X-Wohnungen Athen

X Apartments Athens – apartments from the 1950s and 1960s and houses from the pre-war years—buildings which testify to a rich architectural past—, empty spaces and homes full of memories and old objects, half-finished buildings and temporary constructions, semi-public spaces and sites of social exclusion: X Apartments focuses on unseen aspects of Athens and on the complex phenomenon of shared city space, essaying an alternative anthropogeographical approach to our urban landscape.

Can you rediscover the city of your birth through the lives of its inhabitants? Can an art project really overcome both the dictates of political correctness and nostalgic narratives about the good olddays of ethnic homogeneity and engage with the new hybrid social identities that have come into being with the arrival of large numbers of immigrants and refugees? Does art have the power to crack open the dominant geographical narrative which has locked the public image of downtown Athens into a discourse on overarching urban decay? Can an artist work in areas traumatized by attempts to reappropriate public space, by conflicting forms of coexistence and by extreme social phenomena?

Initiated in 2002 by Matthias Lilienthal, the new artistic director of the Münchner Kammerspiele and former artistic director of Hebbel Am Ufer in Berlin, X Apartments has been staged in a number of different cities throughout the world. After Beirut, Johannesburg, São Paolo and many more cities besides, this unique dérive which invites us to penetrate deep into our fellow citizens’ private inner sancta is coming to Athens.

Fifteen Greek and international artists who work in different fields using different artistic idioms accepted our challenge to create works especially for the houses and apartments of downtown Athens.