Sounding the Camp

Listening (to) the camp may participate in specificity, in systems of control, in contesting rights and identities, interrogating spaces of authority, as well as in echoes of resilience and celebration. For this ephemeral installation, we embrace and suggest listening as less of a project, position or testimony, but rather a leaning, an incoherent opening, a trespass, or a dance.

Ritsona Refugee Camp, located in central Greece, 80km north of Athens, has been in existence since 2016. In the years since, its physical structure has changed almost beyond recognition. As well as the construction of a huge extension, the camp is now surrounded by a 3-metre-high concrete wall. Access to non-residents is strictly prohibited.

Camp residents, the vast majority of whom hail from one of the countries of the Global South, are suspended in time, waiting to hear if their asylum claim has been accepted. Some stay for a few months, others for years. These camps, dotted across the Greek mainland, are spaces of limbo, neither ghettos nor cités, neither favelas nor slums; their temporality is absolute; no one is from there, no one will stay there. Everyone who contributed to this project over the past several years has now left the camp.