Culture Journal [EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT]

Public Anthropology in Greek Crisis

The first Program on Everyday Life and Culture in Greece was recently instituted at The University of Peloponnese. The founding director of the Program is the anthropologist C. Nadia Seremetakis (www.seremetakis.com), known worldwide for her influential writings as well as her engagement with and contributions in public anthropology. The Program aiming at promoting and sustaining a dialogue between academia and the wider society, held its first publicmultimedia-participatory Symposium on Taste and Memory in the S. Peloponnese (region of Messinia) from March 13 to 19, and is to be diffused, by popular demand, in other regions immediately after. Based on professor Seremetakiss notion of ethnography as performance and drawing on her book The Senses Still, this event involved the active, voluntary participation of over 20 schools (elementary and high schools) of the region, over 25 local cultural organizations, public organizations such as theater, dance, music, the authorities of the area (all six Mayors and municipalities of Messinia), 75 university students, and numerous citizens. As professor Seremetakis claims, the effective mobilization and collaboration of all these forces in presenting original works for a specific event like thiscall it public anthropology, cultural management, public education, or whatever, can only be succeeded by good ethnographyethnography as both research method and writing. The former trains you to excavate and communicate, the latter to synthesize effectively the uncovered fragments. This multidisciplinary event featured lectures by renown Greek scholars, artistic performances, and a four-level exhibition which included over 300 students paintings and ceramic creations of sweet and salty memories, numerous narrations and poems on recipes with memory, as well as collections of gastronomic metaphors in everyday speech, in poetry, in popular lyrics, in ancient texts, in fairytales, and much more. These were accompanied by homemade tit-bits and sweets by citizens, and local products of world-acclaimed food businesses.

Culture Journal [EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT]

Film projections included a video documentary which registered the mobilization and preparation of schools (students and teachers) for their participation in the event. This too was produced by students-doctoral candidates under the supervision of prof. Seremetakis. The Aftertaste of the event included aesthetic and gustatory interventions in the eating areas of the university by both local citizens and students, as well as the installation of a handmade compost bin on university campus. The event was attended by over 500 citizens, 179 of which received certification, among them 76 undergraduate and graduate Students, and it was covered by local and national media. As prof. Seremetakis stated in the media, this certainly offers a different picture of Greek crisis than the one prevailing in the news. This, if I may add, is a prime example of public anthropology in a country where anthropology has no public face. Alex Argyriadis University of Peloponnese, Greece Program on Everyday Culture, everydayculturehellas@gmail.com