The present of the past at a time of no future: a synergistic art archaeology of the Athenian Acropolis

Abstract

The long-standing relationship of archaeology with the art of its time is manifested variously throughout its history. In the last three decades this relationship has found a new expression with a handful of scholars making use of art-works and art-making as tools for research and public engagement. Their experiments have so far yielded a small yet substantial number of descriptive and (self-)reflective publications which have hitherto appeared scattered in the literature as unconnected one-off side-projects. However, their careful systematisation and historicisation suggests that they constitute an uncoordinated critique of the modernist legacy of contemporary archaeological practice, and articulate, albeit fragmentarily, a proposition for a new, counter-modern one. In the first part of my thesis I tease out and assemble the pieces of the abovementioned critique and proposition by examining the genealogies and incentives of each project described in the publications (both individually and comparatively). In the second and final part, I build on the lessons learnt from the assessment of these projects’ merits and shortcomings to explore the potential of a counter-modern, site-specific ethnographic art installation to counter and deconstruct hegemonic narratives concerning the material remains of the past, and to encourage people to establish more intimate connections with those, using as case-study the Acropolis of Athens in the years of the so-called ‘crisis’.

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