​During the first weeks of June a strange group of people roamed the city. Their peculiarity had nothing to do with how they looked. They were an introvert gathering of young men and women, students and young professionals with architecture or fine arts background. They were Eric Ellingsen’s Perceiving Academy. Despite their plainness as a group, they repeatedly seemed to fail to move in a “proper” manner through the streets, appearing unexpectedly in different places for a week and disconcerting the city and its inhabitants. The participants would go around with their hands spread out –as if they were inviting passersby in an awkward hug– move as Perseus’ copycats looking only through a mirror, shout around the neighborhoods, walk suspiciously slow, or lie down creating a human myriapod. The purpose of these erratic activities was to experience latent aspects of the city or, as in the case of the blind walk, to face the challenges minorities have to deal with in their everyday lives. For this first week, the group went through a process of becoming a part of and creating an unconventional city, expanding the notion of what is expected in the public space.
During the second week, the Academy went silent for some days, only to reemerge a quiet Thursday afternoon in the area around the city hall. In an almost pagan litany, the group carried around big red structures, which despite their seeming frivolity, were characterized by an alarming geometry. These were the outcome of the silent but frantic days, during which the participants conceptualized and created the structures. Arriving on the waterfront they tried to engage onlookers in their activities, to lure them into their heretic public behavior.
Whether because of the summer inertness, its rooted discomfort with the unconventional, or its inert resilience, the city avoided a strong engagement with the project. Many passersby looked, fewer asked, but virtually nobody decided to take part in the erratic walks. The municipality gallantly offered LABattoir and overall supported the project, but the city council politely refused to take part in activities when the Academy asked. Other institutions also found it difficult to deal with challenges posed to them and accept what was generally perceived as unconventional. However, during the last day people came closer and took part, especially a group of children –Syrian refugees– with their disinterest on decency and thirst for fun. The inclusion of this recent, but also latent, part of the city and the genuine enjoyment gave deeper political meaning in the act of having fun, as a participant remarked. 

​At the same time, a more subtle project was taking place in the city: “you are food”. Lynn Peemoeller studied the city’s foodscape, not through the customary culinary paths, but through the subversive potential of the grassroots endeavors of urban agriculture and a literal tasting of the city.
Lynn found the people that cultivate the city, that bring fertility in disused places, integrating them in the social space. As Dimitris from Peliti  –one of the participants– eloquently said about PERKA, an abandoned military camp, people there “made fertile a place that was rendered sterile by soldiers’ boots performing military drills for years”. In the actions of urban gardeners, that bring the diversity of plants and varieties, tastes and scents, there is common ground. Despite their differences and degree of militancy, in their words one can find defiance. Without overstating the scope of their actions, there is a political thread that connects their efforts with general issues such as the economic crisis, unemployment, global agro-food systems and social justice. In this sense, Peemoeller’s project also elevates a latent aspect of the city, a group of people that grow awareness through practice, in a subtle but very committed way.
The project also included the savoring of the city’s flavors. The five different tastes were condensed from ingredients that came from integral parts of the city. This food-city was offered to its inhabitants, in an urban communion ceremony that made one the body of the city and the body of the dweller. A ceremony to bring about the togetherness of the inhabitants and a city, as well as to function as a manifesto for an urban space that integrates its own self-sustenance in its functions.
Although the residencies ended, both artists left a legacy behind. The participants of Perceiving Academy with the help and guidance of Ellingsen are taking their first steps to attempt more permanent interventions in the city, while Peemoeller is engaged in support of local institutions to a food waste reduction campaign. The food waste campaign has a smoother road ahead in a framework where waste and food are increasingly accepted as important issues, albeit the Perceiving Academy’s undertaking faces more challenges. The willingness to pursue these ends, the ideas and interest of the participants are there, as is the support of the artist and those that were involved in the project. What will pose the basic difficulty though would be the development of commoning, which though implicit underlines the practices of the Academy. Nevertheless, this is one of the aims of the project itself – that is to bring “Community” through communing, next to the “Radical Imagination” of the perceiving experiences. 
The seed is sowed. It needs work and care to become radical.

I first heard about the Innovation Gym from a friend that closely followed the Artecitya project. A seminar on producing, assessing and blueprinting new ideas was to be offered in Thessaloniki. My first reaction was unenthusiastic. I’m quite skeptical about seminars especially if they include hype jargon and “innovation” certainly qualifies. Moreover, I dreaded that I might have to listen to the “think outside of the box” mantra… again. As it turned out boxes were involved, but thinking outside of them wasn’t.
I overcame my initial reluctance when I got some more information: the seminar, which incorporated techniques from prestigious institutions - such as the MIT - and blending them with artistic practices, was developed by Achilleas Kentonis. Kentonis studied Engineering, Physics and Fine Arts, participated among others in NASA research projects and is now self-described as a “trans-disciplinary artist, innovation trainer and engineer”. At least on paper the seminar wasn’t supposed to be same old and it actually wasn’t.
The seminar took place at Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki between the 2nd and the 4th of December 2015, with the participants forming a very diverse group across several spectrums; students and professionals, artists and engineers, natural and social scientists. After the customary introductions, we were asked to try to accomplish a feat that is universally considered impossible. We proved it wasn’t. I will refrain from giving away what the feat was since it will spoil much of the fun for future participants and obscure the point of the whole exercise. Nevertheless, I can say that its purpose was to challenge the mind’s comfort zone, provoke reflection, open participants up for what was to follow, as well as to deliver a shattering blow to skepticism.
The seminar moved to more familiar ground after the flamboyant introduction and avoided the common creativity fanfare, which mystifies innovation presenting it almost as a super-human endeavor, instead of illuminating it. The focus shifted on unveiling basic misconceptions about innovation and presenting techniques about evaluating, nourishing and managing new ideas, while more effort was given into the implementation process, than boosting creativity per se. In this sense, no participant became more creative after the seminar, but we all were equipped with tools enabling us to get the most out of our creativity.
On the last day of the seminar, participants were asked to present their own ideas to tackle a real problem in the city. Since we all had different backgrounds, the proposed projects were equally diverse, both in respect of the choice of the issue to be addressed and the type of intervention proposed. What was even more interesting was the interaction the projects instigated and the input that everyone brought into the discussion.
Unfortunately, the limited amount of time and the general configuration did not allow for an actual idea to emerge and materialize. While this particular weakness is endemic to most initiatives like Innovation Gym, whether in an artistic, academic or other setting, the whole experience would be greatly more consequential for both the participants and the overall Artecitya project if it went this extra mile. A general critique that cannot be easily disregarded is whether such initiatives enable actual interventions and whether these interventions can be more than a mind experiment or an academic exercise which, as useful and radical they may be, remain enclosed within a limited social space. The biggest challenge for the Artecitya project will not be enabling agencies and art residencies – something that it has been doing successfully so far anyway–, but how these will enable interventions in the city that will be meaningful, both to the artists and to the residents.
Innovation Gym was an oasis in what often resembles a desert of uninspired, plain, superfluous deliverance of ideas. As an oasis it had its limitations, but might prove a crucial stepping stone towards the overall aspirations of the Artecitya project.
As for the boxes, all I can say is that they were more than magguffins.

From the 4th to the 8th of April the artists Eric Ellingsen and Lynn Peemoeller visited Thessaloniki as a prelude of their residency in the city this summer. Their visit’s scope was to prepare the ground for their projects and recruit participants. During this week they had 17 meetings with 50 members of the local authorities, the university, and the professional community of the city. Their frantic visit was concluded with an inspiring lecture in the auditorium of GOETHE-INSTITUT, where they presented their past work and their aspirations about the Thessaloniki – specific work.

The artists’ projects share a common urge to induce social change. Launched from different starting points, the projects follow dissimilar trajectories. Ellingsen’s work resembling a philosophy treatise has as an epicenter the ways we perceive our world, while Peemoeller builds up her work from her solid experience in urban food systems. In this respect their courses are complementary.

In particular, Ellingsen’s project aims to create a workshop in progress: a workshop, which empowers participants and facilitates the development of their own platforms of change; a workshop that transcends the scope of an art project, to become a continuous social intervention within the city; a Radical Imagination Community. Central to these aspirations is collaboratory learning through doing. The artist engages the participants in an experiential negotiation with their perceptions and invites them in a dialogue about how these were solidified. The city is mapped through perception walks; walks that challenge the relationship with space, sound, time, movement, smell and that dissolve common logic experience. While the actions take place in a specific space, time, and institutional structure, they intend to generate a creative elusiveness that can bring different disciplines together in a common project. It is through this process that specific, yet fluid, the platforms of change will emerge. Nevertheless, the focus is on the process, the learning of learning, the weaving of knowledge bundles, how the question is framed not which answer is given. Platforms are an outcome, the conditions through which they emerge, the Community is the goal.

On another level, the work of Lynn Peemoeller writes an ellipse that has food and change as its two foci. Peemoeller’s engagement with the complex human-food system within and outside the urban environment informs her work. Food is not merely produced, consumed or enjoyed. Food in its totality and complexity is an integral part of the economic, ecological, social, anthropological, and artistic fields. In this respect food and change are complementary reflections. The project wants to bring together citizens with different background, illuminate food production, circulation and consumption practices, in an attempt to induce changes in the human-food system. The artist will activate public spaces by bringing forward the intimacy of the kitchen. Utilizing art as the social neutralizer, the project aims to develop a prototype of change for urban farmers, politicians, and citizens.

What is evident in both artists is their commitment to their projects and their actual willingness to induce change. This quality is what makes their work so relevant and interesting in the specific setting of Thessaloniki and Greece. Not only because for many within the Greek setting change lies in the conjunction of necessity and impossibility, but also because Greece has been tantalized by an economic depression, a refugee crisis and the rise of neo-nazis.

So far the projects have not traversed the city’s comfort zone. Most of the meetings had to do with well established institutions, the ones - it can be reasonably argued - that either place sand to the cogs of change, or through silent acceptance or support enable it. What will be more interesting would be the projects themselves - the magnitude and essence of their interventions, their relevance to the specific situation, the practical answers about how can be induced and more importantly about which change is induced - and how the city will react to them.