What exactly is an Odeion? Today, my final day in Athens, I visited four buildings with this name: the Odeion of Perikles, the Odeion of Agrippa, the Odeion of Herodes Atticus and the modern Odeion of Athens (also known as the Athens Conservatoire) which is one of the major venues for documenta 14. In general […]
Dear William and Andreas, I hope this finds you both well and that you don’t mind me writing you this joint message. I wanted to let you know that I had spent the morning here in Athens looking for you both, first missing you and then finding you in some unexpected places. I know this […]
America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956 – Allen Ginsberg ‘America’ When Plato died, the only material possessions he left behind were a small garden next to the Academy, two slaves, a bowl with which he made offerings to the gods and a tiny […]
[Minus Plato is undergoing some technical difficulties with image uploads so I apologize for the scarcity of pictures to accompany this post. I hope to have this rectified before tomorrow] When I woke up this morning I had a somewhat modest plan for the day: to visit the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) by way […]
Today, on my way to start my first full day at documenta 14 at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), I took a detour past the Lysikrates Monument. This small cylindrical building was erected in 335/4 BCE (a few years after Philip of Macedon’s conquest of Greece) to commemorate the work of the ‘chorus-producer’ […]
I finished my good friend and fellow Classicist Johanna Hanink’s brilliant new book The Classical Debt: Greek Antiquity in the Era of Austerity before boarding the plane from Madrid to Athens. I am here to experience, research and write about the documenta 14 exhibition, specifically how both ancient sites and themes are activated by the […]