As part of PSL 2023 on "Ec/o/ntologies", we held a three-day public symposium in three different locations - Volos on June 30th, Makrinitsa on July 1, and Stagiates on July 2, attempting to create a true space of exchange and encounter through participatory activities and multimodal formats (assemblies, documentary screening, collective audition of podcasts).
Our aim in the “Strange Weather: Ecologies of Resistance and Repair” symposium was to seek out and sound out alternatives to despair and paralysis, on the one hand, and to a naïve faith in techno-capitalist solutions, on the other. We brought together activists, researchers, artists, from near and far, to join local community members responding to what we see as a planetary imperative: to regroup and ground our respective imaginative powers, everyday experiences, and multi-sited struggles for racial, historical, political, and environmental justice.
To mark the opening of the Strange Weather Symposium we hosted a hybrid assembly in Volos where members of PSL 5 Ec/o/ntologies faculty and cohort, together with PSL alum hailing from all over the terrestrial globe, joined community members affiliated to the Laboratory of Social Anthropology at the University of Thessaly and engaged citizens of Volos and Pelion to provide dispatches from the front lines of today’s mounting climate crisis.
The speakers included:
Joel McKim (U of London)
Olga Cielemęcka (University of Eastern Finland)
Melina Roise (Bard College, and the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library)
Violetta Koutsoukou (Panteion U)
Femke Vulto (University of Oxford)
Lydia Karazarifi (Scuola Normale Superiore)
Darinka Szigecsan (Bath Spa U)
Antonis Petras (University of Thessaly)
Panos Galanopoulos (Activist member of the Stagiates Assembly, Pelion, Greece)
Evy Vourlides (Project Manager at The Southern Lights and Regenerative Farming Greece)
Tanya Richardson (Wilfrid Laurier U)
Anna Olenenko (Kule Folklore Center; University of Alberta)
Sardar Saadi (Director of the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Rojava)
Gene Ray (Geneva University of Art and Design)
Alexandros Kioupkiolis (Aristotle U)
Penelope Papailias (U of Thessaly)
Our aim in the “Strange Weather: Ecologies of Resistance and Repair” symposium was to seek out and sound out alternatives to despair and paralysis, on the one hand, and to a naïve faith in techno-capitalist solutions, on the other. We brought together activists, researchers, artists, from near and far, to join local community members responding to what we see as a planetary imperative: to regroup and ground our respective imaginative powers, everyday experiences, and multi-sited struggles for racial, historical, political, and environmental justice.
To mark the opening of the Strange Weather Symposium we hosted a hybrid assembly in Volos where members of PSL 5 Ec/o/ntologies faculty and cohort, together with PSL alum hailing from all over the terrestrial globe, joined community members affiliated to the Laboratory of Social Anthropology at the University of Thessaly and engaged citizens of Volos and Pelion to provide dispatches from the front lines of today’s mounting climate crisis.
The speakers included:
Joel McKim (U of London)
Olga Cielemęcka (University of Eastern Finland)
Melina Roise (Bard College, and the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library)
Violetta Koutsoukou (Panteion U)
Femke Vulto (University of Oxford)
Lydia Karazarifi (Scuola Normale Superiore)
Darinka Szigecsan (Bath Spa U)
Antonis Petras (University of Thessaly)
Panos Galanopoulos (Activist member of the Stagiates Assembly, Pelion, Greece)
Evy Vourlides (Project Manager at The Southern Lights and Regenerative Farming Greece)
Tanya Richardson (Wilfrid Laurier U)
Anna Olenenko (Kule Folklore Center; University of Alberta)
Sardar Saadi (Director of the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Rojava)
Gene Ray (Geneva University of Art and Design)
Alexandros Kioupkiolis (Aristotle U)
Penelope Papailias (U of Thessaly)
On day 2 of the Symposium, in collaboration with Cine-Doc Volos and supported by the Thessalian Regional Government, we hosted in Makrinitsa a public screening of the documentary “Up to the Last Drop - The Secret Water War in Europe” (2017) by Greek journalist and documentary filmmaker Yorgos Avgeropoulos.
The last day of the symposium was dedicated to the intersecting struggles of local movements in Volos and Pelion related to environmental issues and the privatization of resources. Specifically, PSL participants hiked to the village of Stagiates to meet with representatives of the local “Free Water” movement. We also held, at the square of Stagiates, a collective listening of podcasts produced at the Laboratory of Social Anthropology (University of Thessaly) in collaboration with the student network of the dëcoloиıze hellάş, with financial support from the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network (EHCN).
Download the PSL 5 booklet for more detailed descriptions of the symposium

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