[MGSA-L] Call for Applications: Mataroa Summer Seminar (Ikaria June 2012)

[kosmatopoulos at ethno.uzh.ch]

Dear list members,

The call might be of interest to you, your colleagues and your broader networks.

All good wishes,


Nikolas Kosmatopoulos, Ph.D. 

Visiting scholar
Department of Anthropology
Columbia University/City University of New York

                                                       1st Mataroa Summer Seminar

Disobedience, Counter-Conduct
and Political Imagination in the new Mediterranean
17 - 27 June 2012
Nas Village, Ikaria Island, Greece
 
The Mataroa Summer Seminar is an experiment in creating an expansive political experience. Its ambition is to combine the arts of debate, analysis, and aesthetic engagement about pressing global socio-political issues with the acts of participation, learning, exchange and active immersion in the life of the island of Ikaria. It seeks to bring together a dozen scholars, artists and thinkers from a broad interdisciplinary background, willing to participate in ten days of both Apollonian and Dionysian activities. Apart from their presence in these events, the participants are expected to contribute to the exchange by sharing work in progress with the rest of the group on the seminar topic. The  discussions are public, self-organized and do not comprise the bulk of the program, which includes learning activities, visits to local sites and a lot of free time. Participation in the seminar is hoped to contribute in multiple ways to the establishment of a more permanent seminar structure on the island, the Mataroa Center for Critique.   
 
The seminar is named after the ship that in December 1945 took a number of young leftist thinkers, artists and other professionals from Piraeus to France via Italy, and thus effectively saved them from the perils of the rampaging Greek Civil War (1945-48). In Paris, these refugees became important part of an exile generation of intellectuals and heavily contributed to the advance of global radical political thought, both before and after May 1968. One of them was Cornelius Castoriadis, co-founder of Socialisme ou Barbarie and author of the ‘Imaginary Constitution of Society.’ Mataroa’s name and history is part of the modern political mythology of Greece. The seminar takes up the name as a sign of recognition of the complex trajectories of civil war, exile, resistance, the role of intellectuals in political struggles and in the imagination of a more just, free and egalitarian society.
 
The 1st Mataroa Summer Seminar is titled “Disobedience, Counter-Conduct and Political Imagination in the new Mediterranean.” Its principal aim is to provide a congenial environment within which participants will approach the cataclysmic political events and the subsequent transformative processes that have shaken - and continue to do so - both the Southern and the Northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Since 2011, the entire region is undergoing unique political processes that bring to the forefront multiple practices of disobedience and distinct forms of counter-conduct. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria have witnessed massive popular revolts that demanded the “fall of the regime;” Greece, Italy and Spain have experienced massive movements that sought direct or “real democracy.” In the seminar, we will take on the ideas, practices and prospects for direct democracy, civil disobedience and the political imagination that have been witnessed within these movements. The seminar topic and format are conceptualized broadly enough to allow for different kinds of contributions (papers, book and film ideas, political projects).
     
Ikaria is known as the ‘Red Island’ of Greece. Today, most of its inhabitants support leftist politics. Yet, the island has a complex and distinct history that includes the ancient cult of Dionysus and the cultivation of the first vineyards in the Aegean, the intense commercial links to Egypt and Asia Minor during the Ottoman reign, the emergence of the Diasporic communities in the USA in the late 19th century, the declaration of the Independent Republic of Ikaria in 1918, and the transformation of the island into an exile destination for hundreds of communists and anarchists during the Greek Civil War and the junta later on (1967-73). But Ikaria is also one of the “verifiable parts of the world where people live the longest and report the highest levels of well-being”, according to National Geographic’s Blue Zones. Finally, Ikaria’s festivals, the so-called ‘panigiria’ are renowned for their distinct aesthetic atmosphere and rich musical tradition.  

The seminar’s main site is the village of Nas, which takes its name from a pre-Christian, animist temple (Naos in Greek), which once reigned over the bay and now lies in ruins next to the river. Our hosts will be Thea and Ilias. She is half American and half Ikarian and he is from the island. They met in the USA and decided to come back and create a self-sustaining life there. They produce their own vegetables, meat, honey, milk, cheese and wine. Thea, Ilias, and their friends will introduce the participants to the art of a life somewhat away from global markets and financial crises, perhaps, in the art of a life of counter-conduct. Talal Asad (Anthropology, City University of New York) is the Seminar’s Special Guest for this summer.  

Suggested Program:

Day One
Arrival, pick-up from airport/port. Breakfast or snack at Thea’s. Seminar introductions. Afternoon: Walk to Ilias’ farm and then walk back to Nas. Free time and dinner.
ÿ
Day Two
Breakfast. Seminar (9.30 am-12.30 pm). Ceramics workshop (1-3 pm). Free time/ Seminar (3-8pm). Dinner.
ÿ
Day Three
Breakfast. Seminar (9.30 am-12.30 pm). Visit the museum in Cambos, and the city of Evdilos. Meeting with the producers of Ikariamag.gr, an online political portal on Ikaria (12.30-3 pm). Free time (3-5 pm). Seminar (5-7.30 pm). Dinner.
Day Four
Breakfast. Seminar (9.30 am-12.30 pm). Visit the Mounte Monastery and the mountain city of Rahes, meeting with Christos Malahias, a self-made ethnographer and photographer of Ikaria (12.30-3 pm). Free time/ Seminar (3-8pm). Dinner.
Day Five
Breakfast. Seminar (9.30 am-12.30 pm). Visit the Theoktisti Church and the Karimalis winery (12.30-3 pm). Free time (3-5 pm). Seminar (5-7.30 pm). Dinner.
ÿ
Day Six
Breakfast. Seminar (9.30 am-12.30 pm). Conclude ceramics workshop with a talk about the history of Nas (1-3 pm). Free time/ Seminar (3-8pm). Dinner.
Day Seven
Breakfast. Hiking into the Nas Valley (9.30 am-12.30 pm). Free time/ Seminar (1-8pm). Dinner accompanied with a discussion on the political history of Ikaria (7.30-9.30 pm).
ÿ
Day Eight
Breakfast. Seminar (9.30 am-12.30 pm). Ikariotiko dance lesson with meze and local wine (1-3 pm). Free time/ Seminar (3-8pm). Visit the 
&Panigiri
8 of Saint John in Raches. ÿ
ÿ
Day Nine
Breakfast. Seminar (9.30 am-12.30 pm). Visit Ag. Polykarpos, the honey house, drive by Pezi and the dam, stop at Ag. Dimitrios, talk with local intellectuals about the year of the exile and the Diaspora (1-3 pm). Free time/ Seminar (3-8pm). Dinner with live music and dancing (8 pm-10 pm). Free time.
ÿ
Day Ten
Breakfast (8-9.30 am). Ikarian cooking lesson (9.30 am-12.30 pm). Seminar (12-3 pm). Free time/ Seminar (3-8pm). Dinnerÿ - enjoy what we have cooked 
) discussion on forms of publication (8 pm-10 pm). Farewell.
ÿ
ÿ
Participation costs: Global North junior scholars 70 Euros/day, G.N. senior scholars 90 Euros/day
Global South junior scholars 60 Euros/day, G.S. senior scholars 75 Euros/day (Greece belongs here)
Room (single/double), breakfast, dinner, transport, rented bus and all program activities included
Minimum stay: 5 daysÿ - Maximum places: 14 - Application deadline: March 25

To apply send a CV and a short abstract to mataroa.ikaria at gmail.com

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