, held psychological connotations that enabled them to bear their dire understanding of international politics. It also counters questionable narratives of modern progress with a creative impetus for change. While this marks a way in which to reconcile international events with local agency, Free&Real’s political engagement on a national scale led them to re-establish the meaning of citizenship. The following section discusses this situation.

National Politics and Citizenship

“You’re such a show-off!" Moka teased as Thodoris was doing handstands on the beach. “Hah, I wish! It would make my life easier. When a girl comes around I get all shy and stumble over myself and lose my speech.” He smiled upside down, his longish hair dangling in the sand, before he snapped back into canonised verticality and strolled over to us. We were lazing on the small pebbles at the beach near the Test Site, the surprisingly hot September sun creeping higher in the sky. Six months ago I had visited

Free&Real for the second time and had first met Thodoris, who was dividing his time between studies in Athens and project life. He had recently gotten into yoga and was working out indoors due to cold and rainy March weather. Now, a year after he had begun the practice, his 23-year-old body had transformed into athletic elasticity. “No luck with girls? Eh, what have you been doing all summer, re?” Moka asked playfully. “Let’s see… I worked for a bit, I went free camping in Samothraki, and then I voted for the last time in my life.” I sat up. “The referendum, eh? Tell me more.” I was curious to find out what the younger crew members had to say about national politics. I had already gotten acquainted with Apostolos’ view when a France-based camera team had arrived to shoot footage for a documentary. Apostolos had asked about the theme of the piece. “To get a sense of people’s perceptions of the future across a range of traditional political positions” the camera man had recited. To that, Apostolos had retorted: “So it is not about us.” – “Are you being sarcastic?” The sound guy asked puzzled. – “No. He said ‘political positions from left to right’. We are under that, or over that, I don’t care.” – “So you don’t care about politics?” The director scratched his head. – “No, I don’t care about politics.” What Apostolos had meant was that he did not care about party politics: In Greek, politiki, politics, is used to refer to all aspects of state or national politics, and the more subtle meaning was lost in translation, bewildering the unsuspecting camera team. I later learned that for Apostolos, the reasons for his rejection aligned with what Thodoris, thirteen years his junior, had come to realize during the past summer. Under the hot September sun, sitting at the beach in full lotus position, Thodoris explained: “What to tell you? When Tsipras got re- elected, I realized that it was the last time I voted – because it doesn’t matter. They give you two choices, maybe three, and then they do whatever the fuck they want anyway. By voting for them you just say ‘yes, you can do your shit’, and I don’t buy into this.” Moka and I nodded in agreement.

In Greece, as in many nation states, ideological affiliation with political parties is a serious local concern: Anarchists (Kallianos 2013; Dalakoglou

2012, 2009), fascists (Kirtsoglou 2015) and supporters of the more moderate socialist and conservative parties (Theodossopoulos 2013) form prominent part of public and private debate and categorisation. Since the end of the dictatorship, the socialist and the conservative party have taken turns in holding office, with the respective prime-ministers stemming from two extended families. Dichotomous narratives are thus deeply ingrained in Greece’s national politics: One is either socialist / communist, or conservative / nationalist. It is therefore common to vote by tradition, so that children vote for the same parties as their parents: Political support is treated as a matter of principle and a question of loyalty. In the same line, civil society initiatives are commonly launched under the umbrella of political parties or associations: Syriza and the Communist party they emerged from sponsored and organised the vast majority of the demonstrations that opposed structural adjustments, while Athens’ anarchists routinely arrange rallies of protest in the capital’s cultural quarter Exarchia. Yet Free&Real have always rejected any political affiliation, which constitutes an exceptional decision in Greece. The reason is a deep-seated mistrust of the forthrightness, competence, and capabilities of politicians and their parties. Apostolos, Moka, and Karmen had been convinced about this for several years; the younger crew members had initially supported Syriza, Greece’s party in government, only to be deeply disappointed a few months later. Syriza had earned voters’ support for the January 2015 elections through promises to radically reassess international creditors’ dictates of austerity measures formerly endorsed by the country’s right-wing conservative party New Democracy. After several fruitless negotiations, Syriza called a national referendum on 5 July 2015 which was to decide whether Greece would accept the bailout conditions proposed by the IMF, the ECB, and the EU. With a majority of 61% of the population voting ‘no’, the following week the Greek government accepted a bailout package that contained even larger pension cuts and tax increases than the one rejected by the referendum. The party split, and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was re-elected in September 2015. Despite the public’s choice, the feeling that lingered with many Greeks as summer was

59 coming to an end was that political promises and citizens’ votes were overridden by international policy makers and national governments. Frustrated with the arbitrariness of these proceedings, Thodoris and the other crew members of Free&Real decided that their commitment to party politics had ended. Instead, as the following paragraphs illustrate, they propose to focus their citizenship on social change through environmentalism.

Winter 2015 was an intense period. I lived in a small studio in Athens, close to my cohort friend Letizia Bonanno, who was conducting fieldwork on social pharmacies in Greece’s capital. I studied over eight hours a day for my language training and spent the remaining free time discovering the city and catching up with people I had met at the project. A group of them organised monthly vegan food gatherings, and Manthos and Moka took me along. There, I met Panagiotis, one of Free&Real’s founding members. He had left the project a year before my fieldwork began, and I had innumerable questions which he answered patiently. In the course of the evening he told me: “We created Free&Real because we realized one thing: Don’t wait for the state to do something, because you’ll wait forever. Instead, just do it yourself.” Greek relations with the state are notoriously complex and range from unquestioned party-loyalty to strategic trespassing of laws (Tsitselikis 2006; Birtek & Dragonas 2005; Charalambis & Demertzis 1993; Herzfeld 1992, 1985). Adding complexity to these relations is a well-established contestation of what Ferguson & Gupta (2002) call ‘vertical encompassment’, or the idea that the state sits above its citizens and encompasses their livelihoods. This contestation has its roots in the fierce resistance Greek citizens posed to four hundred years of Ottoman rule (related to as sklavia, ‘being enslaved’) and reflects more recent perceptions of the state as a colonizing force pursuing a ‘western’ hegemonic project that opposes communal self-administration gained in the late empire (Papataxiarchis 1999; Herzfeld 1987a). Of late, it has flared up in the riots and civil society initiatives that contested the onset of austerity (Rakopoulos 2014a, b; Theodossopoulos 2013; Kallianos 2013; Dalakoglou

2009). If Panagiotis rejects demands on the state on the grounds of an appeal to civic engagement, Telaithrion Project represents a localized effort against state governance. In this respect, Free&Real’s grassroots initiative can be conceived of as a challenge to state power based on the recognition that society is composed of bundles of social practices that shape, contest, and recreate the state14. If, however, Panagiotis used the English word ‘state’ to refer to the government, a slippage common with Greeks speaking English (despite kratos meaning state and kivernisi meaning government), such an interpretation may be premature. It is therefore important to carefully dissect Free&Real’s attitude towards the government and the state.

As our night-time conversation in the hot springs drifted to everyday acts of environmental sustainability, Andreas explained: “To tell you the truth, I don’t think there is a recycling station anywhere on this island. They [the authorities] probably collect the rubbish and then throw everything into the same ditch, maybe set it on fire, and that’s it. But this is an environmental project, and people who come here need to see that we recycle, so they can start to think positively about it. We have to start from somewhere.” Andreas had little faith in the local government’s administration and, like Panagiotis, he stressed the project’s aim to bypass it. Indeed, recent Greek governmental policies that concern the environment are few and far between, and solely regulate the production and distribution of renewable energies. These regulations, in alignment with demands by Greece’s creditors (IMF, ECB, and EU) have pronounced the opening of the country’s closed energy sectors to international investors (Argenti & Knight 2015). Such kinds of ‘sustainable development’ “maintain the fundamental structures of neoliberalism that led to the current economic crisis” (Knight 2017:30) through interventionist policies, privatisation, and market liberalization that strip the Greek state of its sovereignty while maintaining incentives for private profit over environmental,

14 For an alternative reading that aligns civic agency with neoliberal proclamation of individualized responsibility, see Chapter 3.

61 societal, and ethical needs (ibid.) Disillusioned with international policy makers and national governments, the founders and followers of Free&Real decided to take matters into their own hands. It was getting late, and so Andreas and I bravely pulled our bodies out of the hot spring pools into the chilly November breeze, towelled and dressed ourselves and walked the short distance to re-join the party. During workshops, one evening was spent at a local spa hotel in Aidipsos where participants and crew members bathed, drank, and danced into the early morning. Upon entering through the foyer the bar was located to the right, opening up to the dining room that doubled as a dance floor. Opposite the bar a balcony and a flight of stairs led to the hotel’s outdoor pool. The pool was fed with thermal waters from a spring on the premises; in fact, such springs are scattered all across Aidipsos’ sea side resort (loutra, baths). Giorgos or George, the chubby and good-humoured owner of the Nine Queens Spa Hotel, was friendly with the project and used the naturally occurring hot waters not only for his pool but for the heating system of his entire hotel. “The whole town could be heated with the hot springs. It’s a great thing, especially now with the crisis: People don’t have money for heating. We tried to get the mayor to do it, but he didn’t want. Greek government: A nightmare!” While George had capitalized on the town’s natural resources, he saw the local government reluctant to do the same for the benefit of its citizens. As he shuffled behind the bar to open a bottle of beer for me (he never asked for money from crew members, and I usually resorted to leaving a bank note behind the till at the end of the night), I joined a conversation at the bar counter. Nene, 36, had visited earlier this summer from Amsterdam and, being thrilled by the project and by Apostolos, had invested considerable money from her lay theatre group into Telaithrion Project. Returning in autumn with her ex-husband and their son, Nene was disillusioned by the low level of sustainability she found the project to generate. She was complaining about this to Artemis, a regular who herself continued to be enthralled by the project’s environmentalism and the romantic engagement she

62 had struck up with Apostolos. Artemis, a single mother in her late forties, explained the project’s role as a model for Greeks:

But this is Greece, don’t forget that. Things work differently here than in the Netherlands: My friends think I’m crazy that I come here and support this place. But they read all the positive stories on Facebook and they become curious. They ask ‘is it really possible to live like this?’ and I tell them ‘yes, look, they are doing it’, and this is how they get interested. Living like this is not normal here, and if you show that you’re struggling, then people will look down on you. But if you show the positive aspects, people get interested. Artemis

In order to understand how ‘things work differently’ in Greece, Artemis’ claim that ‘living like this is not normal’ needs some further explanation. Free&Real promote a rural lifestyle in harmony with nature, but in Greece, this is not an unorthodox aspiration. With the population of Athens almost doubling from about 2 to about 3.7 million people in the last fifty years (and similar growth rates for Thessaloniki, the country’s second biggest city), most Athenians have kin who reside in the country side and have chorafia and ktimata, pieces of land for agricultural use. Asked where they are from, most city dwellers will refer to these rural places as ‘my village’, and to those land holdings as ‘my land’. Indeed, life histories of twenty- to forty-year-olds often reveal how, with both parents working, they spent their childhood summers at their grandparents’ rural homes. It is therefore not uncommon for young urbanites to have strong ties to the country side – in fact, with the onset of the sovereign debt crisis a wave of redundant city dwellers seemed to relocate to ‘their village’ to take up farming (BBC 2012). ‘Like this’ thus cannot only refer to Free&Real’s rural lifestyle, despite the fact that Athens alone holds half the country’s population.

Neither does it solely refer to a life ‘close to nature’15: Every summer, hoards of young Greek urbanites leave Athens and Thessaloniki (which become rather ghostly in August) and occupy the forests and beaches of Greece’s multiple islands. ‘Wild’ or ‘free’ camping, the practice of setting up one’s tent or sleeping berth away from designated camping grounds somewhere in nature is officially prohibited yet very common; for many, it accounts for the ‘true’ camping experience and a ‘real’ summer holiday. At the same time, it is often the only affordable solution with high season tourist prices excelling local expenditure feasibilities. Due to Greece’s long climatic, institutional, and social summer, wild camping is a matter not of days but of weeks, during which city dwellers enthusiastically embrace their embeddedness in natural environments. Therefore, what Artemis referred to was not only Free&Real’s rural settlement or their nature-embracing lifestyle, which both resonate with more common Greek human-nature relations. What she pointed to beyond these were the political implications of the group’s environmentalism. By abandoning party politics in favour of an environmentalist initiative, Free&Real conceptually unlink their citizenship from a national government and, instead, emphasise agency over structure. Artemis highlighted ordinary Greek citizens’ curiosity about Free&Real’s environmentalism to express the group’s emphasis on initiative. When it comes to political concerns, ‘the way things work’ in Greece is via liaison with parties. To step out of this patronage and pursue political goals – in this case, environmentalist trajectories – through party-independent civil society initiatives is both unconventional and uncommon. From Apostolos’ and Thodoris’ renunciation of party politics to Andreas’ and Artemis’ call for positive examples, a particular narrative of citizenship emerges. This is a citizenship that, in Panagiotis’ words, does not wait for state or government to implement change but instead takes initiative. In this sense, citizenship “defin[es] the limits of state power and where a ‘civil society’ or the private sphere of free individuals begin” (Werbner 1998:4). It

15 Of course, the group’s rural lifestyle immersed in nature is an important aspect of their prefiguration. While the Chapters 2 and 5 analyse these ecological and lifestyle choices, here the focus lays on the politics that underlie them.

64 thereby becomes a space for contestation and negotiation of what it means to be part of a society. Officially, citizenship is tied to state membership and categorised as a cluster of civil, social, and political rights and obligations. These importantly shape citizen’s identities as they inspire the formulation, implementation, and contestation of agendas which prescribe society’s norms, values, and behaviour (de Koning et al. 2015; Englund 2006; Ong 2006; Shore 2004; Mitchell 2004; Marshall 1964). Contesting social norms, Free&Real are uninterested in expressing state membership through voting for governments, and instead recreate their citizenship as a means to inducing change. In this endeavour, the positive examples they aim to set constitute instances of ‘strategic prefiguration’ (cf. Maeckelbergh 2011) which connect a problematic present to a desirable future. Grounded in a modernist concept of progress, this prefiguration contests the state’s vertical encompassment16 through taking initiative. Such a ‘radicalization of modernity’ is characteristic of environmental initiatives that grow out of a critique of capitalism’s notion of limitless growth, its certainty of progress, and its duality of nature and society (Beck 1997). It is a means through which prefigurative environmentalists insist on taking responsibility for the ecological environment: Changing one’s politics, in this way, transforms one’s citizenship, prefigures social forms, and ultimately aims to change society (c.f. Harvey 2000).

Cutting the Ties? Emancipatory Efforts between Family and Society

The first time I visited giagia Nicoletta was together with Apostolos a few weeks into fieldwork, when we drove up the hill with a basket of fruits and

16 At the same time, Free&Real are firmly situated in Greece’s nation state through legal, civic, and social rights and obligations. I do not discuss them here because my present concern is with the group’s ideological endeavours and their impetus for change, rather than with their concrete entanglements.

65 some medication. Apostolos’ ninety-year-old grandmother quartered in the living room of her crumbling concrete house and, struggling to survive on her 300 euro austerity state pension, she relied on her son and daughter-in-law as well as on her grandson to routinely drive up Agios’ steep village road and bring her food, pharmaceuticals and, in winter, firewood. As of late, she suffered from ulcus cruris, her legs permanently displaying open wounds that would not heal. Sitting down on her bed and employing my meagre Greek to converse with her threw me into an intimate family situation as Apostolos did his best to juggle her whining orders, my presence, and his own emotions. I was moved by the visit: The meagreness of her home and the odours of confinement to bed mixed with the woman’s anguished eyes that sparkled up with love as she showed me old family photos. “She’s cute”, I said later as we were driving down the village to reach the Workshop. “Yes, she’s cute, but if you sit her in a car she will still throw garbage out of the window.” Apostolos was referring to a conversation we had started on the way up the village, when he told me about the ways in which the local population treated the natural environment. “They fuck up the land completely with their fertilizers and pesticides, but they don’t care”, he had told me. Now he added: “The old generation has fucked it all up. It’s better to cut the ties, to start something new.” The seeming paradox between his emancipatory call to cutting generational ties and his dutiful visit to his grandmother is bridged by the insight that the former was a discursive tool while the latter represented real, practical engagement. Cutting the ties meant abandoning old or mainstream ways in order to make space for doing and ‘being otherwise’ (Povinelli 2012). Nevertheless, the comment evokes considerations about the connections between family, society, and environment in the context of late capitalism in Greece. While claims to emancipation and the loosening of kin ties are common to discursive modernity, Chapter 5 reveals how they were complicated by crew members’ evocation of the group as a family. Together with negotiations of cohabitation discussed in Chapter 4, negotiations of kinship and friendship form a cluster of intimate relatedness that marked life at Telaithrion Project. Here, I argue that the dichotomous notions of

‘backward’ and ‘progressive’ cultural practices that underlie Free&Real’s perception of engagements with nature form part of the dualist discourse the group aim to emancipate from. These notions underpin how Free&Real act as they seek to overcome the inequities of capitalist socio-economic relations and end up reproducing already-existing inequalities along the lines of social dispositions. Outside of workshops, most of the Greek visitors Free&Real received were young urban adults between 18 and 35; the number of older visitors was small. One of them was Marina, 50, who had worked as a waitress for many years, singly bringing up her daughter. She visited the project about once a year because she saw in it a “beautiful and necessary attempt towards change”17. We were sitting on plastic chairs at the sea front of one of Aidipsos’ many taverns one starry summer night and discussed the state of Greek society. “The way the crisis is portrayed is wrong, because Greeks have more money than you think: Your mother will always give you some money, or your uncle, or your cousin, when you’re short. These family ties are nice, but they also mean that you never have to grow up, because you’re never independent from your parents or your family. But if a society doesn’t grow up, they cannot learn or advance or change.” Familial ties were of such patronising strength, Marina claimed, that they hindered the coming-of-age of an entire nation. She continued: “The people behind you, they are so typically Greek! They are gossiping about who did what to whom in their family: They talk about their uncles and aunts and cousins. And did you see how much food they had left over? This waste, disguised as greatness [read: grandeur] – there is no connection with nature, no understanding that food is valuable, that nature gives and we have to be grateful for it and respect it. They don’t grow their own food, I’m certain of it.” To Marina, society’s backwardness manifested in the effusive revelries of eating out – a practice which in Greece habitually entails sending large portions of food to waste. By alluding to a lack of both emotional and practical engagement

17 The sense of linear progress underlying this view is picked up in Chapter 5.

67 with nature – via respect and subsistence farming – Marina explained environmental attitudes via family ties. The ways in which Greek family ties bind have gained much anthropological attention (Anthopoulou 2010; Paxson 2004; Mazower 2000; Loizos & Papataxiarchis 1991; Georgas 1991, 1989; Herzfeld 1980; Campbell 1964; Friedl 1962). Arguably guided by a postmodern focus on constructivism (Tsantiropoulos 2014), much of this literature conceives of the family as a nuclear reflection of the state. In this tradition, Free&Real participants perceived family relations to hinder change insofar as they reflected capitalism’s binding, or governing, of citizens: Exploitative labour relations employed narratives of binding family obligations to maintain consumerism while perpetuating people’s alienation from the natural environment. Andreas grew up in a working class neighbourhood close to the port of Piraeus. His parents, who wanted their only son to think critically, approved of his teenage passion for Greek anarchism. Unlike Anastasia’s parents who worried about their daughter’s financial independence (see Chapter 5), Andreas’ mother and father supported their son’s voluntary engagement with the project. “My parents are super happy for me that I’m here! They always wanted to farm and be in nature, but they couldn’t. They were communists during the junta, so it wasn’t easy for them”, Andreas explained as we were walking back to the party after the nightly bath in the hot springs. The Greek military junta lasted from 1967 to 1974 and marked a period of violent nationalist dictatorship followed by the proclamation of the Third Hellenic Republic. “And especially my dad, he always wanted to farm. But he had all these stupid social obligations that he had to follow, you know, career, house for the family… the European dream, the rat race. We all fell for this, two entire generations, for sure … Now, actually, that’s what I plan to do: to rent a field somewhere and do some farming with my father. He would love that.” Andreas juxtaposed subsistence farming and intensified engagement with the natural environment with the ‘rat race’ of what he called the ‘European dream’. The latter he explained as “going to school in order to get a job; working all your life to sustain your

68 consumerism; and then getting a decent state pension until you die.” This prospect perpetuates a sense of progress, as it narrates individual lifetime through institutionalized phases that reward previous acquiescence18. Andreas located the hegemony of this ‘European dream’ in the forty years since the junta had ended and hoped to help his father break free from it, as he understood it to create binding social obligations within the family. While for Marina the lack of practical and emotional relations with nature exemplified the infantile state of society, Andreas identified the fostering of such relations as a way to recreate one’s life. Turning away from exploitative labour relations that capitalize on self-perpetuating narratives of progress, connectivity and engagement with nature enable more meaningful ways of being. All Free&Real crew members embraced this view, and it was commonly understood among most visitors: In order to emancipate one’s self from the environmentally and socially destructive mechanisms of society, one had to break free from its inherent alienation from nature. However, one’s engagement with nature inevitably underwent crew members’ evaluation along dichotomous lines of traditional or progressive outlooks.

From the rolling hills around us blew the spicy scent of a leaf fire, autumn hey and straw lay on the fields to dry, and the air was reverberating with the humming sound of a motor saw. It was one of the rare days without visitors and we were lounging on the bright red cob benches under the large olive trees at the Test Site. “In the country side, people lack education” Spyros declared. “They are racist, or afraid, or angry, because they are not educated.” 22 years old, Spyros had visited Free&Real in search of environmental education, and until recently lived at Telaithrion Project. His quiet and thoughtful speech, amplified by gentle eyes, never concealed for long his judgmental opinions. Next to him, Moka, thirteen years his senior, was nodding in agreement. Like all crew members, she had grown up and spent most of her

18 Chapter 5 discusses both this critique and alternative ways of spending one’s lifetime as they were negotiated within the project. It also dissects the intimate relatedness of kinship relations.

69 life in Athens. Her lively brown eyes twinkled assertively behind purple glasses: “They are very backward. They don’t understand that nature needs protection, so they throw garbage and they don’t care.” For Moka, the older generations’ more basic level of education dominated the Greek country side19 and induced a backwardness which, combined with an alleged misapprehension of nature’s needs, demonstrated locals’ lack of care and affection for nature. Free&Real members commonly perceived the lack of care for nature to transgress demographic boundaries and prevail across Greek – and, by extension, wider – society. The causes and effects of this situational blame on locals are discussed shortly. “Do you remember the local culture club20 I told you about? The villagers don’t let them do anything. Anything! You cannot imagine” Apostolos continued the conversation. “They organised this culture festival last year, they did everything officially, and the villagers sued them! … These ‘deep villagers’, they just don’t want anything to change!” Not the entire rural population was perceived to be backward: In fact, crew members commonly referred to ‘locals’ as the rural population of North Evia, but called them ‘villagers’ when condemning local practices and citing lack of education as a sign of backwardness. Typically, the ‘villager’, usually conceived of as male, possessed only basic education, never lived outside his village or hamlet, voted by tradition and had limited understanding of and interest in those aspects of life that did not form tangible part of his everyday. In many respects, he was predictably close to Bourdieu’s (2004) ‘peasant’, as his habitus was written all over his body and behaviour, crucially limiting his social – and, by extension, environmental – engagements. Hindering change, these idiomatic villagers seemed unprogressive and reactionary. Apostolos went on: “Now they’re butchering the trees, the olive trees, with the chain saw. They leave almost no

19 Until the mid-1970s, it was common in rural Greece to have only secondary – and, in some cases, only primary – school education. However, official and popular narratives of making one’s career (especially in Greece’s large public sector) have since elevated education levels so that nowadays, young people commonly move to urban centres for academic education. A case in point was 21-year-old Antonis, who had grown up in Agiokampos and frequented Telaithrion Project throughout his summer vacation from Athens State University.

20 This was a loose association of local individuals

70 branches. And then they burn the twigs and the leaves, do you smell that? They could just pile them up and make good, rich compost, but instead they burn them.” Olive trees are botanically classified as shrubs and only grow a main stem with branches if continuously pruned. Local pruning practices left the plants indeed rather desolate and scarred. As the motor saws rattled and howled for days in late autumn, crew members insisted that the country side was populated by a majority of poorly educated, backward, and reactionary people whose practical and emotional engagement with nature oscillated between carelessness and outright butchery21. Dichotomous categorisation reproduced social inequality as it aggravated and impeded the creation of social ties with rural locals. In correspondence with their perception of local inadequacies, crew members’ engagement with the local population was fairly limited. Apostolos upheld a number of friendly commercial relations with some grocers and tradespeople One local farmer, Kostas, was a loyal project friend. Beyond these relations, little interaction took place between the project and the population of North Evia. According to Apostolos, the group’s previous attempts to approach the locals through collective cob bench making initiatives and emergency fire- extinguishing commitments had resulted in erratic instances of amity and hostility, corresponding to wider incidents of national significance. Whenever one of the numerous national TV coverage on Free&Real portrayed their endeavours as praiseworthy, neighbourliness thrived; and whenever the patriarch, head of the Greek Orthodox Church, condemned yoga and meditation as ungodly practices, local faces turned sinister. Subsequently, the group withdrew and decided that those interested would get involved in due time. My lack of adequate language skills foreclosed any substantial investigation into local perceptions of Telaithrion Project, but one snippet provides a glimpse. An acquaintance of Apostolos’ father and participant in the culture club was friendly with the project, but during fieldwork came by only once. When I met

21 The construction of ‘villagers’ as backward, ignorant, and afraid of change is common throughout Greece.

71 him by chance in a tavern on the village square, he told me in English: “I have lived here almost all my life, and I have always worked the land. Now these city kids say they have things to teach us about nature. I don’t need their [teaching], I know my land. But it’s good for them, they can learn a lot being here.” While Free&Real perceived local engagement with nature as reactionary and harmful, locals may well have thought of the group as incompetent in giving farming advice. Whatever the range of local perceptions, Free&Real’s discursive intention to ‘cut the ties’ along demographically defined lines of backwardness resulted in the practical reproduction of social inequality and crucially aggravated and impeded the creation of social ties with locals. According to Bourdieu (1990), people’s dispositions, or their propensity to habitually act in particular ways, are perpetuated through the constant exposure to and subsequent internalization of social relations. This reproduces inequality as similar social strategies foster similar aspirations and estimations, rather than germinating new liaisons and novel ties. Free&Real’s impetus for change is driven by the endeavour to initiate more just, holistic, and equal social and environmental relations. Disengaging from that part of society in which they perceive the severest need for change, they perpetuate unequal power relations by discriminating against others for their basic education, their conservative outlook and, by extension, their lack of modernity. Applying dualist discourses of social relations to the evaluation of villagers’ practices and attitudes derogated from the political trajectories of Free&Real’s environmentalist endeavours. The beginning of this chapter employed Apostolos’ juxtaposition of ‘modern’ with ‘tsigani’ to carve out how narratives of dichotomous relations of past and future are not only intrinsic to Greek understandings of modernity, but how modernity itself relies on this duality to induce a complex present in which to capitalize on the concept of progress in order to reproduce itself. As this discourse diagonally opposes an undesirable with a desirable construct of social relations, it produces reified and antagonistic interpretations of social realities. Free&Real’s understanding of local practices and belief systems follows such a dichotomy as it classifies these

72 practices as ignorant, backward, and reactionary, an undesirable social reality from which they wish to emancipate themselves in Greece. The application of duality to complex social relations is so ingrained in Free&Real’s conceptualization of contemporary society that it collapses their political agenda into depoliticized reproduction of modernity’s self-perpetuating narrative of progress. By disengaging with the local population, the present becomes a struggle to discursively and practically ‘cut the ties’, rather than to strategically prefigure change through intensified engagement with one’s social and natural environment. The group’s aims are hindered by their enmeshment in emancipatory efforts from an undesirable, backward past to a desirable, ‘new’ future. The unintended consequence is that they thus spend their present in a continuous effort to disentangle complex social realities into dualist categories, instead of following their political trajectory and extending their endeavours to the rural population. The majority of Free&Real’s visitors were urbanites whose practical engagement with nature tended to be limited. Many visitors dreamt of applying permacultural subsistence practices on ‘their’ chorafi or ktima (pieces of land), and several did engage practically with what they saw and learned at Telaithrion by setting up their own eco-projects in Greece and abroad. However, beyond these past-time ambitions, there was little evidence to suggest that the group reached out to professional farmers and impacted on their attitudes and practices. I encountered less than a handful of people – all male – who self-identified as farmers. The people who made engagement with nature their profession seemed to have little common ground with the project, and the envisaged emancipation from capitalism’s environmentally and socially destructive mechanisms was treated as an urban, rather than a rural issue. Potentially, alienation from nature indeed weighs heavier in cities than in the country side; yet exploitative hegemonic narratives of maximum impact and optimal application certainly do find their ways into farming policies. As dichotomous narratives of social relations reified complex realities into modernist dualities, the attempt to emancipate from an undesirable past to a

73 desirable future reproduced social inequality. However, as Marilyn Strathern points out, each change and continuity “depends on the other to demonstrate its effect” (1992:3). While everyday life at Telaithrion Project was unintentionally depoliticized, Free&Real’s endeavours nevertheless engaged with capitalist modernity in fundamental and significant ways. Through their attempt to emancipate from the environmentally and socially destructive mechanisms of society by abandoning party politics in favour of a civil society initiative that concentrates on environmentalist concerns, Free&Real urged to engage with and act upon the humanitarian and environmental problems that, for them, form source and symptom of what is truly at stake in the early 21st century.

2 Nature and the

‘Real’

How a Consequential Ethics and Pragmatic Realism produce Radical Environmentalism

The sun stood low on the friendly blue October sky, and I squinted my eyes to oversee the landscape. The hills and valleys below me displayed surprising shades of green: Autumn rains and milder temperatures had regenerated the scorched vegetation and dotted the meadows with dainty floral ornaments. The plane and walnut trees were turning bright yellow, but the olive trees and conifers continued their evergreen complexions. I had hiked up towards Free&Real’s Mountain Site but had turned south along one of the mountain ridges. To the right, I was overlooking the western part of North Evia, dominated by an agricultural plane of vegetable and grain fields, hilly olive groves and a number of laid-back villages. One of these was Agios, nestled into the foothills of Mount Telaithrion and easily recognizable by the large cypress trees that flank the grand, white church in the village’s centre. A tarmac road connects Agios to the municipality’s two towns: Aidipsos in the south and Istiaia in the north-east, with a tee to the north-western sea side resort of Agiokampos. Although separated by about 4.5 kilometres, Agiokampos is part of the village Agios, and many villagers possess residences, land, or businesses in both parts of the village. Hiking the winding country paths between Agiokampos, where the Test Site is located, and Agios, where Free&Real’s

Map 2. North Evia. Hand-drawn by the author.

Workshop sits, quickly became my daily ritual. Beyond these routes I spent much time strolling the surrounding hills and valleys, and today had brought an especially extensive walk along the dusty country paths. Whatever route I chose and whichever paths I followed, the generously scattered red and orange plastic shells of hunting bullets greeted me with their persistent and conspicuous presence. As the sun was sinking lower, a cold breeze was rising up. It was time to return to the project premises before dusk would make it difficult to navigate. As I wandered downhill in the approximate direction of Agios, the heaps of household litter, stacks of broken gadgets, and piles of ruined furniture increased by the mile. It seemed counterintuitive to litter such a beautiful landscape, the more so because the rubbish had deliberately been transported and discarded here. I passed by a field of emerging winter grain, where a tractor raced against time to spray the day’s last gallons of fertilizer. The air was thick with the foul smell of the chemical, and my coughs mixed with the barking of a nearby dog as the sharp stench burned our lungs. I quickened my pace and made for the valley. It was dusk by the time I reached the village, and the village square had emptied in the chilly autumn air. But the taverns around the square were populated with jolly faces, mainly male, and through the windows and ventilation shafts the tangy smell of charcoal grilled meat wafted along the streets. I strode downhill, past the cypress-guarded church, and took the last turns to reach the Workshop just as night was falling. I opened the Workshop’s wooden door, kicked off my shoes, and entered the living room. I had arrived just in time for dinner: A large mixed salad, containing the different parts of plants from roots to seeds, and a steaming pot of vegetable rice were temptingly placed on the tall square living room table, flanked by a tower of plates and a bunch of spoons. A magenta and black patterned fabric served as table-cloth, and a round wooden board in the middle of the table held an array of glass jars containing dried herbs, herbal salts, and olive oil. Karmen was leaving the kitchen: She had spent the last two or three hours in the windowless, steaming space and would take a shower before eating. The permaculture teacher for the upcoming workshop had

77 already arrived, a few days ahead of schedule, and was chatting with some Greek visitors who would also attend the workshop. As we were hungrily and without much ado helping ourselves to big portions of vegan tastiness, one of the visitors, a man in his thirties who had grown up on a farm, declared: “The Greeks don’t know how to treat their land. They are still a farming society, but it’s the old ideas without the education. That’s why they use all these fertilizers and pesticides, and that’s why they dump their rubbish into the forest.” The visitor contended that the littering and spraying I had observed on my hike was, in effect, a local lack of education – a view discussed in the previous chapter. That he regarded the rather recent introduction of Mediterranean farming to chemical fertilizers and pesticides as outdated hints at a temporal framing of human-nature relations, and in fact, the environmentalism engaged at Telaithrion Project was importantly shaped by time.

At the edge of Agios, Free&Real inhabit an environmentalist stance that promotes recycling, permaculture, and veganism. A sense of urgency expedites the group’s endeavours, as they perceive the present as a critical point in time which signifies a transition of human-nature relations. The direction of this transition appears as of yet undetermined, and for a life-sustaining outcome the group insist on a particular ethics. Through a consequential ecological ethics they situate humans firmly within nature, foreground the effects of human action vis-à-vis the environment, and promote solution-focussed approaches to present environmental troubles. At the same time, they follow a particular, factual approach to the environment, which combines claims to objectivity and a singular reality with an insistence of the need for socio-environmental transition. I call this approach pragmatic realism. On this the group base their radical environmentalism which casts as ‘real’, or actually and objectively existing, both nature and its temporal expression of transition. Practically applied to human-nature relations, pragmatic realism generates the situational application of ethics. During fieldwork, visitors repeatedly contested this approach, as it seemed to stand in contrast with the consequentialist ethics

78 common among environmentalists. The ensuing negotiations lay open the potentials and limits of radical pragmatic realist environmentalism. Exploring Free&Real’s environmentalism thus entails dissecting the ways in which they temporally measured, ethically approached, and practically engaged in human- nature relations. In this process, the chapter’s driving question examines how Free&Real forged their radical environmentalism through relating to nature as a ‘real’, objectively existing unity, and what the implications and outcomes of such an approach were. I argue that Free&Real constructed nature within an ongoing temporality whose immediacy of environmental troubles produced a present of transition. Positioning humans firmly within this ongoing temporality, and thus within nature, enabled them to reach beyond human- nature dichotomies and to arrive at a radical environmentalism based on coexistence of humans and other parts of nature. Before delving into an exploration of Free&Real’s approach to human- nature relations, two terms need clarification. Nature for my informants contains all planetary existence22 and its ‘collaborations’ (Haraway 2016), meaning its processes, interactions, and relations. Some perceived such collaborations, or co-creations, through a functionalist approach to eco-systems and assessed these systems in terms of their internal and external interconnections. Others adhered to more philosophical approaches. Whichever approach they followed, my informants understood the multiple elements of nature to constitute not discrete individual units that interact, but rather birthing, growing, developing, and dying organisms who share the spatio-temporal framing of their existence. They are immersed in ‘becoming with’ and ‘dying with’ and, at the same time, engage in a ‘making with’ (sympoiesis, Haraway 2016) that encompasses all existing organisms and processes. Nature, then, comprises the organisms and processes that engage with and are created and terminated by the multidimensional collaborations and combinations of the

22 I use the term existence rather than life to reach beyond debates on sentience and animation, or individualization and collectivity. The term existence here refers to everything that can be perceived to have an objective reality (OED n.d.), and therefore includes processes and occurrences of geological, meteorological, atmospheric, and stratospheric nature.

‘inescapable interconnections’ of existence (cf. ibid.). They form an ongoing temporality that finds its immediate expression in the environment. For my informants, the environment is the concrete manifestation of the ongoing temporality of nature. Over the last three centuries the concrete manifestation of nature has suffered impairing impact as it has increasingly been affected by one of its elements, as manifest in the term Anthropocene (cf. Introduction). The environment, in other words, has been depleted by human action to the degree that its ‘ongoing-ness’, or continuation, can no longer be taken for granted. As planetary existence and its collaborations linger in a present of critical time, this present unfolds as a time of socio-environmental transition, or change. Free&Real’s environmentalism poses a response to this troubled temporality through advocating ecologically regenerating practices. The group attempt to compact time into constructive co-creation, accelerating regenerative natural processes through collaboration. I explore this understanding ethnographically through following Free&Real’s hosting of a ten-day workshop on permaculture, an alternative farming method widely promoted and implemented among eco- projects. The first section dissects the temporal framing of the present that formed part of the workshop’s project presentation.

Urgency and Critical Time at Telaithrion Project

Contemporary radical environmentalist discourse disseminates a sense of urgency. The Transition Town initiative, which originated in the British isles, for instance, is concerned with a speedy move from high to low energy consumption and actively creates alternative food and energy supply chains, similar to the US-American Peak Oil movement (Schneider-Mayerson 2015; Cretney 2014; Sage 2014; Neal 2013; Barry & Quilley 2009). The international Degrowth initiative presses for a downscaling of production and consumption on the grounds of looming resource finiteness and mass society’s impact on the

80 environment (D’Alisa et al. 2015). The increasing number of eco-villages worldwide, finally, testifies to the growing commitment of individuals to implement ecologically non-harmful ways of being in the world (Lockyer & Veteto 2013a; Sargisson & Sargent 2004; GEN n.d.). What these grassroots initiatives have in common is an insistence on the pressing importance of ecological change in the present. They set themselves apart from environmentalist movements of the latter half of the 20th century that pressed for changes in legislature or occupied themselves with the protection of an allegedly ‘pure’ and ‘pristine’ wilderness, as well as from recent initiatives that demand the combination of wildlife preservation and environmental justice (Lorimer 2015; Hicks et al. 2015; Baer & Reuter 2011; Brosius 1999; Peace 1999, 1996; Guha & Martinez-Alier 1997). Instead, contemporary environmentalism urgently demands speedy and radical change of human- nature-relations and, importantly, attempts to implement this change in real-life scenarios: This is what makes it radical. Strategically prefiguring social change allows these initiatives to directly respond to the very real and pressing environmental troubles while simultaneously critiquing the capitalist relations that produce them (cf. Lockyer & Veteto 2013b). Global in their outlook yet local in their application, such initiatives constitute experimental grounds for ecologically harmless, harmonious, and regenerative human relations with nature. At Telaithrion Project, a similar sense of urgency prevailed in the conceptualization of time23. The following paragraphs discuss this sense ethnographically.

The dim greenish light of the colour-deranged projector cast a ghostly atmosphere into the Workshop’s living room. Around 30 people had gathered on this nippy October night on the chill-out area. They had come for a ten-day workshop on permaculture from all around Europe, and some from even further away. Lounging in a semi-circle on the bouncy mattresses, ergo-dynamic

23 This sense of urgency stood somewhat in contrast to the slow pace of everyday life at the project premises dissected in Chapter 5.

81 stools, and hard-back sofas, the workshop participants sat through the power point presentation that introduced Telaithrion Project. The project presentation formed part of every workshop Free&Real hosted, and during fieldwork, its three parts spread across three days were exclusively conducted by Apostolos. After narrating the inception and development of Free&Real, he now was describing in exigent words the severity of the global environmental situation.

We are at a critical point in time, and we are in a transition period. If the transition is successful, I don’t know what will happen, but we will see. If the transition is not successful, we will not see, because we won’t be here. But these words [like transition] are just terms we use so we are on the same page. We have to be in our arms, ready for climate change, because it’s happening right now. Either something drastic happens, or it’s finished. The environment is collapsing. It has already started. We can’t sit around and talk, we have to act. Apostolos

Figure 3. During a project presentation. Picture taken by Katerina Katalathos.

To Apostolos, the present carried a pressing need for action: Necessary and urgent, there is barely time to talk. In the present state of ‘humanitarian and environmental crisis’, Apostolos located a period of transition, of socio- environmental change. For this transition to be life-sustaining rather than destructive on a global scale, he advocated for people’s active participation. The present thus became a critical point in time, in which human acts emerged as decisive for planetary survival. Apostolos developed the theme of critical time throughout his introduction to the project. At the end of the evening, he usually showed a short video. During fieldwork, this was either Under The Dome (2015), a time lapse of the group effort to erect the geodesic dome on the Mountain Site, or The Lie We Live (2015), a reckoning of American society’s alienation from nature24. Intersecting with snaps of everyday project life, Under The Dome25 shows the entire dome construction with an instrumental audial background. Its depiction of a successful group effort creates an image of constructive collaboration taking place at Telaithrion Project26 – this harks back to crew members’ will to create, rather than destroy, highlighted in the previous chapter. The time lapse mode at once augments the impact of this collaboration through the sped-up bustle of individuals, and diminishes the task’s temporal commitment, as an intensive work process is scaled down into four and a half minutes of video time. As a result, time becomes a compact, constructive space. The other video Apostolos sometimes showed set a different tone. The male voiceover of The Lie We Live directly addresses the viewer as an alienated and isolated individual in front of a screen (for transcript see Appendix i). It paints a gloomy image of the

24 Apostolos’ choice of video depended on his evaluation of the workshop group as well as on the workshop content. During the autumn permaculture workshop he showed Under The Dome, which featured a toddler about the same age as the youngest participant.

25 I did not have the chance to discuss with the maker of the clip the choice of title; it is probable that it is a conscious – if rather obvious – reference to the 2015 dystopian series with the same title (2013-15).

26 See Chapter 4 for discussion of the discrepancies between such online images and visitors’ experiences.

83 production, distribution, and consumption patterns of mass society, implies that these patterns lead to destruction and extinction of life, and finally declares: “We have mastered the act of killing. Now let’s master the joy of living” (2015). Visually, the video features images of mass society and environmental destruction, contrasted by frames of natural beauty, freely roaming wildlife, and humans immersed in natural environments through outdoor sports and traditional lifestyles. An interlude shows a young man, potentially the creator of the clip, praising the internet as a radically new way of connecting to others, before the video ends with a reversed playback of nuclear destruction and some final shots of lakes, sunsets, and wildlife. In sum, The Lie We Live describes the present as a decisive moment in human history, in which past mistakes can be rectified and future ones – like mass destruction – reversed. The present becomes a critical point in time in which the magnitude of decisions and acts appears enlarged. Both videos thus point to the temporal aspect of socio- environmental change: One by depicting an impressive group effort in a short period of time, the other by pointing to the present’s importance for the future. Taken together, the two videos underscore Apostolos’ declaration: They situate humans at a critical point in time and link change, or transition, to action.

The response to presentation and videos was positive, and prompted animated conversation amongst workshop participants. It was the second workshop evening, and people had already become acquainted and subsequently vigorously discussed environmental troubles and possible solutions. The slow and relaxed retreat to the Test Site marked the end of that evening, as people dispersed into small groups chatting, smoking, and brushing teeth at the two outdoor taps, before going to sleep in the yurts. The next morning saw Apostolos’ presentation of the Test Site, which demonstrated Free&Real’s ideals on practical testing ground. He narrated how the First, the Cuckoo, and the Mystic yurts were built in succession, the latter two improving the mistakes and shortcomings of the initial attempt. He explained insulation

84 and thermodynamics, mentioned costs and funding sources27, and answered individual questions about tax laws for construction, the significance of varnish, and the smell of unprocessed sheep wool for insulation. At the time of fieldwork, Free&Real had spent six years in North Evia. The Test Site featured four residential buildings sleeping 31 persons, with a fifth building under construction. This number was pointed out by participants as highly impressive – even more so as only one founding member had had previous knowledge in civil engineering or construction. Apostolos also indicated to the group the herb garden in which they found themselves, and pointed to the importance of growing a large variety of plants together for the benefit of insect sustentation and the plants’ own heightened resilience. While the lay building efforts demonstrated in practice the impact of collaboration through group effort and underscored Under The Dome’s compact and constructive time, the herb garden exemplified nature’s ability to positively adapt to change: Its resilience had become so thorough that new plants were only watered for one season and established ones were left to endure the climate. The message Apostolos delivered through the presentation of the Test Site was that both human collaboration and human-nature co-creation enable regeneration to manifest surprisingly speedy. The last part of the introduction to Telaithrion Project took place the following day, as workshop participants were taken up Mount Telaithrion and shown around the Mountain Site. When Free&Real acquired the land through crowd sourcing funds, it was scraggy and depleted. Surrounded by pine and plane forest to the north-east and a thick heath and heather landscape to the south-west, the former sheep farm oddly displayed its rocky dirt amongst the mountain’s green fertility. The lack of trees (in Greece habitually burned down to ease licencing of farm and construction land), the strain of over-grazing, and the geographically conditioned intense exposure to the elements had eroded most of the fertile top soil, so that regeneration was slow. Apostolos explained

27 Funding for the yurts came from small international NGOs that support sustainable projects; other funding, for instance for lake construction, included online crowd sourcing campaigns.

85 how eventually, the planted trees would grow to create the shading canopy of a food forest, how the existing dome and the yurts to-be would immerse into the varied and resilient landscape, and how the dug-out basin would fill with rain water and create a lake for irrigation. Unlike the Test Site, whose past agricultural use accounted for some of its present fertility, the Mountain Site demonstrated to participants nature’s depletion: Farming activity had ceased 30 years ago, and yet that mountain slope had not recovered from human- orchestrated overuse.

Figure 4. Dug-out basin for the lake. Picture taken by Katerina Katalathos.

Throughout Apostolos’ introduction of the project, time emerged as a critical factor of socio-environmental change. As human impact on the environment has become increasingly impairing, the present emerged as a critical point in time that marked a (thus far) undetermined transition. In order for this transition, this inevitable socio-environmental change, to be life- sustaining, the present demanded human action. As time was stretched by depletion and compacted by collaboration, human decisions and acts assumed enlarged magnitude. In this sense, Free&Real’s critical time is akin to Guyer’s (2017, 2007) ‘punctuated time’: It is unpredictable, and thus undetermined, and

86 therefore relates to immediate situations with an orientation to a long-term horizon. In other words, the undetermined period of transition responds to the immediacy of environmental degradation by posing questions of planetary survival. Critical time thus shares with punctuated time a connection between the immediate and the possible, or the present and the future. However, Gruyer’s concept marks a departure from a consequential focus on reasoning towards the near future; by contrast, in the course of this chapter I dissect how Free&Real stress consequential reasoning towards their environment – and through this, towards a near future or the present – as an ethical imperative. From that perspective, the group’s temporal outlook is more closely related to what Donna Haraway (2016) calls ‘staying with the trouble’: A response to the immediate, troubled times which neither entertains a faith in quick ‘technofixes’28 nor purports that it is too late to change the looming environmental catastrophes of late capitalism (2016:3-4). Instead, ‘staying with the trouble’ acknowledges the myriad interconnections of existence and welcomes the arrays of collaborations and combinations of nature to exist, become, and emerge (ibid.). Such an approach creates new paradigms of temporal existence, which Haraway expresses with the term ‘Chthulucene’ (cf. Introduction). Critical time, punctuated time, and considerations about the Chthulucene all stress an open-endedness of outcomes, and the multiplicity of possibilities – a quality that supports prefigurative endeavours, which likewise are open-ended rather than predetermined (cf. Introduction). At Telaithrion Project, however, urgency and critical time produced more functionalist evaluations of appropriate human-nature relations; it is to these that I turn now, dissecting the lessons taught during the permaculture workshops.

28 While it can be argued that Jacque Fresco’s Venus Project (cf. Chapter 1) constitutes an evolved version of such an approach, it is important to remember that Free&Real do not actively link their project to his.

Consequential Ecological Ethics: The Permaculture of Free&Real

Permaculture was first developed by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren (1978) in Australia. It proposes a ‘permanent (agri-) culture’ which aims to integrate humans in their environment in an ecologically harmless and thus permanently sustainable way. Starting out with food production yet quickly widening the concept to human conduct more generally, the two environmental scholars insisted on human embeddedness in nature. In the forty years since its conception, permaculture has been developed into a full-fledged system of agricultural and social design principles widely cited and applied in eco- projects around the world. In the process, the concept of human embeddedness in nature has been deepened into an understanding of the “need to get over our naïve and simplistic notions of sustainability as a likely reality for ourselves or even our grandchildren and instead accept that our task is [to] use our

Figure 5. Permaculture ethics and principles. Source: https://intuerifarm.wordpress.com/ethics-and-principals-the-foundation/ethics-and- principles/ 88 familiarity with continuous change to adapt to energy descent” (Holmgren 2011 [2002]:xxx, original with emphasis). This perception of human-nature relations as adaptive ever-emerging change (or transition) speaks of an ongoing temporality whose current is guided by three ethical ideas: Earth care; people care; fair share. Free&Real loosely followed the ideas of permaculture and, during my fieldwork, hosted two ten-day workshops on the subject. The one in autumn was used to build swales and plant numerous trees on the Mountain Site, while half a year later, in late spring, another workshop initiated the creation of a vegetable garden at the Test Site. Both workshops were taught by Giulio, a bright-eyed 28-year-old Italian with a degree in philosophy, politics, and ethics. He had studied permaculture throughout his twenties and had obtained a diploma that allowed him to officially teach it. During the autumn seminar, Giulio situated humans firmly within nature. “Humans are nature, too, and all we make is natural. Plastic is natural. It’s not from outside nature.” Embedding humans within the web of existence, permaculture takes a holistically- functionalist approach to ecological systems: Every element of a system has its inputs (needs, characteristics) and outputs (behaviours, products), so that analysis does not aim at categorisation but rather dissects the elements’ functions. In Giulio’s example, therefore, plastic is categorised as natural in the sense of being made by humans, who are a part of nature; the focus, however, lies on the plastic’s functions within the system, i.e. its composition, use, and decomposition. Permaculture promotes regenerative functions, that is acts and mechanisms which sustain and reinvigorate ecological systems. In regenerative systems all inputs and outputs are recycled. This means that they create no waste: Giulio explained that an apple tree, for instance, produces more apples than it needs to secure its proliferation. However, apples give nutrition and nutrients to their surroundings as they are eaten and decomposed by animals, plants, fungi, and bacteria in the tree’s environment. Plastic, on the other hand, is an inorganic material that cannot be used by other parts of the system or by

89 other systems: It thus creates waste. Working towards not producing waste is one of the essential aspects of a permacultural lifestyle. A waste-less, regenerative approach to nature, Giulio insisted, goes beyond the by now over-used and undermined concept of sustainability and proposes solution-focussed, practical approaches to some of the world’s most pressing environmental troubles. When discussing the imminent danger of desertification of Southern Europe, Giulio declared “I hope it will not happen – no, I would like to work towards this not happening”, and then explained how building swales on sloping territory helps drenching the ground by directing rain water along contour lines. Regenerative practices also include accelerating natural processes via non-toxic inputs: Under Giulio’s guidance the workshop participants made a big pile of bokashi, an anaerobic decomposing compost that uses microorganisms, sugars, and carbon which is extremely rich in nutrients. Turning the bokashi compost once a day for about twenty days speeds up the decaying process so that, within about three weeks, one can create soil so rich in nutrients that its equivalent produced by an average Greek forest would take between eighty and one hundred and fifty years to evolve. When the compost was ready, we distributed it on the newly created Mountain Site’s contour

Figure 6. Making bokashi in the Workshop yard. Picture taken by Eleni Frantzi.

90 mounds to support plant growth and topsoil creation. Thereby time, stretched by depletion, was compacted through regenerative collaboration that not only included workshop participants and crew members but indeed an array of existences spanning earth worms and compost microorganisms to meteorological rainfall patterns and topographic isoclines. These permaculture practices powerfully illustrated to workshop participants how collaborative acts compact critical time and thereby impact on nature in regenerative ways. As illustrated in the following, they were based on an ethics of consequences.

The workshop participants had gathered into a concrete-floored semi- circle in the workshop yard facing an ad-hoc drawn cardboard sign that recreated the above illustration of permaculture’s ethics and principles (Fig. 5). The cicadas had died and made audial space for the jaunty song of birds, while the warm afternoon sun had lured bright-blue damselflies onto the mulberry leaves. Pastelis, the Workshop’s dominant tomcat, was demanding petting attention in his habitually obtrusive ways. The sun’s shimmer on Giulio’s dark hair amplified the sparkle in his eyes as he passionately and with wild gesticulation talked to us about responsibility.

We can go over there and pull out that Aloe there. Takes us three seconds. The Aloe can’t do this. We are the most powerful creatures on this planet, that’s a fact. So it is about using this power wisely. The three permaculture ethics, earth care, people care, and fair share, can be summed up into one word: Responsibility. Giulio

The Aloe Vera in its terracotta pot did not seem offended, but the stumps of its amputated lower leaves were testimony of prior interspecies encounters. The physical power of humans over potted plants is not difficult to comprehend; but Giulio’s appeal to wise and responsible employment of these powers transcended his simple example. What he meant was that the consequences of

91 human actions are often forceful, and therefore need to be considered ethically. He detailed what this ethics entails when I asked him why it is that we need to take responsibility.

Because every being has intrinsic value. This is a philosophical or ethical concept you can’t go beyond. Why does every being have intrinsic value? Because it has. Why don’t you just kill me right now? Because I have value. And not only individual beings have intrinsic value, but also groups of beings or things, like eco-systems. So that’s why we have to act responsibly. Giulio

For Giulio, human conduct should commence from an ethics that recognizes the intrinsic value of every living being as well as every system of beings, and approaches human actions according to their significance for these beings and things. Such a consequential ‘ethics of responsibility’ (Weber 2008 [1919]) assesses human conduct neither via a system of societal morals, nor in terms of self-transformation (see following chapter). Instead, a consequential ethics assesses human conduct according to its effects on its environment (Fassin 2012). These effects, or functions, of conduct require human responsiveness. On a walk along the beach, Manthos explained: “We cannot be above nature, or outside of it: We are part of it. We have to respect nature, and we have to consider nature.” According to Giulio’s teachings, nature encompasses human existence in a system-element relation in which the system entails the birthing, growing, developing, and dying of elements through the elements’ myriad collaborations, co-creations, and combinations. In this relation, humans interrelate with other elements and thus with nature in particular ways: Both respect and consideration imply ‘looking at’, via Latin respectus ‘regard’, literally ‘act of looking back (or often) at one’, and Old French consideracion, ‘a beholding, looking at’ (OED n.d.). Relatedly, as the ability to respond and to be responsive, responsibility suggests an exchange, or dialectic,

92 echoing Harvey’s (2000) dialectical utopianism (Hetherington 2013; Haraway 2008). Looking in order to respond means to look closely, attentively, and it is in this attentive, consequentialist exchange with nature that permaculture grounds its ethics.

Figure 7. Permaculture teachings in the Workshop yard. Picture taken by Eleni Frantzi.

In the Introduction of this thesis I briefly mentioned different environmentalist strands and their inclinations to either anthropocentric or eco- centric perspectives. The case of the recently proclaimed Anthropocene brought to the fore anthropocentric accounts of agency and claims to planetary stewardship, while deep ecology’s demand for egalitarianism and recognition of complexity appears challenged by its own foregrounding of ecological relations over human needs. Beyond these binary theoretical oppositions, the lived and experienced everyday of Free&Real’s engagements created an exchange that existed within the myriad and inescapable interconnections of nature. The group approached the ensuing complexities of human-nature relations via a consequentialist environmental ethics that assessed human conduct via its effects on the environment. Permaculture’s functionalism,

93 combined with the processual approach of consequential ethics, seems well suited to ‘staying with the trouble’ at the dawn of the Cthulucene (Haraway 2016). At the same time, however, a factual approach underlay much of the ways in which Free&Real engaged in human-nature relations. This approach is teased out in the following, before I turn to some of its applied realizations.

Pragmatic Realism and Radical Environmentalism

A large double-doored fridge outside the Workshop contained a diverse array of fruits, regularly bought by Apostolos and Anastasia from a nearby green grocer’s. Mostly grown locally in the fertile planes and hills of Greece, they varied seasonally and were extremely tasty. They ranged from peaches, apricots, and melons in summer to grapes, plums, and kiwi in autumn, and from oranges, pomegranates, and mandarins in winter to apples, strawberries, and pears in spring. Tomatoes and cucumbers, botanically classified as fruit, also featured prominently in the fridge, whose wooden shelves usually dripped with condensed water and from overripe fruit juice. Two large fig trees at the Test Site, two arching mulberry trees at the Workshop, and a striving young medlar added to the seasonal gluts, while a steady all-year supply of banana and pineapple catered for exotic flavours. The fruits made up breakfast and snacks for crew members and visitors alike: The only cooked meal of the day was served between 6 and 8pm. Soon after I started fieldwork, Anastasia and Apostolos took to blending their breakfast into smoothies, habitually adding pineapple. The large plastic tag that most commercially sold pineapples feature on their spiky leaves landed in the compost bin day after day, together with plastic tags on banana skins and orange peels. When I asked Anastasia why they did not bother separating the non-degradable tags from the food scraps, she told me in a cheerful manner: “Oh, don’t worry, it’s just plastic: It’s not toxic for the compost!” When I received a similar answer from Giulio in autumn,

94 who added that of course, it would be better if plastic were not part of the soil, but in fact it was already everywhere on the planet, I began to realize that there was a particular sense of pragmatism underlying the group’s endeavours. By pragmatism29 I mean a sober, down-to-earth way of dealing with situations: The Greek etymology suggests a factual approach to action via pragmatikos ‘relating to fact’, and pragma, ‘deed’ (OED n.d.). As such, pragmatism focuses on practical consequences rather than theoretical speculations: Since plastic was already an integral part of the Earth’s soil, and since it does not directly deplete or poison the ground, its composting was deemed acceptable. I had first encountered this pragmatism during my second visit prior to fieldwork. I had noted that the majority of power tools in the tool shed were made by DeWalt, the professional subsidiary of Stanley Black & Decker. I asked Apostolos about this, and he explained that the company had agreed to sponsor the project through tool donations without expecting their name to be mentioned officially. Intrigued by this kind of sponsorship (especially in light of the group’s refusal to affiliate with political parties, cf. Chapter 1), I enquired into the ideology of sponsorship in relation to Telaithrion Project. Apostolos answered:

Well, that’s a very difficult question. Every firm, especially the big ones that you want as sponsor, have some dirt on their hands, some slaves working for them. So how do you choose? People ask me ‘if Monsanto was to give you a million Euros, without asking you to put their name anywhere, would you do it?’[…]

I asked, ‘So, would you’?

If I didn’t have to use their name, yes I would. It’s about the resources for the project, you know. People see that we were in a documentary on the national channel [which has a bad reputation with the political left],

29 The corresponding American philosophical tradition bears, of course, affinity to this approach but is not discussed in this thesis.

and they say ‘what the hell, you are not free and real’. And I say to them ‘Yes, I am not, of course I’m not: Free and real is the goal, not the reality. It’s a goal for everybody: Freedom of resources for everyone everywhere, not for some people somewhere.

In order to increase resources and outreach to further the project goal, Apostolos was willing to engage strategically with capitalist enterprises whose impacts on the environment are reportedly destructive (cf., for instance, Hetherington 2013). In other words, the ends of fostering the project could override the means of resource origin. Such a ‘politics of pragmatism’ (Anderson 2011) arises from the urgency of critical time, and finds its temporal correspondent in a particular approach to the present.

During the permaculture workshop in autumn, I was busy with a justification for an academic grant proposal which, if successful, would allow me to donate a sum of money to Free&Real. Like all crew members, I was dwelling at the project free of charge, and although I valued this generous arrangement I was inclined to financially contribute to Free&Real’s endeavours. My refusal to join the workshop’s tree planting in order to finalize the required documents was interpreted unfavourably by Apostolos, who saw in it a lack of interest in the project’s efforts. After the workshop, he claimed he had observed me during the past few days and had understood my intentions to be egoistic. He did not know that I planned to financially contribute to the project (as I was only going to tell him if the grant application were successful) and thought my interest lay in personal financial gain rather than in supporting the project. I wanted my donation to be a surprise and a gift to the project and its members, and thus replied in a rather vague manner that I regretted the incommensurability of our different realities. He retorted that reality was not to be pluralized. “There is only one reality. Only one. It is based on actions. This has nothing to do with different perceptions, but with objective observation.” For Apostolos reality, a system of acts, appeared transparently accessible

96 through observation30. Its singularity made it universal: If there is only one reality, then nothing exists outside of it31. The corresponding, realist attitude is to accept a situation as it is and be prepared to deal with it accordingly. When I countered Apostolos’ explications by suggesting that we both were in a state of anger, he replied: “I’m not angry. Emotions have nothing to do with this. I’m giving you objective feedback. Accept the feedback.” In a realist stance, he used one of permaculture’s principles, ‘accept the feedback’ to reflect on the factual objectivity of reality. Whether spoken in anger or not, throughout fieldwork this approach to reality transpired as deeply ingrained in Apostolos’ worldview. Pragmatic realism fundamentally fuelled Free&Real’s environmentalist endeavours through overwriting the present with a singular reality. Taken together, Anastasia, Giulio, and Apostolos’ reasoning amounted to an attitude that left no doubt about the actually existing reality and the consequent necessity to deal with this reality in a sober, pragmatic way. As human decisions and acts emerge as decisive for planetary survival, the need for their grounding in a consequential environmental ethics only amplified. This is why Apostolos in his project presentations tirelessly urged for people’s active engagement, despite the lack of time for words: Because the environment, or nature, and thus existence itself, existed within the ongoing temporality as a present of critical time whose outcomes are crucially co-created by human decisions and acts. On the one hand, this stance casts nature and its environmental expression as ‘real’ in the sense of actually and objectively existing. Such narratives also guide the technical, managerial tenor of ecomodernist visions that advocate nature as a series of ‘coupled’ yet bounded

30 Such negotiations correspond with anthropological debates about ethnographic realism and ethics. For recent discussion see, for example, Herzfeld 2017; Narotzky 2007; Fluehr-Lobban 2003.

31 Philosophically, realism is the doctrine that matter as the object of perception has real existence and is neither reducible to universal mind or spirit nor dependent on a perceiving agent.

‘spheres’ whose interactions can be fully comprehended and guided by human planetary stewardship (Lorimer 2017; Hamilton 2016). At the same time, however, this stance also casts as ‘real’ a present determined by socio- environmental transition. Growing out of this, its consequentialism demands and begins to implement ecological ethics beyond popular notions of ‘sustainable development’ that place development on a higher value than the environment itself (Leonard 2007; Eckersley 1992; for the Greek case see Knight 2017; Voulvouli 2013). Instead, pragmatic realism allowed Free&Real to respond to the immediacy of critical time through prefigurative implementation of regenerative human-nature relations. This is what made the group’s environmentalism radical. Thus combined, pragmatic realism and radical environmentalism produce an undeniable environmental reality in which human engagement determines planetary survival. While this approach echoes anthropocentric attitudes, it importantly responds to the immediacy of human impairing impact by engaging in human-nature relations through regenerative and reinvigorating practices anchored in a consequentialist ethics. However, this environmentalist stance was contested by several visitors, and the ensuing negotiations brought to the fore some of the potentials and limits of pragmatic realist environmentalism. How these negotiations unfolded and what they revealed is ethnographically explored in the remainder of the chapter, beginning with the ways in which it informed ethical negotiations about vegan diets.

Contextual Veganism and Situational Ethics

In October my parents came to visit me in the field. They arrived the same day that I was given feedback by Apostolos, and I was glad to partially escape project reality which I found dominating and overpowering. My parents had rented a car and for a few days we spent the mornings at the project and the afternoons exploring the northern parts of Evia. We were accompanied by

Sabrina, 39, who stayed with the project for about a month and a half and whose comfortingly loud and jolly Italian voice never minced matters. Sabrina had lived in several eco-projects over the past few years, was in the process of publishing a cook book on veganism and community living, and would soon start her own, radical eco-project where even the lawyers who signed the property sales deal were officially vegan. One afternoon we stopped in a small village for a bite to eat. The only tavern in sight offered seating by the sea, and several elderly couples were enjoying a late lunch in the refreshing breeze. After noting down our order of a generous variety of starters and wine, a combination that often substitutes for main courses in Greece, the waiter asked: “Kai gia fagito?” And for food? Meaning that he was now ready to take our meat order. Despite its astonishing amount of vegetarian and even vegan mezze (starters), Greek cuisine focuses heavily on meat. Souvla, skewers of all denominations, along with fish and sea food form an integral part of any tavern order, and indeed all other tables featured the remnants of some kind of animal flesh. Sabrina, in her cheerfully outspoken way, explained the waiter that she was vegan, meaning that she refused to consume any part or product of animal origin. “Alla psari tros?” But you eat fish? Was the inevitable oxymoronic reply. Fish and sea creatures that do not possess blood vessels are in Greece categorised distinct from meat, and while a certain sympathy for meatless diets exists (due, in part, to culturally established consumption patterns during Easter lent), the declaration to abstain from consuming marine animals is met by most Greeks with incomprehension. As we laughingly shook our heads and waved aside the waiter’s well-intentioned recommendations, we caught the attention of the couple next to our table. They had lived in Switzerland, my native country, for several years, and their daughter, a dedicated vegan, worked in conservation. We began an animated conversation in which we exchanged impressions about Greek consumption habits. “Eggs, especially when fresh [freska, recently purchased and usually obtained from the market rather than the supermarket], cheese and yoghurt, and honey of course: They are so central to Greek food! Everybody has an uncle, or a cousin, or a friend, who has a bee

99 hive. To not eat honey is crazy for Greeks!” the father of the vegan conservationist explained. “And the bee wax is used for natural cosmetics, and sponges for baths, and leather and silk for clothing. How can you tell the Greeks not to use bee wax? It’s not possible!” – “But in Athens I saw quite a few vegan health stores and restaurants. It seems people are becoming more aware…?” Sabrina asked hopefully. – “I’m not sure. I think this is just a trend, now for a few years the Athenians are tired of souvlaki [lit. little skewers; grilled pieces of meat, topped with salad and sauce and wrapped in bread] and eat falafel instead. They will go back to souvlaki soon”, the grey-haired lady laughed amusedly. The utilization of animals for human consumption, the couple contended, remains an integral part of Greek cultural practices. Free&Real’s food consumption, by comparison, differed quite substantially. Apart from the extensive variety of fruits, Free&Real provided one meal a day, comprised of a large raw salad and cooked food containing vegetables and grains or legumes. This meal was free from animal products, and indeed, the project was advertised as vegan, despite its non- vegan specialty fouchata, a honey and carob spread distributed during seminars. Of the crew members, only Spyros strictly followed a non- animal diet, followed by Anastasia who made exceptions for milk chocolate and honey. When we spread tahini over our br eakfast fruits she exclaimed: “Ok, but tahini begs you to add honey! The combination is too perfect!” and thus we laughingly helped ourselves to generous spoonfulls from the large honey tins used for making fouchata. Everyone else indulged occasionally in cheese pies, chocolate croissants, or bougatsa, cream pies, from the local bakery. All crew members abstained from eating animal flesh, and the only meat on the project premises existed in the form of cat food. That, however, regularly spilled on the outdoor surfaces used to stack dishes before carrying them back inside, and no-one seemed to mind the accidental proximity of this cat food to their plates and bodies. Moreover, we all used home-made keralifi, traditional ointments containing beeswax and herb-infused oils. The oils were produced on site,

100 the beeswax bought locally, and Moka showed me how to gently warm the wax and probe for the balanced mixture by observing the consistency. When I commented that this was not a vegan process, Moka winked and shrug her shoulders: “I know… but at least it’s natural. Buying chemical stuff from the supermarket to put on your skin is not better, is it? Not for the environment, nor for you.” Variously used for both healing and skin care purposes, Moka deemed the ointments more environmentally sustainable than energy-intensely produced commercial products. Leather and silk, finally, were not prominent among crew members, but my leather belt never raised any argument. It transpires that crew members’ veganism was situational: Depending on the product, one’s taste, and the available alternatives, abstinence from animal products was negotiable. The group’s diet thus may be better defined as vegetarian. Whatever the wording, crew members’ insistence on veganism grew out of a consequential assessment of human-nature relations. Natural sponges commonly used in Greek personal hygiene were avoided, and Anastasia once mentioned the depleting impact of the tourist industry’s advertisement of these aquatic animals. It was this impact, the consequences of human acts, which motivated Free&Real’s veganism. In a heated discussion with a meat consuming first-time visitor, Apostolos exclaimed:

If you want to fuck up the planet, eat meat. The meat and dairy industry is responsible for the biggest part of greenhouse emissions that push global warming, for the biggest amounts of deforestation, pollution, and destructive land use. And if you want to fuck up your health, eat meat. Your heart will collapse, your liver goes crazy, your arteries block and the general information you give to your body is ‘death’. That’s what eating meat means.

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Animal agriculture’s impact on the environment, together with potential negative impacts of meat on the human body, determined veganism for Apostolos: A pragmatic approach to cause and effect, in other words. This was reflected on the Workshop’s interior walls. Amongst a motley mix of visitors’ farewell notes, book posters, and photos of Cretan resistance fighters, the walls displayed several info-posters about the global impact of farming and dairy industry. The posters had been provided by and featured information from an environmental documentary called Cowspiracy (2014). The documentary proclaims that animal rearing is the leading cause for environmental degradation including deforestation, water consumption and pollution, heightened greenhouse gases, rainforest destruction, species extinction, habitat loss, topsoil erosion, and marine life decline. Exposing international policy makers’ refusal to discuss the issue, the documentary proposes individuals’ veganism as the most effective strategy to act against increasing environmental troubles. In line with this documentary, Free&Real advocate veganism as a means to oppose animal husbandry’s environmental destruction. “If the world was different, if people did not mass-produce meat and dairy the way they do, if they respected each other and their environment – we could talk again about veganism. But the world is not like this, right now, is it?” Manthos told me i ndignantly on our stroll along the beach. “But when you talk to people about veganism it’s better to tell them the facts about eating meat than saying to them ‘I think it’s wrong to kill animals’, because maybe the other person doesn’t think it’s wrong, so your argument is gone – but the facts stay, they stay true.” What Manthos meant by facts are the indicators of environmental degradation caused by animal husbandry and other human actions, by now largely acknowledged by international reports on climate change (UN 2017; UNCTAD 2013). Environmental degradation, commonly understood to be the leading cause of climate change, is caused by the large industrial complexes of human production, consumption, distribution, and disposal. The impact of these practises impairs on the environment to the extent that, in the eyes not only of

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Free&Real members, a critical time of transition is upon the planet. The group cast the animal-industrial complex to lead the impairing impact and, responding to this present moment, advocated a vegan lifestyle. In this way, their veganism constituted an applied realization of their situational assessment of the consequences of human impact on the environment. Manthos’ argument weighs pragmatic realism against the moral reasoning of radical veganism. As a secular, modern phenomenon, radical veganism32 opposes the consumption of non-human animals and their products, as well as the utilization of animals in research for political and moral reasons. Animal husbandry is perceived as a form of oppression, subjugation, and slavery, including systematic rape of females and mass-murder of billions of lives – annually. Animals’ utilization in medical, pharmaceutical, and military industries for experimental and biotechnological purposes is understood to originate in and reproduce colonial, patriarchal, and fascist narratives of anthropocentric exceptionalism and binary human-animal ontologies. The underlying commodification of animal life, finally, is attributed to global capitalism and its material and immaterial cultures (Calarco 2014; Plumwood 2000; Adams 1990). Radical veganism renounces the edibility and utilization of animals, and calls to attention the ways in which the animal-industrial complex abuses sentient beings as commodity. Manthos, however, argued that this stance is to be set aside in favour of a more factual approach. He soberly assessed the environmental situation through the lens of a singular, universal reality that spans the entirety of the ‘world’. The situation that determines this reality provokes a response, and for Manthos and other crew members, veganism constituted this response. Such veganism is contextual rather than ontological, as it calls for a situationally specific analysis of circumstances (Werkheiser 2013).

32 Radical veganism I call the 20th and 21st century movement that renounces non-human animals’ flesh and products not on spiritual-religious grounds (as strands of Hinduism, Buddhism, and other spiritual worldviews suggest) but for secular reasons including animal rights, anarchist and feminist theories, and ethical considerations.

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Importantly, however, ethical considerations of animal agriculture’s impact did form part of consumption considerations at Telaithrion Project. It is within the negotiations of ethics that the limits of pragmatic realist environmentalism emerged. Sabrina observed Free&Real’s veganism critically. As part of every single workshop, one evening was dedicated to a trip to Aidipsos, where a stop at a local ice cream parlour heralded the party night at George’s spa hotel (cf. Chapter 1). The parlour owner was friendly with Apostolos, and while the waves of workshop participants generated a monthly addition to his business, he had one sorbet and one dairy-free ice cream option on offer. However, the number and availability of these options was somewhat limited, fluctuating, and unreliable, habitually tempting most workshop participants to buy dairy ice cream. Among the crew members, this was not perceived as a problem: “I always take the vegan ice cream, and if they don’t have any, then I don’t take. They have vegan chocolate too. If you want, you can find something vegan. If you don’t want, then you don’t care about veganism anyway, and I cannot make you care”, was Anastasia’s shoulder- shrugging comment on the matter. Her assessment rested on a pragmatic stance that addressed reality through observed action: If one bought vegan ice cream, one cared about veganism. If not, then there was nothing to be done about it. By contrast, Sabrina’s radical veganism allowed her to approach social change via its relationalities. When we visited the parlour during the permaculture seminar in autumn, there was no vegan ice cream option available. Sabrina was disappointed:

You know, if it’s not vegan ice-cream, after a week of permaculture and conversations about why it’s so important to be vegan, then it gives the wrong signal: If we want to have fun, we have to ignore our convictions. You could easily make a deal with them, call them up and say ‘have five flavours ready, we’re coming in three days’. That’s what the community in Pillion33 is doing where I stay: The local bakery makes wholemeal

33 A mountain range behind the city of Volos, on the central-eastern coast of Greece’s mainland

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bread just for us, and it’s super yummy and everyone loves it, but we buy at least five kilos a week. That’s how you change something in the community, and show people with a good example that a new way can be fun.

In Sabrina’s view, omission of organized collaboration allowed situational veganism to slip into a binary hedonist-moral opposition: If there was no or only a limited choice of vegan ice cream, then a situationally malleable diet permitted to bypass veganism for the sake of enjoyment of ice cream. In other words, inconsistent application failed to transmit to others the significance attached to implementation. Instead, Sabrina proposed collaborative human engagement whose effects had practical, experiential, and ideological consequences. The yoga retreat centre for which she worked also generated economic additions to local businesses, but did not compromise its ideological attitudes (i.e. wholesome food diets, exemplified by wholemeal rather than the more common white flour). Rather, it combined ethics with pleasure through radical, uncompromising practices. As such, Sabrina pointed out the limits of pragmatic realist environmentalism: Its applied realization through situational ethics runs the risk of ‘giving the wrong signal’, of failing to convey the significance of the implementation of ethics. This tension in the group’s ethics, promoted as consequential yet lived as situational, was repeatedly pointed out and challenged by visitors. At the same time, however, Free&Real's pragmatic realism highlighted human coexistence with other parts of nature, and enabled the group to maintain the project’s functionality, as the following section illustrates.

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Killings and ‘Indistinction’: Positioning Oneself within Nature

After a three months winter break rodents, bed bugs, and spiders had taken over both the Workshop and the Test Site in spring 2016. Upon reopening, therefore, the group dedicated themselves to a thorough spring cleaning of several weeks. To get rid of the bedbugs, Apostolos suggested a bio-cleaning but was discouraged by specialists: The pests had proliferated too intensely to be expelled by organic sprays. A pest control duo, fully masked, arrived to fume, UV irradiate, and finally vapour clean both the Workshop and the Test Site. None of the Free&Real crew members questioned the decision to use chemical pest control: The itchy red skin irritations inflicted by the vermin were testimony to its necessity. While the bed bugs were slowly dying off, the rodents proliferated in the Workshop kitchen. The group first decided to use mouse traps, but in the end Apostolos sprinkled rat poison to get to terms with the animals. Disapproving of this tactics Dimitra, a young and energetic Athenian, engaged in catching and marooning mice to a nearby field. Dimitra had participated in the autumn permaculture workshop and was eagerly looking forward to the spring’s follow-up. Trained as a teacher and photographer, austerity had left her unemployed, and so she resolved to spend an entire month at the project site before the onset of the spring workshop. Marooning mice together with Andreas, the latter caught a young mouse but, upon Apostolos’ behest, set it free in the yard, where one of the resident cats grabbed the opportunity and killed the mouse in front of Dimitra. Anastasia, Moka, Thodoris, and Andreas himself did not mind the incident, but Dimitra was upset to the extent that she spent all afternoon and evening secluded. Later, she told me:

You know, I wasn’t upset because a cat ate a mouse. I know that this happens in nature, of course. I was upset, and I told Apostolos that,

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because he decided to give a baby mouse directly to the cat. The cat didn’t just catch it: They fed the mouse to the cat. The baby mouse would probably have died in the field, too, but at least it would have had a chance to live. Feeding animals to others without letting them have the chance to escape: That’s so unfair! Do you see my point? Dimitra

Dimitra’s point was that if killing happens without the interference of humans, she does not mind it because it is part of natural processes, but if humans assist the killing, the equilibrium shifts. Starting from the understanding that human actions have consequences for the environment, Dimitra understood Giulio’s appeal to ethically responsible behaviour as a call to conservation: She marooned the mice because it seemed ethically right to sustain their lives. However, such an approach separates humans from nature through its demand of benignancy: If killings are acceptable ‘in nature’ but unacceptable when assisted by humans, the latter assume a position that both distances and moralises human-nature relations. Rather than situating humans as one element within nature’s multidimensional collaborations and combinations, and arguing for consequential, responsive engagement, Dimitra’s stance centralizes on moral evaluations of fairness. By contrast, crew members found themselves in a position much more immersed in the interconnections of existence. Several of them had lived through prior murine plagues and followed a pragmatic realist approach: “Look, we somehow have to deal with the situation. None of us likes that we have to kill them, but what else to do? You see the situation, it’s disgusting, it’s dangerous for our health. I’m really thinking hard what’s the best thing to do, ok, and I think we just have to be pragmatic here.” Moka resolved my objections to lethal mouse traps in a considerate yet sober situational evaluation. In order to do so, she analysed the situation through a functionalist lens: Like all of us, she deemed the rodents’ output (in form of droppings and germ transmission) hazardous to human hygiene and health. Consequently, the

107 group responded to the situation in the most efficient way: Rat poison. That the collaborations and combinations of the inescapable interconnections of existence include not only ‘living and becoming with’ but also ‘dying with’ (Haraway 2016) is a fact that Dimitra understood to ‘happen in nature’; crew members, however, actively practiced it, as they positioned themselves and their acts as elements of nature. In recent philosophic discussions on veganism, such ‘indistinction’ (Calarco 2011) is called upon to reach beyond anthropocentric capitalist narratives of binary distinctions between humans and animals (Calarco 2014). Contextual veganism suggests that “one need not treat all interests equally as if one had no relationship to any of the parties” (Curtin 1991:70). Instead, it allows for a consequential ecological ethic that looks attentively and pragmatically at a given situation. Such an ability to respond considers the situation’s effects on the environment holistically, paying attention to its myriad interrelations of elements and their functions without morally evaluating human-nature relations. More crucially, the pragmatic realism that underlay crew members’ contextual veganism allowed them to deal with a hygiene and health problem in an efficient and effective way. They thereby were able to maintain and continue the project as a functioning, serviceable space, which is in itself a pragmatic and realist goal to pursue.

Nature’s Magic

By early November my parents and Sabrina had left and, due to colder temperatures, the stream of visitors had quieted down. A sunny day was chosen by Apostolos to launch the mushroom picking season: After a relaxed breakfast and some odd jobs at the Workshop we set off to the far side of Mount Telaithrion. I had packed fruits, baskets and knives, and after an hour’s drive we parked and began our ascent. Following a steep pebbled forest road covered in autumn leaves, we walked fast and our chatting voices got louder: It seemed

108 we all felt awake and strong. Soon we left the road and entered the forest. Oak and beech dominated the canopy, with some chestnut trees scattered about, while kermes oak and hazel bushes scratched our long sleeves and tickled our cheeks. Shimmering on the ground there were ivy and cyclamen, and hidden beneath the autumn leaves grew horns of plenty and chanterelles: These were what we were after. We dispersed into small groups or lone rangers: The hunt was on. Andreas was so excited he jumped up and down with joy, and then ran off, uphill, letting out a long cry. As we strolled through the leafy woods, baskets in hands and scratching the ground with sticks, our faces ridded themselves of worry lines and looked young and radiant. Whenever edibles were found, yells of joy echoed through the forest, followed by excited calls to join the harvest at that specific place. After about an hour and a half, we stopped to eat the fruits that we had carried along. Artemis showed us a large mushroom she found and explained: “It’s magical, when you look at the forest ground, and all of a sudden it transforms, becomes something else, and reveals that mushroom. It’s… wonderful!” All too soon, the sun began to sink behind the branches and we had to start walking back. As we climbed and slid down a steep slope, the mood was content but melancholic: The adventure seemed over. But then we took the wrong turn and had to make a detour to find the cars. “More forest!” I exclaimed, and Moka jokingly suggested to build a tree house and live in the woods. I walked in front with Apostolos, and when we saw a path that led into the small valley that separated us from the cars, Apostolos asked: “Shall we take this one? Or maybe the road, the safe bet.” – “Never”, I exclaimed, and we wandered down the winding path. A thousand fairy tales sparkled up as parmelia-covered branches stretched out their last radiantly gleaming leaves, and thin-stemmed mushrooms held up their caps like miniature lamp posts, while mossy rocks rested beneath large hollow plane trees. We sat down at an old fountain: The cars were close, but nobody wanted to leave. Andreas’ eyes looked larger than the moon: “That’s it, re, the perfect spot.” I hugged Artemis and stared with her into the blue fading sky dotted with plane fruits. “You could

109 set up your tent here”, she said, “you have fresh water”. – “And you could roast chestnuts over the fire” I spun the thought further, - “and hunt mushrooms all day”, she replied. “What more do you want?” we asked in unison and laughed. “Synchronized”, she smiled, and I nodded in her hug.

Figure 8. Picking Mushrooms. Picture taken by Moka.

The uncommonly enchanting experience of that autumn day reveals a set of human-nature relations different from those dissected throughout this chapter. A tentative analysis of the day of the mushroom hunt might argue that, despite our stick-armed scavenging attempts, we mostly relied on our eye sight to reveal the mushrooms among the colourful autumn leaves. This was a way of looking that assumed an attentive gaze that regarded and thus respected the forest. In this sense, Artemis’ suggestion of synchronisation surmounted linguistic unison. It evoked the temporal unity of ‘becoming with’ and ‘making with’ that the multidimensional collaborations and combinations of nature entail. Nature’s elements thereby appeared equally immersed in the inescapable interconnections of existence. At the same time, discovering a mushroom

110 means becoming aware of its presence. For Artemis, this process seemed like a magical transformation of the forest, who revealed the mushroom’s presence so that she learned its hitherto secret location. The wonderful enchantment we experienced that day we all felt was an acronymically ‘real’ engagement with nature based on respect, equality, awareness, and learning (cf. Introduction). However, this engagement was temporally short and somewhat removed: Rather than enduringly positioning and immersing ourselves within nature, we marvelled at it for a short period of time. Instead, ‘real’ engagement with nature in the sense of a lived and experienced everyday has painted a more complex picture. Going beyond theories of human-nature relations that oppose anthropocentric with eco-centric foci, the lived everyday practices and experiences of people at Telaithrion Project suggest an engaged co-creation of existence whose spatio-temporal unity resembles a transformative, ever- emerging temporality. As this temporality’s expression, the environment, has been impaired by human impact, the present of this unity denotes a period of transition. The outcome of the transition is, as of yet, undetermined, and in this critical point in time the magnitude of human decisions and acts appears enlarged. Free&Real’s approach to this period of transition is grounded in consequential ecological ethics and pragmatic realism, and finds its expression in contextual veganism and situational ethics. Through their inconsistency, these engagements limit the extent to which ethical significance can be transmitted, yet their adaptability allows for the efficient maintenance and continuation of the project as a functioning, serviceable space. Additionally, their ‘indistinction’ situates humans firmly within their environment and reaches beyond binary oppositions between humans and nature. Instead, it perceives humans as part of an overarching system, the web of existence. As such, the group’s environmentalism proposes socio-environmental change through temporally measuring, ethically approaching, and practically engaging in human-nature relations in particular, radical ways. These ways respond to the immediate environmental troubles through regenerative, responsive, and situationally malleable practices. Such practices emerged as ‘real’ at Telaithrion

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Project as they were grounded in the everyday negotiations of people who whole-heartedly engaged in human-nature relations.

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3 The School of Life

Subject Making Mechanisms at Telaithrion Project

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When I left Telaithrion Project, my body had changed. My muscles had expanded, my shoulders straightened and my freckles darkened. My eye sight had improved by 0.1 percent, my sense of smell had developed an aversion to synthesized odours, and I found myself to have a temporary lactose intolerance. Whether my senses had sharpened due to a different diet, an outdoor life-style, or intensified mind-body awareness I do not know; but my muscles and shoulders had strengthened in response to tree planting, vegetable bed digging, construction work, and a lot of deep cleaning. I felt strong and healthy. I also found I had learned much about myself, was able to observe myself better and to balance my emotions in more attentive ways. This, in turn, enabled me to interact with others more harmoniously and, at the same time, intensified my subjective understanding of what is important in life: I felt I had ethically improved. One immediate manifestation of this was that, once back from the field, I struggled immensely with formal exchange relations that concerned food. Choosing standardized and plastic-wrapped items in return for metal coins and plastic slips seemed so abstract that I hardly could bear entering a grocery shop. My alienation did not stem from a researcher’s romanticizing of her field experience as somehow ‘pure’ or ‘aloof’ of mundaneness: Free&Real bought all their aliments too. Rather, it arose from the feeling that many of my relations to my basic needs, especially to my food, were primarily economic. “Growing your own food is like printing your own money”, a slogan popularized by urban gardener Ron Finley in a TED talk in 2013 (Finley 2013) was common at the project and had impressed itself on me as a direction that there were various ways in which I could relate to my subsistence – some of them, potentially, intriguingly liberating. Therefore, once I had settled back into the UK, the feeling of alienation concretized into the realization that I had an – albeit limited – degree of freedom in choosing and exploring these relations, and so I began growing my own vegetables on an allotment plot. The majority of information as to how to grow my own food I accessed online.

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This chapter occupies itself with Free&Real’s intention of societal change through personal transformation. “Be the change you want to see in the world”, a Gandhian snippet of wisdom, called out to visitors and crew members from a wood burned board in the Workshop yard. It illustrated the group’s conviction that profound social change begins at an individual level, and that every individual has the option to contribute to this change. Inspiration towards this change is what the project had to offer: On their web page, the group state that they

will do all we can to animate, empower, educate and inspire all people we meet so they will be able to follow their own path towards a more possible, more balanced coexistence of races and species on the planet. We want to learn from our mistakes, to evolve the way we communicate with our fellow men, to re-establish our self’s [sic] by re-establishing our environments and our needs [in order to] become better than our own self’s [sic], accepting the daily feedback as food for thought and conscious harmonious creative and productive communication. We want to live with the lowest possible ecological footprint and simultaneously with the greatest possible freedom in education (information) and creative living. Free&Real n.d.

The re-establishment – or transformation – of the self to become a better person appears as the project’s primary goal. From it radiates the intention to inspire and motivate others to do the same. Out of this arises the second goal, to generate a space for transformation: A school for self-sufficiency and sustainability. Transformation of the self is what this chapter is concerned with. It is not the kind of self-transformation built into belief systems of spiritual merit (Eberhardt 2006); nor is it the kind that favours normalization of the self in anticipation of an intrinsic authenticity (Heyes 2007). This means that change amounts neither to esoteric nor physical transformation; instead,

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Free&Real’s self-transformation is the initiation of change of one’s practices and behaviours grounded in the political and ethical ‘will to be otherwise’ (Povinelli 2012). The Introduction of this thesis discusses this concept as constant ethical reflection and practice that generate ethical becoming. This transformation is less concerned with absolute freedom from governance and more interested in discerning how, why, and by whom one is governed. In the case of Free&Real, this translates into the geopolitically critical attitude dissected in Chapter 1. Following from this, a sense of motivation towards a particular kind of self-governance or autonomy arises, discussed in Chapter 6. Given that most crew members, visitors, and passers-by already were, to varying degrees, critical of capitalist relations, the impact of this motivation is not readily discernible. As it is less significant to evaluate the extent of transformation in absolute terms than to examine the new and novel concepts and practices of selfhood that arose from it, the chapter at hand traces Free&Real’s motivational impact to discern their subject-making mechanisms. Among visitors and crew members’ experiences I also draw on auto- ethnography to point out the ways in which the group inspired ethical transformation, as some of these changes became fully evident only after fieldwork had ended or were individually embodied. I return to the above description at the end of this chapter in order to discuss how the year I spent with the group inspired, motivated, and altered my own practices. For now, however, these descriptions form the point of departure for the chapter’s leading question, which concerns itself with the ways in which Free&Real inspired new and novel concepts and practices of selfhood. I argue that, while their conceptualization of self-transformation reproduced some of the dominant epistemologies of late capitalism, it also generated a creative space in which different concepts and practices surrounding personhood flourished. This was enabled through the group’s interpretation of tech creativity and IT remix culture, whose fluctuating and processual character points to the transformative qualities of ever-becoming selves. Free&Real’s self-transformation thus did not constitute any absolute, holistic, or irreversible alteration of person, but a –

116 situationally applied – approximation of one’s practices to one’s ethical standpoints.

Several people related to Telaithrion Project with the term ‘school of life’, meaning that it constituted an informal learning ground beyond the school for self-sufficiency and sustainability that defines one of the goals of the project. A school is a place of knowledge production and subject making: Information is delivered in specific ways so as to form certain kinds of knowledge which impact on and thus alter the persons immersed in them. Education, in short, transforms people. Free&Real participants perceived formal education as insufficient for their intentions and posed Telaithrion Project as a creative response to its shortcomings. However, they did not aim to impart knowledge to others, but to provide others with a space in which to forge their own selves into particular kinds of persons. This forging, or transforming, was an individual task, attained through educating oneself. Self-transformation thus amounted to practices of self-education, and Telaithrion Project advocated, engaged, and hosted an array of such practices. In this way, the term school of life aptly combines the project’s two goals: Building up a learning centre for, and widely disseminating their ideology about ecological environmentalism. At the same time, it points to the fact that this educational transformation is forever incomplete and becoming, as it spans the time of one’s life, rather than a set amount of school years. The term thus points to the processual character of transformation through education, rather than making claims about the breadth and width of things to be learned at the project. It thereby sets itself apart from more conservative usages of this term that imply cognition through adherence to institutional dogma: In Greece as elsewhere, obligatory army service is locally referred to as ‘school of life’, meaning that it teaches the predominantly male recruits morals and conduct in line with specific social expectations. By contrast, the term as used by my informants highlights the benefits of self- education for ever-becoming selves. Finally, the term also hints at the myriad interconnections of life and existence, thereby situating the self within its

117 environment. Rather than focussing on individual excellence and achievement, the school of life thus aims to convey embedded, holistic, and relational education. The following section describes the concept of a school of life in which to transform the self from the point of visitors and passers-by.

Figure 9. Gine i allagi pou thes na deis ston kosmo: Be [lit. become] the change you want to see in the world. Picture taken by Katerina Katalathos.

Self-Transformation and Social Change

Elyssa’s chestnut hair swayed gently as she embraced each of us in turn. With her eyes closed and a radiant smile on her face, she looked relaxed and calm. She had just delivered a Cosmic Energy Healing group session to two visitors and myself, and we all still lingered in the abating waves of the experience. It had been an impromptu session in the evening hours of a workshop, and we had held it in the Crew Room, the only space at the Workshop we could lock for an entire hour. In order to gently drown out the chatting voices in the yard, Elyssa played some meditation music from her

118 laptop. This is music created through low, slow sounds of singing bowls, gongs, and bow instruments, interspersed with sprinkles of triangles and glockenspiels. We closed our eyes and stood silently in the room, thin woollen blankets over our shoulders against the nightly autumn chill, while Elyssa began channelling the universe’s energies towards us. My body felt warm, especially my hands, and during the entire session I felt as if held by loving arms, awaiting a gentle and affectionate kiss. I could not help but smile: With closed eyes, I turned my face upwards from whence the love radiated, and smiled, deeply in love with the universe. Only a few weeks before I had been presented with a similarly healing gift, a Reiki session, by a visitor who offered to support my menstruating and aching abdomen. It was a starry night in early autumn when we stood hip-deep in the cool sea, the hot spring waterfalls sprinkling our shoulders with rich minerals. The man lay one hand below my navel and the other one on my neck, and channelled the stars’ energies into my lower body. Warmth, tranquillity, and a feeling of familiarity expanded through my body and my entire belly felt orange and red. My thoughts were governed by gratitude and love. Elyssa’s session had a similar effect, and when she embraced us each at the end I kissed and thanked her wholeheartedly. Elyssa had begun visiting Telaithrion Project about a year before my fieldwork. In her late thirties, she lived in Athens and earned her money with a mix of photography, project development, and casual labour. She had lived at the project for about a month last autumn, but had felt uncomfortable due to a lack of communication. Nevertheless, she continued to drive up from Athens to take pictures during workshops, and this is how I met her. Elyssa practiced yoga, meditation, past life integration, chakra healing, and inner child work. All these practices, she explained to me one mild winter night in Athens, “are part of a journey towards the self. The ultimate goal is self-realization: Maybe you know the word ‘enlightenment’ for it. So ‘self’ doesn’t mean the ego, it means the opposite: It’s about overcoming the ego, and realizing what you really are, in a cosmic sort of way.” Her goal was to cultivate an understanding of the self to comprehend existence. To attain this, she engaged in practices that

119 presumed, highlighted, and engaged with the self as a transcendental, transformative entity in continuous interdependency and reciprocity with the universe. This approach rendered conscious the processual character of self- transformation as Elyssa aimed to guide her own and support others’ cultivation of a cosmically aware self. Transcendental consciousness was of importance to several visitors at the project. For some, its cultivation was of utmost psychological importance. Melanie had migrated from Belgium to Greece right after finishing high school. Having lived in Athens for about a year, she came to visit Free&Real for a few days in summer. Twenty years old and a convinced vegan, the stout young woman had a history of suicide attempts and anorexia caused, as she told me, by the psychological effects of a rigid school system and a broken home. But her wide blue eyes sparkled with excitement and joy as she related how she loved nature and wanted to study botany in Greece. I asked her what kept her going. She answered:

When I was very young I used to feel angels around me and I understood why and how we exist. But when I turned older and had to go to school, with its drill and rules and regulations, I lost all this. I began to deny and destroy myself, because I couldn’t cope with this loss. It didn’t help that my father’s family constantly blamed me for his unhappiness: Because I was disobedient at school, he was sad, because I hated the education forced on me, he was in trouble. But then, somehow, I remembered that I used to know the angels, and began again to think about why we’re alive. Now I know that everything passes and yet exists at the same time, and I have learned to transcend my feelings because they are not real, so that I can embrace them. Melanie

School routines and family expectations produced social pressure that was hard to stand, and Melanie’s struggle for survival led her to cultivate her self as a

120 spiritually aware person. Similarly Jungmi, a Korean visitor who stayed at the project for two months in autumn, felt the need to dissociate from her formal education and find different ways to develop as a person. As we were walking on the beach one windy autumn afternoon, she recalled her education thus:

The Korean school system is built up exactly like the army: Drill, obedience, respect. No talking, just listening. When I was thirteen, fourteen, the boys in my class learned to shoot, and we girls learned how to nurse. I realized all we learned is about war, not about peace. And I decided to unlearn and become a different person – but I had already signed up for three years in the Korean army! Those years I realized that when we are alive we use physical energy, and when we are dead we are spirit, spiritual energy. So during our life we can develop spiritual power to prepare ourselves for the future after death. Only we don’t learn this in school. We learn ‘science’, but not shamanism. We don’t learn to be connected to nature, or the spiritual world. We learn only to obey and follow. Jungmi

Jungmi experienced school and army service as similar in their guiding of human development. In both, she found an emphasis on duty and submission, and a lack of engagement with spiritual and philosophical aspects of life. In order to align her education with a way of being she believed was meaningful, she had to unlearn many deeply engrained beliefs and practices. In her case, this took her on a money-less journey discussed in Chapter 5, which shifted into seeking spirituality. Despite Telaithrion Project’s explicit secularity, it attracted a number of visitors seeking spiritual development. These people were not devotees to institutionalized religions but, instead, followed individual quests of spiritual self-cultivation. For some, like Melanie and Jungmi, this self-cultivation was directly linked to negative experiences in formal education and constituted an

121 attempt to step out of this education’s dominant discourses and practices. Typically, spiritual development for visitors of Free&Real involved the combination of a number of different bodies of knowledge. Elyssa combined Buddhism, Hermeticism, and ancient Greek philosophies with her interest in spiritual healing. Melanie deployed Judeo-Christian mythology of angels alongside psychoanalytical therapy; and Jungmi engaged military service, meditative fasting, and shamanic practices to develop her self. They freely and creatively engaged in cultural appropriation characteristic of New Age spirituality (Sutcliffe 2003; Ivakhiv 2003; York 2001). Importantly, their quests were part of a larger goal of social transformation. Jungmi’s army service, for example, was an expression of her will to do good. “I signed up because I thought I can contribute to world peace. I really believed it at the time. When I realized my mistake, I had to stay. These three years taught me a lot. They really transformed me – or maybe they started my transformation.” Driven by the aspiration to improve the life of many, Jungmi ended up transforming herself. Starting, instead, from the self, Elyssa’s self-transformative practices aimed to impact on society through transcendental engagement. During the project’s winter break, we were strolling the nightly streets of Athens together with Moka and Artemis. The three women had been friends for many years, and Moka had first introduced the others to Free&Real. I asked Elyssa how self- realization was related to environmentalism. “There is a big imbalance in the world today”, she explained.

There’s very little female energy, and a lot of male energy. I don’t mean this in gender or feminist terms, although there’s a lot to say about this too. I mean it more like yin and yang, like principles. The feminine is creative, nurturing, swirling; the masculine is focussed, stable, and straight. […] Existence is an interplay of the two, which now is not balanced well anymore. Capitalism, for example, is based only on the masculine principle, in its most negative sense: Its exploitation, its

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orientation towards profit and individual gain. So we need to engage more with the feminine energy, to balance the two in order to heal society, and politics, and the planet. Elyssa

We were passing overflowing dustbins under hardy orange trees laden with fruit. Some of the trees carried glowing fairy lights, remnants of the past Christmas celebrations. “But how can you heal the planet by focussing on the self?” I insisted. “Everything is connected”, Elyssa replied, “everything is in relationship to everything else. That’s why everything influences each other. So, how can you create something beautiful and healthy and sustainable when inside you things are not beautiful and healthy and sustainable? It is from the inside out that healing happens, that’s why we have to focus on the self in order to change things.” Elyssa contended that the healing of spiritual, environmental, social, and political relations was based on a balance of energies that started from the self. For many people who passed by Telaithrion Project, social change started from the individual. While some focussed on individual transformation the self, others looked for ways to accommodate self- transformation for themselves and others.

My very first visit to Telaithrion Project took place about a year before fieldwork. I flew to Athens, followed the e-mailed instructions to Liosion Station in the north of the city centre, boarded a coach and stared out of the window. Dry landscapes and crumbling concrete buildings flew past me along the highway connecting the country’s biggest cities, Athens and Thessaloniki. After about two hours the coach pulled off the highway, steered to the right and came to a stand at a small port: It was time to take the ferry from Arkitsa to Aidipsos, Evia. Slightly insecure about the itinerary, I enquired how to get to Agios, only to be assured that everything would be fine and to be ushered towards a nearby ticket office. While I queued to buy my passage, the empty bus rolled onto the ferry: We would re-board it on the other side of the slender

123 strip of sea. Later, on the pleasantly windy deck, a bearded man with bright blue eyes and a broad smile walked over to me. “I bet you’re going to Free&Real, too”, was his opening line. He said I gave my travel intentions away by asking for Agios, a sleepy village that could not possibly be of any interest to travellers if not for its resident environmentalists. Against the backdrop of the evening sun touching down on Mount Parnassus behind us and the green hills of Evia protruding out of the peaceful sea we talked about change and transformation. The man was from Israel, had finished his mandatory military service and had been travelling through Europe’s eco- projects for about a year. Telaithrion Project was his last stop before returning home, where he hoped to realize his inspiration into a project of his own: Not unlike the kibbutzim founders a century earlier, he was set to find himself a dry and arid piece of land that could be transformed into a fertile self-sufficient farm.

But the farm will be open to visitors and people who want to help and get inspired: It will not be a closed thing just for myself. You know, I’ve come to understand that true change doesn’t happen quickly, like they try with revolutions, seizing power, or killing the king. It’s a slow process, one person after the other, one individual after the other, who begins to understand and thus changes his or her behaviour. That’s a very slow process, but it’s much better than quick changes, because it is deeper and truer. So the farm can be a place where part of this process can happen. Israeli Traveller

‘True change’, the traveller suggested, is as much an individual as a societal process. What he meant by change was an alteration of humans’ interaction with nature as much as with each other: Undoubtedly, his military service had brought him face to face with substantial forms of violence and destruction. Symbolized in the transformation of arid to fertile land, he sought amendment

124 on personal, societal, and ecological levels. This change, he explained further, is grounded in individual beliefs and actions: This is what makes it ‘true’. Rather than through upheavals or subversions, harmonisation of relations was to grow out of individual comprehension and initiative. By offering engagement on the farm, the traveller hoped to inspire and motivate transformative processes in others. Many visitors were in a process of ethical self- transformation, and they commonly understood eco-projects such as Telaithrion Project to provide space for such endeavours. Providing a communal space for self-transformation is the basic concept of intentional communities. For centuries and even millennia, people around the globe have created living arrangements to consciously share their lives along the lines of explicit ethical values (cf. Introduction). Whether secular or spiritual in outlook, whether driven by political and humanitarian ideals or transcendental and redemptive goals, intentional community life is silhouetted against wider society through the participants’ emphasis on ‘being otherwise’. This intentional convening of community inevitably generates a focus on self- transformation: Creating a utopia, a good place away from immediate reality or wider society, necessitates individual change in which society’s norms, values, and habits are exchanged for practices aligned with the community’s intentions. Through a transformation of the self, changes are sought in the group and, ultimately, in wider society. The Shakers, for instance, combined celibacy, communalism, and gender equality to invoke benediction through Christ’s Second Coming into their own bodies (De Wolfe 2002:108); Kibbutz culture aimed at creating a ‘new man’ (Spiro 2004:557) by rejecting private property and the amenities of urban life; and the Hutterites abide by modesty, thrift, and self-abnegation to reach the ‘perfect society’ (Bennett 1967:35). Similarly, eco- communities and -projects strive for harmonious and regenerative human- nature relations through altering individual production, consumption, and waste patterns (Lockyer & Veteto 2013b; Dickens 2004; Sargisson 2000). This interplay of self and nature, this ‘dialectical utopianism’ (Harvey 2000, cf. Introduction) prefigures socio-environmental relations alternative to dominant

125 capitalist discourses and practices. Taking responsibility for the ecological environment, one changes one’s politics and transforms the self, the social forms, and ultimately, society. Self-transformation in the context of eco- projects thus contributes to social change through individual amendment of practices. The following section turns to crew members’ perceptions of the school of life.

The School of Life

“School curricula, basically, are a joke”, Apostolos declared. We were sitting around the tall square table in the Workshop’s living room after dinner. I had just handed two hand-made dolls to Anastasia and Jungmi. The two were about to embark on a journey eastwards together, and the dolls were my parting gift to them. Marvelling over the gifts, Anastasia had asked me where I had learned to sew, and I had told them about both my mother’s creativity and the Swiss state school system’s mandatory handcrafting classes. None of them had ever received practical creative education, and we began a conversation about school systems34. To Apostolos’ comment, Anastasia added reproachfully: “We don’t even learn to be with other people, nor with nature!” Group work had been uncommon in the classroom, and class outings were restricted to annual camps. I was surprised: Hikes and excursions were an integral part of my mandatory school years. In primary school, we had even harrowed a field, sowed, harvested, and flailed grain, brought it to a local mill and finally had made bread from it. Admittedly, this was not part of any school curriculum and instead speaks of my teachers’ dedication. Nevertheless, Greek and Swiss education systems seemed to differ substantially. I asked what they felt they had gained from their school years. Andreas’ evaluation was sobering: “You go

34 My informants went to public schools and attended private language lessons, a common practice in Greece. Private holistic schooling as advocated by Montessori, Waldorf, and Rudolf Steiner schools did not exist in Greece when they were growing up.

126 through twelve years of school and don’t even learn to use hammer and nail, but by the end you’re not even curious about the world anymore because you’ve become this obedient robot that begs for employment so you can buy stuff.” The others agreed: In their experience, contemporary education merely functioned to incorporate children into consumer society, leaving little space for the expansion of one’s personality through curious views on and practical engagement with the world. Critical thinking, in other words, was sacrificed for social reproduction. Like Melanie and Jungmi, crew members were dissatisfied with their formal education. To be sure, most Free&Real crew members had gained a university degree. Their experience of education thus spanned both mandatory and voluntary education. The centralized Greek state school curriculum contains a number of particularities worth noting. Most strikingly, a strong emphasis is placed on the country’s heritage: Maths and philosophy tuition excels in depth and complexity, literature lessons treat the ancient classics as core texts, and history classes focus almost exclusively on ancient, Byzantine and modern Greece. This not only fosters concepts of national pride and complacency (Tsanelli 2007), but also accounts for an interesting combination of theoretical depth and narrowness. For instance, in discussions on literature or film my informants habitually skipped synopsis for analysis. “What’s it about?” I asked Anastasia who told me about her favourite movie, La Belle Verte (1996). I expected to hear a storyline. “It’s a critical analysis of consumer society that uses humour to portray society’s dystopic tendencies and poses alternatives that embrace harmony”, the 21-year-old answered spontaneously. Her ease of conveying the theme rather than just recounting the plot was fostered in a schooling environment that covered the Odyssey in eighth grade. At the same time, however, knowledge of socio-political contexts outside Greece had often been neglected in school, as had education in applied crafts. “You think we’ve been taught to cook, stitch, or weld? I wish! I didn’t even have music or arts class… Or, for that matter, the history of feminism, or even sexuality: No, we never learned any of these”, Andreas revealed as he

127 played with one of the dolls. The Greek curricula’s theoretical, conservative outlook did not appeal to crew members. After twelve years of school, students throughout the country sit the panellinies, a centralised exam period whose outcome determines one’s university entry. All academic education is free, with even the books provided gratis. However, the subject one is allowed to study is an outcome of a nation- wide matching of a preliminarily submitted list of preferences with the grades attained in the panellinies. Depending on one’s inclination and ability to prepare for the exam on the one side, and the favourability of academic courses on the other, it is not uncommon to study what one dislikes. With study pressure high and familial expectations firmly in place, many Greeks complete their formal education with listlessness or even aversion. This is why Anastasia disdained every semester of the shipment logistics course her father urged her to take so she could inherit his firm. This is also why Thodoris burdened himself with a correspondence course on physiology alongside his economics bachelor degree: The latter contained his mother’s requirement for a solid academic education, the former reflected his own interest. Of the three youngest crew members, only Spyros studied what he had chosen: “I was lucky, my parents let me study what I wanted. So I chose geography, but I dropped out because the books we read and the lectures we had were just repeating what I already knew. It was very superficial, not critical. That’s why I decided to educate myself.” Disillusioned even with academic curricula, Spyros had decided to ‘cut the ties’ (cf. Chapter 2) with old and mainstream kinds of education. However, he was well-read on a range of topics as he had taken education in his own hands. He highlighted the need to abandon the concept of discreet subjects of study:

How can I understand geography without sociology? And how can I understand sociology without history, economy, and ecology? They’re all parts of each other! But you know what? I won’t understand any of this if I don’t go and dig the soil as well, and eat and sleep with other

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people as well, and dream and build and create with them. This is what pedagogy should really be about, I think: To teach you how to be in the world, with others and yourself. – And these others are not just humans, they’re… all of life. Spyros

Not only did different subjects complement and build on one another, in Spyros’ view, but their insights could only be grasped if combined with actual engagement with the world, both human and non-human. This was the kind of education public schooling lacked: Dissatisfied with the theoretical approach, the limited perspectives, and the fragmentary character of their schooling, people at Telaithrion Project looked for more holistic learning grounds.

Starting from the conviction that harmonious coexistence can be learned, Free&Real’s school for self-sufficiency and sustainability aims to convey not only ecological, but social education. Apostolos explained:

All the Greek eco-communities of the seventies and eighties collapsed: None has survived. So we did some research and found that the reason was always the same: The ego, the lack of an understanding how to create something together – and also sometimes practical knowledge. So we thought, instead of making the same mistake, we go one step back, and don’t create an eco-community but a school in which to learn to become the kind of people who can create and live in such places. Apostolos

Visitors as well as crew-members habitually highlighted self-centredness and the inability to collaborate as serious limits to Greek attempts to social change. While more conventional narratives emphasise kinship bonds, cultural solidarity, and national pride to highlight the positive aspects of egoism (egotismos, Herzfeld 1986), Andreas explained it as an alienation from one’s environment characteristic of capitalist labour relations:

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In the city life that we often talk about, there is always a schedule, there are always things you need to do. And all these things circle around you: You get up, you go to work, you meet your friends, you go to sleep. And always you have to take yourself out of these situations again and move to the next one, because there is always something else waiting. Here, we circle not just around ourselves, but around the others, too, and around nature, so everything’s less self-centred, more mixed. Living here you learn how to live and interact with others, and with yourself, and you develop an understanding of what is important in life: The connections between living beings, rather than money, fame, or power. So it’s like… a school of life. Andreas

Free&Real conveyed the inspiration to realize that relationality can exist beyond commodity exchange relations and resource extraction. Anthropologists have long documented the culturally specific forms of authority of public education that foster agreement rather than objection and create ‘monocultures of the mind’ that perpetuate capitalist ideals of development and nature (Kopnina 2013; Escobar 1995; Ferguson 1994; Shiva 1993; Henry 1963). To recreate these relations, to ‘learn to be with oneself and others’ in harmonious and regenerative ways, is the aim and purpose of Telaithrion Project. The inspiration thus conveyed is to serve as motivation to take initiative, both ecological and social, to recreate one’s own relations and thereby to contribute to socio-environmental change. The belief that relational qualities can be self- taught and transformed presumes a particular kind of person, one who is free to change, who takes the liberty to develop herself along individually chosen lines. This kind of person and self is dissected in the following section.

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The Self and Society

We were sitting at the picnic bench in the Workshop yard, an old bedsheet covering the table and heaps of dried thyme spread out across it. Rubbing the twigs between our fingers separated the leaves and flowers from the wooden parts. The former were stored in large plastic containers and used for food preparation and souvenir gifts, while the latter were collected in bags for kindling. It was a meditative and fragrant task, and Thodoris’ phone was playing psy-trance tunes, amplified by a coconut shell. Themis, a visitor, expressed her dislike of electronic music. Thodoris replied: “But it’s not the music that creates these feelings, it’s your brain. Everything happens in the brain: Your thoughts and feelings, the impulses that move your body… everything that makes you you.” Themis disagreed and explained how she experienced music in her body rather than through her mind, and Thodoris replied that what she felt were physical impulses directed from the brain. Listening to their conversation I remembered a remark Apostolos had made about a year ago, during my initial visit to the project. Manthos had directed a small interactive game among visitors, in which four people attempted to lift a sitting person with their fingers only. After several failed attempts, Manthos made them stretch their arms to the sitting person’s head, where they piled up their hands under fervent cries. The following attempt succeeded, and everyone cheered in surprise. “How cool! It makes such a difference how you focus your energies” one of the visitors exclaimed. Apostolos, standing under the Workshop’s corrugated metal roof observing the scene, shot back: “What energies, re? There’s no ‘energies’: This is mental focus, you just focussed your brain on the task. Everything happens in the brain, everything.” Visitors and crew members’ understandings of the self, its expressions, and transformations were not always compatible, yet existed within the same space. While back then the absoluteness with which Apostolos endued mental focus caught my

131 attention, what struck me now was Thodoris’ insistence on one organ’s dominance over the self. Both men, in any case, maintained one organ’s power over the rest of the body.

Figure 10. Cleaning thyme. Picture taken by Apostolos Sianos. For some of Free&Real’s crew members, the brain’s central position within the body translated into precedence of mind over body. Apostolos especially held mental power in high esteem. When I suggested him to rest as stinging knee pain burdened his every move in late summer, he looked me straight in the eyes as he placed some power tools into his car. “This is how I get well, Elvira: By working, not by resting.” He meant that his body healed better through movement than through repose; however, the driving force for this convalescence came from a mind not easily cured of ideas. When he caught a heavy flu, he did not eat or drink at all, ‘starving the fever’ as the saying goes. He slept on the chill-out area of the Workshop and barely spoke; after three days, he got up, drank some water and ate some fruits, then drove to the Test Site to continue construction work. Attentive to the needs of his body, he

132 granted the mind ascendancy without, however, ignoring his physical needs. Others had yet to learn how to balance body and mind. In late spring, Spyros grew so enthusiastic about digging vegetable beds that he disregarded his increasing cough for several weeks. Apostolos told him to take it easy, then to rest, and then to see a doctor, but Spyros downplayed the issue. Finally, Apostolos insisted on taking the young man to a hospital in Athens (the medical centre in Istiaia was understaffed and ill-equipped due to austerity measures), where he had to be treated for advanced pneumonia. Spyros had forced his will on his body, and spent three weeks in hospital recovering. Comprehension of the interplay of body and mind could be acquired through attention to emotional and psychological aspects of the self. When premenstrual syndromes pressed down on my mood Apostolos gave me wild mint tea and willow extract. “They function as menstruation supports. You will feel like a super human again in no time!” he said and hugged me as I tried to hide my tears from him. He gave me the feeling that my emotional breakdown could be contained and rehabilitated through a biochemical safety net of herbal ingestion. It worked: The two herbs eased my abdominal cramps and cleared my melancholic mood. Ever since I have been using them and have recommended their healing effects to other women. Paying attention to one’s emotional states and psychological needs could lead to physical action. In this sense, the body appears regulated by the mind not through willpower, but through mental awareness and recognition. This mindfulness is what Andreas pointed to when he said that at Telaithrion Project, one learned how to live and interact with others and oneself: To develop cognitive awareness of one’s emotions allowed for an attentive understanding of one’s needs and desires. This understanding was fostered at the project through small acts as the one just described: Crew members encouraged each other to pay attention to their own physical, emotional, and psychological states. After Apostolos made me herbal tea, Anastasia showed me an app she had downloaded to her smartphone to track her menstrual cycle. The app provided a diary, calculations on ovulation and bleeding based on one’s own cyclic timeline, and explanations of the moon

133 phases. “Since I use this app I’m much more aware of why I feel how I feel. It’s really helpful” Anastasia told me. Observing and understanding the self was a crucial skill to learn at Telaithrion Project; it even formed the basis of the group’s decision making process as discussed in Chapter 6. Through cognitive mindfulness Free&Real members aimed to generate appreciative, holistic, and replenishing relations with self and other. Importantly, developing such mindfulness not only established ascendance of mind over body, but produced individual agency, as the following episode illustrates.

In August, Free&Real hosted a ten-day workshop that functioned as an introduction to self-sufficiency and sustainability. It was by far the most general of all workshops, aimed at people who had no prior knowledge about or experience with environmentalism. Therefore, Apostolos’ project presentation was slightly more general than usual, emphasising the vision of a global society in harmony with nature. After the project presentation, a young man raised his hand. He had followed Apostolos’ remarks attentively yet had frowned at times. Now he asked how Free&Real’s vision of change was to be achieved in the face of human imperfection. “How could it work, practically? Do you really think people are that good, in the end?” Apostolos was quick to answer:

People are inherently good. If there was the perfect society, nobody would fuck it up. It doesn’t make sense. I have read many studies about this: Psychologists and social scientists say that people are inherently good. […] So once we achieve a resource-based society35, […] you will do what you really want to, and you’ll have time to extend your mind and learn and understand and create things. Apostolos

The young man who had asked the question nodded slowly, but did not seem convinced. A few days later, he sat at the beach with Anastasia. With their legs

35 For discussion see Chapter 1

134 in the water, they were collecting and comparing pebbles, then throwing them back into the sea. I joined them and before long, he picked up on Apostolos’ remark. “If people are inherently good, then why are things the way they are? It’s obvious people have to change… I just don’t understand how to make them change.” Curious to hear Anastasia’s point of view, I remained quiet. After skipping a rock in a rather professional manner, she answered: “You can never change a person, never. Because that’s an influence from the outside. What can happen is development. But that’s different, because it’s from inside. Everybody can develop, and you maybe can inspire someone’s development, but the initiative, consciously or not, comes from within. So you can’t change others, but you can develop yourself. And that’s how you create your own reality.” Once again the young man nodded slowly, and before he could reply the conversation drowned in the sudden onslaught of a water fight.

Free&Real’s vision of social change built on the self’s creative agency. Change began with the development of mind-body balance. This was to release the goodness inherent in humans. The Free&Real webpage, authored by Apostolos, further explains what ‘being good’ entails: It emphasises “selfless giving” and “selfless service (not exchange)” as intrinsic human qualities (Free&Real n.d.). Mindfulness thus was thought to produce altruism: Aware of one’s emotions and in control of one’s needs and passions, individuals were to engage selflessly with their environment. The following chapter discusses the limits of this approach in depth; however, in Apostolos’ rational conceptualization, to overthrow such an altruistic society was nonsensical. The establishment of this ‘perfect’ society was to release individuals’ full potential through further cognitive expansion and creative engagement. Importantly, this engagement was to be embedded in the world. Returning to Thodoris and Apostolos’ focus on brain functions, their emphasis on the organ’s importance within the body appears as a metaphor for the self within the environment. Situated firmly inside the body and in constant correspondence with its parts, the brain was not imagined to dominate but rather coordinate the self. In a

135 similar fashion the individual, immersed in the collaborations and interconnections of existence, aimed to coordinate the environment. This understanding of self and other was reflected in the group’s radical environmentalism, whose consequentialist ethics demanded regenerative human acts (cf. Chapter 2). As the group aimed to ‘re-establish their environments and their needs’ in order to re-establish themselves and ‘become better than their own selves’ (Free&Real n.d., cf. above), they sought to prefigure social change through self-transformation. This was their response to contemporary capitalist relations in which individuals are mere docile consumers: Crew members and visitors aimed to transform themselves and their relations in ways that allowed them to ‘create their own reality’, to become active participants in shaping the world. ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’ thus carried meaning beyond late capitalist narratives of ethical choice and individuated self-will (Mostafanezhad 2014; Georgeou 2012; Muelebach 2011; Douglas & Ney 1998). It was a call to taking initiative, based on the belief in the self’s creative and prefigurative abilities. What taking initiative concretely looked like in the school of life is discussed in the following section.

Remix: Cultural Appropriation for Social Change

We were sitting at the picnic bench in the Workshop yard, sunny spots flickering through the shaded area as dry mulberry leaves rustled in the wind. A group of Finnish visitors had arrived a few days ago: They formed a travel group of ten, organised by a self-employed travel agent who offered uncommon holidays to the adventurous. He had contacted Apostolos a few weeks prior and they had agreed that the group could stay for one week. During their stay, we introduced them to life at Telaithrion Project and Free&Real’s environmentalism. This afternoon they were listening to Manthos’ elaborations of oral hygiene: We were making home-made toothpaste. As one visitor was

136 stirring the paste to homogenize the water, white clay, and soda, the conversation drifted to additives. “Fluoride is pretty much a scam. It’s a by- product of certain chemical processes, a waste product. But to increase profit, they started adding it to toothpaste, advertising it as healthy despite its damaging effects. It basically fucks up your mental cognition, like, you know, when you feel you’re in a tunnel? Like that. So it’s really bad for you.” One visitor, a young man in his early twenties, replied that he had only read positive reviews of the substance’s impact on health. Manthos scratched his head. “Of course you will not find out why fluoride is bad for you if you read studies sponsored by Bayer and Colgate. Studies – knowledge, in general – is not free from power. Of course it is not. You have to search for independent, unbiased studies. They do exist, and you can find them online.” The young man pulled out his smartphone from his pocket, and a few minutes later read to us some of fluoride’s negative effects: It is more toxic than lead, affects bones, brain, and thyroid gland, causes symptoms similar to arthritis, increases blood glucose levels, decreases male fertility, disrupts the endocrine system, and damages kidneys. “So why the hell would anybody put such a thing into toothpaste?” another visitor asked. “Good question”, Manthos answered. “Another question would be: Now that you know, what do you do? It’s your choice.”

Figure 11. Making toothpaste. Picture taken by Eleni Frantzi.

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At Telaithrion Project, knowledge production was closely linked to the internet. Free&Real maintained that information, as the basis of knowledge, was most wholesomely accessed via the internet. During project presentations, Apostolos described how the group had gained all their knowledge of yurt construction from online sources. “The internet has all the information you need. It’s all there, and it’s all free. The possibilities are endless!” With its sheer infinite amount of information, the internet represents the ideal medium for self-directed education. Free&Real’s celebration of computing and information technology goes back to the beginnings of the group. The first chapter of the thesis describes the inception of Free&Real via an online forum. The four founding members who moved to Agios two years later brought with them their passion for all things computing. Looking back, a regular of the project’s early years commented: “You walked into the yard and all you could find was psy- trance and four guys dressed in black staring into their screens. They sent each other mails instead of talking.” During fieldwork still, group communication was permeated by virtuality, especially via facebook threads. In general, the internet was the main source of information for crew members: ‘Doing research’ about vegan recipes, soap making processes, or plant growth meant finding, cross-checking, and evaluating online information. Only once did I see a crew member open a book in order to look up a particular piece of information: Apostolos once read up on the breeding patterns of flies in the Humanure Handbook (Jenkins 1999). While the internet certainly constituted the most convenient source of information (due, among other factors, to the project’s relative remoteness), its sustained celebration grew out of Free&Real’s longstanding focus on IT. This focus, in turn, had important implications for the group’s subject making mechanisms. In the introduction of this chapter I quote Free&Real’s objective. The quote ends with an appeal to live with the “the greatest possible freedom in education (information) and creative living” (Free&Real, n.d.). The separation of education and information through brackets implies their connectedness: They relate to each other along the lines of means and ends. Information forms

138 the basis of knowledge production, while education occupies itself with the ways in which knowledge is imparted. An attempt to equate the two would collapse the role of pedagogy: If education was merely a question of access to information, how could social norms be sustained? Social reproduction requires guided learning; it follows that certain kinds of guided learning generate social reproduction. This was Free&Real’s main critique of contemporary education: That critical thinking is sacrificed for the production of politically docile, market-driven consumerism. Challenging these conditions, they experimented with alternative kinds of education: From conspiracy theory documentaries to permaculture workshops, and from ‘learning by doing’ to online research, the group engaged an array of practices to educate themselves. While descriptions of such practices form the basis of much of my analysis the thesis at hand produces, their self-directedness points to the group’s pedagogy: Spyros’ example above speaks of taking agency for one’s education. Taking up this agency appears not as an obligation or a need, but as a liberty: Information access becomes a particular kind of freedom. Freedom in this sense signifies more a practice than a right (Laidlaw 2002), a process of self-transformation through the production and ethical application of knowledge36. The ethical becoming thus generated was to be consciously embedded in the world: Spyros pointed out the need to learn through actual engagement, and Free&Real argue for the ‘greatest possible freedom’, for lived rather than proclaimed freedom. In this sense, taking the liberty – or responsibility – to educate oneself is taking initiative; it was this transformational process the group aimed to inspire in others and to attain for themselves. To equate access to information with freedom is a basic pedagogical argument – it is also prevalent in IT and tech culture. Gabrielle Coleman (2013) shows ethnographically how American hackers create free software in response to laws and policies that protect intellectual property rights. In the process, they explicitly invoke concepts of

36 The previous chapter dissected how ethics were, in fact, applied situationally in pragmatic realist fashion.

139 freedom that emphasise personal control and autonomous production. They understand the creative expression of knowledge and inventions not as property but rather as speech to be freely shared, circulated, and modified. Thereby, hackers highlight the values of information access, self-cultivation, and self- expression as central to a free, liberal society. In a similar way, Free&Real deploy liberal concepts of personhood to critique liberal education patterns. Manthos stressed the need to critically assess online information for its accuracy, liability, and biases. Doing so he presupposed individuals’ ability to think critically, although all crew members repeatedly contended that contemporary education lacked critical engagement. He also presumed individuals’ unrestricted willingness and ability to access and process information. The rational individual who deliberately uses her social capital to foster her personal self-development evokes notions of Foucauldian self- conditioning (1988) and contemporary rationalizations of human capital development (Park 2010; O’Flynn & Petersen 2007; Rose 1996). Free&Real foster and deploy this concept to critique late capitalist reproduction of the self as docile consumer. In doing so, they offer a targeted critique of late capitalism by deploying and reproducing some of its very concepts.

“Everything is a remix”, Apostolos retorted when I complained about the sampling tendencies of his music taste. Habitually playing electronic tunes from his office speakers into the Workshop yard, today he had chosen trance remixes of psychedelic 1960s songs that hurt my ear and my heart. I had stepped into his office to face the blasting sound and to mock his insistence on new and novel kinds of music. “Well, this is a remix gone wrong”, I argued frowningly. “You’re so old-fashioned! You probably like the original best, right? I never listen to music produced before the 2000s. It’s not worth it. There’s so much new stuff coming out all the time.” We were shouting at each other, the music creating a noisy carpet muffling our voices. I pointed at his screens. “Like this? Yeah, very new, and very original too!” He smiled. “What, because it’s a remix? Everything is a remix. You think they were original in the

140 sixties? They stole from the fifties! Check out the ‘Media Project’, there’s a mini-series about it.” With this he ended the conversation as he turned the volume up, and I stepped out of the dim office into the sunny yard. Remixing or combining, interpreting, and balancing parts to create new and novel wholes is a practice not restricted to music recording – in its widest sense, it underlies all human endeavour to development inasmuch as this means combining available resources in creative ways. More specifically, the term ‘remix culture’ has been associated with the international Free or Open-Source Software movement, which encourages the re-using and remixing of software works (Coleman 2013; Lessing 2008). Growing out of this movement, Everything is a Remix is an audio-visual mini-series and corresponding website (n.d.) by film maker Kriby Ferguson, who understands remixing as a way “to combine or edit existing materials to produce something new” (Part 1 2010). The two initial videos of the series, available among others on Free&Real’s website under the heading ‘Media Project’, describe how entertainment media is largely based on covering and copying already existing material. The third video introduces creativity as driven not by individuals’ genius or mythical inspiration but made up of copying, transforming, and combining. To illustrate this argument the video recalls remixing methods of early computer development by Xerox and Macintosh. It ends by pointing out that the interdependency of human creativity has been obscured by powerful cultural ideas, but that technology now is exposing this connectedness through legal, ethical, and artistic expression (Part 3 2011). The final episode of the original mini-series begins by equating evolution, in which cells copy, transform, and combine, to social evolution, in which memes take the place of genes and new ideas evolve from old ones. The video traces the history of copy rights to portray the “growing dominance of the market economy where the products of our intellectual labours are bought and sold” (Part 4 2012). The video explains how, over the last 250 years, the attempt to build a robust public domain with intellectual achievements affordable to many was corrupted into privileged laws of intellectual property, malleable trade agreements, and absurdly vague

141 software patents. Ferguson suggests that the ‘common good’, a meme captured in 18th century American laws, needs to prosper again, so that the present social troubles can be addressed and laws, norms, and society can transform. The series ends with the motivating note that this ‘social evolution’ “is not up to governments, corporations, or lawyers. It is up to us” (ibid.). Overall, the mini- series points to the connectedness of ideas through copying, transforming, and combining information, presents this process as a deterministic evolution of knowledge, and argues for an individuated choice to partake in its creation. The deterministic evolution of knowledge will resurface in Chapter 6, which describes a different and at times conflicting kind of knowledge prevalent at the project. While the latter regulated the group’s social order, the creative engagement with information constituted Free&Real’s structural device for social change through self-transformation. Free&Real’s response to late capitalism deploys remix culture to create new and novel socio-environmental relations. Hackers understand remixing as creative artistic expression and a form of individual empowerment that re- formulates ideas about self-governance and autonomy (Lindtner 2014). At Telaithrion Project, creative cultural appropriation was used to transform both society and the self. Remix culture formed the basis of Free&Real’s knowledge production. The group creatively appropriated an array of practices, concepts, and insights from across the globe. They slept in yurts, traditional Mongolian round tents, which they adapted for their purposes. They experimented with Australian permaculture and Japanese Natural Farming, combining and altering the farming methods to suit both a Mediterranean climate and other requirements. They hosted workshops about Asian spiritual practices such as yoga and tai chi, and reinterpreted the corresponding non-animal diets to support their environmental endeavours. In this way, Telaithrion Project was a remix of many different bodies of knowledge, creatively re-used to forge something new. At the same time, it generated a space in which to engage with such remixing on individual terms, as it constituted a school in which to educate oneself towards ethical becoming through choosing appropriate

142 information from a wide virtual range. While the group’s cultural appropriation prefigured societal change, the self-directed remixing of information to generate new kinds of knowledge created new and novel concepts and practices of the self. The opening vignette of this chapter describes such creation; the final paragraphs are dedicated to making sense of this experience through the lens of Free&Real’s environmentalist endeavours.

The Prefigurative Self

After settling back into the UK, I signed up for an allotment plot and soon spent hours digging, weeding, and sowing. Having grown up with a large vegetable garden, I knew how to work the ground and had long been considering the possibility of growing my own produce. Yet it was only after my year at Telaithrion Project that I began putting this knowledge and wish into practice: I finally took initiative. The animation to actively pursue personal interests, practices, and convictions is a neoliberal strategy of subject-making insofar as it targets the creation of individuated consumers and docile citizens; it is also an important tool for social change as it encourages individuals to act upon their beliefs. In my case, it combined ethical, environmental, and political considerations into ecologically harmless and replenishing practices. While these were recreational and only modestly altered my economic relations to my nutritional needs, they constituted an engagement in the world that Spyros had pointed out as pivotal for educational purposes. They also triggered further considerations about the kind of person I aim to be. Anthropology’s principal method, participant observation, enabled me to partake most fully in Free&Real’s everyday practices; as these involved both conscious and unconscious re-establishment of the self, fieldwork made me mindful of my own transformations. Self-transformation is a continuous process of fragmented, embodied experiences and realizations, periods of which may

143 appear distinct only in hindsight. The opening account of this chapter as well as further episodes of personal experiences scattered throughout the thesis point to the self’s dividual, processual, and relational character (Smith 2012; Strathern 1988). Relating these episodes means fabricating subjective narratives of experiences and realizations whose analysis amalgamate the participant and the observer in me. While self-conscious reflection has provided the abstraction necessary for this Ph.D. project, it has also opened tactical and ethical considerations about the meaning, value, and applicability of education. I agree with Strathern (2005) that knowledge can and should be produced for its own merit and does not define its usefulness through any quantifiably measurable way. However, Manthos was right: Knowledge is intricately linked to power, and in line with this, a growing number of voices advocate for an applied anthropology that is grounded in political ecology and focussed on cultural diversity, social justice, and environmental sustainability (Veteto & Lockyer 2015; Nabhan 2013, 2008, 2002; Escobar 2001, 1995; Scheper-Hughes 1995). In this way, gardening practices have opened questions far beyond their scope. As I am finalising this Ph.D. project, I continuously experiment with new and novel concepts and practices of my self – some of them have certainly been inspired and motivated by Free&Real. While remix culture enabled different concepts and practices of selfhood to exist in the same space, that space at times became overcrowded with individuals. Subsequently, the boundaries between self and other, between individual and collective, had to be negotiated. It is these negotiations that the following chapters pays attention to.

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4 The Limits of Hospitality

Negotiations of Personal Space in a Temporary Place

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In June a young family came to visit for two nights: Working in Amsterdam for nine months a year and spending the rest travelling by van, the Israeli-Greek couple were looking for alternative ways to bring up their two young children outside mainstream educational systems and society. The man had grown up in the Netherlands and was now attempting to connect to his Greek roots as the couple entertained the idea of settling in his country of origin. We were eating dinner at the picnic bench in the Workshop yard, the mulberry trees laden with sweet fruits and the bees buzzing busily about. The five year old son was playing chase with Anastasia, his mother was feeding the younger daughter, and her partner took the opportunity to shower a stream of questions onto Apostolos. “What is Greek society like? How does the crisis influence your life? How is the mood in the countryside different from Athens? And what do you think about the state?” were some of the issues the man raised in an engaged manner. Apostolos answered in brief statements. “The Greeks are very Greek. The crisis doesn’t affect me. In the country side the birds are shot, in Athens they suffocate. And I don’t care about the state.” If the questions got too long, Apostolos simply cut them off by posing counter questions. “Do you feel what you do has an impact, I mean do you think you can reach out to people and make them see…” – “Why are you here?” Apostolos countered, meaning that the family’s presence was testimony of Free&Real’s outreach. All the while, he was looking down at his plate, shovelling spoonfulls of salad and vegipasta into his mouth and paying little attention to table manners or conversation conventions. After an awkward pause, the man resumed the unilateral inquisition, this time from an angle he hoped would strike a chord in the project’s only remaining founding member: “So, how did you decide to set up a community? Because we would also like to create a community, and have communal spaces, especially for the chil–“ Apostolos intervened: “This is not a community. It’s never been a community, and it never will be one.” Chewing on a generous spoonful of salad, Spyros placidly added: “It’s a project. People come to stay for a period of time, help and support the project, get inspired to do their own thing, and go off to do this thing. It’s not a place where people

146 stay and live forever, it’s just provisional. So we don’t need that much space here.” The man pondered this answer, then, in mild despair, made one more attempt to discuss what moved his life these days. “But what are the people in Greece like? Is it easy to connect with them?” – “You know the word philotimo?” Apostolos asked. “No”, the man replied, “What does it mean?” At this point Apostolos got up, took his plate and spoon down to the sink, washed them and went into his office. Spyros and I were left to explain the concept of philotimo, a complex construct of virtues that sum up Greek conceptions of honourable and dignified behaviour and extend to social norms of hospitality.

Free&Real crew members insisted that theirs was not a community but a project. What they meant was that they constructed their initiative not as the building up of permanent settlement such as an eco-village, but as temporary engagement that will eventually be completed. At the same time, Telaithrion Project seemed a transitory space marked by a constant flow of visitors and new, returning, and leaving crew members. Spyros’ comment points to one of the effects of this situation: Framed as temporary and transitory, the project did not provide a lot of space. More specifically, all available space was shared, while private space was barely available. However, the longer crew members stayed, the more they felt the need to carve out space for themselves. While negotiations about the personal self and the communal other are integral to intentional communities (Sargisson 2010; Kamau 2002; Shenker 1986; Bennet 1975; Hostetler 1974), eco-projects commonly open their grounds to visitors and passers-by. They thus add to these negotiations the layer of hospitality, which itself is a negotiation between other and self. They therefore constitute fertile grounds in which to examine the effects of community on practices of hospitality. At Telaithrion Project, these negotiations were carried out physically and metaphorically within the realms of space, and emotionally within the realms of time. They affected the group’s hospitality, as visitors repeatedly felt unwelcome at the project when they interpreted crew members’ spatio-temporal

147 negotiations as inhospitality. This stood in contrast with the group’s efforts to foster hospitality as a political tool towards social change. Their endeavours to accommodate others built on creating a feeling of togetherness they expressed with the term friendship. This kind of friendship is grounded in an intentional sharing of one’s time and space. As an emotion, it comprises what scholars working on civil society initiatives and social change variously identify as affective bonds (Jasper 2011) or social glue (Meijering at al. 2007). Its practices are based on deliberately spending time with each other, voluntarily sharing the same space, and intentionally relating to the other in attentive and perceptive ways. Rather than static and invariant, friendship naturally follows cyclical social and emotional group dynamics, its ebbs and flows subject to the delicate and multi-layered interplay of interpersonal sociality. However, Free&Real’s online appearance created an image of friendship as constant and continuous, and of extending to all visitors through the group’s altruistic hospitality. This seemingly ‘free gift’ of friendship shaped visitors’ expectations and clashed with lived project reality in which space and time constituted obligations in the exertive gift exchange of hospitality. The chapter at hand investigates into Free&Real’s practices of hospitality in order to shed light on the ways in which self-other relations and their negotiations of space and time impacted on the group’s endeavours to social change. I suggest that Free&Real’s insistence on constituting a project rather than a community brought to the fore the spatio-temporal limits of hospitality. Specifically, I argue that the project’s conceptualization as a temporary, transitory place resulted in a lack of private space, which subsequently had to be carved out by crew members. This carving out of personal space, in turn, twisted hospitality into its opposite in the experiences of visitors. To trace the circumstances that led to such experiences, the chapter first delineates the conceptualization of Telaithrion Project as a temporary and transitory place. It then goes on to describe how a sense of friendship captured both crew and visitors in spring 2016, before discussing hospitality as a political tool for social change. The chapter then dissects how crew members

148 negotiated space and time to balance personal self and communal other, before delving into the ways in which visitors experienced hospitality at Telaithrion Project. Fathoming out Free&Real’s limits of hospitality importantly adds to the understanding of how the intricate interplay of different forms of intimate relatedness shaped the group’s endeavours of socio-environmental change; it does so by investigating into the lived experiences of self-other relations and how these, in turn, impacted on the group’s endeavours to recreate social relations in meaningful ways.

A Temporary, Transitory Place

After the young family had washed their dishes and spoons at the sink in front of the Workshop’s entrance, I saw the parents peering at the A1 laminated print of the Mountain Site’s model that was pinned to the door. With its clustered yurts and geodesic domes amongst a lush food forest, this model looked very different from what they had stepped into. I remembered the countless times crew members had explained the set-up of the learning centre

Figure 12. Model of the school for self-sufficiency and sustainability. By Free&Real.

149 to-be. In particular, I remembered Manthos’ explanation, as it struck me as peculiar in its emphasis. “The five smaller yurts are for one person each, a screen and a mattress each – but they are connected to the bigger, central yurt, where you’ll have a server and a communal room. Like this, you have both privacy and community, because of course we humans need both.” This description not only reflects Free&Real’s focus on IT and computing in all areas of life (cf. Chapter 3), it also speaks of a clear conceptualization of spatial balance between self and community (for discussion see below). Despite the transitory character of educational spaces, individuals were recognised to need privacy away from the group. Part of this reasoning reflects the fact that the school’s architecture and lay-out were designed to function as a model display for permanent cohabitation. As such, the end product of the project was to physically display the possibility of permanence while being maintained through transitory engagement. Yet while the end-product of the project was to provide private space, the place that constituted Telaithrion Project during fieldwork did not. The reasons were, as expressed by Apostolos and Spyros, the temporary character of the project and the transitory engagement of individuals. When Free&Real moved to Evia six years ago, they quartered in the Workshop as they were clearing the Test Site from brambles overgrowth before beginning to construct the Fist yurt. To make the Workshop liveable, they built quick and basic sanitary constructions, followed by an extension of the brick building. All this they built with salvaged wood ranging from doors and desks to pallets and boards. This infrastructure was created for short-term use and subsequently became more and more ram-shackle over time. The Test Site, on the other hand, constituted a place built for medium-term use: Its name designates an experimental testing ground for more permanent implementations on the Mountain Site. Despite these conceptualizations, to this day everyday life at Telaithrion Project includes both spaces, although the completion of the Hexa yurt’s kitchen after fieldwork marked an important step in making the Test Site a more permanently liveable place and independent from the Workshop. In any case, during fieldwork all built space was shared among crew members, and

150 most of it was accessible to visitors37. While the conceptualization of Telaithrion Project as temporary reflected the initiative’s definition as project rather than community, the sharing of space grew out of the narrative of transitory engagement. Free&Real was a fluctuating and shifting group of people. As individuals arrived, engaged with the project, and moved on, space was not to be occupied privately but rather to be shared38. However, despite Free&Real’s conceptualization of Telaithrion Project as temporary and transitory, the lived everyday produced relative permanence in the experience of crew members. As we spent our days between the Test Site and the Workshop, we all felt the need to carve out private space for ourselves. While this feeling was augmented by the fact that unremitting streams of visitors crowded the project space at all times, the interplay of crew members and visitors at times also created joyful conviviality and a sensation of friendship. The following section describes this experience.

Friendship at Telaithrion Project

My light-blue shirt was stained with brown varnish, as I had spent the morning painting a window frame. I wore a washed-out pair of burgundy shorts, partly ripped at the bottom by a protruding nail in some wooden board. My bare feet were muddy up to the calves from stomping the mixtures of natural materials for construction. We had been working on the Test Site’s latest building, the Hexa yurt, for several weeks, constructing the walls and interior parts of the ground floor which was going to be a kitchen. We were

37 Visitors had limited access to the kitchen, the Crew Room, and the Office.

38 As the only permanent member, Apostolos had made the Office his abode. While this reflected his role as manager and administrator of Telaithrion Project (see Chapter 6), it granted him more privacy than anybody else had. Visitors repeatedly pointed to this fact in their evaluation of place and people; however, I am here interested not in dissecting individuals’ proportionate occupation of space but in the impact spatial negotiations had on the group’s hospitality.

151 building with cob, a mixture of clay, sand, straw, and water, and the process was slow, dirty, and a lot of fun. It was the first time the entire crew and all the visitors worked together, and as the merry month of May spread its floral décor and bird song across the island, life at Telaithrion Project was at its jolliest. Cutting boards for the circumferential balcony, Apostolos was whistling a merry tune over the rattling of the generator that powered his jigsaw. Anastasia was hanging half-suspended between some wooden frames, mud-dripping straw in her hands and laughing, as Moka was teasing Léon about his building technique. Giorgos and Marijuara had covered their faces in mud and pretended to be Native Americans stalking an invisible buffalo. I was bending over the wheelbarrow that contained the latest building mix, scooping handfuls into my bucket. Spyros called over to me: “Oh El-viral, can you give me some material too, please?” – “Sure thing – ‘cause I am a material girl!” I exclaimed singingly, mocking popstar Madonna’s mid-1980s hit. Roaring laughter resounded from all six corners of the Hexa yurt, and I looked around and saw the happy faces of my friends in the sunshine.

Figure 13. Happy muddy faces. All three pictures takenA by Katerina Katalathos.

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Figure 14. Construction work. Both pictures taken by Katerina Katalathos.

A workshop on natural building had kick-started the construction of the kitchen in the hexagonal three-storey tower that constituted Free&Real’s latest building effort. Four participants stayed on from the workshop; among them French retiree Léon, whose wrinkly blue eyes sparkled amusedly behind thick glasses as he heartily engaged in the physical labour. He had worked as a cheese maker, shepherd, social worker, and musician in France and Switzerland and waited for his delayed pension payment while visiting eco-projects around Europe. Also staying on after the workshop was returning visitor Raye, a slender young woman from South Africa who had spent her teenage years in the UK and longed to create an eco-community. She had first visited in late autumn and returned in spring for a prolonged period of time. Calm and kind- hearted, Raye was good at balancing the different moods she met at the project. Giorgos, 35, was unemployed in Athens and felt that at the project, he could be of help and at the same time enjoy himself. His energetic engagement and relaxed attitude added to the jolly industriousness of the group, and he pondered

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Figure 15. Kitchen dance. Picture taken by Anastasia. the possibility of becoming part of the crew. Finally, there was 19-year-old Marijuara. She had grown up in the town of Kalamata on the Peloponnesus, had been working as a waitress since the age of 16, and was as of yet uncertain what she wanted to study. To get inspiration, she followed a friend’s advice to visit Telaithrion Project, and her stay outlasted the end of my fieldwork. No-none could resist joining in her loud and cheeky laughter as she good-humouredly engaged in every aspect of project life. With Thodoris in Athens, crew and visitors amounted to ten people, and for about ten days no other visitors joined. During this short yet intense period, we spent the mornings with construction work, eating fruits we had brought from the Workshop the night before. When the heat increased around 2 or 3 o’clock, everyone went for a swim in the nearby sea, followed by a beach walk, a card game, or a yoga session. When it was time to cook, two or three people went to the Workshop, while the rest resumed construction work. Yet since we all agreed that the greenness of the Test Site was more beautiful than the concrete-dominated Workshop, we daily

154 brought the food from Agios to Agiokampos. In this way, the group spent nearly all their time together and mostly shared the same space with each other. In itself, this was not unusual: From May to October, the project hosted an average of twenty people before the numbers dropped by about half during winter months. Everyday life took place at the Workshop and the Test Site, extended by the nearby beach. The Workshop contained some semi-private areas, as the Crew Room was meant for crew members, and the Office was Apostolos’ abode. Despite these spaces, however, solitariness was extremely rare for crew members as they spent virtually all their time on the project premises39: Only Manthos, Karmen, and I habitually went for walks, and Apostolos and Anastasia drove to the towns for food shopping once or twice a week. As Workshop and Test Site were separated by around 4.5 kilometres, the movement between these two spaces also had to be coordinated. Electricity and internet connection were only available at the Workshop, and food preparation and consumption usually took place there as well. Apostolos drove the bright blue project car, while an older and more erratic vehicle served as standby and was driven by Anastasia, Thodoris, or Andreas. Moka had her own car, while Spyros and I did not possess driving licences. Some visitors drove, while others arrived by public transport or hitch-hiking and had to be considered in terms of car space. Transportation between the two sites – and up the mountain, whenever we visited the Mountain Site – thus further delimited peoples’ movements and defined their whereabouts spatiotemporally. As a result, physical space was necessarily shared. However, while shared space usually was an inevitability, those days in May we deliberately spent all our time together, not just during work processes but also during the many hours spent relaxing, playing, or passing time. We voluntarily shared space, coordinating even our sleeping arrangements as we all slept in the Hexa yurt’s upper floors. And we attentively observed and enquired into each other’s moods, emotions, and wellbeing through conversations and non-verbal interaction. In other

39 The spontaneity and irregularity of work and leisure time constituted one factor for this, see Chapter 5.

155 words, we intentionally and intimately shared each other’s lives. Marijuara, Giorogs, Raye, and Léon felt very welcome. “I’m having a great time, I feel very connected to all of you”, Léon smiled one evening under the large olive trees. “Yes, I agree, it’s so much fun! This is what I imagine for my eco- community, once I get to set one up”, Raye declared. Another night, Giorgos, Marijuara, and I were at the beach. “I’m glad I came here. I found friends”, Giorgos said as he lit a cigarette. “Hmhm, me too. I didn’t expect that, it’s great here”, Marijuara nodded. Those days in May, Telaithrion Project was a welcoming place as conviviality engulfed both visitors and crew members. As we slept, worked, ate, and relaxed together, as we shared an environmental outlook and were invested in furthering the project’s endeavours, and as we revealed our life stories through conversations and our strengths and limitations through interactions, friendships developed between all of us. Throughout my fieldwork visitors and crew members pointed out how rapidly and deeply such friendships evolved within project life, and unanimously named the sharing of space and time as main reason. “I spent a week with you and feel I know you guys better than most of my friends. It’s just that we spent all day together, so we have so much time to talk, and do things together. That’s quite different from how I see my friends, because I just go for a coffee with them once or twice a week” one Greek visitor in her late twenties pondered at the beginning of fieldwork. Almost a year later, Marijuara expressed the same experience: “It’s nice being here, I feel we’ve become friends already, because we’re together all day.” The implications of friendship for fostering social change are, of course, manifold: It can become the organizational basis for prefiguration and maybe even amount to the destruction of tyrannical power; at the same time, it can put at risk the endeavours of social movements as its emotional dynamics may destabilize goals or reproduce inequalities (Maeckelbergh 2009; Derrida 2005; Klatch 2004; Summers-Effler 2002; Simmel & Wolff 1950). At Telaithrion Project, the bonds of friendship created feelings of joyful conviviality. This was closely related to Victor Turner’s ‘communitas’ (1969), a non-hierarchical social and emotional bonding

156 created in the course of shared liminality. Turner found liminality, or the threshold stage in rituals, to be marked by relative powerlessness and in- between-ness. This interrupts normative social relations and allows for intense feelings of closeness. Similarly, those ten days were marked not by the group’s regular hierarchy (for discussion see Chapter 6) but by an equality and amicability to which both crew members and visitors referred as friendship. The sensation of ‘communitas’ is notoriously fleeting and ephemeral, and while Free&Real’s friendship marked less euphoric and more lasting social bonds of amicable dispositions they were, nevertheless, subject to socially determined cycles. The beginning of June marked the end of this joyful conviviality, as the group seemed saturated with sharing space and time. Before describing the ensuing spatio-temporal negotiations between crew members, however, I discuss friendship as a kind of hospitality.

Hospitality and the Subversion of Urban Anonymity

Arriving at the project site, Andreas hurled his backpack onto the pallet bench, stretched out his arms, and yelled “I’m back!” I dropped the laundry basket and ran to greet him, while Spyros and Anastasia were already clinging on to his shoulders, whooping with joy to see their friend again. Andreas had had some debt due to a minor car accident and had left the project for about a month in mid spring to gather money. He had worked at the hotel in Athens at which he used to be employed. By early May he returned, and the dark circles around his eyes contrasted with the youthful look of his unusually clean-shaved beard. “You look shit”, Spyros teased him. “What did they do to you in Athens?” Andreas laughed and took a deep breath. “Poooo, Athens… Life has a different rhythm there. Everything is faster: So many people and cars everywhere! And everything is slower, because everything takes ages… In the city there is a lot of stress. And there is mistrust. You can see it in people’s eyes, they are afraid. Here we trust each other, we are more relaxed.” He

157 tousled Anastasia’s hair and they started play-fighting. Thodoris nodded and scratched his head. He and Anastasia had been drinking coffee on the pallet benches before, and he lighted his half-smoked roll-up cigarette before he said: “Yes, I know what you mean. City life brings out the differences in people, and the lifestyle we live here makes the differences between us smaller. We are very different, but somehow we sit down and talk, and do things together. In the city lifestyle, you are more alone.” Both men felt that the urban everyday was dictated by stress and feelings of distrustful anonymity. It was usually after returning from Athens that crew members complained about life in the capital. After paying a visit to her parents, Anastasia once told me: “Life is too chaotic there, you cannot imagine. It’s so dirty and hot and loud. The traffic is incredible. Too many people, too few trees – and nobody speaks with each other!” Anonymous, hectic, and polluted, Greece’s capital had little appeal for the crew members of Free&Real. Their shared aversion to urban settings and their collective longing for alternative forms of sociality fuelled the feeling of friendship. Andreas’ assurance of trust and Thodoris’ affirmation of diminished difference speak of social and emotional bonding40. In Greece, as elsewhere, urban life is not only the norm for most – Athens alone holds half the country’s population – but is also aspired to, as it is depicted as diverse, progressive, and modern. Crew members’ wish to get away from urban life was often not comprehensible to others: “My friends don’t understand why I want to stay here, they think I’m crazy to leave Athens” Anastasia told me one evening as we were picking parsley for the salad. Finding people who accepted and supported one’s choices therefore marked an important aspect of friendship at Telaithrion Project. On the first evening of his initial visit, Spyros tilted his head back in a gesture of relief and called out: “Finally, this is a place where I meet others who think like me!” For years he had tenaciously defend his veganism, his decision to drop out of university, and his wish to leave city life. Arriving at Telaithrion Project he

40 Chapter 5 illustrates how this bonding was also conceptualized via kin relations or ‘being like a family’.

158 felt he had found like-minded people to whom he could relate, and this relationality formed the basis of friendship at the project.

Shortly after Andreas had returned, Marijuara arrived at the project. The first few days after her arrival she barely spoke, and her large brown eyes seemed to observe everyone and everything with mistrust and shyness. By the end of the month, her laughter seemed to vibrate through the Test Site incessantly. Andreas, who always generously shared his social observations with me, commented:

It’s good that she is here, I think she learns a lot. The way we grew up, we didn’t learn what it means to be nice to each other. You know, helping each other, working together, trusting each other. So in terms of social and emotional growth, she gains a lot here. And I can already see it.

I asked him why he thought an Athenian boy and a girl from Kalamata had grown up in socially similar ways.

Kalamata is a town, you know, a small city. Not like Athens or Thessaloniki. So the people in these small towns, they often have the worst from both sides, from the country side and the city. Because they think they live in a city, they have the whole swag and ‘let’s buy frappe41 from a coffee chain’ style – but of course they don’t live in a city with diversity, and so they are stuck in their beliefs like the villagers. The country side people, at least they have their fields, you know, and nature. But in small towns you have nothing. And come on, she’s been working in a cafeteria since she was 16, earning her own money to be independent from her parents. This is not a nice thing to do when you’re that young.

41 Cold instant coffee beverage immensely popular in Greece

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Five years Marijuara’s senior, Andreas contended that mutual trust, help, and cooperation were not fostered during their generation’s upbringing, and as a consequence young adults often lacked social and emotional skills. He observed Marijuara’s changes as she gained trust in crew members, began to engage in the daily tasks, and started enjoying herself. His critique spanned the dissociation of consumption with social relations, the alienation from nature through urban infrastructure, and familial dysfunction in urban settings, while pointing to further, rural, issues discussed already in Chapter 1. Such critique of social relations echoes classic sociological descriptions of modern cities that dissect how capitalist structures of impersonality foster mutual aversion and repulsion of individuals (Simmel & Wolff 1950; Tönnies 2001 [1887]; Engels 2012 [1844]). Like other crew members, Andreas felt that life in the city fostered alienation and anonymity. By contrast, crew members contended that project life cultivated a sense of togetherness, or friendship. Opening the project to visitors at all times, the group attempted to extend their friendship beyond the crew. The merry days in May illustrate how friendship bonds engulfed both crew members and visitors. The goal to foster relations not grounded in capitalist commodification prompted Free&Real to accept visitors all year around. However, hosting strangers is a delicate undertaking: Social scientists contend that hospitality is ambiguous and ambivalent, as it seeks to contain potential danger through ritualized forms of socialization that include, incorporate, and subordinate the guest to the host. The stranger may disrupt the sameness of the group by introducing an element of difference and, possibly, contestation. This difference is risky for hosts and guests alike, and thus has to be contained (Onuf 2009; Introna & Brigham 2008; Douglas 2004 [1966]; Derrida 2000; Smith 2010 [1989]; Herzfeld 1987b) Yet, at Telaithrion Project, visitors were actively sought in order to disseminate the group’s environmental beliefs. This implies a more politicized approach to hospitality, as recently taken by Carine Farias (2017), who discusses acts of sociality in an intentional community. The scholar contends that urban

160 anonymity is subverted by reflexive and intentional acts of hospitality-as- friendship that create bonds of togetherness. Describing hospitality as a form of friendship that disregards instrumental calculations (Aristotle & Rackham, 1982), Farias shows its potential to challenge hierarchy, obedience, ideology, and a sociality based on impersonal relationships (2017:579). This potential she delineates thus:

The advent of modernism saw a pronounced separation between the private and public spheres (Silver 1990), increasingly tying friendship to intimacy and personal choice. According to Smith (2000) and other classic liberal thinkers, this produced a morally superior form of friendship cleansed of any instrumental calculations. At the same time, it created a space between friends and enemies that was filled by acquaintances and indifferent strangers. The making of a society of strangers facilitated the spreading of liberal universal markets: In a society of anonymous individuals, anyone can enter into an exchange relation and be replaced without impact (Simmel & Wolff 1950). Hence, practising friendship as a hospitable disposition requires a radically different conceptualization of the Other. A culture of hospitality, which constitutes a questioning and refusal of a society consisting of indifferent and interchangeable individuals, makes it impossible to stay indifferent to the Stranger. Practising hospitality […] promotes an idea of community based on an ethical proximity of the other as a matter of justice (Introna 2008). Farias 2017:582

According to Farias, the creation of personal bonds between hosts and guests subverts urban anonymity through eradication of indifference. The creation of affective closeness opposes alienating isolation, indifference that obstructs relationality, and the impersonal anonymity of progress through capitalist exchange relations. This is a systematic and reflexive engagement of hospitality

161 for political ends of social change, and resonates closely with Free&Real’s rejection of urban alienation and their endeavours towards more meaningful relations.

Despite their endeavours to conviviality and friendship, Free&Real took money for visitors’ stay. Their hospitality thus was not free from capitalist exchange relations. As laid out in the standardised initial e-mail that each prospective visitor received from Apostolos, visitors were not expected to work and could spend their time relaxing. Neither should they expect to be taught in the ways of the project, as such teaching was reserved for ‘volunteers’ 42 and ‘prospective crew members’ (cf. Appendix ii; for discussion of teaching see Chapter 3). These latter statuses were to be acquired through repeated engagement and an organic flow of entering and assimilating with the project (for discussion see Chapter 6). In return for they stay, then, visitors were asked to pay a ‘voluntary contribution’ of €14/day for accommodation, food, and transport. Crew members stayed at the project free of charge, had unrestricted access to most of the project’s resources (excluding cash), and worked to maintain and advance the project. Without the opportunity for work in exchange of board and lodging, visitors equalled paying guests on holidays. “You don’t have to do this, I’ll do it in a bit”, or “you can join if you like, but you can just go to the beach instead” were crew members’ frequent answers to visitors’ work requests. Of course, visitors did engage in project tasks, but often they had to insist, and then would be given maintenance chores like chopping vegetables for dinner or cleaning the living room. Augmented by workshops, where participants paid a set amount for the advertised product that included practical and theoretical sessions as well as a visit to the spa hotel along with

42 During my fieldwork nobody was designated as volunteer, but in January 2018 the group achieved European Voluntary Service status and have since been able to advertise and assign four one-year placements as well as several short- and medium-term volunteer spots.

162 food, accommodation, and transport43, the accommodation of visitors at times did resemble a tourist retreat. Such arrangements are far from uncommon in eco-projects. They regularly gain their cash income through the hosting of workshops and seminars, as well as through suggested contributions from visitors (GEN n.d.). Utilizing capitalist exchange relations to engage with visitors reflects the fact that eco-projects, despite their ideological rejection of alienating capitalist relations, nevertheless exist within a capitalist environment. Faced with the necessity to generate monetary income, asking for donations constitutes another aspect of pragmatism (cf. Chapter 2). At Telaithrion Project, Apostolos handled the payment of visitors. He habitually deducted part of the expenses for those who stayed more than a couple of days, while friends and family of crew members stayed entirely free of charge. Additionally, he unfailingly gave everyone generous home-made souvenirs in form of dried herbs, jam, and tooth paste. If visitors were not in a position to pay, they could still arrange a visit: Jungmi, the Korean woman whose story forms part of Chapters 3 and 5, stayed with the project for two months without paying. She actively engaged in project life in exchange for board and lodging. In this way, the suggested donations were indeed voluntary and the accommodation of visitors was not defined first and foremost via capitalist exchange relations. Instead, hospitality was seen as a way to actively inspire and transform social relations through emotions of friendship and practices of sharing time and space. The latter, however, was limited by the project’s temporariness. As nearly all space and time were shared, crew members had to negotiate the personal and the collective via seclusion, which had unintended effects on the group’s hospitality.

43 With the advent of Free&Real’s Spiral Knights eco-festival, the focus on monetary exchange has further increased as festival goers choose between different ‘packages’ ranging from simple camping space and access to free sessions, to more elaborate arrangements including pre-paid workshops and food vouchers.

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Spatial and Temporal Negotiations

The first weeks of summer carried tensions as our hands were getting tired from construction work and our eyes longed to exchange the brown cob with green leaves and blue sky. The group had been working on the walls and kitchen for about six weeks every single day, spending several hours daily labouring side by side. As skills and knowledge accumulated, communication increasingly changed from cheerful jesting to didactic instruction. This created tensions as some members felt patronized by others. Specifically, Moka and Apostolos seemed very concerned about the ways in which the construction progressed and continuously supervised and inspected others’ work. When this supervision spilled into other aspects of project life, it became unbearable for other crew members and visitors who felt they were ordered around. Andreas finally called an ‘emergency meeting’, an assembly of everyone present. Free&Real did not entertain regular gatherings for affective exchange, and the sporadic meetings we held were informative in character. Emergency meetings were called when emotional tension had built up between people. We gathered under the large olive trees at the Test Site at around 11pm, and Andreas opened the meeting by thanking everyone for coming, before describing the situation. He appealed:

Give us some space! We are all in this together, we all share this space. We spend almost all our time together, and its normal to not agree on everything the others do. But nobody likes to be told what to do all the time. It’s important to give each other some space! Andreas

He was referring to space metaphorically, as an arena in which social relations were negotiated. Asking someone to give something implies that it is in their possession: Andreas felt that some crew members were occupying more space than others and asked for this apportionment to be equalled. Chapter 5

164 discusses the same emergency meeting where his call to equality resurfaces as a refutation of kinship relations and a claim to shared adulthood. Here, Andreas hinted at the transgression of personal boundaries, which demarcate what contains the individuated self. This self constitutes a processual psychological construct unique to an individual person within a specific social context (Morris 1994; Hallowell 1976, 1955; Mauss 2002 [1924]). Through this self individuals come to know themselves in their surroundings. Therefore, the “crucial dialectic [of selfhood is] between the self and his or her environment, mediated via social praxis” (Morris 1994:13; see also Morris 1991; Brewster Smith 1978). The self, in other words, is shaped and understood through engagement and interaction with its environment, and in this engagement, personal boundaries are negotiated. What shapes these engagements took, and how they contributed to personal development, are questions discussed in Chapters 3 and 6; however, their dialectic is of importance here as a limit to hospitality’s accommodating practices. At Telaithrion Project, boundaries between the self and the collective other were negotiated within the physically shared space of the project. Crew members responded to the inevitability of shared space by carving out personal space. They did so not by leaving the project premises, but through seclusion. After several months at the project, Manthos had built a small triangular shed on short stilts44. Contrary to the yurts, the shed – which the group called Pod – had no insulation and proved to not be completely waterproof. Nevertheless, Manthos preferred it to the project’s communal sleeping arrangements: “When you have two people snoring, one sleep-talking, and one grinding teeth, you just go crazy at some point. You need some space to yourself.” Similarly, Karmen had been in charge of cooking for about six months when she requested the small two-seater sofa to be moved from the living room into the kitchen. Thodoris and I carried it over, and she decorated the far corner of the rather gloomy space with table cloths and flowers. She relocated her computer

44 Apostolos’ narrative about how this building was conceptualized and built differs. I here follow Manthos’ comments during a conversation about privacy and space.

165 shortly afterwards and from then on spent whole days secluded in the kitchen. She never gave explicit reasons for this move, but Apostolos commented that “it seems this is Karmen’s way to show us that she wants more space”. He himself worked daily in his office, into which others only stepped if they had explicit business with him. Despite the work he did for the project, this gave him time and space away from others. Finally, when Anastasia temporarily moved her bed into the vacant Fist yurt, she exclaimed: “Ah, I slept perfect last night! It’s great to sleep alone, I didn’t think of it before. Maybe sometimes you really need it, to just be alone.” She enjoyed having the space to herself and recognised solitariness as a necessity. The longer they stayed at the project, the more crew members felt the need to carve out personal space through partial seclusion. This they did not only physically but also metaphorically through disengagement, in order to maintain their personal boundaries. The following episode illustrates this situation.

As spring was coming to an end and the project spaces became more populated, the Hexa yurt’s interior took shape. Apostolos had first told me that he planned to make the top floor his private room, but later he decided that both upper floors were to be the crew members’ stronghold. With a bookshelf, a number of mattresses, a circumferential balcony, and a kitchen to-be, the Hexa yurt was reserved for crew members and close friends of the group. Spatially demarcating the crew from visitors, the building carved out a collectively private space. However, reflecting the wider project premises, the Hexa yurt emerged as a place in which boundaries were crossed and private space had to be negotiated. One rare night, Anastasia and I were alone on the building’s upper floor. We had been talking for hours about our goals and dreams, and I was finally about to fall asleep when she told me a story that made me roar with laughter.

You won’t believe what happened the other day. I hadn’t slept well at night, because Spyros was snoring all night and Andreas was sleep-

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talking in Russian or something. Then, just before it got to day, I finally fell asleep. I was so happy! But at seven thirty, Kostas pulled open the door and started screaming. I don’t even know why he was here, maybe he wanted us to carry some wood or something. I was deeply asleep, and I woke up with a big shock – it was too much. Andreas was lying next to me, and I thought it was bad for him, too. So I wanted to make things better and I said to him ‘ok, that was not the best way to wake up’. And Andreas? He just farted really loudly, really bad, and then he turned around and said ‘That’s my answer’. Imagine! It was impossible to happen! I really didn’t know what to say. I mean, there were no words to describe how my day started. So I just put on my sunglasses and climbed downstairs and didn’t speak to anybody until we were at the Workshop. Anastasia

Andreas’ ‘answer’ to Kostas’ shouting may have been a way to sustain personal boundaries by demonstrating how little he cared for the latter’s demands about getting up. However, at the same time Andreas’ gutsy reaction transgressed Anastasia’s boundaries already impaired by Kostas, a project regular, as well as by the nightly intricacies of shared sleeping space. In order to restore them,

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Figure 16. The Hexa yurt by night. Picture taken by Katerina Katalathos. Anastasia responded in surprisingly concrete ways, as she armoured herself with sunglasses and refused to talk. This disengagement was a way to maintain the personal boundaries that contained the space of her personal self. Unfortunately, visitors who were not aware of this process misunderstood its implications. A Greek visitor in his late thirties had arrived the previous night. Unaccustomed to the ways of the project, he asked Anastasia about breakfast. “She didn’t even bother to answer my question. It seemed like I was a burden”, he observed later the same day and added: “If they don’t like having so many visitors, that’s fine. But making people feel unwelcome is not nice either.” Unaware of Anastasia’s need to maintain personal boundaries, he perceived her disengagement with others as unaccommodating. In the shared space of the project premises, maintaining personal boundaries at times overrode crew members’ ability to be accommodating hosts.

At the same time, the project’s large turnover of visitors rendered time a scarcity to be divided between the self and the other. The place was so well- advertised that, according to Apostolos’ book-keeping, close to 15.000 people had passed through it within the six years of its existence. This constant stream of individuals supplied a network of returning visitors and friends – but it also meant that crew members constantly had to open their temporary home to strangers. As a result, crew members felt the weight of the temporary and transitory place in emotional dimensions:

I’m not a person who opens very easily. It’s hard work to let people into my life, and if someone is here only for a few days it’s very difficult for me to meet them. I prefer having time to myself instead of talking ten minutes with somebody I’ll never see again. You understand? Because I spend almost all my time with you guys, and so I enjoy having some time to myself. That’s the only thing I don’t like so much about the project: That there’re always new people and that they leave again. Anastasia

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As she stayed almost exclusively at the project premises, Anastasia often chose to not spend time with short-term visitors and to seclude herself as much as possible. Moka strategically manoeuvred visitors away from herself by delegating their engagements physically away from her: “Why don’t you cut the salad outside, it’s nicer than here” she would say to visitors when coordinating dinner preparations in the kitchen. Later she confined that she “didn’t feel like spending time and talking. I’m afraid of visitors. I say this with a smile, but you know what I mean. It’s very tiring to always meet new people”, she told me over a shared cup of coffee. All crew members tired of incessantly opening up to strangers and subsequently having to say good-bye to those they had met. When hospitality is lived as friendship to generate a sense of community, accommodating the other within the self also means exposing the self to the other and allowing them to cross personal boundaries. The following episode describes this process and its emotional burden not concerning visitors but crew members.

One afternoon in mid-April, I was drinking some water under the corrugated metal roof at the Workshop. The day before I had gotten into a fury about the Crew Room’s state and decided to deep-clean the entire space. As I began moving the space’s interior out into the Workshop yard, Anastasia, Thodoris, Moka, and Andreas joined my endeavours. Apostolos looked at us, then went into his office and soon emerged with a PC screen. He decided to follow our example and clear out his office in its entirety in order to wage war on the bedbugs, rodents, spiders, dust, and autumn leaves that had taken over the space in our absence. On the second day of this cleaning effort, I was sipping water and looking at the motley mix of things that cluttered the yard in what we jokingly called a tsigani, gipsy fashion, when Apostolos joined me and began what turned out to be our longest and most intimate conversation. He told me about his and Thodoris’ travels in winter: They had orbited the globe in two and a half months, stopping at a variety of eco-projects to establish

169 relationships and gather inspiration. I asked about the creation of personal connections.

Yes, the psychological aspect is what you can never share. I talked to the husband of the head of Ecofemme in Auroville45. He’s been there for six years, and the person who has been there second-longest has been there for two years. So we were basically in the same situation, and we talked about what it does to you psychologically to invest time and energy – I don’t care about time, but mainly psychological energy – into training somebody, and then they leave. For stupid reasons, or for not-so stupid reasons. It’s very tiring, psychologically, and even if you share all the responsibilities with each other, you cannot share this. That’s what that guy said, too: It’s the curse of being there from the beginning. You always have spent more time at the project than anybody else, and this will always be an issue.46 Apostolos

I answered that he seemed to have opened so much more than in the beginning of my stay, and that I found it much easier to relate to him and understand his goals and endeavours. He nodded: “It does depend on time, too. For example, before you came I had opened up a lot to Sotiria and Manthos. I really wanted to make them part of the project, but they were very scared. And then they left. So…” For Apostolos, summoning up the ‘psychological energy’ of opening up to new crew members was emotionally both difficult and imposed a strain. The social and emotional group dynamics that created friendship were cyclic, but the project’s temporariness meant that they did not always involve the same individuals. Of the fluctuating and shifting group of people who constituted

45 Ecofemme is a women’s cooperative producing and distributing washable cloth pads for female hygiene. Free&Real distribute these pads, for no profit, in their exhibition shop. Auroville is the largest eco-village, or intentional city in the making, in the world. It is situated in Tamil Nadu, south-west India. It was initiated in 1968.

46 Chapter 6 discusses this issue as a positionality of authority based on place-based knowledge.

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Free&Real, only Apostolos had remained since the group’s beginning. Therefore, he felt the emotional burden of temporariness in relation to his own time spent with the project.

The project’s structural temporariness impacted crucially on Free&Real’s crew members. On the one hand, it seemed to justify the disregard for individuals’ need for private space, so that all space was shared. This meant that, as crew members made Telaithrion Project their temporary home, they needed to carve out private space to maintain their personal boundaries. They did so through spatial seclusion as well as through disengagement with visitors. On the other hand, the project’s conceptualization as a temporary and transitory place invited an unremitting stream of visitors, passers-by, and changing crew members. While this produced dynamics which created conviviality and friendship, it emotionally drained crew members who tired of spending time with and investing time in newcomers. Both spatially and temporally, Telaithrion Project’s temporariness thus complicated self-other relations for Free&Real crew members. This situation, in turn, crucially impacted on their capacity to host others. The remainder of this chapter dissects how visitors experienced hospitality at the project, and theorises hospitality as gift exchange.

A seemingly Free Gift: Discrepancies between the Virtual and the Actual

As late June was rolling out carpets of warmth across the country two women came to visit for a week: Ifi, 37, worked with refugees in Athens while Bernie, slightly older, was an environmental activist from Australia. They had been friends for years and visited each other regularly across continents, and as Ifi had been following Free&Real on facebook for a while they decided to use Bernie’s visit to check out the project. They arrived at the Workshop and had

171 barely drunken some water when Bernie called out: “Ok, where do we start, what can we do?” They looked around, eager to get involved and ready to launch into work. Two days later they left, disappointed and annoyed. During those two days, we spent a lot of time together and tried to make sense of what was happening to them. Before they left, we went to the beach. Lying sidelong on her towel on the pebbles, head propped up by her arm, Ifi said:

The welcoming wasn’t exactly… warm, you know. Nobody really talked to us; we only experienced irony and disinterest. It would be nice to have… you know… somebody giving you the feeling that you are wanted here, that it’s good you are around, and that we can create something together. This is how the place is advertised online anyhow, so that raises expectations. But… It’s not at all what we expected. It’s very cold: No interaction, and no communication.

The initial lack of interest the two women perceived from crew members was quite common: Many visitors reported that they felt unwelcome when they first arrived. In the case of Ifi and Bernie, Spyros had hurriedly introduced them to the Workshop space and then, turning away abruptly, had left them standing in the yard. “We didn’t know what to do next. We came to help, but nobody showed us what to do47. It was quite awkward. So we were just hanging around”, Bernie explained. Later that afternoon, they grabbed the opportunity of going to the Test Site with Apostolos and Anastasia. They hoped to engage with the construction work or the gardening, but instead were sent to the beach by Anastasia who briefly pointed out the yurts and toilets and then walked away from them without further notice. Irritated yet hopeful, the two women told themselves that maybe the project members needed a bit of time to get used to visitors. But the next day brought no improvement. Bernie, who had tended vegetable gardens since her childhood, asked me if she and Ifi could weed the

47 For discussion of work engagements see also Chapters 5 and 6.

172 carrot bed. It was wildly overgrown and I was glad that somebody was willing to take on the work in the rising summer heat. While Bernie went to the toilet, Ifi started weeding – only to be stopped by Apostolos, who was calling down from the three-storey Hexa yurt that I had no right to let visitors interfere with the garden. His explanation was that Ifi did not know about permaculture weeding practices and therefore did it wrongly. It was true: She pulled the weeds out instead of cutting them to the ground and leaving the roots to rot in the soil; on top of that, she was stepping onto the beds, thereby compacting the soil. However, Ifi felt upset: “My god, he could have just told me how he wanted it to be done. And he didn’t have to scream at you in front of us. If he doesn’t want people around, why does he advertise the place online?” – “That’s the problem”, Bernie agreed. “Online it looks like an amazing place, full of love and collective action48. And all the facebook posts say ‘come, join us, let’s do stuff together’. But it’s not like this when you come here.” The discrepancies between the virtual image and the actual project reality puzzled the two women, and as they failed to reconcile the two, they decided to spend their shared time elsewhere. Discrepancies between the project’s virtual image and its actual, experienced reality caused confusion for a lot of visitors. The disjuncture between what the website seemed to promise and the actuality of project life made visitors confused and unhappy. This was compounded by the vision drawn by the website and the actuality. Hannah, a Finnish woman who attended the natural building workshop in spring explained it thus:

Everything here is a bit cryptic […] The web page, for example: If you check the web page of this place it’s not at all clear what it’s all about, and what is happening here. Also it’s not clear what stage the project is in – if you read very, very carefully you can understand that it’s a vision, but if you just go through it you come here and expect

48 For discussion of collaboration and co-creation see Chapter 6.

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something… something more established, maybe. It’s all very, very vague.

Hannah felt that the web page’s content was unclear and that this created false expectations regarding the project’s state of development. To many visitors, Free&Real’s online presence depicted a well-developed infrastructure and a collaborative, inviting atmosphere. In order to understand the lack of hospitality they perceived at Telaithrion Project, it is therefore crucial to consider the content of the group’s two main websites.

Telaithrion Project is by far the best-advertised eco-project in Greece. Free&Real’s internet presence was handled exclusively by Apostolos, who proudly told me that “ninety percent of people first hear of the project through the internet”. He spent hours on facebook posting, ‘liking’ and commenting, uploading pictures, tagging people, and writing captions. As a result, the group’s social media teemed with images of work-intense collaboration and conviviality, with comments inviting people to join, and with emoji reacting euphorically to image comments (Free&Real facebook n.d.). At the same time, he updated the official Free&Real web page with information about upcoming workshops and fundraising campaigns. The page’s description of Telaithrion Project is more static; it has not been updated for several years. It contains statements of goals, ideals, and intentions (under the rubric the project), as well as a display of future implementations on the Mountain Site (headed the community and eco-pieces, Free&Real n.d.). Despite the fact that this display is based on a 3D model, rather than images of existing infrastructure, and notwithstanding the future tense used in its description, visitors regularly expressed surprise at the rudimentary state of the project’s infrastructural development. More crucially, however, they commented on the discrepancies between the group’s stated ideals and intentions, and the lack of hospitality they experienced on site.

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Figure 17. Model of the Mountain Site. By Free&Real.

The group’s online presence created a virtual image of hospitality as an altruistic bestowal, or a ‘free gift’. Partly dissected in previous chapters, the project describes Free&Real’s social and societal goals:

The ‘Telaithrion Project’ hopes to put in actual perspective, that a self[- ]sufficient sustainable society that is based on true incentives and selfless giving, can exist, and that [it] can be applied to practice in everyday life, and that even if the entire culture of humanity adopted[ it,] it could flourish. […] We will do all we can to animate, empower, educate and inspire all people we meet so they will be able to follow their own path towards a more possible, more balanced coexistence […] Free&Real n.d., emphasis mine

This statement speaks of consummate altruism. ‘Selfless giving’, in other pages of the same web site also mentioned as ‘selfless giving (not exchange)’ creates an image of a gift that appears free from obligations and ties, even opposes them (cf. Mauss 2002 [1924]; for discussion see below). Despite this being a societal goal, rather than a statement of actually existing reality, Hannah explained how its implications might be misleading to prospective visitors.

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Similarly, ‘we will do all we can’ reflects the group’s endeavours to disseminate their socio-environmental vision to others (cf. Chapter 3), yet its benevolent tones excel its meaning. Together, social media and web page created an image of altruistic, generous openness to others. This image depicted a hospitality based on friendship, available to all visitors at all times. This resembles a seemingly ‘free gift’ in the sense of what Jacques Derrida (1994:10-16) claims an impossibility: A relation in which no reciprocity is demanded, and in which neither giver nor recipient conceives of the gift as such. Such a ‘free’ or ‘pure’ gift is contrary to what Marcel Mauss (1979 [1938]) described as a seemingly disinterested yet in fact obligatory and reciprocal exchange. However, James Laidlaw (2000) suggests that ‘a ‘free gift’ makes no friends’, contending that its social importance lies specifically in the omission of creating social relations. Indeed in reality, hospitality contains anything but free gifts, as it implies delicate negotiations of socializations between strangers and hosts (Derrida 2000; Herzfeld 1987). One way for free gifts to enable relationships, Soumhya Venkatesan (2011) suggests, is by transforming failed gift attempts into successfully given gifts through rendering in myth. By myth she means a “narration of events that is not empirically true or, at any rate, verifiable as true, but which nevertheless has real social effects” (2011:48). Such mystification, I suggest, accounts for the discrepancies visitors experienced between virtual and actual project realities. Free&Real’s online presence, with its depictions of harmonious conviviality and industrious collaboration, constructed an image of altruistic hospitality that connected crew members and visitors. In this way, it produced a mythical narrative of hospitality as a seemingly free gift. The disparities between this virtual self- portrait and the manifold expressions of project reality provoked visitors’ criticism. “I miss the hospitality” or “I didn’t feel welcome” were frequent complaints vented to me. They speak of disappointed expectations as people visited a project advertised as hospitable and welcoming.

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Anastasia was still playing chase with the little boy of the young family. She always preferred spending time with kids than with their parents. “It’s more fun with kids, I relate to them so much easier”, she explained. Meanwhile, the parents were brooding over the laminated picture of the Mountain Site’s model in the diminishing evening light. I restrained myself from giving explanations and waited instead for other crew members to accommodate the visitors. But Apostolos sat behind his screens in the Office, Moka had retreated to the Crew Room, Spyros crouched over his laptop with headphones, and Andreas was taking a shower. Night fell and we drove to the yurts, where Moka showed the family where to sleep and then walked off to feed the cats. The next day I was helping the family doing laundry before moving on, and the man, polite but disappointed, asked: “Why do you think the others were so… so… unwelcoming? They didn’t seem interested in meeting us. Especially Apostolos: It was obvious that he was bored to talk with people.” In the pages that comprise this chapter I have attempted to give an answer to this question; not by enquiring into individuals’ character traits or personal behaviour patterns, but rather by focussing on the ways in which the project’s conceptualization as a temporary and transitory place impacted on crew members’ need for personal space. I answered the man that yes, sometimes crew members did not feel like engaging with visitors, because they engaged with people all the time. They needed time for themselves, and space to themselves, and that was the reason they seemed inhospitable at times. However, Apostolos’ actions seem to follow a different logic, discussed in Chapter 6. Acts of hospitality constitute social exchanges that aim to accommodate the other within the self49. These exchanges extend what Nancy Munn calls ‘intersubjective spacetime’, or “the space of self-other relationships formed in and through acts and practices” (1992:9). These self-other relationships are themselves negotiations of space and time: Hospitality urges the host to give to

49 Note how this stands in contrast to the partitioning of persons achieved by gift exchange; cf. Candea & Da Col 2012:59, discussing Munn 1992.

177 the visitor both physical and metaphorical space and to share time through social engagement. Hospitality thus evokes the image of a gift whose obligations foreground the giving of space and time. When hospitality constitutes a continuous situation, rather than a temporally contained event, space and time can become scarcities. They thus emerge as powerful obligations that rearrange the fabric of sociality. Seen through this lens, hospitality at Telaithrion Project occurs as a gift no longer free of reciprocity and based on altruism, but rather grounded in obligations that provoke negotiations. Part of Free&Real’s efforts towards social change was the subversion of urban anonymity through showcasing more meaningful social relations. To this end, the group incessantly hosted visitors, attempting to create bonds of friendship and a sense of togetherness. As common in eco-projects, these endeavours did not evade monetary exchange relations established between hosts and guests. However, it was the conceptual structure of Telaithrion Project that complicated the creation of togetherness. Insisting that theirs was a project rather than a community, crew members conceptualized Telaithrion Project as a temporary and transitory place. This allowed a large turn-over of passers-by to get introduced to and inspired by the group’s socio- environmental ideology. At the same time, it also meant that the individuals more permanently involved with Telaithrion Project were subject to this particular temporality through the constant sharing of space and time. While they dealt with this situation in creative ways that maintained their personal boundaries, this aspect of project reality clashed with the group’s online presence, which portrayed hospitality-as-friendship as a gift continuously and altruistically bestowed on visitors. This also rectifies the group’s rational reasoning that self-development leads to altruism if guided by mindfulness (cf. Chapter 3). In the reality of the project’s everyday, self-other relations were not guided by mindful self-development but framed by intricate negotiations of space and time. When successful, they fostered a sense of conviviality that had the power to oppose urban anonymity with friendship. The weeks in spring powerfully embraced this vision.

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5 The Leisurely Life

Lived Time Experiences within and beyond the Value of Labour Time

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A warm breeze gently rocked the stone dry laundry that had been baking in the sun for hours. Yesterday’s pots had not been soaked, and greasy left-overs had hardened into steel brush business. The trash piled high in the dustbins, the cat food lay spilled all over the floor, and the compost spread its rotting odours across the Workshop yard. Anastasia and Thodoris were sitting on the pallet benches, soaking up the sun and leisurely smoking roll-up cigarettes. I joined them, drained and annoyed: I had been cleaning all morning and did not understand why they did not engage in any of the obvious tasks. When they asked me good-humouredly how I was, I took a deep breath and confessed that I felt obliged to repay Free&Real for their hospitality through hard work, but that I struggled to cover for others’ leisure time. Anastasia smiled reassuringly, hugged me and with bright eyes told me that there was no need to repay the group. She said being here was enough, handed me her cup of coffee, and told me to relax and enjoy the sun.

Here you can do whatever you want! If you want to work you work, and if you want to hang out you hang out: We have all life! We don’t need to run after things: Everything will be done, somehow. And when the toilets are not clean, or when Karmen says the plates are not in the right order: She’s not the master of the universe, she can do these things herself. Imagine all the energy we spend with cleaning toilets and washing up and all this. This is energy we give to the project, but it’s not useful if we give this energy being angry. We are here like a family: Everything belongs to everybody, and we share everything. Anastasia

In Greece’s current climate of job insecurity and precariousness, a strong commitment to work ethic functions as both a means for survival and a source of personal identity and self-worth (Spyridakis 2013). Labourers look upon the notion of work not in instrumentally-oriented maximising terms, but as an activity ascribing identity and status (2013:3). However, the sovereign

180 debt crisis and subsequent austerity measures have tripled Greece’s youth unemployment in the last eight years (tradingeconomics.com n.d.). Of the young people who do have a job, a significant number work in gastronomy. Being a seasonal waiter or waitress in Greece often means twelve hour shifts on six to seven days a week for a monthly salary of seven hundred euros or less. Summer holidays are then postponed to the end of the tourist season in late September, before looking for other employment. In contrast to such arduous employment realities, life at Telaithrion Project was markedly unhurried and leisurely. Work and leisure were not thought of as rigid temporal categories but existed within wider negotiations of how to spend one’s time. This was expressed through a refusal of work structures and routines, and through a marked spontaneity in everyday engagements. In intentional communities, time often exists as a relational entity, while labour and leisure, outside the formal economy, are embedded into personally meaningful temporalities (Lockyer & Veteto 2013b; Brown 2001; Bennet 1967; Spiro 1956). Such a leisurely life takes forward the Marxist insight that in capitalism, value equals labour time and reshapes their relationship by emphasising the value of lifetime and existence itself. It does so by breaking up the work/leisure dichotomy inherent in capitalist labour relations and reframing temporal understandings of lived time experiences (Bowers 2007:32; Kleiber 2000; De Grazia 1962; Pieper 1952). At Telaithrion Project, some people succeeded at expanding time beyond work and non-work dichotomies: As Anastasia contended, being merry was more important than being diligent, and work would get done somehow anyway. Others, however, struggled to balance project life’s spontaneity with a need for structure and organisation. This chapter uses a Marxist lens to trace how personal temporalities at Telaithrion Project differed situationally and brought to the fore negotiations around structure, organisation, and value as individuals sought to balance work and leisure in their attempt to find meaningful ways of spending one’s lifetime. I argue that their leisurely life, which promoted a refutation of daily routines structured and organised through work/leisure dichotomies, did not in fact do

181 away with dichotomous structures but rather transported them into the group’s social relations, where they were expressed through kinship relations. Employing and challenging the linear temporality of these relations from child- like inclination and disinclination to work to an adult work ethic reflected crew members’ efforts to unlink time from capitalist equations to labour. Instead, Free&Real participants aimed to equate time with life, thereby presenting existence as a value in itself. In this way, experimenting with alternative ways of spending one’s time outside the formal economy and work/leisure dichotomies reveals endeavours to live a personally meaningful life within and against late capitalism.

Daily Work without Routine

I had spent the night at the Workshop, falling asleep to the groaning of the corrugated metal roof fiercely attacked by autumn winds. I needed to type up long-overdue field notes, and as the Test Site had no electricity, the Workshop’s connection to the national electricity grid had dictated my sleeping place. The next day I took my laptop to the wooden cable drum that served as a table and spent the morning typing in the shade of one of the mulberry trees. Around noon, I was leisurely making coffee when a large, battered motorbike drove into the yard and rattled in despair until its rider stalled the engine. I walked up to greet the visitor, and a middle aged face with a heavy German accent appeared from under the strangely round helmet. “So what’s actually the plan here?!” He called out perplexedly, and I pulled a face to hide my laugh. “Eh, I’ll introduce you to the master plan in a minute, but first you have to introduce yourself to me, please” I finally said with what I hoped was a welcoming smile. He smirked, scratched his tousled hair and shook my hand. It turned out that, navigating his way to the project, he had not followed

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Apostolos’ emailed instructions but rather had relied on Google Maps, which sent him up two different mountains and let him stare at abandoned sheep pastures and piles of rotting manure. This was one of Apostolos’ pranks: When a Google Earth car had appeared at the project and asked if the group had heard of someone called Free&Real, Apostolos sent them up the wrong mountain, just for the fun of it. After three hours of failed navigation, the German visitor had finally found Agios and made his way to the Workshop. Confused and irritated about the disorderliness of his trip, his very first remark unknowingly hit the mark about one of Free&Real’s main dilemmas: Was there a plan, or structure, to what was going on?

While building up a school for self-sufficiency and sustainability is Free&Real’s most concrete goal, everyday activities at Telaithrion Project did not reflect this goal tangibly. First, little time was spent at the Mountain Site where the school is to be located, due to a number of structural, legal, and practical reasons. The food forest under plantation was still young and needed time to grow before it would efficiently protect other kinds of plants from exposure to the elements. Gardening work was thus narrowed to structural engagement like building swales (cf. Chapter 2) and to seasonal tasks like seeding soil-replenishing crops. Moreover, the Mountain Site had to undergo new land measurement due to legal administrational regulations. For this measuring to take place, no permanent structures were allowed on the land, so that construction work had to be postponed. Finally, in order to save fuel and car wear trips up the mountain were only undertaken when necessary. As a result, everyday life at the project revolved primarily around the Workshop and the Test Site. Second, much work conducted was related to maintenance and development of these two sites. Cleaning, tidying, and food processing were daily jobs at the project, together with gardening and construction work. While the Test Site was conceptualized as testing ground for built and landscape structures that then were to be implemented at the Mountain Site, most daily activities did not relate directly to the project’s long-term goal but rather to its

183 perpetuation. Third, a considerable amount of time was spent in recreational ways as people socialised, exercised, played, slept, hung out, and waited. For most of fieldwork, these activities were uncoordinated, so that daily life indeed seemed rather haphazard. One could see people hanging out all day, while others did not rest for a minute. This was partly due to the fact that visitors were not expected to work, while crew members had to run the project. More importantly however, this haphazard arrangement of work and leisure time reflected the group’s rejection of routines and work structures. Manthos once told a visitor that “no day is like the other here, it’s always different. There is no routine here.” Indeed, the project had no work plans, schedules, or strict routines. Alarm clocks were scarcely used, and crew members usually woke up between seven and eleven o‘clock. Brewing coffee, going to the beach, exercising, and going for a walk were among the first activities of the day. When everyone was awake, maintenance jobs like cleaning the yurts were taken on in a group effort. Crew members with cars

Figure 18. The Workshop yard after a good sweeping. Picture taken by Katerina Katalathos. 184 decided when to drive to the Workshop, making sure that everyone got a lift. Sometimes, Moka would wait for Anastasia to finish swimming, or Manthos would grant Thodoris an extra thirty minutes of sleep: Timing was situational. After a breakfast of fruits, coffee, and tea at the Workshop, one thought about what one wanted to do that day. Work, finally, commenced between eleven and one o’clock, a time by which, during summer at least, it was so hot that many jobs had to be either postponed or approached in a distinctly slow rhythm50. The situation changed in late spring when the natural building workshop kick- started daily work at the Hexa yurt. This was a group effort that included all crew members and most visitors. We began bringing fruit baskets from the Workshop to the Test Site every evening so that breakfast became a swift prelude to work. In any case, dinner was usually eaten at the Workshop and was to be ready between six and eight o’clock. Afterwards people washed dishes, smoked, or went for a walk, and then most crew members spent their evenings chatting with visitors or using their laptops and phones. Between ten and one o’clock, the crew members with cars once more decided when to leave, but regularly waited for others to finish their skype calls, movies, or showers. Once back at the Test Site a night swim, a final cigarette, or some playtime with the cats would end the summer days, while during the colder parts of the year lighting fires in the wood burners and getting under the warm blankets had priority. As the Test Site had no electricity, reading, board games, or other past time activities rarely occurred, and people usually fell asleep soon after lying down. Week-ends and public holidays did not alter the project rhythm. Within this loose structure, crew members chose more or less freely when to work or what to do. Therefore, forecasts of jobs and works as well as timing were difficult and widely undesired by Free&Real members. Refusing to follow

50 This day structure stands in contrast to traditional rural rhythms which pay tribute to heat and altitude of the sun. The fact that Free&Real ignored these rhythms gave rise to repeated discussion between and among visitors and crew members.

185 schedules and work plans, the group preferred to entertain a spontaneous day- to-day, or rather, hour-to-hour rhythm51. The things done fell into different loose categories. Jobs were activities that needed to be done, like maintenance and development of the project site. At the Workshop, this included washing dishes and clothes, tidying the living room, food preparation, sweeping the yard, taking care of the herb drying process, making soap, picking and processing mulberries (the Workshop was home to two bountiful trees), drying tomatoes, caring for the seedlings, and weeding the Perma Garden. Jobs at the Test Site, especially in the first half of fieldwork, were highly personalised: Anastasia and Apostolos watered the youngest plants in the morning and, in the afternoon, did construction wood work at the Hexa yurt, sometimes together with Thodoris. Maintenance jobs, like cleaning and re-bedding the yurts or weeding occurred situationally. In spring, a series of seminars developed the Test Site: The vegetable garden that grew out of the permaculture workshop in spring, as well as the development of the Hexa yurt, provided a growing number of things to do. Breaks were taken at random and often involved sitting or lying down and enjoying fresh fruits, roll- up cigarettes, and freshly brewed coffee. Exercising was mainly done upon waking up but often fused with going to the beach, as the Test Site was merely three minutes away from the sea. This latter activity could occur several times per day and included swimming, sun bathing, walking to the nearby harbour for a coffee or a snack, or going for a beach walk. None of these occupations, however, were part of a formal money economy52: Board and lodging were free for crew members, and they did not get paid for their work. While a general sense of what needed to be done grew out of place-based knowledge crew members developed over time (see Chapter 6), jobs were often chosen by

51 Chapter 6 partly deconstructs spontaneity as the outcome of planning and organizing.

52 With the exception of food shopping, taking online and cash payments for workshops, and, every once in a while, sending ‘goodie bag’ parcels in return for monetary donations in crowd sourcing campaigns. All this was done by Apostolos, who was in complete charge of monetary exchanges at the project.

186 inclination. This lack of structure was not unproblematic, as the following section describes.

Structure and Boredom

After pest control had sprayed every corner, cupboard, and tray at the Workshop, heaps of bedsheets, cushion covers, and woollen blankets needed washing. Apostolos and Moka had piled them up on pallets outside the laundry shed and covered them with waterproof tarps, and as the days got warmer Moka and I took turns in loading the machine. This was a delicate business which involved knowledge of spin cycles in relation to weight, awareness of divergences in theoretical and practical water temperature, and sympathy for the arbitrary capriciousness of the aging machine at large. Therefore, only crew members operated the washing machine. Dimitra, who was staying with the project for a month, peeped over my shoulder as I loaded the drum and added the washing powder. Despite participating readily in the intense spring cleaning, today she was at a loss of finding herself something to do. “Do you have a job for me? I’m bored! I came here full of energy and with the appetite to do stuff, but everything seems to be moving so slow.” Even though she had been with the project before, Dimitra suffered under the inertia of project life. “Hm, kitchen work?” I proposed. - “I’ve already asked: Andreas doesn’t need me at the moment.” – “What about the seeds, shall we plant some stuff?” – “Apostolos wants us to do it tomorrow, after he brings compost.” – “Wanna… clean something?” I asked jokingly. She rolled her eyes and we laughed. I pushed her out of the laundry shed and we walked leisurely to the fridge, where we found some fruits and sat down in the afternoon sunshine to eat them. Unfamiliar with the place, its chores, and inner workings, visitors were often at a loss to find occupations and sometimes suffered from boredom. A

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Portuguese couple who attended the permaculture workshop because they were planning to build up their own eco-project put it thus:

- There needs to be more focus, and more organisation of the place and the people.

- Maybe some rules, too, because rules are not a bad thing, if they make sense and we all agree to them.

- Ok, Apostolos said he doesn’t want slaves, because we’re slaving in the city, but you need somebody who leads, who guides people and tells them what has to be done.

- Yes! Without some organisation nothing can get done. In this workshop, for example, we could have done so much more. There were people who were really up for putting their hands into work and doing stuff, but there was so much standing around, and people were getting bored. That’s a shame, because this place could really use some hands, and people are here, you know, they want to help.

Portuguese couple

For this couple, as for Dimitra and other visitors, boredom was to be tackled with ‘something to do’, with occupation. This occupation had to be organised and guided, especially in the structure of a seminar, where most participants were first-time visitors of the project. Organisation, here, was understood as a way of structurally ordering people and work tasks. This structuring could be aided by rules: A rule to bring back gardening tools to a central place so that they could be found again, for instance. Organisation, the premise was, would enhance efficiency, lest people felt bored. Michael Herzfeld (1993) describes a feeling of ‘indifference’, a habitual apathy in the face of bureaucratic routines,

188 as a reoccurring Greek experience. Yet the boredom visitors encountered at Telaithrion Project was rather a feeling of unpleasantly extended time, as Goodman (2005) explains the German term Langeweile: A stretched time in which, seemingly, nothing happens. Boredom was first and foremost experienced by those whose temporalities did not fit into project life. Manthos’ claim that routine did not exist at the project often meant that the planning and execution of work procedures were neither routinized nor prioritized. Rather, they occurred in spontaneous, fragmented instances, which made it difficult for visitors to identify organisation. Many visitors came to the project to take a break from their structured and busy everyday and happily indulged in crew members’ repeated invitation to relax, hang out, or take it easy. But for some a certain assiduity and industriousness was important. This kind of efficiency relates less to neoliberal audit culture (Shore & Wright 1999) and more to a feeling of not wasting one’s time: They wanted to be productive in the sense of being useful to the project. Shortly after the first permaculture seminar in autumn a group of six young to middle-aged men and women, including the permaculture teacher Giulio, offered their hands to plant trees on the Mountain Site the following morning. Apostolos turned them down on the grounds that he had no time to supervise the planting, as he wanted to exercise that morning. He suggested the group go for a morning walk and plant during the afternoon, but the group argued that in the morning they had more stamina and ‘appetite’ for work. Although Apostolos did not uphold a regular exercising routine, he would not deviate from his plan, and so the group did not engage in any work that day. “I really wanted to help, but if we only start at two o’clock in the afternoon, when half the day is gone, I’m bored to even start”, one of them said crossly while others nodded. The visitors felt that putting leisure before work time was a reversion of order: “Business before pleasure”, another one emphasised. Both the protestant work ethic and the boredom that arises from a lack of things to do have been analysed as basis and by-products respectively of capitalist labour relations whose dichotomy into labour and recreational time structures life in

189 industrial and post-industrial society (Weber 2014 [1905]; Gardiner 2012; Bowers 2007; Benjamin 1999;). In this sense, boredom manifests as an affective state that emerges from the inability to consume (O’Neill 2014) and reflects a passing of time that is often neither serious nor productive (Fuller 2011). Visitors, who most often were part of capitalist labour relations in what the group called ‘city life’, sometimes experienced project time as empty, boring, and inefficient. The project built on expectations of voluntary work and availability. One afternoon early into fieldwork I saw Apostolos and returning visitor Ferdinand work speedily on the Hexa yurt. They were creating the first floor by cutting and screwing planks to the vertically placed beams. With a workshop coming up the next day, they were under pressure to finish the task to create sleeping space. I climbed up the ladder, observed their work and stepped up to help – only to be dismissed by Apostolos. “Please don’t. There’s no time to teach you how to do this now.” Feeling somewhat rejected I climbed back down to eat figs with Anastasia instead. About half an hour later Apostolos called down from the platform: “Who wants a job?” – “Depends on the job”, I retorted still slightly sore, while Anastasia jollily called out “me!” Frowning at me, Apostolos pointed to Anastasia. “That’s the right answer.” They spent the afternoon working together, while I took a walk along the beach. On the one side, Apostolos wanted others to engage in work voluntarily. This attitude arose from a deep suspicion of capitalist labour relations that allow leisure time as recuperation between imposed work. “In the city people slave away every day, and then they take their week-end and run to nature to relax. Even the relaxing is slavery, because it’s just there to make you go back to work”, he once stated during a project presentation. This echoes Andreas, who declared that the ‘European Dream’ of institutionalized phases such as school, work life, and pension creates binding social obligations (cf. Chapter 3). Instead of structurally imposing work on others, Apostolos wanted work to be initiated through individual inclination. “One thing I appreciate about Apostolos is that he will never tell you off for chilling out. If you don’t want to work, you can

190 just scratch your ass for five days in a row, and he won’t push you” Andreas commented once winkingly. There was little obligation to work, yet when work was done, it was to be done by choice, and therefore, in good spirits. Anastasia’s insistence that being merry was more important than being diligent supports this attitude. On the other side, however, timing was situational, so that there were times when work offers, such as mine, were turned down. More importantly, situational timing meant that at times, people’s availability was assumed in imposing ways. Nene, who had invested money into the project and came to visit with her ex-husband and their son in autumn, shed tears when we discussed boredom and work.

For five days now, every day I asked ‘What can I do’, ‘How can I help’, ‘Where do you need me’, and Apostolos never gave me anything to do. Today I was bored, I didn’t want to stay at the Workshop all day again. So I decided to [take a spontaneous day trip away from the project site], and when I returned he called me over and said ‘Where were you? I was looking for you, I had a job for you’. This is so random… It’s not very respectful to treat me and my time like this! Nene

While Apostolos favoured voluntary engagement, he expected others to be available for any job opportunity that arose. This created a ‘double bind’ (Bateson et al. 1956), a dilemma in communication in which one message negates the other. If one was to be available at all times, work could not always be done voluntarily. And if one was to only engage in work when inclined, one’s availability would be reduced. The reasons for this communication impasse are tightly woven to Apostolos’ planning and organising responsibilities dissected in Chapter 6. In any case, the spontaneity and situational character of timing sometimes made others’ time appear to be at Apostolos’ disposal. Those who could not easily adapt to these fluid project temporalities (and the power structures accompanying them, see Chapter 6) at

191 times felt bored of, cross with, or disrespected by crew members and their attitude to time, work, and leisure. In these ways, the opacity of work distribution over time created boredom and reproachfulness. And yet, for those who could adapt to the lack of structure and organisation, project life held inspiring opportunities. “I think it’s never boring here”, Anastasia replied to Dimitra as we were eating fruits in the afternoon sun and discussed work organisation. “There is always something to do. I like that I get up in the morning and don’t know what I’m gonna do: Every day is full of possibilities. And if you don’t feel like doing anything, if you’re bored to do anything, you can just look at the trees and the sky and the sea. You can just be and dream. And you can dream anything: Anything is possible in your dreams. I like that I have time to dream here.” The spontaneity of life at the project suited Anastasia well, who generally enjoyed following her own and others’ impulses. When she was not happy to engage with tasks, she could spend hours leisurely drinking coffee, or absent-mindedly staring at the sea. This kind of boredom denotes a disinclination to engage with activities and is a common meaning of the Greek term varethei (bored). It invites physical inactivity, and in this sense has creative properties, as it generates space and time to fantasize or dream about different ways of being. Built on temporalities in which space and time are more freely and playfully appropriated, this fantasizing is what Michael Gardiner calls ‘everyday utopianism’: A “mode of imagining that desires and perpetually reaches out for a different and better life, but in the full knowledge that perfection or completion is endlessly deferred, and thankfully so” (Gardiner 2012:56, see also 2004). If boredom grows out of having time, it can induce critique of accepted meaning and open up possibilities of “higher states of awareness and a better understanding of the link to a potentially transformative praxis” (Gardiner 2012:59). As such, extended time allowed for a kind of boredom which generated creative thought experiments. With its lack of schedules, routines, and temporal structures, Telaithrion Project provoked boredom, irritation, and crossness, but it also served as a setting for

192 experiencing time and existence in particular ways. The following section addresses some of these ways in detail.

Just Be: Meaningful Temporalities and the Value of Existence

By October, Telaithrion Project lay covered in leaves and mild sunshine. The stream of summer visitors had calmed down and the days were quiet. A new visitor arrived: South Korean Jungmi (whom we met in Chapter 3), about to turn thirty, had moved to the UK to live what she called the ‘Korean dream’, namely to earn good money and explore the glamourous lifestyle of the European metropolis. At the time she felt this was the ‘normal’ thing to do, following naturally from a good education and a promising office-based career start. Six months later she quit her job, disillusioned by the impression that, like in Korea, society seemed to measure everything in monetary terms. She decided to explore alternative value systems and embarked on a one-year project without the use of any money. During that year, she travelled by bicycle, on foot and by hitch-hiking, used money-free lodging platforms like couchsurfing and warmshowers, and worked on farms and in eco-projects around Europe for board and lodging. When she had no food, she practiced fasting, and when she had no shelter, she meditated. This was a radically new way of being for the woman who had, in her early twenties, served a three-year assignment in the Korean army because she intended to contribute to world peace. Her journey also introduced her to pacifist Rainbow travellers and several New Age philosophies before she completed her moneyless year at Telaithrion Project. Puzzled at first by the project’s arrangements that included money more than she had gathered from its vision statement, she soon settled into project life and stayed for about two months, valuing the shelter, food, and company she received from Free&Real by engaging fully in project life. One morning, as I

193 was busying myself cleaning yesterday’s dishes and tidying up the Workshop space, Jungmi asked me if I would give her one hour of my time. She said what she would like to give me in return was to do nothing, and to breathe. “There are three kinds of activities: Doing, living, and being. Most people practice doing all their lives, without questioning or thinking twice: They just do stuff, all the time, and are always busy because there is so much to do. Living is more reflexive, because you think about what you’re doing and you do it consciously. Being, finally, is the highest, the most difficult state. It is an understanding that you exist, at every moment in time, but that it is this very moment you choose to live. This is what I want to reach.” She took me to a nearby olive grove to meditate. The sun filtered through the rustling leaves, the birds sang jauntily and Jungmi showed me how to breathe, without doing anything else, just to breathe and exist.

Jungmi’s philosophical differentiation between doing, living, and being grew out of a recent interest in spirituality, but was rooted in her observations of the capitalist value system53. According to Marx, the value or importance society attaches to any given object or activity is measured through labour time (Graeber 2001:54-56). Selling one’s labour can facilitate money as a means to consumption, or it can facilitate money as an end in itself: Money then becomes a value in its own right. The value that money represents when it functions as a means is that of labour.

What money measures and mediates, according to Marx, is ultimately the importance of certain forms of human action. In money, workers see the meaning or importance of their own creative energies, their own capacity to act, and by acting to transform the world, reflected back at them. Money represents the ultimate social significance of their actions [… but it] is also the object of their actions; that’s why they are working: in order to receive a

53 In her own perception, Jungmi had been a materialistic person “without a soul” until the year without money opened her perception to the realms of philosophy and spirituality.

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paycheck at the end of the week. Hence, it is a representation that plays a necessary role in bringing into being the very thing it represents. Graeber 2001:66-67, emphasis original

In a Marxist analysis of capitalism, labour as a means to transform the world is measured through money, specifically through wages. Wage-labour thus carries both meaning and significance through money, as it expresses wage-earners’ actions – labour – and enables their participation in a larger social whole, namely the market economy and consumer society. As a token of value, money thus holds meaning that demands constant reproduction: It can only be sustained through continued engagement in wage-labour, an engagement which perpetuates the very value system it represents. Encountering this emphasis on money’s value both in Korea and in the UK disappointed Jungmi, who was beginning to look for other, less alienated ways to transform the world (cf. Chapter 3). Rather than continuing the reproduction of wage-labour relations, Jungmi chose to eviscerate the value of money and instead to explore

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Figure 19. Turning away from the glamourous urban lifestyle. Picture taken by Katerina Katalathos. alternative value systems that allowed her to act beyond material interest. At times, she employed her labour for board and lodging, as during her time with Free&Real. This was a conscious engagement which she called living. At other times, she relinquished even this engagement in favour of a form of existing that carried transcendental significance. This form of being is antithetical to the capitalist value of money, as it locates the capacity to act and thereby transform the world within the individual, rather than from the outside through labour. Choosing to live without money meant that Jungmi turned away from capitalism’s value system and instead explored other ways of spending her time in meaningful ways. Jungmi’s turning away from consumerism and towards mindful spiritual engagement with the world was a lifestyle choice built on an individualistic notion of freedom, self-realisation, and personal development. Her two favourite movies were Winnie the Pooh (2011) and Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972). The cartoon’s indulgence of a carefree life is situated in its immediateness, while the feature film’s examination of the life of St. Francis of Assisi portrays the beauty of choosing a simple life despite its hardships. Its soundtrack repeatedly reverberated through Telaithrion Project as Jungmi loved to sing. The night before she left, she taught me this song:

If you want your dream to be, build it slow and surely Small beginnings greater ends, heart-felt works go purely If you want to live life free, take your time go slowly Do few things but do them well, simple joys are holy Day by day, stone by stone, build your secret slowly Day by day you’ll grow too, you’ll know heaven’s glory Leitch 2005

The song suggests to live life in a slow and mindful manner, and equates this mind-set with individual freedom, the realisation of dreams, and personal growth. Chapter 3 has noted how individual self-development taps into liberal

196 notions of self-conditioning. While her lifestyle choice built on and perpetuated the individuated value system inherent in capitalism, it also allowed Jungmi to appreciate existence as a value in itself, expressed in the immediateness of the present moment. Her remixing of individualism combined liberal framings with spiritual ones. Such ‘existing’ signifies a ‘politics of the present’ (Day, Papataxiarchis & Stewart 1999) which constructs the now as a source of empowerment and a means to autonomy as it recasts temporalities along personally meaningful lines. Instead of spending her time making money, Jungmi took the initiative to live without it as far as possible and instead to value existence through living in the present moment. In this way, she creatively re-appropriated capitalist values to suit her own understanding of how to spend her time meaningfully. Such re-appropriation challenged established expectations of how to spend one’s time, as the following episode shows.

Anastasia and I were lying on a piece of tarp next to the creek at the Workshop, large plane trees rustling in the wind. I was writing my diary and she was smoking a cigarette. When she found the wing of a damsel fly amongst the weeds, she handed it to me. I held it against the sun that flickered through the leaves and smiled. Suddenly her phone rang. She picked up and began a conversation in French. A few minutes later she hung up and smiled wryly. “My mom”, she explained. Knowing that her parents did not approve of her being here, I asked how things were with them. She stretched out next to me.

I’ve been telling them for years I don’t like the city life. But they don’t understand. I have been laughing at them when they said ‘I don’t have time’: Because I have to work, because money doesn’t make itself – I have to, I have to. My dad tells me ‘life is not a hobby: you have to work.’ But they are not happy! They only work, work, work, all the time, always busy, and then they go to France for two weeks a year for holidays, and that’s it. Now my mom asks ‘do they pay you?’ and I tell

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her ‘It’s not about the money.’ But she doesn’t understand. I like it so much here! Every moment is good, even the bad ones. We’re just here and it’s good, and it’s meaningful, and in the moment. Why don’t they understand this? Anastasia

Anastasia’s parents grew up with little money. Her mother, a half-orphan, was raised by older siblings in the French Alps and left home at 17 to find work. Her father, equally bereft of one parent, saw his family’s considerable fortune crumbling under his mother’s refusal to work. By the age of 15 he financially sustained the family which, evicted from former homes, lived without electricity and running water in the Greek country side. Both parents had been working ever since, building up their own shipment company and accumulating enough to raise their two children in a small villa in one of Athens’ well-to-do neighbourhoods. They took pride in their ascent and their hard work, and wanted their daughter to take over the family company. Consequently, they did not approve of Anastasia’s voluntary engagement with a group of environmentalists who showed little appreciation for the rigid work ethic they themselves had adopted. Perceiving work as a means for both survival and a source of personal identity, they expected Anastasia to display more diligence. However, their daughter quit her job in her father’s company and instead spent her time building yurts and eating figs, being ‘in the moment’. For her, this was an autonomous expression of the way she wanted to spend her time. For them, it may well have seemed like a return to the financial hardships and insecurities they had worked so hard to escape. Enacting one’s values within and against capitalism is a privilege of the middle classes, who can afford individuated choices that renegotiate their material concerns (Weiss 2015; Inglehart 1977). Eco-projects in post-industrial countries are typically run and visited by individuals associated with these classes – Jungmi and Anastasia, like other crew members and myself, were no exception. Having grown up with parents who spent most of their time working

198 to enable their children’s well-being, we had the time and leisure to discuss and experiment with other kinds of temporalities. “My parents are simple and kind- hearted people. They have little education. They worked all their life for my and my brother’s future, for our education. That’s why it’s so important for them that I have a good job and money” Jungmi explained. “That’s why I lie to them. Even if I tell them that I’m much happier now, without money and with lots of time, they would never understand what I’m doing, and they would be very, very sad.” Korean emphasis on respect and obedience towards seniors made it ethically difficult for Jungmi to tell her parents about her lifestyle change. She thus pretended to still be in the UK, in order to be able to maintain close relations with them. Having spent the majority of their lifetime working to improve their and their children’s future, Jungmi and Anastasia’s parents did, in their children’s words, not ‘understand’ the latter’s politics of the present. A desire for greater control of personal time, and for a reconnection of work and life is common among participants and visitors of eco-projects (Bowers 2007). Within such projects, the re-ordering of personal temporalities is often intimately connected to a pursuit of a more meaningful life (Lockyer & Veteto 2013b; Lynes 2011). Being in the present casts existence as a value in its own right without connecting it to capitalist labour relations. For Jungmi and Anastasia, choosing this lifestyle represented autonomy. Others, who valued time in relation to work, found it more difficult to balance work and leisure within project life. It is to these difficulties that I turn now.

Doing Things the Right Way

Upon returning from a short trip, I decided one morning to sweep the Cuckoo yurt for the upcoming workshop. The project had only limited order of tools and utensils, so I felt lucky to find a broom in the apothiki (storage room) and used it right away, even though I noticed that it was quite dusty. Later,

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Moka thanked me for the work and asked me which broom I had used. I told her, and she replied that the broom I had used was for outside, as there was a clean one in one of the yurts. “Since you’ve been away for some time, it would be good to ask, to catch up. I cleaned the other broom with water and a little bit of chlorine, and left it in the sun to dry. The one you used is full of dust and – whatever else, we don’t want to know. Not all the floors are sealed [with varnish], and dust and small animals go and live there. That’s why it’s so important to use a clean skoupa [broom].” Later the same day, Moka told a returning visitor how to sun-gaze the thick woollen blankets: “You have to wave the blankets first, the two of you together because they are heavy, before hanging them into the sun, because this is the right way to do it: You get off as many things as you can, and then you let the others die in the sun, and then you beat them out with a carpet beater.” The visitor, a man in his mid-forties, nodded slowly and wandered off with a carpet beater in his hand. Moka was deeply concerned about the right way of doing things. On countless occasions, she corrected other people’s behaviour because she felt they could improve their ways. This she never did inconsiderately but with the

Figure 20. The Cuckoo yurt at the Test Site. Picture taken by Katerina Katalathos.

200 best intentions for both people and project. However, her preoccupation with the right way of doing things impacted on her perception of time. After the permaculture workshop in early May, we were drinking coffee under the mulberry trees. Moka slowly massaged her temples. “I have talked about how to do things so many times, I feel tired of it. I say the same things again and again, to different people and to the same people.” At that time, she was extremely tired, both physically and mentally. “I feel very exhausted, and out of breath. I haven’t been to the beach at all since we came back [over a month ago], not even for a walk. It’s so close and still I haven’t managed, because I never found the time. This is malakia [bullshit]!” The spring cleaning was long and intense. While some crew members worked whenever they pleased and hung out whenever they felt like it, Moka seemed to work incessantly. As a result, labour became an obligation rather than a voluntary action, and diminished the time leisurely spent. Additionally, the repetitiveness of giving instructions tired her. In their Australia-based study Organo, Head & Waitt (2013) enquire into time and gender implications of work-sharing in sustainable households. Following six heterosexual family households that took part in a governmental sustainability campaign, the authors found that women spent more total time on sustainable practices than men, and did so more often. Men contributed to such practices through labour and time required to start or research a project, while women took on the responsibility of everyday implementation and habit-changing. As a result the men, who worked full- time outside the home, constructed sustainable practices as leisure time, while their part-time working partners,

Figure 21. The beach, three minutes from the 201 Test Site. Picture taken by Katerina Katalathos. who did the bulk of domestic work, experienced time as continuous, fragmented, and interruptible as their perception of work and leisure merged (2013:567). Within Free&Real, the situation was different, of course. No crew member worked outside the project, sustainable practices were an intrinsic aspect of the project rather than built on temporally contained participation in a campaign, and the group consisted of a small number of adults living together intentionally, rather than of a nuclear family unit. And yet, Moka’s experience of time echoes the authors’ findings: Busying herself continuously, Moka experienced a continuity of time. Simultaneously, time was fragmented into frustrating instances of repetition and interruptible because she could never be sure that her time input would result in her goal, namely to get people to do things in the right way. As becomes clear in the following section, Moka saw herself as a woman of a certain age within a household, which she framed as taking on the ‘mother role’. This gendered perception further added to the ways in which her experience echoes that of the family-based study54. Moka’s insistence on doing things the right way grew out of the project’s lack of structure. Anastasia had called out that ‘we have all life’ to work and hang out and do what we wanted to do. Stretching time to encompass the complete personal lifespan enabled her to escape time measurements that sought to divide life into work and leisure. Moka, however, experienced time as a continuous stream of work which did not leave space for leisure. Underlying the discrepancies between their perceptions of time is a negotiation of Free&Real’s commitment to an unstructured everyday. Anastasia embraced the voluntarism and spontaneity of project life, while Moka aimed to contain the lack of structure in the project’s organisation and work processes. To a degree, her endeavours were successful: In the execution of everyday maintenance tasks, her voice carried authority over visitors and she often delegated work processes. Moreover, her assertive instructions initiated change within the project structure, as crew members listened to and followed her advice. In this

54 I do not here make space for a discussion of work and gender, as its depth would interrupt the argument of this section. However, see amongst others Federici 2012, Weeks 2011, and, for discussion of gendered work practices in eco-projects, Pickerill 2015.

202 way, Moka actively morphed structure into project life. Unfortunately, however, Moka held herself accountable for more than what she controlled: The flux of visitors and passers-by, as well as the fluidity of crew members on site, meant that Moka’s instructions had to be repeated again and again, leading to her perception of time as continuous, fragmented, and interruptible. It is typically ‘habit changers’ who grapple with personal temporalities as work and leisure overlap (Organo et al. 2013). Attempting change within the project left Moka exhausted and frustrated.

The right way of doing things reproduced capitalist value through labour time. Sipping coffee and rolling a cigarette I asked Moka why she kept telling people how to do things, if this exhausted her so much. “I tell them when I see they don’t know, so they can do it better. It is very important to do things the right way, because it saves us time and energy. We are many people here, and we need to value each other’s time and work”. Insisting that activities had to be done in the right way, Moka attached value to them through work and time. She thereby reproduced the capitalist value of labour time Jungmi aimed to transcend. This had implications for her well-being, or her social production. In a Marxist analysis, the capitalist system contains two sets of units, the workplace and the household, while the market mediates relations between the two: Commodities are produced in one and consumed in the other. Due to the anonymity of economic transactions, each sphere remains invisible to the other with regard to specific products. In the sphere of the household, this means that objects take on subjective qualities as production histories are unknown to consumers. Meanwhile, within the workplace, Graeber (2001:80) suggests it is the ‘creative energies’ that go into producing labour power that become invisible, as social production takes place away from the work place. In other words, the repose and leisure the worker needs to sustain herself and to continue her role as worker does not form part of the workplace’s concept. Beyond the production of labour time, these creative energies have no value in the market system and thus become measured through social and personal

203 values (in the plural). At Telaithrion Project, household and workplace were fused as work and leisure, production and consumption, took place in the same space. Nevertheless, in Marx’ terms, Moka expended more than she received, which left her exhausted. Rather than from exploitative employment relations, her domination stemmed from work itself: It was the lack of structure of Free&Real’s everyday that produced Moka’s need for efficiency. This was an efficiency that, in order not to waste one’s time, insisted on the right way of doing things and thereby reproduced value through labour time. Outside the realms of waged labour and the formal economy, Free&Real crew members still struggled to harmonize a leisurely life with the need for structure and organisation. One way of making sense of the intricate tensions such attempts evoked was through kinship relations.

Kinship and Relationality of Time

“You behave like a mother, Moka, telling everyone what to do and how to do it best. Stop that, please! We’re all adults here, and nobody likes being told what to do.” Andreas rarely lost his temper. During spring cleaning, he had set aside his frustration as Moka insisted on cleaning the kitchen in her own specific way. “I’m a chef, I clean kitchens every day. But ok, let’s do it her way, why not.” Rodent droppings, spider webs, and, as Apostolos’ rat poison started working, cadavers were Andreas’ constant companions during these first weeks after the project re-opened in early spring. He took pride in cleaning the space again and again in a professional way, and felt unnecessary Moka’s instructions on how much bleach to use and which brushes and sponges to employ. Several weeks later, daily group work at the Hexa yurt had altered the mood from convivial friendship to tensions that finally led to an emergency meeting – Chapter 4 introduced this event already. When Andreas expressed his frustration with what he perceived as patronising behaviour, he referred to

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Moka as taking on the role of a mother. A few days later I discussed the issue with her, and she, too, explained her relationship to the younger crew members in kinship terms. “Andreas sometimes, but especially Anastasia and Thodoris, they are like kids. You have to take them by the hand and show them that there is a job, and how to do it, step by step, and how to finish it, too, because they don’t see the work, and they don’t know how to work yet. So I have to take the mother role, which is not nice, because I don’t like telling people what to do.” Moka said it was with reluctance that she took on a role necessitated by others’ behaviours: If they did not act like children, she would not have to act like a mother. Kinship roles were readily deployed at Telaithrion Project. Parental roles carried negative meanings, as they expressed patronising or ordering connotations. Apostolos once apologetically thanked me for tolerating Karmen’s peculiarities, as “she has somehow taken on the mother role in the project, that’s why she’s sometimes bossy.” Similarly Sabrina, the jolly radical vegan from Italy, replied to my complaints about Apostolos that “it’s like facing your father all over again: The same shit you went through when you were a teenager.” Finally, Anastasia and I at times referred to the older crew members as ‘adults’ (cf. Chapter 6) to point to authority. At the same time, Moka indicated crew members’ immaturity through referring to their behaviour as that of ‘kids’. In this way, nuclear family terms connected unrelated individuals into kin relations. The group’s deployment of kinship roles is characteristic both of their Greek background and of the structure of their project. Grigoris, an informant who only vaguely knew Free&Real but had been involved with several eco-projects and initiatives in Greece told me during my stay in Athens:

People tend to reproduce what they know, right? That’s why kids become like their parents, etc. So, Greeks know two kinds of social structures: Hierarchical ones, like in the state and the school, and family ones. That’s it: They don’t learn cooperation, say, in school, and

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working or existing with equals. This is not part of the Greek culture. So, in projects and initiatives, they tend to reproduce these structures known to them. These things happen unconsciously. The people just end up taking up roles, in a way that seems natural to them. This doesn’t need to be bad, by the way. Because people are used to these structures, so they function quite well within them, and identify with them. Grigoris

Kinship relations, I was told, are part and parcel of Greek intentional communities and projects, as family relations carry continuous importance in Greek everyday life (Loizos & Papataxiarchis 1991). Moreover, as early as 1954 Melford Spiro discussed ‘psychological’ kinship ties in intentional communities, and lately social scientists have shown how members of eco- communities appoint new forms of intimate relatedness (Eräranta 2009; Carsten 2000). The previous chapter has pointed out the importance of friendship for the group’s political goal of overcoming alienated relations. What emerges is a cluster of intimacy, expressed variously as friendship or kinship. This intimate relatedness underlay Anastasia’s comment that ‘we share everything’ because ‘we are here like a family’, as familiarity and closeness are among the more positive aspects kin relations are employed to express. The use of kinship roles thus reflects common understandings of family relations as simultaneously affective and oppressive, as well as the intimacies and socio-cultural particularities of both Greek society and intentionally living groups. The work ethic underlying these kin relations reproduced capitalist narratives of valuable individuals. Moka’s perception of the younger crew members as ‘kids’ was based on their limited knowledge of how to work. A person who did not know how to work was not yet an adult, and Moka deliberately took on an air of patronage to help crew members ‘grow up’ to work. In a capitalist system, work is the primary means by which individuals are integrated into economic, social, political, and familial modes of cooperation (Weeks 2001:8). Helping others to grow up to work thus means

206 enabling them to partake in the labour relations that produce personal values as well as market value. Alberto Corsin Jimenez (2003) notes that in industrial and post-industrial societies, people’s sense of worth as human agents has come to rely on the value of their work and accomplishments as labourers, and that work is essential in establishing personhood – an argument also made for Greek work ethic (Spyridakis 2013). As the individual is crucially defined through her work, raising young people to be good workers is part of the social contract that establishes their value – through labour time – within capitalist society. The effort to emancipate time from its domination through labour was brought to the fore through the negotiations about kin relations. According to Marx, the value of an individual is measured within capitalism through her labour time. At the same time, the production of valuable individuals through a capitalist work ethic measures personhood along a linear temporality. Crew members who were still like kids needed patronage and guidance to integrate into life-as-work55. The necessity to ‘grow up’ to reach a socially appropriate work ethic casts time as linear along modernity’s narrative of progress. Simultaneously, time appears as dichotomous, divided into valuable labour time and valueless (i.e. unproductive) leisure time (remember: The ‘creative energies’ have no value in the market system beyond enabling labour time). However, if individuals only reach adulthood when they have learned to work in any socially defined way, then their coming-of-age necessarily leads to the binding ties of labour. This narrative of progress frames individual lifetime through institutionalized phases – a point of critique Andreas made about the ‘European dream’ (cf. Chapter 1). For him, time did not follow this linear path. He emphasised crew members’ shared and equal state of adulthood and framed time not as linear but as relational. Chapter 1 illustrated the ways in which Andreas identified the fostering of human-nature relations as a way to recreate one’s life away from exploitative capitalist relations. The discursive ‘cutting’ of generational ties enabled the group to abandon old or mainstream ways in

55 This resonates with Marina’s view who located the lack of Greek environmental attitudes and practices in the infantile state of society (cf. Chapter 2).

207 favour of doing and being ‘otherwise’ (Povinelli 2012). Seen in this light, Andreas’ effort to emancipate from the group’s kin relations was a way to emancipate time from its domination through work, and express that in a leisurely life, time is not linear but relational.

Social Time

Whoever asked what time it was at Free&Real was likely to always get the same answer, accompanied by a smile: “The time is now!” An invocation to live the moment, this reply expressed an immediateness and at the same time flexibility of the group’s temporal understanding. When I asked Anastasia what she was up to, meaning what work she was doing, I got a reply immersed in the immediate: “I’m chewing gum now.” Rather than expressing a work/leisure dichotomy in which she differentiated between a job she was doing and a break she was taking, Anastasia described the immediate action she was immersed in. Collecting texts about ‘marginal people who live for the moment’, Day, Papataxiarchis & Stewart (1999) find that their informants “live resolutely in the short term” and “achieve a remarkable voluntarism in their sense of identity: the less you are concerned with past and future, the more true it is to say, ‘you are what you do’” (Day et al. 1999:3). Through their fundamental commitment to living each day as it comes, they define themselves via the immediate. Similarly, when the time is always now, what one is up to can only mean what one is immersed in. This, Day et al. contend, means that “in privileged moments, [their informants] transform this short term into a transcendent escape from time itself” (1999:3) as they rid themselves from time measurement entirely. Such timelessness can constitute a ‘politics of the present’, a powerful tool of resistance and opposition to one’s environment if this environment appears to generate social reproduction through time (Day et al. 1999:3, 18ff.). Indeed, what I had in mind with my question to Anastasia

208 was to find out whether she was ‘busy’ or not, a notion engrained in a dualist classification of time into work and leisure. By answering in the immediate, the young woman opposed and refuted this dualism, reminding me that project time had alternative connotations. Durkheim once said that “what the category of time expresses is the time common to the group, a social time, so to speak” (1915:11). While critiques of his approach exist (e.g. Gell 1992; Bloch 1977) Durkheim argued that collective representations of time are both derived from and dictate to society (Gell 1992:4) – in other words, he declared that time is created by human beings. As demonstrated throughout this chapter, project life swarmed with conflicting temporalities. While in some situations these conflicts initiated boredom, crossness, or exhaustion, at other moments an understanding that the group created their own time informed people’s reaction to these conflicts more positively. Jeannine, in her mid-forties, stayed with the project for about three weeks in spring. She divided her time between the Netherlands, where she wrote screenplays for TV shows, and Egypt, where she had built a small house which she now, after the revolution, was trying to sell. During her time with Free&Real she dedicatedly weeded the entire Test Site, explaining that she enjoyed the meditative task for its visible outcome. The night before she left I asked how she had enjoyed her stay. “I like the concept of time here, because it is liberating, and challenging: For example, being dependent on the car transportation. Sometimes I maybe would have preferred to go to the Test Site earlier in the evening but I had to wait, but then I just lived the moment I had here at the Workshop, and it made me forget any concept of time.” The challenges of social temporalities could be both demanding and liberating, as they forced and, at the same time, enabled individuals to be in the present. Léon, the French retiree who stayed on from the natural building workshop, once observed laughingly: “Time works differently here. It doesn’t move at all, and then, when we’re leaving, it accelerates, and everyone screams ‘pame, pame’ [let’s go, let’s go] and I forget half my things. It’s fascinating!” Project time, it was understood, was constructed by and adaptable to human behaviours

209 and needs, and as such was flexible enough to include a range of conflicting approaches. This insight expanded time beyond work and non-work dichotomies and promoted an understanding of collective representations of time. In its most positive expressions, the leisurely life reframed collective understandings of lived time experiences through an appreciation of diverse temporalities.

In spring, a Danish journalist visited for two days to cover the project in an article. Before she left, I asked what she found. “The one thing that everybody mentions here when I ask them about this place is time: That there is no pressure about time, that you have time for yourself, that things get done even though nobody seems to look at the clock.” What Anastasia had told me half a year earlier continued to reverberate through the project. I answered:

Yeah, I guess this is because we are masters of our own time. Most people are not, because they have to be at work at a specific time, work for this many hours, catch the train at that hour, etc. Here, we decide on our time ourselves, pretty much anyway, and this has a big impact on our lives.

She asked, ‘So that when people do work, they do so because they want to?’

Yes, not because they are paid to spend x hours at work. Time equals money in our society, or, in Marxist terms, value equals labour time. But maybe time really equals life, and this is what you experience when you live here”.

The project enabled its crew members to live outside the formal economy, where they had the leisure to experiment with different temporalities. Spending one’s everyday for the most part voluntarily generated a perception of time as relational, situational, and, ultimately, social. It thus could be recreated into

210 personally meaningful temporalities by breaking up work/leisure dichotomies inherent in capitalist labour relations. However, these temporalities differed and thus at times clashed as crew members negotiated divergent conceptualizations of how to spend one’s time. To some, merriment was more important than diligence, and voluntarism and availability congregated into spontaneity. To others, the efficiency of doing things the right way prevailed. Between existing in the present and structuring the everyday, people at Telaithrion Project both recreated and reproduced capitalist labour time in their quest to reframe temporal understandings of lived time experiences. Ultimately, however, all these negotiations contributed to an awareness that one’s time and existence possess value in their own right, and that a leisurely life is preferable to the domination of wage-labour. As Léon told me and winked: “This is what to be free and real means, you know: To decide yourself what you do with your time.”

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6 Between Self- Determination and Authority

The Social Order of Free&Real

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One month into fieldwork, Apostolos called an emergency meeting. There had been some intense exchange of words in Greek between Manthos, him, and a project regular. Despite these being my early days at the project, the argument struck me as unusual: It was very rare that anyone raised their voice in anger. The emergency meeting took place under the walnut and plane trees next to the creek that rippled along the borders of the Workshop space. It was the end of August, and the punishing heat was slowly rolling back to comforting warmth. Sitting in a circle on marble slabs on a mud bank, or on a canvas on the floor were Manthos, Anastasia, Karmen, Moka, Apostolos, Antonis the regular, and myself. Apostolos spoke up. He revealed that the compost toilet at the Test Site was infected with flies which caused both bad odours and potential health risks as the insects multiplied. None of us had raised the issue or taken the initiative to do anything about it, and Apostolos was disappointed with our passivity:

I know we don’t care – I’ve come to this conclusion long ago, because I watch the news – I know we don’t care, but we should, because this planet is our home. I’ve been waiting for a comment from somebody to do something about it, three, four days now, but nothing came. Why, why are people waiting for the command from the office, why? I know that, for the time being, until somebody else comes round, I have to do this sometimes. But I get very tired of it, really. How often can I tell someone ‘tidy up these bags’ or ‘go and get some toilet paper’? Observe and interact!

Employing various approaches, the previous chapters have discussed how Free&Real endeavoured to foster meaningful socio-environmental interactions in order to respond to and overcome exploitative relations. In order to do so, the group advocated the need to take initiative. Their political emancipatory expectations, their self-transformative endeavours, and their call to unstructured everyday lives all speak of an effort towards responsive agency

213 and autonomy. This stance was driven by an anti-authoritarian approach that comprised state and geopolitics, marketed consumerism, and wage labour employment. The chapter at hand picks up this autonomous stance, intrigued by its inconsistency with Free&Real’s authoritative social order. Chapter 5 has illustrated group-internal establishment and challenge of authority by discussing the evocation of and emancipation from kinship that accompanied work and leisure arrangements. This final chapter continues the investigation into the distribution of labour with emphasis on the group’s social order. More precisely, it examines how it came to pass that the main responsibilities of Telaithrion Project clustered around one individual person, and what impact this situation had on the group’s call to self-determination. In this way, the chapter tackles the hidden mechanisms behind Free&Real’s power structures. It does so by ethnographically dissecting both the group’s social order and the decision making process that emerged from it. Free&Real employed what they called the ‘scientific decision making method’, based on what was constructed as ‘scientific’ and therefore objective knowledge. These arrangements produced a social order consciously built on a ‘hierarchy of knowledge’. Knowledge acquisition at Telaithrion Project required assimilation into the ways of the project, and thus knowledge emerged as highly place-specific. Chapters 4 and 5 have illustrated the relative powerlessness and ensuing boredom of visitors untrained in the ways of the project. While this points to hierarchically ordered division of labour at the project site, amongst crew members this hierarchy was mostly flat. Where it appeared, it was fought out via kin relations. However, the one person who had stayed with the project since its beginning held the hierarchically highest position within the group’s social order. He was perceived less as a crew member than as the leader of the project. As his position accumulated all major responsibilities, Free&Real’s division of labour was based on positionality. In any case, crew members refrained from challenging the hierarchy thus produced. While they did take initiative to execute jobs and project activities, they forbore to take responsibility by taking

214 on responsibilities. Thus, the group effectively failed to redistribute power so that authority remained unchallenged.

Beyond sanitary sanitation issues, Apostolos’ reproach was an appeal to self-determination. In the Introduction, I described self-determination to encompass both personal and social relations. I contended that, for my informants, directing oneself and taking responsibility for one’s thoughts and actions is as much part of a proactive autonomous stance as applying this same responsibility to one’s environment as an extension of the self. Collapsing environmental care for the planet into project maintenance, Apostolos argued for attentive and autonomous engagement with the project environment and employed permaculture’s fist principle, ‘observe and interact’, to illustrate this analogy. At the same time, however, he acknowledged his role of being the de- facto leader of the group who had to animate and orchestrate others’ activities, making clear, however, that he did not appreciate this role. The full bearing of his question why people so often passively wait for orders rather than act from a position of self-determination is, of course, beyond this thesis; however, my fieldwork revealed how the hidden mechanisms that produced authority within Free&Real lay in the group’s insistence on a social order and a decision making process that favoured meritocracy over democracy. Chapter 1 delineated how the group rejected national and geopolitical orchestration of democracy, and how crew members turned away from the allegedly democratic process of voting. Within Telaithrion Project, democratic decision making processes were also abandoned. As the opportunity to create shared responsibility through collective decision taking was replaced by a personified authority of place- specific knowledge, autonomy, self-determination, and responsibility remained individual, rather than collective endeavours. It is this individualism, I argue, that ultimately foreclosed the challenging of authority, as it depoliticized social change into acquisition of and assimilation into a particular kind of knowledge.

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Against World Leaders and For Self-Determination

During fieldwork, the Test Site had no electricity. Solar panels had been installed in the past, but the battery broke down and the group lacked the knowledge or money to repair the damage56. At night, solar fairy lights guided the way through the herb garden, giving the space an enchanted and dreamy atmosphere. ‘Where the street lights end and the moonlight begins’ became a saying to relate to the Test Site’s romantic atmosphere, as the last street lantern indeed flickered close to its pallet fence. Sometimes we lit candles under the olive trees or inside the yurts, and during the colder months wood fires flickered in the stoves. For electricity-powered tools like the jigsaw and for the water pump that supplied water from an underground stream, a noisy but powerful petrol-fuelled generator was employed. Beyond these necessities, no electricity was available at the Test Site, which made the regular cleaning of the yurts a work-intense and sweaty business. Woollen blankets had to be waved and sun gazed, mattresses and rugs had to be carried outside and beaten, and the yurts themselves had to be swept and brushed. This happened about every four weeks, before or after workshops, and was usually carried out in a spirited manner by crew members and eager visitors before driving up to the Workshop for breakfast. In June, Andreas and I assembled a number of rugs and, after waving them, hung them up on the washing lines between the fig tree and the pallet fence. Looking around, we realized that we lacked carpet-beaters, so we found ourselves some sticks for the job. Lightly slapping my right palm with the stick in a mock-threatening fashion, I asked: “Re, what do you say? Shall we give the fuckers a load?” Andreas laughed. “Yes!” he exclaimed, and struck out for the first blow. “This is to the banks!” A muffled thunk discharged a cloud of dust. “And this is to the IMF!” I followed. “And to the economists!” “To Nestlé!”

56 As my academic grant application had been successful I donated a generous amount explicitly to the “electrification and illumination” of the project. However, during fieldwork the electricity grid was not repaired.

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“To Monsanto!” “To Golden Dawn!” “To privatisation!” “To nepotism!” “To Shell!” “To neoliberalists!” “To money!” “To sexists, fascists, racists, right-winged scum! Huh, that was exhausting! Let’s go!” We laughed. “To ‘world leaders’! Whatever that’s supposed to mean.” “To militarists!” “To corporations!” “To CEOs!” “To bankers!” – “We had that already.” –“Doesn’t matter, they deserve more!” “To the police!” “To Zeta!” “To prisons!” “To border control!” And on we went, beating and shouting in an entertaining yet increasingly frantic reckoning with geopolitical and local powers. In the end the rugs were as clean as never before, and Andreas and I lay in each other’s arms, panting and giggling, before we went for a swim in the sea.

In his teenage years, Andreas had been an anarchist in the streets of Athens. The long-standing black bloc riots in the capital’s alternative quarter Exarchia have gained international attention after 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was killed by a police bullet in 2008, and again during the uprisings following the early implementations of austerity measurements in 2011 and 2012 (for detailed ethnographic discussion see Apoifis 2017). Yet in earlier years, the police had rarely entered the area, as the overthrow of the dictatorship in 1974 rose from Exarchia’s polytechnic university and led to a

217 ban of police forces from the campus. Within its graffiti-ornamented streets, anarchists used to battle their most hated opponents, followers of the far-right political organisation Golden Dawn. In May 2012 Golden Dawn, now a political party, entered the Greek parliament, and police’s special force Zeta Group soon came dashing through Exarchia on motorbikes and with truncheons. Anarchists answered with Molotov cocktails and stones. Videos of policemen thrashing passers-by soon flooded social media, and the special force’s alleged connection with Greece’s most fascist political party became a social truth for many Athenians. After cooling down in the calm and salty water, Andreas and I sat on the beach and talked politics.

Yes, people are disappointed with the state – nobody ever trusted the Greek state in the first place – because it’s corrupt and politicians don’t care about the people. Like everywhere else. But if you look at the street police, they are the poorest guys from the country side with no education or outlook: They go to the army because that’s the only thing to do. Again, like everywhere else, at least in the South. In Greece we call them pigs. And they are, but because of their status in society, not as individuals, of course. They are treated like scum, by the people and by their bosses. So street kids fighting street police is the battle they let you fight, but you don’t come close to the real power. The problem, the real problem, is the leaders. The people who rule you and make you eat dirt so they can get more powerful. And most of them are not in Greece. You understand? This is not about the state, it’s about something bigger.

Andreas recognized the social reality of Exarchia’s street fights as precarious and rejected these clashes as meaningless proxy battles within the lowest levels of social hierarchy. He argued that carrying them out maintained exploitative power relations as they failed to address, oppose, and subvert those in powerful positions. These leading individuals, he further contended, were not – or at least

218 not only – found within the state. Tackling the ‘real problem’, then, meant going beyond throwing stones and burning bottles at enforcers of state power. As a social theory, anarchism traditionally opposes the state. Anthropologists working on anarchism habitually point out state hierarchies, anarchically opposed by unruly everyday forms of resistance. Conflating theory and practice, anarchism is thus often discussed in the context of South American and Southeast Asian rural social groups that are seen to reject state rule (Scott 2009; Clastres 1977). Some scholars find that anarchy in its most negative form, in the sense of chaos, confusion, disorder, and decay, is in fact a product of bureaucratic state organisation (Lea 2012). While these literatures importantly highlight the ways in which anarchist practices oppose state laws, categorisations, and coordination, a growing number of social scientists are also attentive to anarchist tendencies within contemporary social movements that oppose corporate globalization (Graeber 2009, 2004; Maeckelbergh 2009; Curran 2007). The diverse civil society initiatives that have, over the past two decades, created what has been labelled an anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, and (falsely) an anti-globalism movement oppose the geopolitical, economic, and finance structures that allow a small number of individual decision makers to accumulate authority and power. Most of these initiatives, therefore, are not interested in overthrowing the state but demand and prefigure structural justice in the face of the destructive governance of a small elite. Whether such endeavours constitute ‘anarchist’, ‘new anarchist’, ‘post-anarchist’, or even a continuation of post-structuralist thought (Rousselle & Evren 2011; Redhead 2011) seems less significant than paying attention to their practices.

The model for the kind of political and social autonomy that the anti- capitalist movement aspires to is an anarchist one […]; its non- authoritarian make-up, its disavowal of traditional parties of the left, and its commitment to direct action are firmly in the spirit of libertarian socialism. Sheehan 2003:12

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In their anti-corporate and pro-environment surge, initiatives like Occupy!, Earth First!, or the Zapatista Army of National Liberation employ self- organisation, mutual aid, and direct democracy when organising themselves. Importantly, such initiatives do not self-identify as anarchist but rather employ practices stemming from an anarchist tradition. Their aspirations correspond closely with Free&Real’s approaches to geopolitics, political affiliations, and with their call to initiative. What Andreas and I were beating up with our wooden sticks were the alleged culprits of late capitalist governance: The groups, institutions, and systems we found to exercise authority and domination. In this sense, our make-believe game was an anti-authoritarian strike. As each chapter of this thesis has shown in different ways, Free&Real embraced anti-authoritarianism through calls to initiative, autonomy, and self- determination. Rather than reacting to authority through rallying for autonomy in Athenian street fights, the group suggest responding through active observation of and interaction with one’s environment and via a remix culture that re-appropriates practices and epistemologies for harmonious coexistence. Jeannine, the Dutch playwright, explained it thus:

It’s only two years ago that I stopped reading newspapers and magazines. And I realized – it may sound stupid – that we are very much conditioned to thinking in specific ways. To think that something is normal, and other things are not, to accept one reality. And as I stopped reading these things, I slowly unwound myself, de-programmed myself, you know? Now my son is 20 years old and wants to study politics. It sounds like a good idea to me, because things are about to change. They have gotten worse and worse, and either they will collapse now, or new ideas will spread and things will change. So politics sounds like a good option, because you can engage with these ideas. Jeannine

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Jeannine supported her son’s academic choice because she felt it gave him the opportunity to engage with ideas that would only spread to those who ‘unwound’ themselves from dominant discourses. This unwinding, or ‘deprogramming’, allowed her to be more attentive to her environment beyond these discourses. Such self-determination was not to take on authority through directly charging it; rather, it was to make it redundant through the spreading of new ideas. As Apostolos reasoned above, if crew members took a more proactive stance, then he would no longer have to give orders. This echoes Graeber who postulated that anarchist initiatives set out “to expose, subvert, and undermine structures of domination but always, while doing so, proceeding in a democratic fashion, a manner which itself demonstrates those structures are unnecessary” (2004:7). However, Free&Real refuted democracy as a tool for decision making. Chapter 1 dissects this stance from the angle of geopolitical critique; here I trace its implications for the group’s social order.

Hierarchy of Knowledge: Free&Real’s Social Order

In early September I was watering the Perma Garden when Katerina strolled over to me. In her late thirties, she lived and worked in Athens, loved taking part in sailing regattas, and was involved in making a documentary about the devastating environmental effects of EU-sponsored wind turbines in Greece. After following Free&Real on facebook for some time she now had come to visit the project together with a friend. “Can I help you? I love watering plants! I grew up with a large vegetable garden. My parents had a farm, and from a young age on I was in charge of the garden. I really miss that in Athens”, Katerina revealed. She looked around. “These tomatoes don’t look very happy, eh? They need to be fixed. Do you have some rope?” She was right: The plants were drooping under the weight of their bountiful crops. I was

221 not sure where to find what she had asked for, but promised to do my best. In the meantime, I handed the hose over to Katerina, who brightened up instantly. When I returned five minutes later with some cord in hand, she was listlessly sitting on a pallet bench. “They told me to stop. They said watering is not for visitors…” I later enquired into the matter. Apostolos told me: “You can’t just let anyone water the garden.” I explained that Katerina had grown up on a farm and was used to tending a garden: She would not snap twigs inadvertently or pull the heavy hose across the plants unthoughtfully, as inexperienced visitors might. However, this did not convince Apostolos: “She cannot have watered a perma garden all her life, it’s not possible. We do things in specific ways here, and she doesn’t know how to water in a permaculture way. This is why I said the other day there’s a hierarchy of knowledge here: You need to know how to do something to do it right.” – “Apostolos, watering plants is not rocket science. Besides I was with her and we did it together.” – “You don’t know anything about it!” – “Well… I taught her everything I know. How the straw protects the moisture of the soil from the sun, how to water all the ground so that the roots spread further, and that you have to avoid creating puddles because they attract pests.” Apostolos contended that in any case, visitors were not supposed to engage in project chores that involved responsibility. With that he left me, and I joined Katrina on the pallet bench.

The term ‘hierarchy of knowledge’ reoccurred throughout fieldwork to refer to the social order at the project site. The concept suggested a meritocracy in which individuals gained credibility and responsibility by displaying theoretical and practical knowledge. Meritocracy, a term used at the project site, is an early 20th century concept that created an ideal of democracy as attained through neutral, disinterested, and objective knowledge. It thus opposed contemporary politics that often were guided by passions, interests, and habits (Scott 2012:119ff.). However, this scientific modernist approach to knowledge ranked skills, intelligence, and demonstrated knowledge, while other qualities such as compassion, wisdom, courage, or breadth of experience dropped out of

222 its account (ibid.). At Telaithrion Project, the distinction made was less abrupt. Chapter 3 delineates the group’s theoretical conceptualization of knowledge as derived from an objective and independent reality. Within project reality, however, this concept yielded to place-specific knowledge, whose value as an ordering dimension of social relations was tied to learning and assimilating into the ways of the project. This was why Katerina’s gardening knowledge was of little relevance for Apostolos: Free&Real followed distinct sets of practices in accordance with their social and environmental endeavours. These practices transformed mundane everyday tasks like watering a garden into arenas for place-specific knowledge. This knowledge had to be accumulated through repeated engagement with the project (cf. Chapter 4) until individuals ‘knew how to do something’ and ‘did it right’ in the evaluation of Apostolos, the person in authority. First-time visitors like Katerina thus ranked low in the project’s hierarchy of knowledge. While Apostolos insisted that he had “seen people adapting to this place within days”, for me this assimilation took several weeks. The following episode describes the anxiety and frustration I experienced in the early days of my fieldwork, as well as the assurance and approval that followed on, in order to dissect how entry into and ascendance in the hierarchy of knowledge complicated self-determination. I use auto- ethnographic reflections to make accessible both the emotional struggles and the supportive social relations the hierarchy of knowledge generated.

By mid-August, my self-confidence had all but vanished. I had ceased to ask “what’s the plan for today?” as this never yielded an answer beyond raised eyebrows from Manthos, Apostolos, and Karmen. I did not know how to communicate with the three of them: Whenever I asked what I could do or whether I could join what they were doing, I was ignored or turned down. I cleaned dishes and chopped vegetables, but besides these tasks I had little to do. I was puzzled: Was this not a project that aimed at collaboratively creating novel social and environmental relations? Why, then, did none of the three crew members introduce me to any of the tasks? What were people doing in this

223 place? To be sure, there was plenty of work: The Workshop space was dirty and messy, and a lot of cleaning could be done. However, on the one side I felt uncomfortable to clean and tidy someone else’s place, and on the other, my feminist ethos prevented me from resorting to housework in the face of boredom57. Anastasia daily assisted Apostolos in construction work, and as I had observed a romantic engagement I did not want to impose myself and felt I should give the couple some privacy. Nevertheless, one day I summoned my courage and told Apostolos I would come with him to partake in construction. But as he got into the car and switched on the engine he told me to stay at the Workshop. Karmen had asked for help in the kitchen and it was decided that I would assist her. In due time, she gave me a number of vegetables to cut and I was attentively peeping over her shoulder as she made a yeast dough and mixed left-over lentils with the finely cut vegetables I handed her back. Her English was very basic, and my Greek at that time was practically non-existent, so that attempts at chatting quickly dried out. She finally sent me away and called me back an hour later to make a salad. “But not too much. We have from yesterday”, she added. I had rarely cooked for fifteen people, as we were doing that day, and so the quantitative meaning of her words remained unclear to me. In any case, I first had to find out what to assemble into the plastic bowl she had handed me. Salad was considered the most important part of the meal, as its ingredients were mostly raw and had to be mustered in a wholesome way. Manthos had told me once that the ‘Free&Real salad’ contained “all the good stuff that you need”, but my knowledge on nutrition was limited. Trying to remember what past dishes had contained, I hesitantly opened the kitchen fridge. Vegetables and leafy greens of all sorts were wrapped in non-transparent plastic bags, and opening bag after bag I was not sure which ones were considered to be more nutritious raw than cooked. Aiming for a large variety, I picked some that I had not yet cut for Karmen’s lentil stew, but after chopping these the bowl was still almost empty. I looked around the kitchen, hoping to

57 Put plainly, I felt I would reproduce gender stereotypes of maintenance work by engaging in cleaning.

224 get some hints from commercial packaging. Instead, foodstuffs were stored in big glass jars and plastic containers and labelled in an alphabet and language unintelligible to me. I felt uncomfortable. “Hmm, what else could I put, Karmen?” I finally asked. She turned around, looked into the bowl, raised her eyebrows and gesticulated with the knife in her hands: “I don’t know re, find something!” I swallowed hard and opened the fridge again. Asking for help did not seem adequate: Karmen’s answer made it plain that I was to find out by myself what a ‘Free&Real salad’ contained. Had I better observed past food assemblages, I might have gathered the necessary knowledge. As it were, I had to improvise. When Apostolos asked over dinner how food preparation went, I mentioned that Karmen had let me make the salad. “Ah, that’s why it tastes like… that” he retorted. I had not yet gathered the necessary knowledge and, over the next few weeks, continued to chop vegetables in an attempt to learn. Two weeks later Karmen wanted a day off: She cooked almost every day during that summer, as Manthos was the only other crew member to take on food preparation. Moka had just arrived the day before, and the two of us offered to prepare the food. Despite still feeling nervous about doing things according to the ways of the project, I was looking

Figure 22. Cutting vegetables, wearing a Free&Real T-shirt. Picture taken by Eleni Frantzi. 225 forward to the task: Finally I could create something, rather than doing maintenance work. However, Apostolos was not very optimistic. “Here, food isn’t random. You can’t just cook anything. We have a specific diet here.” – “I know, but we’ll do something nice!” I pleaded. Doubtingly, he waved aside and said: “Just make pasta and sauce, it will be fine.” Moka nodded, went into the kitchen and returned with a large bag of spaghetti. She asked Apostolos how much we would need, but I did not agree with the menu: Over the weeks I had gathered enough nutritional information to dismiss pasta and sauce as inadequate for project standards. “Wait, guys!” I called out. “Come on Moka, we can make it, we can cook something nice. Let’s go into the kitchen and get inspired.” – “You can’t just…” Apostolos began. I turned around, ready to burst into tears from sheer frustration. “Well, can’t you just… trust us? We’ll do it!” Apostolos looked at me. “Ok, I just trust you and let you do.” Like the watering of a garden, cooking dinner constitutes a mundane practice that both Moka and I routinely undertook in our everyday lives. However, project particularities complicated the matter in terms of quantity, composition, and nutritional value and reformulated food preparation into place-specific knowledge. In order to ‘do something right’, this knowledge was crucial. Yet, while Karmen expected me to possess that knowledge, Apostolos disputed it. The former made me feel insecure because I lacked the basis for initiative; the latter angered me because I was denied autonomy. In this way, the hierarchy of knowledge created internal emotional struggles that complicated self-determination: Taking a proactive stance generated anxiety and frustration, so that most of the time, I passively waited for others to show me tasks.

Over time, however, this situation changed. About twelve weeks into my fieldwork I felt much more at home in project life. I took the initiative to make some wooden flower pots, as the ones in the Workshop yard were dissolving slowly and disgracefully. My first attempts were rather deplorable, and I turned to Apostolos for help. “Why is it falling apart?” He put aside his own work and squatted down over the crooked construction. “If you put them

226 together like this, you gain stability; here, you see? And don’t bother with nails, just use screws, they are much stronger. Do you know how to use a drill?” He looked straight into my eyes. – “Yes” I replied. – “Good. It’s in the tool shed. Just make sure you put the batteries back to charge.” With this he left me to try again, and approvingly commented on my progress as I produced several flower pots over the next few weeks. After constructing and painting them I decided to also paint the Crew Room’s exterior wall to brighten up the Workshop yard. Apostolos liked my style and took me to the tool shed to show me a number of small flower pots I could paint. I was excited: “Now I don’t want the project to close: There are so many nice things to do!” – “After three months!” he exclaimed. As we slowly walked back to the front of the Workshop I said, only half-jokingly: “Well, I had to emancipate myself from your reign first”, and added that things had been quite rough for me in the beginning. He shrugged his shoulders: “But that’s all part of the recruitment. To get to know the drill.” Metaphors of military training were not uncommon in Apostolos’ speech. They encompassed the acquisition of place-specific knowledge as well as the development of self-determination. On the one side, the group’s ideology and outreach insisted on anti-authoritarian autonomy combined with a proactive stance. When I realized this and took the initiative to construct and paint, I gained approval and support from Apostolos58. His willingness to explain the flower pot’s stability, his trust in my ability to use the drill, and his support of my painting activities all suggest that I was acting in the ways of the project. On the other side, ‘knowing the drill’ meant to be able to execute the task in the ways of the project. To Thodoris he would say, for example, “can you get the jars ready for the jam? You know the drill.” This referred to a sterilization process which involved finding and washing a certain amount of specifically sized glass jars and lids (more lids than jars were needed because some would eventually fail to close correctly), positioning and piling them up in a specific

58 Note that it is his position as project leader, discussed below, that adds weight – and authority – to his approval.

227 formation to fit into the two ovens, choosing temperature and duration for each tray, and most probably assist whoever was making the jam with the filling in and vacuuming process. The term ‘drill’ contained all these tasks and their correct execution59. Hence, the ‘recruitment’ constituted a sort of double bind (Bateson et al. 1956): It urged for initiative yet demanded assimilation; it acclaimed self-determination yet proclaimed hierarchy. These contradictive demands created emotional tensions that could situationally be overcome by assuming a proactive stance. Structurally, however, Free&Real’s hierarchy of knowledge had other implications. As a concept, the hierarchy of knowledge suggested a meritocracy based on practical and theoretical knowledge grounded in an observable reality; in practice, it attributed authority to place-specific knowledge. Scholars habitually point to the dynamics of decision making within anti-authoritarian initiatives to highlight the potentials and pitfalls of their demands. They either celebrate consensual decision making as ‘new’ and ‘prefigurative’ forms of ‘global democracy’, or, more critically, display the inconsistencies of public disavowals of authority in the light of simultaneous maintenance of hierarchical structures (Kadir 2016; Graeber 2006, Maeckelbergh 2009; Sarigsson 2004). Specifically, Nazima Kadir (2016) distinguishes between performance and habitus in her examination of a squatters community in Amsterdam. While the latter encompasses unconscious expressions of activists’ comportment, the former denotes activists’ self-conscious behaviour. Performance displays a specific socialization into the movement subculture which renders invisible the arduous skill acquisition at its base. The more ‘culturally central’ activists are, meaning the more social capital they possess within the group, the more successful they are in accumulating power and authority in decision making. The hierarchy thus created stands in opposition to the anti-authoritarian ideals of the community. Kadir’s analysis is helpful in that it points to the ways in

59 It here becomes transparent why Apostolos rejected my offer to help with construction work when Ferdinand and he were racing against time to finish the Hexa yurt’s first floor (cf. Chapter 5). There was indeed no time to teach me how to do the work as it comprised a number of different tasks and their correct executions.

228 which being an activist is based on culturally acquired social capital, or place- specific knowledge: Rules, conventions, and convictions that are important and seem self-evident within the group. As place-specific knowledge is normalized and therefore remains unquestioned, the realities and implications of its power relations remain hidden. This process bears similarities with the ways in which self-determination clashed with authority in decision-making processes at Telaithrion Project. In order to take decisions, one had to acquire place-specific knowledge. While this knowledge had to be gained through assimilation into the ways of the project, the project’s demand to individuals was independent action. Caught in a double bind of authority and self-determination, crew members could situationally escape by assuming a proactive stance in spite of lacking or through gaining place-specific knowledge. Structurally, however, place-specific knowledge assumed an authority that undermined self- determination on both personal and social levels as it accumulated in one person’s position. How this position developed over the project years, and what concrete implications it had for decision making within the group is dissected in the following section.

Personified Authority: Implications of Knowledge Accumulation

July’s swathes of cicadas created a never-subsiding canvas of chirring around us. We had spent the morning working at the Hexa yurt’s cob walls, eating fruits that we had brought from the Workshop the night before. Around four o’clock, it was time to start preparing the only meal of the day, and Apostolos drove Andreas and me to the Workshop to cook. It was an unusually hot day, and as we arrived and exited the car we all, without a word, strode for the chilled fruits piled up temptingly in the large double-doored fridge. While Andreas and I darted for the ice-cold underpart of a watermelon, Apostolos

229 sampled an assortment of fruits and went to the kitchen to make himself a smoothie. After relishing the melon, Andreas and I began cleaning yesterday’s soaked pots and pans in the shadow of the corrugated metal roof. After a while, Apostolos came out of the kitchen and, as was his habit, placed the sticky smoothie maker in one of the sinks. It never stopped astounding me that he would not rinse the item, as he used it almost daily. With fieldwork nearly over, I felt a few points needed clarification before I left, and so I asked bluntly: “Why do you never wash dishes?” - “I do.” - “Beyond your own plate and spoon.” - “I think we’ve been through this before.” - “Remind me.” - “Because I have more important things to do.” - “Unlike we others?” - “I have many responsibilities that nobody else has. Washing dishes anybody can do: It’s a visitor’s job. Utilize the visitors for this.” With this he turned around and left. Andreas and I smiled at each other as we continued scrubbing the pots in order to make dinner.

It was true: Apostolos did have more important things to do than washing dishes. His workload was immense, and I rarely ever saw him relaxing or hanging out. He was in charge of all the administration and organisation of Telaithrion Project – but what he liked doing best was construction work. He was the architect, master builder, and lead worker of the Hexa Yurt, the first building he conceptualized and built himself. With a folding ruler in his side pocket, a drill in his hand, and a number of screws in the corner of his mouth, he could work for hours on end, stopped only by the emptying of the tool’s battery or the diminishing light. Many a time Anastasia and he returned from the Test Site at dusk, tired and content, after toiling in the hot summer sun or the chilly autumn winds. After dinner, Anastasia would prepare Greek coffee for both, and Apostolos would drink his share in front of his double screen PC,

230 attending to the managerial tasks of Telaithrion Project. The development and distribution of responsibilities at the project give insights into why Apostolos worked so hard. Four founding members came to Agios in summer 2010 to begin building up a school for self-sufficiency and sustainability. Panagiotis was the last one to leave: He quit the project a year before the beginning of my fieldwork. I met him and Manthos in Athens during the project’s winter break, at the vegan food gathering. He told me how workloads were distributed in the project’s early days:

In the beginning we needed to work very hard, and everybody had to take on as much work as they could. Apostolos took on all the computer work: Responding to e-mails, advertising the project etc. And he took on the finances: the bills, the visitors’ contributions, the organisation of workshops, the shopping. I knew a bit about construction, so I focussed on that, and other things, and so on: Everybody did a lot of stuff, a lot. Panagiotis

After about six months, more people joined and slowly the crew grew to around twenty members. I know little about these years, as their social complexity seems to have produced strong emotional turbulences which, as a researcher and friend, I did not wish to stir up through inquiry60. Whatever the histories, incitements, and psychologies of these years may have been, during fieldwork Apostolos carried out the entire administration of Telaithrion Project. He singlehandedly managed the project’s finances and legal face, decided on building and gardening projects, organized and promoted workshops, went food shopping, struck deals with merchants, and handled all the correspondence, PR,

60 Of course, the question of why everyone left lingered at the project site. Apostolos said they did because the project is not conceptualized for permanence; however, its temporariness seems to evade himself in curious ways (cf. Chapter 4). Panagiotis, on the other hand, insisted that beyond lifestyle choices and obligations the main reason for crew members to leave had to do with personal disputes that involved Apostolos. That Apostolos himself did not leave through all this turmoil, Panagiotis attributed to the fact that the latter’s father grew up in Agios and the land of the Test Site has been donated by his grandmother, giagia Nicoletta.

231 and online appearance. This is why he spent hours on end in front of his PC in the dark yet tidy room we called Apostolos’ Office, a space that doubled as storage for dried herbs and featured an assemblage of anime figurines and a modest drawer with clothes and personal items. Over the years, Apostolos took on the responsibilities of all the founding members. In the process, he acquired the practical knowledge necessary to accomplish these tasks. In a valiant DIY fashion, he learned how to manage a project, construct buildings, organize workshops, and deal with the project’s legal face61. The accumulation of all this practical knowledge positioned him at the top of Free&Real’s hierarchy of place-based knowledge. As authority became personified, self-determination was undermined. Shortly before Manthos left, he told me that “whenever I have a good idea and I say ‘let’s do this’, Apostolos, for some reason, doesn’t feel like doing it, and says ‘no’. The final argument is always that ‘you don’t know the project as well as I do’.” After two years of project life, 28-year-old Manthos still felt his initiative thwarted by Apostolos’ appeal to the hierarchy of knowledge. The latter emphasised habitually that he knew most about the project and thus was qualified to take final decisions. Used as a factual piece of information, the hierarchy of knowledge collapsed decision making into personal resolution. Apostolos did not want to assume the role of ‘giving orders’. His appeal during the emergency meeting in August disclosed his unwillingness to create authority. However, rather than by giving orders, it was by making decisions that he assumed authority, namely by employing the argument of a hierarchy of knowledge in the group’s decision making processes. His doing was in line with project ideology: The founding members had constructed knowledge as objective and observable, and its employment was to regulate social affairs in a disinterested, fair way (see below). Yet the kind of knowledge that did, in fact, assume authority in project activities was highly place-specific. This knowledge

61 As indicated elsewhere, Free&Real legally constituted a not-for-profit company. As former members decided to leave and resign from their legal participation, Apostolos had to deal with rather tedious administrative processes prolonged by the complexities of Greece’s bureaucratic apparatus.

232 accumulated in the one person who had been with the project the longest and had taken on all necessary responsibilities as others had left. Its employment in the decision making process amounted, effectively, to identifying authority with the person at the top of the hierarchy of knowledge. This personification of authority undermined self-determination both socially and personally. Personally, the appeal to hierarchy of knowledge thwarted initiative. Socially, the personification of authority opposed the conceptualization of the project as an extension of the self through collapsing decision making into personal resolution. Thereby, the opportunity to create shared responsibility through collective decision taking was replaced by a personified authority of place- specific knowledge.

The Scientific Decision Making Method and the Production of Technocratic Knowledge

Free&Real are based on the belief that in late capitalism, democratic decision making processes entail intrinsically oppressive and unjust mechanisms. Therefore, the group propose what they call the ‘scientific decision making method’62. This, the original members had canonized as the most efficient, just, and holistic way to arrive at practical decisions that concern the project – provided it was executed in the appropriate way. The appropriate way is sketched on their web page63 and entails nine open-ended points about the definition of objectives, the gathering, assessment, and cross-checking of data, theoretical implementation, evaluation and redesign, practical implementation, and feedback. In order to function smoothly, this process requires a heightened awareness of the self and its embeddedness. The web

62 This deterministic, factual approach to knowledge is the basis of pragmatic realism discussed in Chapter 2.

63 See Appendix iii for Free&Real’s full description of this concept.

233 page mentions the need to have answered questions such as ‘who am I?’, ‘where am I?’, ‘where do I want to go?’ and ‘how will I get there?’ before setting out to make a practical decision. With this challenging framework of self-recognition (for discussion see Chapter 3), the original Free&Real members hoped to ‘cover the huge gap’ they acknowledged to exist between individuals through personal beliefs, influences of one’s environment, and the ‘ego’. In other words, answering these questions was to enable individuals to replace personal interests and passions with neutral, technical judgment. In this way, decision making was believed to circumvent unjust mechanisms and generate holistic and feasible solutions. While knowledge was conceptualized as attainable through attentive observation of an objective reality (cf. Chapter 2), it was also perceived to evolve deterministically in an ‘endless evolution of information and human knowledge through [the] centuries’. Anchoring information and knowledge outside human creation gives it, if not an agency of its own, then at least an air of Darwinian natural and thus optimal selection. In this spirit, the evolution of knowledge, on the webpage written in bold capitals, was perceived to be ‘independent’ and ‘inevitable’. Applicable both to small- and large-scale societies, scientific decision making was expected to circumvent the uneven processes of democracy and enable a social group to arrive at ethical, holistic, and feasible decisions and actions. While a hierarchy of knowledge attempted to generate a social order, the scientific decision making method aimed to organize this order via seemingly neutral judgments. Immersed in late capitalism’s irrationally planned economy and unjust political system (cf. Introduction and Chapter 1), the group looked to rational, objective knowledge for decision making. Unfortunately, the scientific decision making method led to a technocratic conceptualization of social order. Technocracy, or “that society in which those who govern justify themselves by appeal to technical experts who, in turn, justify themselves by appeal to scientific forms of knowledge’’ (Roszak 1969:8) has long been an object of enquiry for social scientists. They detect in it a specific kind of knowledge production that coerces individuals into passive – and apolitical – docility via

234 norming, auditing and governing strategies (Latour 1996; Foucault 1991; Rabinow 1989). It does so through a multitude of practices, including quantifying, regulating, or planning around the unplannable (Beck 1992; Giddens 1991), staging claims about ‘transparency’ and ‘audit’ (West & Sanders 2003), and targeting its own failures via further implementations and interventions (Riles 2000; Castel 1991). In the process, technocracy expands bureaucratic power and depoliticizes public life (Ferguson 1994). At Telaithrion Project, the appeal to scientific forms of knowledge explicitly substituted for democratic or consensual decision making. A complex framework of self-recognition hoped to plan around and insure against individual differences, and the narrative of a deterministic evolution of knowledge justified its continued implementation. As this process underlay the ways in which practical decisions concerning the project were made, technocratic knowledge production governed much of the project’s everyday. While the scientific decision making method was never explicitly or transparently applied, the following episode illustrates how it was employed to justify decisions, and brings to the fore its depoliticizing effects.

After collecting a number of complaints from female visitors about the toilet arrangements at the project I voiced a concern that also had become my own. In order to compost human excrement odourlessly and safely, the group divided solid and liquid human waste. While solid waste was collected in buckets underneath the toilet seats and subsequently cleared out and composted by the crew members, liquid waste was piped out to the nearby creek at the Workshop and into a drainage pit feeding banana trees at the Test Site. However, the solid and liquid systems worked separately, and while the faeces toilet was hand-built with comfortable toilet seats, urination was combined with washing in bidets. Although the project provided shop-bought toilet paper, the bidets’ original use was actively promoted as less wasteful. The problem that many women and I encountered was the following: While men performed their urination in considerable vertical detachment from the bidet base, women

235 would squat over or sit on the bidet’s rim. But the plumbing fixtures installed featured flat, rather than hollowed bases so that urine would splash back up. When squatting or sitting (the latter of which is more comfortable and relaxing for most women) the splashing, in connection with the bidet’s original use, led to health hazards: Several women, including myself, battled with bacterial infections. When I raised this issue at a crew meeting in September, Apostolos informed me that the original crew had taken “all the data into account” and had developed this system “for maximal and optimal outcomes.” The original crew consisted of four men joined, after a few months, by a woman. I had the suspicion that gendered toilet practices were not part of their considerations. “But new ‘data’ shows that there’s a health hazard involved”, I replied. “That’s not possible. You just use the toilet in the wrong way”, Apostolos informed me, and Manthos proposed I construct a moveable toilet seat that could be stood over the bidet. The conversation then went on to other subjects, and I never built the construction Manthos had suggested.

Figure 23. Compost toilet at the Workshop. Picture taken by Anastasia.

Scientific knowledge was portrayed to stem from the observation of an objective reality of actions, which in turn became rationalized into sets of ‘data’

236 that could be assessed and audited for normative evaluation of quantifiable impact and comprehensible application. These ‘maximal and optimal outcomes’ were used to justify decisions and silence objections. By declaring knowledge disinterested and neutral, technocratic argumentation avoids considering the realities and implications of power relations whose fluctuating yet concrete effects encompass both situational and structural aspects of social orders. Thereby, it depoliticizes decisions and silences disagreements. The health and gender implications of the project’s sanitary facilities were waved aside as personal inabilities – a narrative painfully prevalent in the contemporary climate of neoliberal austerity measures across welfare state sectors. Furthermore, the depoliticizing and silencing tendencies of technocratic argumentation expand the power of those already elevated through its hierarchy by further implementing its narrative of objective reality. Anastasia, for example, never raised gender issues (about toilets or other aspects of project life) and instead trained herself to go to the toilet in the ways of the project. Karmen impatiently waved my objections aside, and Moka said she had gotten used to squatting. As I was regularly the only woman raising what I felt were unequal considerations and treatments of the sexes (though unfailingly supported by Andreas, whenever he was present), the depoliticization arose not only from Apostolos but from everyone’s unwillingness to engage with these questions. However, as the only remaining founding member, Apostolos was the sole advocate and assertor of the scientific decision making method. As such, his justifications of decisions via this method earned him authority, making it more difficult for others to object. In these ways, decision making at Telaithrion Project revealed a social order full of tensions between self- determination and authority. Free&Real advocate a politics of ‘observe and interact’ and insist that individuals need to take a proactive stance to bring about social and environmental change. To circumvent the oppressive and unjust mechanisms of contemporary democratic decision making, the group proposed a meritocracy grounded in seemingly disinterested knowledge. Constructed as deterministic and independent, this knowledge was, in effect,

237 highly place-specific and technocratic. It granted personified authority through hierarchy and a claim to objectivity, and had depoliticizing and silencing effects. In several ways, it was akin to the standardised knowledge of formal schooling the group rejected (cf. Chapter 3). Why, then, did crew members not object? Where was their self-directed decision-taking, their initiative, in real terms? The final section addresses these questions by describing how crew members themselves perpetuated the necessity for authority.

(Not) Taking Decisions

Before fieldwork I visited Telaithrion Project twice; the second time was in March 2015. The group had recently been asked to return the plot of land they had been using as a natural farming garden. They were low-spirited at first, but decided to make the best of the situation and relocate some of the plants to the Mountain Site. Unfortunately, as is often the case in March, the weather was wet and grey, and we spent much of our time confined to the Workshop living room. When the rains stopped and the sun finally broke through the clouds, crew member Sotiria and I stormed into the garden to dig out the largest plants. Apostolos, Manthos, and Thodoris drove up to the Mountain Site to inspect and repair the dirt road, and Dannie, a returning visitor, had long been aching to go for a run. Enthusiastically uprooting sage and rosemary bushes, I broke the handle of a gardening fork. I felt slightly sheepish and asked Sotiria what to do now. She was 35 and had been a crew member for about a year. Her answer surprised me: “Ah, don’t worry. Let’s wait for Apostolos.” – “Yeah ok, but what do you usually do when a tool breaks? Do you have spare handles? Or is there a shop close by where we can buy one?” I asked, hoping to fix the issue quickly. “Eh… I don’t really know. Apostolos takes care of these things. It’s ok, let’s just wait until he’s back”, Sotiria insisted. We sat around for about half an hour chatting about project life

238 and waiting for Apostolos to return. When he did, he looked at the broken handle, told me not to worry and gave me a spade to work with instead. I had not even thought about employing another tool; neither had Sotiria. Over the course of fieldwork, similar incidents accumulated to a pattern- like scheme. Were the sage cuttings completely dry and could be stored away? Would plywood boards make for a good flower pot? Would the cob wall carry one more layer of fresh material without tilting? “Let’s ask Apostolos” or “let’s see what Apostolos will say” concluded a significant amount of discussions concerning everyday decisions. It seemed a question of experience: Having been with the project from its onset, Apostolos had acquired practical knowledge that crew members, as of yet, had to acquire through assimilation into the ways of the project. While these were technical and somewhat minor decisions, they point to important ways in which crew members maintained the hierarchy of knowledge through handing over decision taking. These ways were guided both by the imperative of doing things in the ways of the project, and by crew members’ tendencies to accept authority. This situation appeared magnified in the irregular and infrequent crew meetings, which were called by Apostolos before workshops, or before he left to Athens for a few days to do bulk grocery shopping. We would gather on mattresses and cushions in the Office, and he would tell us about the next steps of the project and the works that would incur along the way. “Before the natural building workshop we will make the stone foundation of the walls, so tomorrow we’ll get stones and cement, and the cement mixer”, he told us, for example, in a meeting in April. “Cool, where do you get a cement mixer from?” I asked, interested in the group’s relations with the local population. “From my ass”, Apostolos retorted with wide eyes, and gave no further explanation. He had conceptualized, planned, and coordinated the entire process and informed us of the facts. The seemingly spontaneous jobs of Chapter 5 thus appear organised, which contextualize Apostolos’ expectations of availability and voluntariness into a managerial process of coordination and planning. Furthermore, the informative framework of the meetings provided no space for background information:

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Apostolos was not interested in disclosing his organising process, but in informing us of the outcomes. Finally, these meetings never contained decision making on practical, economic, or structural questions concerning the project. Apostolos routinely took these decisions as part of his responsibilities; however, crew members did not question this situation, nor demanded any part in it. Only Andreas, during that meeting in April, suggested discussing the group’s decision making method in depth, and we all agreed to read the web page’s explication and meet again. However, apart from two people, no-one read the text, and the discussion never happened. As crew members actively handed over decision taking and, at the same time, remained passive in challenging decision making processes, Apostolos’ authority, gained through responsibilities based on place-specific knowledge, remained in place.

As pointed out above, many contemporary social movements employ processes of self-organisation, mutual aid, and direct democracy. Common to their endeavours is an effort to share responsibilities through non-hierarchical structures, collaboration, and autonomy (Graeber 2004). Similarly, eco-projects routinely employ collective decision making (Gilsenan 2013; Sanguinetti 2012; Sargisson 2004). Collaborative decision making processes are thus widely employed within environmentalist and anti-corporate initiatives to counter the creation of authority through responsibilities and, instead, prefigure different ways of arriving at decisions and actions. However, among Free&Real the opportunity to create shared responsibility through collective decision taking was exchanged with individual decision taking personified in a position of authority based on a hierarchy of place-specific knowledge. At the same time, questions of self-determination were equally individualized. Chapter 2 dissected how Free&Real considered it an individual task to act in accordance with consequential ecological ethics, and how the group adapted these ethics situationally to suit individual needs and conditions. Chapter 3 explored the most outspokenly individualist aspect of Free&Real’s endeavours, namely the effort to transform the self to become a better person. Chapter 4, finally,

240 discussed the group’s limits of collectivism and their need to make space and take time for the self. All these discussions illustrate the ways in which Free&Real centred their prefigurative social change on a certain kind of individualism. This was an individualism that insisted to treat the social as personal by perceiving one’s environment as an extension of the self and, conversely, understanding the self as the beginning of the social. As Apostolos and I were standing under the corrugated metal roof talking about his travels with Thodoris, he told me: “In Hawaii, we were in a car, ok, a closed space, with a mother and her 8-year-old daughter. The mother was smoking weed and gave the spliff to Thodoris. Ok, the mother doesn’t care about her daughter, but by smoking with her, you don’t care either. This is what I tried to tell him: Be aware of the situation. Your actions have consequences.” Exposing the child to both harmful vapours and potentially dangerous driving was less a matter for political discussion than a question of personal action. Through compliance Thodoris became complicit. At the same time, by abdicating from smoking in the car Apostolos positioned himself as an instance of change, based not on discussion and words, but instead on deeds. To live one’s life free and real ultimately meant to determine for oneself how one was to act in the world. Consequently, taking initiative and responsibility constituted individual, rather than collective endeavours. While this approach fostered refusal of geo- and state political authority through claims to agency, it foreclosed the challenging of project-internal authority through a double bind that urged for initiative yet proclaimed hierarchy. In this way, self-determination depoliticized social change into acquisition of and assimilation into a particular kind of knowledge whose alleged objectivity produced a technocratic conceptualization of social order. Justifying decisions and silencing objections, this technocratic knowledge remained largely unchallenged by crew members who accepted its personified authority. As a result, Apostolos was the de facto leader of Telaithrion Project, and crew members aimed to support him in his endeavours. Spyros declared: “Apostolos is full, he cannot take any more conversations and any more work.

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He’s full, and we should work our asses off to help him and take off some of the burden.” This was no passive state of anxiety and frustration as I experienced it at the beginning of fieldwork, nor was it a lack of initiative. Instead, it was a conscious decision to follow and support someone else. In fact, once crew members had completed the ‘recruitment’ and were trained in the ways of the project, they went busily about their everyday activities. They maintained and furthered the project under Apostolos’ organisation and management. However, what was largely lacking from this engagement was co- creation, or creative collaboration, in the form of shared decision making, workload, and responsibilities. Observing this situation, 21-year-old returning visitor Raye mused:

I feel that it would do the place good to have somebody who is willing and able to take on responsibility and pull the place towards the vision. Because Anastasia and Karmen are here because they like being here, and Spiros is into the vision, but he’s a bit frustrated with the reality of it. Katerina doesn’t pull the project… she pushes, rather. Only Andreas, I think, has the ability to pull and inspire, and to carry the vision. But he’s getting frustrated with the politics of the place. So, I think Apostolos is kind of alone carrying the vision, and the project. Raye

Carrying both vision and responsibilities, Apostolos was indeed somewhat alone and isolated in his role, as the negotiations of time discussed in Chapter 4 illustrate. This was certainly not due to a lack of attention: In fact, both visitors and crew members were most keen to engage with whom they perceived to be the project leader. Finding out about Free&Real through the internet, people read and heard Apostolos’ comments in interviews and media coverage. Visitors exchanged e-mails about their stay with him and, upon their arrival, often showered him with questions (see Chapter 4). Rather than for attention, however, Apostolos longed for collaboration. Giorgos, whom we met in

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Chapter 4, stayed at the project in late spring and early summer. When he complained one day that, after two months, he had “hugged everybody except you” 64, Apostolos answered:

You know what is a hug? When we were up there [at the construction site] screwing the same screw, and our shoulders were touching: That is a hug. And that you are here is a hug. The entire project is a hug, don’t you get that? Malaka, I’ve been here six years. You know how many people have said ‘I want to get closer to you, I want more of your time’? I’m not up for discussing stuff one million times. I want to do stuff, create stuff, together! Apostolos

For Apostolos, creating things together went beyond construction work and encompassed the entirety of Telaithrion Project expressed in the collective intimacy of shared labour (for discussion of shared labour and collective intimacy in eco-projects see Watanabe 2014). Creative engagement is intrinsic to Free&Real’s endeavours (cf. Chapter 3); employing it together means to collaborate in meaningful and intimate ways. Chapter 2 has illustrated how for my informants, nature comprised the birthing, growing, developing, and dying organisms who share the spatio-temporal framing of their existence. This sharing constitutes what I, following Donna Haraway (2016), have called collaborations, namely the processes, interactions, and relations of all planetary existence. This view formed the basis of Free&Real’s environmentalism, as the group aimed to accelerate natural processes through regenerative human-nature collaboration. However, on the micro-level of project reality collaboration and co-creation was complicated by the social realities of project life: The inspiration and dissemination of the group’s ideology was hampered by spatio-

64 Despite traditional customs to kiss each other’s cheeks by way of greeting, men hug rarely in contemporary Greece. At Telaithrion Project, however, hugs were a common way of expressing friendship and closeness. They rendered the feeling of togetherness physical (cf. Chapter 4), and thus carried both social and emotional meaning.

243 temporal limits of hospitality (cf. Chapter 4); and the creative collaboration to erect a school for self-sufficiency and sustainability was impeded by a social order that favoured meritocracy over democracy. As such, Telaithrion Project constituted an environmental initiative led by a project leader and supported by a fluctuating and shifting group of people under the name Free&Real.

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Conclusion

Time permeates this thesis and binds together the various strands of Free&Real’s endeavours to one over-arching question: How to best spend one’s lifetime at the beginning of the 21st century? Rather than giving one concise answer, the chapters of this thesis have shown in detail the group’s grappling with this question. As some chapters explicitly discussed and others merely hinted at the meanings and implications of time, time surfaces not as a grand narrative or theory in my informants’ worldviews but rather as a recurring theme implicitly underlying their practices and considerations. Planetary, late- capitalist, and individual time emerge as three temporal scales through which the group frame, contextualize, and pursue their endeavours. The final paragraphs of this thesis aim to show how these scales were connected through Free&Real’s prefigurative action in and on the world and in and on individuals. On a planetary scale, time frames Free&Real’s activism through the ongoing temporality of the environment, now critically endangered by human impact on

245 the planet. In the roughly seventy years of the Anthropocene, human impact has induced a ‘humanitarian and environmental crisis’. This was produced through another time scale, namely late-capitalist time. Late-capitalist time is marked by extreme consumerism whose production, distribution, and waste management has devastating effects for all life on Earth. In an attempt to emancipate themselves and nature from late-capitalist time, Free&Real advocate to rethink how to spend one’s individual time.

Methods of prefiguration, or ways of creating alternatives through practice, allowed Free&Real to tackle late-capitalist time through individual time. The group’s environmentalism was based on ecological ethics and pragmatic realism. The latter defined the present as a time of transition and cast the former as essential for this transition to be life-sustaining. This present transition to a yet undefined future was cast as a consequence of the humanitarian and environmental crisis of late capitalism. Moments and situations that are perceived as crisis, Rebecca Bryant (2016) suggests, give heightened meaning to the present.

In such moments, we become aware of the present that ordinarily slips out of consciousness, and it becomes something viscerally present, a point hovering between past and future. We acquire a sense that what we do in this present will be decisive for both the past and the future, giving to the present the status of a threshold. Bryant 2016:20

Crisis, the scholar explains, emphasises the present and its impact on the future, while carrying meaning also for the past. Grounded in exploitative exchange relations and the commodification of nature, late capitalism has brought about serious environmental troubles. My informants cast this present moment as a critical point in time, in which human acts and their consequences are decisive of a planetary future. Aiming to abandon the unsustainable practices and

246 relations of the past, they used methods of prefiguration such as permaculture, veganism, and remixing to bring about a different future through action in the present. Prefiguration removes the temporal distinction between the struggle in the present and the goal in the future. Employing such methods allowed the group to engage individual time in the present in order to critique and possibly alter late-capitalist time in the future. As they radically changed their everyday ways of being and supported others to do the same, they aimed to make redundant the ways in which capitalist relations structure everyday lives in post-industrial societies. They thus tackled late-capitalist time through practices of individual time. The urgency of planetary time in crisis added meaning to the group’s personal endeavours. First and foremost, Free&Real participants aimed at a transformation of the self. The thesis has detailed the complexities of these endeavours, as they simultaneously liberated individuals and produced hierarchies and tensions within the group. Despite the hierarchies, Free&Real participants ultimately justified the focus on individual change by relating it back to the crisis of planetary time. Scaling up personal development to environmental activism via a critique of economic relations was a way of justifying their endeavours beyond the personal. It added meaning, value, and scope to their action, and presented a means to generate agency based on personal ethics. Paying attention to such practices allows anthropologists to begin to unravel how people construct political agency through time. In her discussion of ‘modern time’, Laura Bear writes:

Within capitalism time is the key site for attempts to develop legitimacy and agency. Yet this centrality of time is a symptom of inequalities in social relationships. Bear 2014:17

She postulates, following Marx, that the conflictual social rhythms of time need to be laid bare if anthropologists are to arrive at explicit

247 epistemologies of time as the basis for analysis. Emphasizing ethics and agency, rather than only legitimation and resistance, she therefore points to the labour (or strenuous mediations) in and of modern time. In order to understand how citizens construct political agency through representations of and labour with time, Bear contends that it is essential to pay attention to the “small practices of endurance that build futures in the material world” (2014:22). At Telaithrion Project, prefigurative methods of creating a more viable future for the planet through personal transformation in the present emerged as a practice of endurance within and against late capitalism. Taking time to ‘stay with the trouble’ by radically restructuring one’s personal time was a way of adding meaning beyond the personal. Harvey’s (2000) dialectical – or spatiotemporal – utopianism constructs and creates ‘spaces of hope’ through imagining the future from within and against the present. In a similar way, Free&Real’s prefigurative methods aimed at making space to enact relations differently and at making time outside late-capitalist time. They did so by attempting to create a planetary future within the late-capitalist present through individual transformation.

The group’s prefigurative practices were imbued with paradoxes. They applied the notion of factual knowledge to both contest capitalist environmental depletion, and to justify authority within their social structure in ways that resonated with the very capitalist system they opposed. They celebrated the individual’s impact on social change through self-transformation, yet hoped to diminish individual needs for private time and space for personal transformative work in their delivery of altruistic hospitality. And they rejected the formal economy’s division of time into work and leisure dualities, but reproduced themselves dualities as they argued for progress and modernity. The group’s unwitting reproduction of capitalist discourses was an outcome of their prefiguration through remixing. Telaithrion Project was an experiential space for ‘free’ and ‘real’ living. While this approach was conscious of human embeddedness in nature and considered imperative the harmonious recreation

248 of socio-environmental relations, it approached this task through distinct practices anchored in liberal epistemologies. As the thesis has shown in detail, liberal narratives of factuality, dichotomy, and individuation form part of the late capitalist project. Free&Real participants actively tapped into these discourses through their remixing or copying, transforming, and combining existing thoughts and practices to create something new. This approach does not ask to radically reinvent every aspect of relationality, but instead to creatively utilize what is at one’s disposal. While founding members’ interest in IT and computing explains prefigurative remixing at the personal level, the narrative of critical planetary time legitimized it structurally. As change appeared necessary and urgent in the present state of transition, remixing allowed Free&Real participants to capitalize on existing knowledge and practices, and to creatively combine them towards transformative ends. Therefore, Free&Real’s reproduction of capitalist epistemologies, discourses, and practices emerges not as a contradiction of their efforts but rather as a reflection of their labour in modern time. Bear uses the term labour literally to demarcate the “creative, mediating action in the world [which reconciles] disparate social rhythms, multiple representations of time and non-human time” (2014:20). In other words, it is the work people put into living through different temporalities. For my informants, the crisis of planetary time produced an urgent need to emancipate themselves and nature from late-capitalist time through transforming individual time. This labour in time importantly guided Free&Real’s prefiguration. As a method, remixing enabled the group to construct political agency by casting individual time as decisive for both late- capitalist and planetary time. As an answer to their question of how to best spend one’s lifetime at the beginning of the 21st century, it lays bare the many negotiations, intricacies, and ultimately the possibilities of prefiguring alternative futures from within and against the present.

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Appendix i

Audio Transcript The Lie We Live, 2015

At this moment, you could be anywhere doing anything. Instead you sit alone before a screen. So what’s stopping us from doing what we want, being where we want to be? Each day we wake up in the same room, and follow the same path, to live the same day as yesterday. Yet at one time each day was a new adventure. Along the way something changed. Before the days were timeless, now our days are scheduled. Is this what it means to be grown up, to be free? But are we really free? Food. Water. Land. The very elements we need to survive are owned by corporations. There is no food for us on trees, no fresh water in streams, no land to build a home. If you try and take what the earth provides you’ll be locked away. So we obey their rules. We discover the world through a textbook. For years we sit and regurgitate what we’re told. Tested and graded like subjects in a lab. Raised not to make a difference in this world, raised to be no different. Smart enough to do our job, but not to question why we do it. So we work and work, left with no time to live the life we work for. Until a day comes when we are too old to do our job. It is here we’re left to die. Our children take our place in the game. To us our path is unique, but together we are nothing more than fuel. The fuel that powers the elite. The elite who hide behind the logos of corporations. This is their world. And their most valuable resource is not in the ground. It is us. We build their cities. We run their machines. We fight their wars. After all, money isn’t what drives them: It’s power. Money is simply the tool they use to control us. Worthless pieces of paper we depend on to feed us, move us, entertain us. They gave us money, and in return we gave them the world. Where there were trees that cleaned our air, are now factories that poison it. Where there was water to drink, is toxic waste that stinks. Where animals ran

250 free are factory farms where they are born and slaughtered endlessly for our satisfaction. Over a billion people are starving despite us having enough food for everybody. Where does it all go? 70 percent of the grain we grow is fed to the animals you eat for dinner. Why help the starving? You can’t profit off them. We’re like a plague sweeping the earth. Tearing apart the very environment that allows us to live. We see everything as something to be sold. As an object to be owned. But what happens when we have polluted the last river, poisoned the last breath of air, have no oil for the trucks that bring us our food? When will we realize money can’t be eaten, that it has no value? We are destroying the planet. We’re destroying all life on it. Every year thousands of species go extinct, and time is running out before we’re next. If you live in America, there’s a 41 percent chance you’ll get cancer. Heart disease will kill one out of three Americans. We take prescription drugs to deal with these problems. But medical care is the third leading cause of death behind cancer and heart disease. We’re told everything can be solved by throwing money at scientists, so they can discover a pill to make our problems go away. But the drug companies and cancer societies rely on our suffering to make a profit. We think we’re running for a cure65, but really we’re running away from the cause. Our body is a product of what we consume, and the food we eat is designed purely for profit. We fill ourselves with toxic chemicals, the bodies of animals infested with drugs and diseases. But we don’t see this: The small group of corporations that own the media don’t want us to, surrounding us with a fantasy we’re told is reality. It’s funny to think humans once thought the earth was the centre of the universe – but then again, now we see ourselves as the centre of the planet. We point to our technology and say we’re the smartest. But do our computers, cars, and factories really illustrate how intelligent we are? Or do they show how lazy we’ve become? We put this civilized mask on. But when you strip that away, what are we? How quickly we forget only within the past 100 years did we allow women to vote, allow blacks to live as equals. We act as if we’re all

65 Visual footage of running event, assumingly a charity event to raise awareness of cancer

251 knowing beings yet there’s much we fail to see. We walk down the street ignoring the little things. The eyes that stare, the stories they share. Seeing everything as a background to ‘me’. Perhaps we fear we’re not alone. That we’re part of a much bigger picture, but we fail to make the connection. We’re okay killing pigs cows chickens, strangers from foreign lands, but not our neighbours, not our dogs, our cats, those we have come to love and understand. We call other creatures stupid, yet we point to them to justify our actions. But does killing simply because we can, because we always have, make it right? Or does it show how little we’ve learned, that we continue to act out of primal aggression, rather than thought and compassion? One day the sensation we call life will leave us. Our bodies will rot, our valuables recollected. Yesterday’s actions are all that remain. Death constantly surrounds us. Still it seems so distant from our everyday reality. We live in a world on the verge of collapse. The wars of tomorrow will have no winners. For violence will never be the answer, it will destroy every possible solution. If we all look at our innermost desire, we will see our dreams are not so different. We share a common goal: happiness. We tear the world apart looking for joy, without ever looking within ourselves. Many of the happiest people are those who own the least. But are we really so happy with our iPhones, our big houses, our fancy cars? We’ve become disconnected, idolizing people we’ve never met. We witness the extraordinary on screens, but ordinary everywhere else. We wait for someone to bring change, without ever thinking of changing ourselves. Presidential elections might as well be a coin toss: It’s two sides of the same coin. We choose which face we want and the illusion of choice, of change is created. But the world remains the same. We fail to realize the politicians don’t serve us. They serve those who fund them into power. We need leaders, not politicians. But in this world of followers we have forgotten to lead ourselves. Stop waiting for change and be the change you want to see. We didn’t’ get to this point by sitting on our asses. The human race survived not because we are

252 the fastest or the strongest, but because we work together. We have mastered the act of killing: Now let’s master the joy of living. This isn’t about saving the planet. The planet will be here whether we are or not. Earth has been around for billions of years. Each of us will be lucky to last eighty. We are a flash in time, but our impact is forever. “I often wish we lived in an age before computers, when we didn’t have screens to distract us. But I realize there’s one reason why this is the only time I want to be alive. Because here today we have an opportunity we never had before: The internet gives us the power to share a message and unite millions around the world. While we still can, we must use our screens to bring us close together, rather than further apart.” For better or worse our generation will determine the future life on this planet. We can either continue to serve this system of destruction until no memory of our existence remains, or we can wake up, realize we aren’t evolving upwards but rather falling down. We just have screens in our faces so we don’t see where we’re heading. This present moment is what every step, every breath, and every death has led to: We are the faces of all who came before us. Now it is our turn. You can choose to carve your own path, or follow the road countless others have already taken. Life is not a movie, the script isn’t already written. We are the writers, this is your story. Their66 story. Our story.

66 Visual footage of animals

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Appendix ii

Initial E-Mail by Free&Real, received 26 Jan. 2014

The information below applies to those who are visiting our project for the first time. Since you will be travelling from abroad we can arrange for you to stay a bit longer if you like (up to 10 days).

Visiting our grounds.

In general, we accept visits from friends, acquaintances and strangers during the entire year. We never say no to surprise visits, but it is always much easier for us when there is a notice prior to arrivals in order to manage our time and schedule accordingly, in case for example we have other visitors or volunteers, or we are away helping other projects. If you want to be accommodated within the project, if it is your first visit, you have to stay for at least 3 days and no more than 5 days (or up to 2 weeks if you travel from abroad, as stated above).

If you have stayed with us before, then your new visit is planned on a case by case basis (considering running operations, the project’s needs, the reasons you want to visit, number of other guests, etc).

Accommodation

For visitors / volunteers who want to be accommodated within the project, we suggest a contribution of 7€ per night, which also includes breakfast.

You will be spending your nights either in one of our Yurts, or in one of the houses that have been made available to us in the nearby village.

Nutrition

Our diet is vegeterian/raw. The daily food programme includes seasonal fruit, juices, beverages (tea, teas, and herbs, depending on season), one full meal per day early in the afternoon (that includes season salad, sprouts, nuts, main dish (soups, beans, pasta, etc.)) and usually dessert. Our diet does not include milk, white/red meat and fish, whereas eggs and cheese are consumed very rarely.

The suggested contribution for the daily nutrition is 7€ per day.

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In case you are following a specific clinical diet or a medical prescription you need to consult us in our next communication before your arrival. If you have an allergy or intolerance to certain foods, be sure to inform promptly the head of our kitchen.

The accommodation and nutrition contributions are used by the Telaithrion Project to cover expenses of present or future needs (crops, seeds, construction, maintaining tools, materials, equipment, organizing seminars/workshops, etc.)

What to bring along.

You need to bring with you a sleeping bag, flashlight, bedsheets and a pillow case. If you cannot bring your own sleeping bag, the cost for us to provide one for you, is 4€. If you cannot bring your own sheets and pillow case, the cost, for us to provide you is 2€. In case of cold weather conditions, blankets are provided by us.

Total suggested contribution fee per day for your first visit come to a total of 14€.

During your stay

Plantations/gardens:

Within the areas of the project (3 in total) there are planted raised beds, marked with big stones or wood sticks. It is very important to mind your step at all times, in order to not step in them, so that they can continue to grow and enrich the beautiful landscape around..

Toilets:

We have compost (dry) toilets, with which we can manage organic waste and turn humanure and kitchen organics into fertile soil, and thus reducing our daily waste. Please follow the instructions that we will give you after your arrival and feel free to read the useful instructions that you will find beside every toilet seat. Please try to leave the toilets, exactly as tidy as you found it, if not tidier!

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Daily responsibilities:

There is a wide variety of coffees and tea herbs available for everyone. Don't forget that even a small contribution of 0,30€ will be more than enough for other visitors to enjoy this kind of quality drinks.

Everyone is obligated to wash the kitchenware that they use, immediately after use (plate, fork/spoon, glass, etc), thank you.

Smoking is allowed only wherever there are signs that state so, and nowhere else. Also cigarette tips are not allowed on the floor because we roam around barefooted, thank you

Using addictive or controversial substances is allowed only to those who can sneeze while keeping their eyes open. Good luck

Pets:

As people, we are very friendly with pets and animals in general. Unfortunately though, we are not yet in a position to accommodate dogs of any size, whether on a leash or not, because of the vegetable gardens, plant nurseries, small fruit trees, etc. We understand that you could bring your dog and keep it chained somewhere, but this would not be nice neither for the dog nor the people that will have to hear it bark/weep.

Volunteer work:

Your participation in the daily working tasks is not obligatory. Of course though, if you offer a helping hand, no one will turn it down. With that said, if you are interested in actively participating in our daily routine and work schedule your visit, needs to be for at least 5 days. Don't hesitate to give us a notice of your interests, skills, knowledge, hobbies, in advance, so that we can plan your visit to be more interesting for you. Major everyday tasks include construction, woodworking, gardening, herb/fruit collecting, seeding, food/nutrition, research, office work, etc.

After you have visited us at least once, and you have comprehended some deeper aspects of the project, we can arrange for a longer visit or internship (more than 1 month), based on your willingness and passion to participate and cooperate creatively. In these cases, different regulations apply, but we will discuss them when the time comes, since human relationships don't fit in an email!

If for any reason, the above information, is not clear enough, there is any unmet of your costs, you want more information or you just have something else to

256 suggest, please contact us either in this e-mail or on 0030 6932 505056 before your arrival here.

Looking forward for your reply including dates and number of people that will visit.

We hope we will meet you soon! Wishing to you good news

Apostolos

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Appendix iii

Free&Real’s Scientific Decision Making Method explained Source: http://en.freeandreal.org/research/

INTRODUCTION. Clarifications. Is it possible for a group of people (family, school, organization, society, people etc) to function without even one democratic mechanism of decision-making and the people who are forming the group shall manage the environmental resources ethically? Is it possible to make decisions concerning our environment and us without relying on biased / influenced opinions and our non-holistic point of view? Is it possible a decision or choice of a group to remain unaffected by the ideas, convictions and personal “beliefs” of its members? Can the temperament of a group remain unshakeable in front of important decisions that imply not only with organization and development, but also with feelings, ideas, life decisions, etc.? The scientific method as a term, usually relates to science, theories, practices and experiments carried out in order to explain reliably, among others, the phenomena of life, society, environment, and the existence of living organisms. Indicatively some of the key- steps of the implementation of the scientific method which concern, not only sophisticated scientific researches, but as well everyday situations and processes (constructions, human relationships, health, etc.), are:

- the collection of all available information and practical knowledge concerning the subject - the distinction of the person from the subject under consideration - the documentation of the available information - Maintaining an “open mind” for feedback and improvement and even change of a decision concerning the subject under consideration.

In this text, however, we are not examining the scientific method itself under the prism of science – there are experts for this- but we provide a description of its use as a method of decision making.

TO THE POINT. In practice. Plainly as a methodology, the scientific method can be relatively easy to implement as a method of making choices and decisions in our everyday life even for issues that concern human relations or/ and social principles. A precondition for this is that the foundation, the means for achieving these goals- either personal, familiar of collective- are crystal clear to all members of each group, relationship, research, business, project, community etc. Only in this case the implementation of scientific methodology for the decision making can cover the huge gap that is created by our personal beliefs that are influenced by our living environment, our unavailing ego and the endless stubbornness of people who do not know what they do not know.

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In this way, the scientific method, with proper adjustments, is becoming a very efficient tool for finding solutions and avoiding collisions, a methodology of thinking, observation and data and situational approaching, which really helps in avoiding and not repeating mistakes. A basic prerequisite of each action/ choice/ decision which occurs from the implementation of this methodology is to fulfil certain conditions or criteria that are related to each specific environment – human, natural, social etc- to which it is addressed and which are selected by the persons that are going to implement the methodology. Starting from the basics, we should identify the frame in which the SM should be used as a way of decision-making. We should define very clearly who we are (self- awareness and self- reliance, competences, passion, character, courage, boldness, conscience, interdependence with the environment etc), where we are (current economic and social status, urban or other environment, resources and obligations etc), where we want to go (goals, dreams and beliefs, virtues and qualities, vision for the future) and how we will get there (social and environmental ethics, means and tools we want to use etc). As soon as these are defined, we can proceed to the definition of the criteria that are going to found the implementation of the scientific methodology for decision-making As an example we can mention some criteria that have been practically proven to give qualitative results in research and development of projects or activities that concern and target (among others) self sufficiency and resource-based economy. Of course, everyone is free to add, remove or change these criteria upon the issue of discussion and the importance of the criteria that concern the given situation.

 Quantitative impact: (how many people are served by this specific solution/ idea/ choice/ decision),  Qualitative impact: (how important is the implementation of the solution/ idea/ choice/ decision and how deeply is going to affect people in their living conditions),  Time frame: (how feasible is the implementation and application of the solution/ idea/ choice/ decision within a reasonable time frame),  Difficulty of the achievement: (how simple, as to its implementation, is the solution/ idea/ choice/ decision and what is the predicted cost in resources such as man-hours, money, environment, energy, etc),  Duration in timeο: (what is the lifetime of this solution/ idea/ choice/ decision)

Finally, when combining the steps of the scientific methodology, changing or removingsome steps that concern specific/ sophisticated science researches and, based on the previous mentioned

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examples, we can have a simplified form of scientific methodologyin decision making both in personal as well as in social level, which (the form) can filter the facts taking under consideration the above mentioned criteria which, in our example/ case shall serve for the creation and evolution of a self-sufficient human society – despite its size- with respect to the environment and the fellowman. A general, simplified form could be summarized in the following: 1. Define the subject, κmaking clear and understood by everyone what exactly we need to discuss, process and define our current (where we are) and objective (where we want to go) situation. 2. Detect, collect and analyze all the facts, ideas, experiences and practical knowledgewe have gathered up to that moment on the subject. 3. Check/ confirm our sources, and filter information that can not be checked, that do not rely on actual knowledge or eyewitness, that cannot be testified/ do not constitute a norm, as well as data that do not influence the subject. 4. Detect solutions/ decisions that exist on the subject under discussion. 5. Implement one by one all the chosen (by a person or a group) criteria, aiming to complete the solution/ decision that fulfils our criteria the most efficient way 6. Decide or choose the solution/ idea that is the first on our above formed list 7. Analyze and plan our solution/ decision if necessary, implement the solution theoretically and confirm the needs in resources, time, tools etc. Redesign if necessary 8. Implement our solution/ decision 9. Ask and offer direct feedback when new data, practical knowledge, people or resources occur, which can influence directly our decision/ solution It is very important to remember that the scientific method is a methodology that is as effective as the way it is used and its results in practice are of such quality as the quality of our selected/ applied criteria. The methodology cannot make choices for us, nor can it be 100% correct. It is always in the person’s/ group’s hand not only to be clear regarding the targets and means, not only choosing and keeping the qualitative criteria for the decision making, but to maintain all their perceptions/ senses open to new information and new data that may change a choice. CONCLUSION. Food for thought. If we remove ourselves from our egoistic mood and keep only our will for human and social evolution in all levels, if we accept that knowledge and information are already there before we got acquainted with them and they will remain there even if we forget them (unlike our personal beliefs which change depending on the day, the hour, the mood, the environment, our feelings) and if we accept that all the data that are issued the moment of the decision from images/ideas/ books/ discoveries/ experiences/

260 knowledge/ technology etc is an endless evolution of information and human knowledge through centuries, and not our achievement, then it becomes clear that the above mentioned steps and thoughts are dealing not only with decisions but with every new thing that occurs in our way, and we can distinguish that finally every decision we make as a person/ group/ project/ family/ nation/ race etc is simply, another peak-point in a constant line of evolution. In other words, when we realize ourselves (who am I?), our environment (where am I?), our target (where am I going?) and our journey (how am I going there?), then we can deduct/ remove the veil of the word “decision” and see the EVOLUTION that is happening, despite if we are making a “decision” for ourselves, for the group, or for the whole planet. The determinant is that as long as we see it as a decision, the more inclined we are to pettiness, egoism, opinion and feelings that can be misleading. Whilst, when we see it as evolution, our mind remains clear and we take under consideration the facts of an issue, making clear not only the possible developments but also the conditions, the consequences etc.

To make a decision it doesn’t necessarily means that we are ready for the evolution that will occur. Whilst, on the contrary, an evolution which is becoming visible and ready to occur, will not wait for anyone’s decision in order to take place! Someone should make the decision, whilst on the contrary, when all the parameters agree (do not conflict) and when the preconditions are fulfilled, the evolution is coming by itself/ happening independently and is simply inevitable.

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