Ifor Duncan and Stefanos Levidis: Weaponizing a River
Media lecture at tranzit sk
Opening programme:
6:00 - 6:35 p.m. Media lecture by Ifor Duncan & Stefanos Levidis
6:45 - 7:05 p.m. Exhibition tour with the curators, Andrea Conte (Andreco), Ifor Duncan & Stefanos and Oto Hudec
Venue: tranzit.sk, Beskydská 12, Bratislava
This media lecture focuses on the case of the Evros / Meriç / Martisa river – ‘land’ border between Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria – and its production as a border technology. From its main course to its delta, this fluvial frontier is weighted with the crossings of asylum seekers and systematic pushbacks. The river-border technology incorporates the entire hydrology of the river ecosystem, from the deadly velocities of the central course, through its muds, fogs, and flood defence walls that mark the military buffer zone that surrounds it (Zoni Asfaleias Prokalypsis (ZAP)). State impunity is in part produced by the ZAP’s enfolding of
the excess of floodwaters into the excesses of sovereign territorial power.
After a century of fluvio-geomorphological change since demarcation in 1926 the borderised river simultaneously riverises the border. In this way the river border is a dynamic archive of the military calculations and geopolitical decisions that make its properties treacherous as an increasingly perilous migration route. Here beatings are customary, mobile phones and official documentation are thrown into the river, and, after seasonal floods, bodies wash up in the delta. In its waters and in its sediments the river border is both a weapon and an archive of the reproduction of deadly exclusionary policies enacted at the watery edges of the EU.
Ifor Duncan is a writer, artist and interdisciplinary researcher focusing on political violence and degrading watery spaces. He is Postdoctoral Fellow on the ERC project Ecologies of Violence: Crimes Against Nature in the Contemporary Cultural Imaginary at Utrecht University. He was Lecturer and has a PhD entitled Hydrology of the Powerless from the Centre for Research Architecture, Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths. Ifor was previously postdoctoral fellow in environmental humanities at NICHE, Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice.
Stefanos Levidis is an architect, spatial researcher, and an adjunct professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts.
He is the co-founder and co-director of Forensic Architecture Initiative Athens (FAIA) and a senior researcher with Forensis, overseeing the agency's work on borders and migration. He holds a PhD from the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the National Hellenic Research Foundation under the project MUTE and a research fellow with Forensic Architecture.
*******************************************
Free shuttle bus
Vienna - Bratislava - Vienna
Meeting point & schedule:
Erste Campus, Karl-Popper-Straße 4, 1100 Vienna
-16.15 Boarding
-16.30 Departure on time
-17.45 Welcome at tranzit.sk by Judit Angel, director tranzit.sk
Opening of the exhibition Liminal Ecologies with the following programme:
-18.00 Media lecture by the artist duo Ifor Duncan & Stefanos Levidis (approx. 30 min.)
-18.45 Exhibition tour with the curators Marianna Tsionki & Mariana Cunha as well as the artists Andrea Conte (Andreco), Ifor Duncan & Stefanos and Oto Hudec (approx. 20 min.)
-20.15 Departure from Bratislava to Vienna
-21.15 Approx. arrival back in Vienna at Erste Campus
Registration closes on Monday, 24 March 2025. Admission free. Please bring your passport or ID card for the trip! For information please contact heide.wihrheim@erstestiftung.org
REGISTRATE HERE
--------------------------------------------------
ERSTE Foundation is main partner of tranzit.
Kindly supported by Leeds Arts University and CREAM (Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media), University of Westminster
Media partners: Artalk.info, Flash Art CZ & SK, Kapitál, GoOut.net
