The second event of cross section archive's Registered Time program is a screening in two parts of the video Emotional Property (2023) by Sofia Dona. A personal story of a family duplex puts into focus the phenomenon of fragmented emotional ownership as a resistance to uncontrolled development. The evening is framed by an intriguing example of self-building and guerrilla neighbourhood cultivation.

Meeting point: 5 Lechovou Street (behind Attiki Station), 20:30.

21:00, Emotional Property by Sofia Dona, screening in two parts.

1st screening on a plot of land that has been converted into a garden, accompanied by a tour by Vassilis Lazaris, architect, MDesS Harvard GSD, in his self-built house by second hand materials (5 Lechovou Street).

2nd screening on the rooftop of a family’s duplex (10 Neroutsou Street).

The family polykatoikia has been one of the models of reconstruction in Greece. Le Corbusier’s classic Dom-ino is divided into mothers, aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers. Each floor belongs to a relative. The emotional property will never be sold, either because it contains the past, or because it is located among other emotional properties, where the ‘foreigner’ does not belong. The house often remains empty for the few days of Christmas or Easter when the children return. Through two site-specific video projections on the rooftop of a family’s duplex (the third floor was never built) and on a plot of land that has been converted into a garden, emotional property describes instances of properties that remain immovable in time as the city is constantly transformed.

Sofia Dona puts the focus on the personal stories behind the complication of fragmented emotional ownership, bringing to the light a certain resistance inherent to the Athenian urbanity, embodied by a usually unnoticed phenomenon that nevertheless has a potentially wide-ranging effect as a constraint to the omnipresent drive for progress and development.

The program Registered Time is curated by Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot, and organised by cross section archive non-profit space for art and architecture as part of its annual research and exhibition topic of 2022-23, Real Time History. With the city of Athens as the starting point, Real Time History aims to put into focus the continual but unnoticeable transformation of the physical environment of the city taking place while we are inhabiting it, and at the same time formulating a praxis of recording it.

Event 2: Friday 30th June 2023, 20:30, meeting point: 5 Lechovou Street

21:00: Emotional Property (2023), screening in two parts by Sofia Dona,

1st Screening on a plot of land that has been converted into a garden, accompanied by a tour by Vassilis Lazaris, architect, MDesS Harvard GSD, in his self-built house by second hand materials.

2nd Screening on the rooftop of a family’s duplex (10 Neroutsou Street)

The program of Real Time History is supported by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture & Sports.

Special Thanks to: Studio Lialios-Vazoura, Yiannis Malatantis.

Thanks to: Elix Conservation Volunteers Greece, Dorian Inn Hotel, Georgios Minedis, Pantheon Palace Management, and Emergon, Kolonaki.

cross section archive is a space for Art & Architecture, directed and curated by conceptual artist Maria Lalou and architect Skafte Aymo-Boot. Its activities evolve around phenomena that occur in the intersection of those disciplines and explore how historical facts, political structures and everyday circumstances have been interfering with, forming and directing them. With the starting point in an exploration of the politics of urban space, it invites guests/ researchers from fields such as literature, politics, social sciences, history, archeology, and philosophy and from the disciplines of art and architecture to contribute to an unfolding of the hidden layers of the contemporary city. 

http://cross-section-archive.org