Founded in 2004, “Ohi Pezoume” is a team of artists and practitioners from different fields of arts and sciences. Its “UrbanDig” projects are community-artistic research projects in Athens, in communities or urban neighbourhoods, lasting from 2 months to 2 years each.
Main activities
UrbanDig is the meeting point of art and space in an ‘excavation’ of the cultural capital of the contemporary city. It is a perspective on the production and role of art, which is a continuous relationship on the front of the imaginary, the unmeasurable, the unspoken. It is a statement about the production and reproduction of space as a continuous process of realising social relations. The arts of theatre and dance leave the building, the stage, the script, the predefined form, to encounter the urban space and the social relations that produce it.
Within an inseparable circle, artistic creation becomes spatialized, while space provides a motivation for artistic expression. The philosophy of action is at the heart of such a relationship. Action creates new relationships and thus new spaces, new geographies and new artistic imprints that open up the radius of the circle into a spiral form. A spiral that returns to the beginning but moves forward, reallocates and transcends.
A site-specific performance is always a motivation, a demand and a festive finale. The interaction of the team of artists with the place goes far beyond the use of the urban space as a new and alternative stage and leads to a multi-level community plan.
This plan becomes a means of collecting stories and data as well as capturing multiple images of space and community, resulting in an identity, an archive and a script.
The circle of the UrbanDig project places the quest for art at the centre. Its axis is composed of collective actions, bridges and synergies, which inscribe a new perimeter, a new “orchestra” in the heart of the space.
The UrbanDig Project develops and proposes a certain methodology within the central concept or circle. The shape of the triangle accurately represents all basic methodological aspects:
qualitative research – artistic interventions – community actions
The projects establish :
(a) a local network of volunteers interested in the community/cultural plan, building bridges with the world of arts, science, education, tourism, technology.
(b) a series of fun mapping activities open to all, co-organised by “ohi pezoume” with members of the network.
(c) an open and mapped archive of the results of this research and plan. The research topics are defined collectively by the local volunteer network involved.
(d) a specific performance in the public space based on the results.
(e) support for the local research and mapping network to produce further cultural, educational, academic and place-making outputs and tools.
Ohi Pezoume has good experience of site-specific community work.
The structure does not yet have a global approach to its ecological transition. However, it is carrying out projects that combine social ecology issues. The company is also running a project on Water STARTS4Water Academy which will be questioned in the Cake process.
The team
Nadia Siokou is in charge of project coordination. She has a good experience of European cooperation projects. She is the Ohi Pezoume referent in the European Integrity Games partnership currently led by Transplanisphere.
Giorgos Sachinis is an artist and engineer. He is the artistic director of Ohi Pezoume.
PEZ will select and send volunteer ambassadors to the different workshops/learning sessions organised in France, Italy and Portugal.