Skip to main content

Home    Aim    Team       

Revolutionary palimpsests: The visualisation of the network of the distinct urban places in the space-time spectrum of the Greek Revolution

Item

Title

Revolutionary palimpsests: The visualisation of the network of the distinct urban places in the space-time spectrum of the Greek Revolution

Type specialization

The aim of the research project is the mapping of the places in the territory of Greece related to the 1821 Greek Revolution and their visualisation with a combination of scientific and artistic elements as “visual palimpsests”, i.e., layer superimpositions of cultural, historical, social, architectural, etc. elements with expressive means from architecture, cartography and the visual arts. In the mapping process “revolutionary places” are treated by researchers as “nodes”, as “palimpsests” and as “capacitors” and are studied respectively: spatially as networks of relationships, temporally as successions of events and impressions, traces of the past that survive in the present, and in detail by delving into important elements of identity and meanings.

The researchers collected contemporary historical studies and explored the places with reference to their geographical location and the facts that substantiate the Greek Revolution, emphasising the importance that, in their perception, had the characteristics of the places (their natural morphology, economy and social organisation, their spatial organisation and interconnection, their cultural composition, etc.). They created visualisations and incorporated their ideas about the peculiarities that make the places meaningful, they gathered informative/illustrative/narrative material (paintings, literary texts, folk songs and other cultural elements), insisting on how the place contributed in the revolutionary process and on the way it bears today its material and intangible traces, which are intertwined with the impressions, the qualities, the values, the meanings, which have been attributed to it since then and which have contributed to the formation of its contemporary image. Based on their mappings, they created artistic visualisations, placed their findings on superimposed layers and they created works with a multi-layered structure, which visually expresses the meaning of the palimpsest.

Participating in Revolutionary Palimpsests are 18 academics as members of the research team and 300 students, that explored 200 revolutionary sites and produced about 1,000 works (surveys, maps, artistic collages) in 3 undergraduate courses of the host institution and the collaborating institutions (School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens; Department of Interior Architecture, University of West Attica; Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly) and in a trans-academic workshop, which was combined with a “symposium” in which 11 speakers participated. The project has been presented in 5 conferences: Kazan University, University of the Aegean, European Society for Modern Greek Studies, European Cultural Centre of Delphi and National Technical University of Athens & 8th Mediterranean Aesthetics Conference and published in the Journal Sustainable Development, Culture, Traditions and a book of the National Hellenic Research Foundation. In September 2021, a visual art exhibition was presented in Melina Cultural Centre of the city of Athens culture, sports and youth organisation (Opanda), with selections from the works of the students and the 10 artworks of the visual artists – members of the research project.

(Edited and translated description from organiser’s website)

Επιστημονικά Υπεύθυνος/Υπεύθυνη

Efrossyni Tsakiri (National Technical University of Athens)

Σύνδεσμος έργου

Position: 5258 (26 views)