Passage Variations: An Elliptical History of Migration in Eleonas

Abstract

The hypnotic repetition of passages between white containers in the refugee camp in Eleonas, in Athens, heightens the temporality experienced by the refugees in the camp – a sense of life in temporary suspension or perpetual deferment. Passage Variations uses seven images taken from a film that documents the passageways in the camp and their variation owed to human inhabitation. The stills are accompanied by a textual collage of immigrants’ testimonies, literary excerpts on the subject of migration and some instances in the history of the area as a notional edge of the city. The linear, arduous and open-ended migrant journey is contrasted to the monotonous and closed spatial experience of the camp. The essay that follows reflects on these accounts and negotiates the temporal and geographical distance between them – a newly found space of tolerance amid reconciled fragments of histories, experience and collective memory.

Keywords:

• Eleonas refugee camp
• Athens
• migration
• visual anthropology
• film essay

Acknowledgments

The author thanks his unnamed informant interviewed in Eleonas refugee camp, the workers and volunteers in the camp who assisted this research, Serafeim Arkomanis for his contribution to the filming and photography, Joseph Kohlmaier for the design and presentation of this piece, Aleks Catina and Colin O’Sullivan for their useful observations, and last but most Zoi E. Ropaitou-Tsapareli for generously providing a copy of her invaluable research on Eleonas and its neighboring areas.

Notes

Notes

1 Interviewed by the author with an unnamed informant, a Syrian refugee in Eleonas refugee camp, December 24, 2017.

2 Papadiamantis, Alexandros, ′H μετανάστις [The Immigrant] (1879), http://www.papadiamantis.org/works/57-novel/75-01-01-h-metanastis-1879 (accessed December 26, 2017). Author’s own translation.

3 Ropaitou Tsapareli, Zoe E., Ο Ελαιώνας της Αθήνας: Ο Χώρος και οι Άνθρωποι στο Πέρασμα του Χρόνου [Eleonas of Athens: The Space and the People with the Passage of Time] (Athens: Philippotis, 2006), 136. Author’s own translation.

4 Ibid., 322. Informant: Veli Rabi Asari, resident of Eleonas, c.2006 (the precise date of the interview is unknown). Author’s own translation.

5 Prageeta Sharma, Infamous Landscapes (Albany, NY: Fence, 2007), 57.

6 Li-Young Lee, Behind My Eyes: Poems (London: W. W. Norton, 2009), 28–29.

7 Pier Paolo Pasolini, James Ivory, and Stephen Sartarelli, The Selected Poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini. A Bilingual Edition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 392–94.

8 Eleonas refugee camp is a government-run project. It is supervised by the Greek Ministry for Migration Policy and operates in collaboration with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and various teams of volunteers. Hellenic Republic, Ministry for Migration Policy, available online: http://www.immigration.gov.gr/en_US/web/guest/elleniki-metanasteutiki-politiki (accessed November 3, 2018).

9 The number of refugees sheltered in the camp changes daily. In general, it has increased relatively steadily since the camp was established, from about 700 in 2015 to about 2300 in 2018; Ilena Kritikou and Menelaos Myrillas, “Greece’s only refugee camp,” Al-Jazeera (2015), available online: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2015/09/greece-refugees-camp-150928101923759.html (last modified September 30, 2015); “Eleonas Refugees in Athens Share their Plight with TNH,” National Herald, available online: https://www.thenationalherald.com/165105/tnh-visits-eleonas-refugee-camp-athens/ (last modified June 6, 2017); Project Elea, “Eleonas Refugee Camp,” Project Elea, available online: https://projectelea.org/about-us/ (accessed November 3, 2018); UNHRC (The UN Refugee Agency), “Greece – UNHRC,” available online: https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/53941 (last modified January 2017).

10 The vast majority of refugees in the camp have plans for continuing their journey in Europe and settling in other countries. The government and the NGOs aim to keep the average stay time in the camp at three days for individuals and at two weeks for families. This period, however, is often prolonged due to processing an individual’s papers and issuing their status. There are cases of refugees who remain in the camp for longer than a year.

11 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 4–8, 76–80.

12 Trinh T. Minh-ha, Elsewhere, Within Here (London: Routledge, 2010), 28.

13 Greek immigrants arrived from Turkey as a result of a series of historic events: the Turkish War of Independence (1919–23); the abolition of the Ottoman Empire (1922) and the founding of the Republic of Turkey (1923) – all of which led to atrocities against the settled migrant populations in both Greece and Turkey, and culminated in the population exchange between the two states (1923). For a vivid photographic record on the resettlement of refugee populations in Greece at the time, accompanied by transcribed oral testimonies, see Georgios S. Giannakopoulos, ed., Refugee Greece: Photographs from the Archives of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies (Athens: A. G. Leventis Foundation/Centre for Asia Minor Studies, 1992).

14 Ektoras Arkomanis, “Invented Memories: Notes on Filming Industrial Ruins in Eleonas, Athens,” Architecture and Culture, 3, no. 1 (2015): 57–64. This essay details the beginning of my filming in Eleonas, in 2014. It outlines the history of the area from ancient times to the present and provides a more specific account on its recent history of work, industrial ruins, dereliction and informalities.

15 Agamben, Homo Sacer, 81–86, 107–16.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ektoras Arkomanis

Ektoras Arkomanis is a filmmaker and a senior lecturer in architectural history and theory in the Cass School of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University. His research revolves around cities and film. He also publishes essays on the history of architecture. He is currently researching and shooting his second feature film, A Season in Eleonas, which centers on the themes of migration and work/labor in the area of Eleonas in Athens, Greece.