A radio roundtable with Tom Western, Penelope Papailias, and George Mantzios

A radio conversation, an anticolonial imagination. This broadcast brings together members of the ‘Memory – Monuments’ working group of Decolonize Hellas, Penelope Papailias and George Mantzios, taking Tom Western’s piece from The City Talks Back Assembly 1, ‘Παγκόσμια Ηχώ | Echos-Monde | The World is Echo’, as a jumping off point.

The piece is a remapping of Athens. It finds its cartography through an imagined conversation between Athenian poets and anticolonial theorists – who think in circles and circulations, and make a musical language that sounds out the rhythms and relations of struggle. From this imaginary, an Athens emerges that sings long histories of movement, encounter, exchange.

The radio conversation runs with these circular movements, connecting histories that are mobile and migratory, and speaking an anticolonial Athens. 

This show was broadcast on Movement Radio in June 2021, for Assembly II of the project The City Talks Back – co-curated by Onassis Stegi and Theatrum Mundi. Thanks for listening!

Artwork by Carole Hénaff and Tom Western