timely

Solidarity Poiesis

(2016-2018)

“We are always bringing together fiction and concrete political social life, whether nominally in crisis or not.”
Avery F. Gordon in: Solidarity Poiesis: I Will Come and Steal You (ed. Robin Vanbesien, 2017)

In 2011, a multiplicity of self-managed solidarity organizations, ranging from food provision and health care to education initiatives, emerged from the occupation of Syntagma Square in the heart of Athens, among other places across Greece. The film Under These Words (Solidarity Athens 2016) (2017, 52’), and the associated book, Solidarity Poiesis: I Will Come and Steal You (2017), constitute an investigation of the transformative experience and political potential of solidarity work.

The project was guided by the principle of encounter and the social movement’s adage “close [to] each other”—the original Greek expression αλληλεγγύη (allilengýi), translated into English as “solidarity”—turned into an incentive for a hands-on method employed during the process, both practical and micropolitical.