Figure 1. Arrival of refugees from Asia Minor in Salonica, following the Lausanne treaty Figure 2. Photograph from the workshop Osservatorio Nomade organized in Saoul Modiano, Old People's Home of the Jewish Community of . As part of the "Egnatia" project, stones like this one, upon which the participants left their own traces, have been dispersed along the route of Via Egnatia. The stones originated from Salento— the starting point of Egnatia road across the

Garyfallia Katsavounidou Unfamiliar (Hi)stories: The ''Egnatia" Project in Thessaloniki

"Via Egnatia," or the Egnatia Way, connected Rome with contemporary immigrants who travel on the same to and was one of the most important roads. roads of antiquity. Built by the Romans in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, the road started in Durach, on the The methodology of the "Egnatia" project is based on shores of , across the point where Via Appia (the an experiential approach. According to art historian ) met the Adriatic Sea in Southern Italy. Flaminia Gennari, the researcher acts as a catalyst in the From Durach, the Egnatia Way traversed the lands of pursued transfer of memory, "not only because memory

Albania, Macedonia (passing through the major port- is ephemeral and sentimental, but also because the one city of Salonica), and Thrace. Finally, after 739 miles. who listens always adds something of himself."' Such Via Egnatia ended in Constantinople. It was on these an approach has its origins in the artistic group Stalker, ancient paths that millions of people—Greeks, Turks, which has been working in Rome since 1995. combining Jews, Albanians, Armenians, Kurds, Rom. and many other interventions and research on the territory. Members ethnic groups—were displaced during the last century, of Stalker have formed a new collective subject called mainly during the compulsory exchange of populations Osservatorio Nomade ("Nomad Observatory"), with the between and ,' but also unofficially and participation of visual artists, theoreticians, architects,

in smaller numbers (Fig. 1). As the locus of memories of and historians. As the main agent of the "Egnatia" project, migration, but also of displaced memories, this famous Osservatorio Nomade has been collaborating with the road inspired the "Egnatia" project, which was funded by groups Architecture Autogeree (hased in Paris) and the European Union and launched in October 2004. The Oxymoron (based in Athens), organizing workshops in five cross-categorical project, which could be described as a cities (Rome, Berlin. Paris, Athens, and Thessaloniki). The laboratory of memory along Via Egnatia, aims to "collect participation of artists and scientists from various ethnic

stories of people who have been displaced along the backgrounds is quintessential to the project: the "Egnatia"

Egnatia way, to leave traces of collective memories now project is above all "a common ground where to encounter forgotten and obliterated,"^ but also to listen and interact and share values and cultural experiences."''

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In February 2005, Osservatorio Nomade organized show, which took place in the famous Kunsthaus of the a workshop with the telling title "Ghostbustering in Austrian city (designed by Peter Cook and Colin Fournier). Thessaloniki." With the exception of local (Greek) Fully conscious of the hyper-domination of imagery as participants, most members of the group, including visual means of representation, the artists chose not to show any artists and architects from Italy, France, and Spain were visual representation of the city of Thessaloniki. Instead, making their first visit to Thessaloniki. As art critic the installation consists of 21 double-faced slabs of Salento Francesca Recchia writes, "'the complex dynamics of stone (called "chianca" in the local Southern Italian persistence and absence were clear and tangible right from dialect), suspended from wires from the ceiling (Fig. 3). the first contacts and walks. The city seems to be without The first stone has the name "Thessaloniki" on one side

a past; it experiences the visible traces of its centuries- (the ancient name of the city, which was reattributed

old history with the indifference of a chance encounter."^ to it in 1912 when it became part of the Greek state),

During the five days of the workshop, the members of and on the other side it bears the different versions of Osservatorio Nomade worked in small, flexible teams, its name, as used by the various peoples that shared its exploring the city instinctively and non-hierarchically. space: Selanik, Salonika, Salonica, Salonique, Salonicco, The participants combined field research with improvised Saloniki, Solun, Saruna. The rest of the stones make public performances that related to the particular place reference to twenty areas/ buildings/personages of the city

and time (Fig. 2). These experimental actions aimed to with double identity. For example, the stone dedicated engage the locals, create new intercultural collective to the area of the Hirsch Ghetto (last stop in the city for memories, or, in other cases, expose traces of the past in 48.000 Salonican Jews before their transfer to the Nazi city areas where history seems to have been obliterated camps) makes reference to the fact that nowadays the as in the case of the campus of Aristotelian University, history of the area has been forgotten—the neighborhood occupying the grounds of the Jewish cemetery. On the is known as the city's Chinatown. Another stone is final night of the workshop, all participants created dedicated to the district of Galini: there, in the middle another public performance as they toured the city by of a residential suburb, stands a Russian church that bus. Revisiting the places encountered during the walks, replicates a church in Novorosijsk, the Russian city-port they organized video projections of the groups' actions and origin of many recent immigrants to Thessaloniki. In and performances at the places where these performances order to make the story behind each double-faced stone took place, thus engaging public attention and sharing the available to the viewer, the installation also consists of feelings and experiences these places invoked. 21 printed postcards with brief explanatory texts (Fig. 4). "Each stone is both a story and a device, indispensable to After the workshop in Thessaloniki. the members of deeply understand the contemporary face of Thessaloniki Osservatorio Nomade realized that the city was central where erasures, reinterpretations and "emergencies" to the general premise of the "Egnatia" project. By coexist in an unprecedented way."' accessing stories and memories from an unfamiliar past, the "Egnatia" project creates the possibility for a unifying Undoubtedly, few cities have changed so dramatically in culture. The idea of ethnic difference is a cornerstone in such a short period of time. After 1912 and its annexation each country's respective history, despite the fact that to Greece, Salonica became Thessaloniki, and along with the areas now separated by national borders were for its new (old) name, came a systematic rewriting of its centuries a cultural entity encompassing many peoples, past—a common practice in all national states of the languages, and religions. In Salonica, itself traversed by region. The Hellenization of the city, hastened by the the Egnatia Way, Christians, Spanish Jews, and Muslims Muslim exodus in 1923 and the Holocaust in 1943, was coexisted for five centuries in peace and compassion. Until complete by the end of World War II. At the same time, the beginning of the last century, Salonica represented a Thessaloniki underwent an economic and cultural decline.

real "Utopian" multicultural hub. It existed as a paradigm The thriving cosmopolitan port became within a few for the "Egnatia" project's goal for the future: an inclusive, decades a ghost of its old self, a provincial Greek town. transnational culture. Until very recently, the official history of the city treated its Ottoman period as a "sad parenthesis"; the Spanish Thus, the city became the subject matter for a project on Jewish presence, so dominant in the city for five centuries, the theme of "migration," in the context of the exhibition was extremely understated.' Nonetheless, since the early

"M city/European Cityscapes "". organized in Graz 1990s, mass migration from the Balkans and former (Austria) in October 2005. The installation presented by Soviet countries has been changing the city, making it Osservatorio Nomade, entitled "The un-familiar city," was once again a metropolis of strangers.^ In a reversal of the quite different from most of the projects on view at the dominant ideology in the historiography of the city, the

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"Towards 'Thessaloniki: The Un- "sad parenthesis" of introversion, which opened in 1912 5. Francesca Recchia and Lorenzo Romito. familiar City; A Work in Progress." in M city / European Cityscapes, eds. with the city's annexation by Greece, finally seems to be Marco de Michelis and Peter Pakesch (Graz: Kunsthaus. 2005), 109.

ending. 6. Curated by Marco de Michelis (dean of the faculty of arts and design at Universita lUAV di Venezia). Katrin Boucher and Peter Pakesch, the exhibition presented works by artists who dealt with the current transformations in Europe's urban centers. The exhibition was organized in six thematic fields: "Earthscapes", "'Eurosprawl", "Shopping". "Migration", "No Vision?" and "Mapping". See further, www.kunsthausgraz.net; Internet.

7. Excerpt from the text accompanying the installation "The Unfamiliar City" in M city exhibition. See also Osservatorio Nomade (Fyllio Katsavounidou. Mihalis Kyriazis, Laure'nt Malone, Francesca Recchia, Lorenzo Romito), 'The Un-familiar City", in ibid., 268-271, Notes 8. An astonishing 96 percent of the community was annihilated in the camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. See further, Garyfallia Katsavounidou, "Invisible Parentheses; Mapping (out) the city and its histories" (SMArchS thesis, 1. The exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey was decided in Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 2000), the treaty of Lausanne in 1923. following Greece's defeat during an expedition 9. Foreign immigrants, mainly from Albania and the former Soviet countries in Asia Minor. In a historically unprecedented move, the leaders of the (most notably Georgia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Armenia), constitute an two countries agreed upon a compulsory exchange of minority populations estimated 10 percent of the city's population of 1.000.000. A quintessential between the two countries. All Muslim inhabitants in Greek territory had to difference of this contemporary cohabitation from its historical precedent, evacuate their homes and go to Turkey, and all Christian Orthodox residents however, is the fact that it takes place within the sociopolitical conditions of a of Turkey, to find refuge in Greece. An enormous number of people were national state and not in a multinational empire. affected: more than two million people on both sides of the Aegean had to migrate within a few months up to 800 miles away: in this terrible journey, more than 300,000 people died. This obligatory displacement of millions of people was the watershed event that dissolved societies of mixed identities and intercultural exchange.

2. Egnatia News 1 (September-December 2004): 1; available from http://www. osservatorionomade.net; Internet.

3. Flaminia Gennari, "L'imprevedibilita di azione e pensiero", in Voyages Croisees. ed. Gabi Scardi (Milano: 5 Continents. 2005), 54-59.

4. Egnatia News, ibid.

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