Ville [polis] B: "Destructions, constructions, deconstructions of a city: Thessalonica".
The CREE in collaboration with the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the Institut Français de Thessalonique, is pleased to invite you to the international colloquium entitled: Ville [polis] B: "Destructions, constructions, deconstructions d'une ville: Thessalonique".
Working languages: French and Greek
Scientific event summary
Having as a starting point the 1917 fire that ravaged Thessaloniki (destruction) and the plans to redesign its city center (construction), we will look at the city's relationships with its past/multiple pasts, its present and its future (de/construction).
If place/city is not indifferent to the thing that occupies it or rather fills it, the act of inhabiting constitutes the strongest human link between date and place; inhabited places are par excellence memorable, declarative memory delights in evoking and recounting them, so attached is memory to them.
Thessaloniki, with its Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Jewish heritage, and its strategic geographical position in south-eastern Europe, is at the epicenter of the political and social future of a changing world, not only in Greece but also in the Balkans.
The Balkan wars and the Great War; its integration into the Greek state, the fire of 1917, the departure of Turkish populations and the arrival of Greek refugees ; social movements in the 1930s, the annihilation of the Jewish community but also the assassination of Lambrakis, the 1978 earthquakes, the massive arrival of immigrants from the former Soviet bloc after 1990 and refugees from the Middle East and Africa after the 2000s make this city a rich terrain for reflection.
How have the visual arts, urban writing and architecture left their mark on Thessaloniki, shaping its urban space? What is its relationship with cinema? To what extent do these disciplines express politics or power? How do they shape the city's identity and collective memory?
What is the place of memory in a constantly evolving city like Thessaloniki? How does the past, in particular the devastating fire of 1917, continue to influence its present and its image in the future?
How does the city infiltrate the text, and conversely how does the text appropriate urban space? Is the city transformed into an integral representation in literary works, becoming a striking symbol that transcends its reality? What is the relationship between authors, their characters and the city? To what extent does Thessaloniki's identity merge with that of its fictional and real inhabitants? How do the literary character's self and the city's identity intertwine and reflect each other?
We'll try to understand, through the example of Thessaloniki, how the city reflects itself in its history and how it makes (and unmakes) its history to assert its identity especially if we accept that the past depends - if only partially - on the present and that all history is indeed contemporary insofar as the past is grasped by the present and responds to its interests.
Scientific event program
Thursday, November 21, 2024
Inalco - Maison de la Recherche - Auditorium Georges Dumézil (2 rue de Lille, Paris 7e)
9:00 am: welcome of participants
9:30am - 10:00am: opening of the symposium
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Étienne Boisserie, co-director of the Centre de Recherche Europes-Eurasie (CREE), professor of modern and contemporary history of Central Europe: Le CREE et le projet de "Ville [polis]".
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Meropi Anastassiadou, professor of contemporary history (Ottoman Empire, Greece-Turkey), Inalco/CERMOM: La ville de Thessalonique comme terrain de recherche.
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Jean-Luc Lavaud, Monsieur le Consul Général de France à Thessalonique, Institut français de Thessalonique.
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Anastasia Markomichelaki, Head of the Department of Modern and Comparative Greek Literature, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
I. The strata of the past: heritage and memory of Thessalonica
Moderator: Alkistis Sofou, Sorbonne Université, Paris
10:00am - 10:20am: Youyoung Jung, EHESS, Paris: La crise et la reconstruction de la ville médiévale : Thessalonique par Jean Caminiatès. [communication en français]
10:20am - 10:40am : Michał Bzinkowski, Jagielloński University, Krakow, Poland: From a bustling Levantine city, through ruins to modernity - images of Thessalonica in Polish travelers' narratives of the 19th and 20th centuries. [paper in Greek]
10:40am - 11:00am : Vassilios Sabatakakis, University of Lund, Sweden: The city of Thessaloniki of 1784 in the diary of Swedish pastor and traveler Adolf Fredrik Sturtzenbecker (1757-1784). [paper in Greek]
11:00am - 11:20am: discussion
11:20am - 11:40am: coffee break
II. Thessalonica from the 19th to the 20th century
Moderator: Stéphane Sawas, Inalco
11:40 - 12:00 : Alexia Altouva, Capodistrian University of Athens, Greece: Theatrical references and artistic activity in Ottoman Thessalonica. [paper in Greek]
12:00 - 12:20 : Kyriakos Papoulidis, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland:The city of Thessaloniki in the interwar period through archival testimonies of the Polish community (1919-1939). Narrative sketch of a parallel journey in space and time. [paper in Greekηνικά]
12:20 - 12:40 : Alkistis Sofou, Sorbonne Université, Paris: "The Salonika incident" and the demythologizing of the city. [communication in French]
12:40 - 13:00 : Sofia Denissi, Higher School of Fine Arts, University of Athens: The Apocrypha of Thessalonica (1911) by George Scott: a first attempt to represent the underworld in the last decades of the 19th century. [paper in Greek]
1:00 pm - 1:20 pm: discussion
1:20 pm - 2:30 pm: lunch break
III. History and Architecture
Moderator: Fotini Tsibiridou, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki
14h30 - 14h50 : Maria Moschou, Capodistrian University of Athens: Thessaloniki as a "refugee capital". National identity, residential environment and transformations of collective memory. [communication in Greek]
14:50 - 15h10 : Peny Koutsou and Michalis Koyias, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Greek Ministry of Culture: Write, erase and rewrite: Successive pasts and monuments-palimpsests of Thessaloniki. [communication in Greek]
15:10 - 15:30: Ariadni Vozani, Athens Polytechnic: Redrawing public spaces and memory: The new proposal for the redevelopment of the Aristotle axis and square. [communication in Greek]
3:30 pm - 3:50 pm : Bernard Pailhès, consulting urban planner: Destruction / reconstruction of Thessaloniki (1917-1920). [paper in French]
15h50 - 16h10: discussion
16h10 - 16h30: coffee break
IV. Anthropology and the City
Moderator: Sofia Denissi, Higher School of Fine Arts, University of Athens
4:30pm - 4:50pm: Fotini Tsibiridou, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki:The city as a workshop of de-colonial knowledge. La mise en pratique des anti-tours, un projet d'anthropologie publique dans les quartiers de Thessalonique. [communication en français]
16h50 - 17h10 : Areti Kondylidou, Greek Ministry of Culture : Islahané: a palimpsest of memory. [communication en français]
17h10 - 17h30 : Maria Papadopoulou, Roza Eleni Barka, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki: Linguistic diversity in contemporary cemeteries in the city of Thessaloniki. [paper in French]
17:30 - 17:50 : Olivier Givre, Université Lumière-Lyon 2 : Thessaloniki, laboratory city for research-creation in the Balkans? Around the CREABALK (Creative Balkans) network. [communication en français]
17h50 - 18h10 : discussion
18h10 - 19h10 : The city as a new reality in literature.
Guest of honor: Yorgos Skampardonis, writer
[session in Greek, translation in French]
20:00 : dinner
Friday, November 22, 2024
Inalco - Pôle des langues et des civilisations - Auditorium du PLC (65, rue des Grands Moulins, Paris 13e)
V. Musics of Thessalonica
Moderator: Lisa Onufrieva, Inalco
10:00am - 10:20am : Melina Moschou, Sorbonne Université, Paris: A musical synthesis: a poem for Thessalonica. [communication en français]
10:20am - 10:40am : Katerina Karra, Capodistrian University of Athens:The musico-theatrical identity of Thessaloniki in the interwar period. [paper in Greek]
10:40am - 11:00am : Thanos Giannoudis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki: "March in Thessaloniki, summer in Depot..." : the form and role of the city of Thessalonica in verses set to music. [communication in Greek]
11:00am - 11:20am: discussion
11:20am - 11:40am: coffee break
VI. Theater
Moderator: Maria Papadopoulou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
11:40 - 12:00 : Nikos Barkas, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece :The contemporary theater spaces of Thessaloniki. [paper in French]
12:00 - 12:20 : Tatiana Liani and Ioulia Pipinia, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki: Does the city remember? Contemporary theatrical representations of the Jewish past of the city of Thessaloniki. [communication in Greek]
12:20 - 12:40: Mélisande Leventopoulos, Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis and Nefeli Liontou, Université Paris 1 Sorbonne: Cinema and Nazi Occupation in Thessaloniki: some proposals for study around the "Visual Salonica" project. [communication en français]
12:40 - 13:00: discussion
13:00 - 13:30: Areti Kondylidou, Greek Ministry of Culture: Les clichés de l'Armée française d'Orient du grand incendie de Thessalonique (1917). [communication in French]
13:30 - 14:30: lunch break
VII. Ville et Littérature
Moderator : Sophia Vassilaki, Inalco
14h30 - 14h50 : Sofia Iakovidou, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece : Thessalonian Eros : the poetics of distance in Υorgos Ioannou and Thomas Korovinis. [paper in Greek]
14:50 - 15h10 : Federica Ambroso, Italian Institute of Historical Studies, Naples: City of the past and past of the city. Thessaloniki in Petros Martinidis's Μοιραίοι Αντικατοπτρισμοί. [paper in French]
3:10 - 3:30 pm: Venetia Apostolidou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki: Thessaloniki during the interwar period, a city in effervescence. From Nikos Bakolas's Great Square to Georges Skabardonis's Soleil aux baïonnettes. [paper in Greek]
3:30pm - 3:50pm: discussion
3:50pm - 4:10pm: coffee break
VIII. From literature to screen
Moderator: Andreas Guidi, Inalco
16:10 -16:30: Georges Kostakiotis, Inalco: Social geography of the city of Thessalonica in A. Sourounis and Y. Skampardonis. [communication en français,]
16h30 - 16h50 : Martha Vassiliadi, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki: For a poetic geography: on the traces of an urban poetry. [communication en français]
16:50 - 17:10: Ioanna Naoum, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki: The Cinematographic Circle "Art" and the restless youth of Thessaloniki in the 1960s: the construction of a new intellectual life. [paper in Greek]
17:10 - 17:30: Ioannis Marcopoulos, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki: Children of Paradise Lost: Coming-of-age films by young Thessaloniki filmmakers. Children of lost paradise. [communication in Greek]
17:30 - 17:50 : discussion
17:50 - 18:00: Martha Vassiliadi and Georges Kostakiotis : conclusions
end of the symposium
Organization of the scientific event
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Georges Kostakiotis (CREE, Inalco)
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Martha Vassiliadi (Aristode University of Thessaloniki)