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The city - past, present, future

 

Images of the past

 

 

     

      Community life back then

Skating on the lake - very rarely does it happen that the lake freezes completely

 

During the 18th century, every author of the Greek world, was either from Ioannina or was a graduate of one of the city's schools.

The legacy of Ali Pasha

"In 1789 the city became the center of the territory ruled by Ali Pasha, an area that included the entire northwestern part of Greece, Thessaly as well as parts of Euboea and the Peloponnese. The Ottoman-Albanian lord Ali Pasha was one of the most influential personalities of the region in the 18th and 19th centuries. Born in Tepelenë, he maintained diplomatic relations with the most important European leaders of the time and his court became a point of attraction for many of those restless minds who would become major figures of the Greek Revolution (Georgios Karaiskakis, Odysseas Androutsos, Markos Botsaris and others). Although during this time Ali Pasha committed a number of atrocities against the Greek population of Ioannina, culminating in the sewing up of local women in sacks and drowning them in the nearby lake,[18] this period of his rule coincides with the greatest economic and intellectual era of the city. As a couplet has it "The city was first in arms, money and letters". The efforts of Ali Pasha to break away from the Sublime Porte alarmed the Ottoman government, and in 1820 (the year before the Greek War of Independence began) he was declared guilty of treason and Ioannina was besieged by Turkish troops. Ali Pasha was assassinated in 1822 in the monastery of St Panteleimon on the island of the lake, where he took refuge while waiting to be pardoned by Sultan Mahmud II." 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ioannina

 

 

 

 

The present: 2015 - 2021

 

 

    

     A side street

 

Public buildings

Wax museum

 

   

   Municipality of Ioannina

 

                       

 

                          The military headquarter

Prefecture of Epirus at Central Square

 

The central square

  

 

   Central square with Tourist information booth 29.12.2014

  

   Tagged wall and the role of the shadow

 

The platform and secluded park

           

 

 

Entrance to Archaeological Institute

 

                

                 View of mountains over and beyond the archaeological institute

 

                

                 Monika and Anna Arvanitaki walking towards the platform 31.12.2014

 

 

                      

 

 

               

                View down to dance and Cultural Centre of Ioannina

 

Use of public space as parking lot 

Such a view raises questions about traffic solutions not found as of yet in Ioannina as this sight reminds as well what problems Valletta in Malta faces where people have to get up at four o'clock in the morning to make sure they can get a parking space close to the place where they work.

 

The voices screaming from the wall

 

    

     Wall mural

 

 

       

        ...or die trying

        which the pigeon already did

                            

 

 

    

     "Vandalism is the culture of profit making"

 

 

Signs of the future

 

 

  

 

Some suggest the future goes hand in hand with a "politics of the commons" as expressed in the following abstract of a far reaching paper given at a conference held in Melbourne, Australia 2014:
Arts and Community in Uncertain Times:  Cooperation and Commoning to Secure Other Futures - Stephen Healy
"The practice of austerity undermines support for public goods—the arts, but also education, healthcare, and governance that contribute to social and ecological wellbeing.  Expressed one way in the US, another in the EU, still another way in Australia and in majority world (developing) countries—austerity coheres as a logic in the context of what we call a capitalocentric imaginary. In the context of this imaginary capitalist economic activity, particularly in the private sector, is privileged while all else—communities, the arts, environment, public health, education—is confined to a dependent, subordinate role. The cunning of austerity logic is that it makes it appear as if all of these elements of social-reproduction depend upon continued growth in the capitalist sector, while the actual practice directs the wealth of societies away from public goods and toward the support of continued growth in the capitalist sector. 
Imagining a future for the arts, for the public good, for public funding, for our communities, our families and even for ourselves in the face of profound ecological and social crisis demands not just an engagement with logic of austerity, it requires a different imagination of what an economy is.  Fortunately this process of re-imagining can be informed by initiatives around the world that are enabling the emergence of economies predicated on cooperation rather than competition, and that recognize our interdependence upon others (human and non). In so doing, they are taking back the economy as something that we shape through our collective practices and in which the public good, including public support of the arts, becomes a primary goal.  This talk will highlight examples of taking back the economy for both people and planet by means of cooperation within enterprises and between the enterprise and the state, collective investing in a common future through the crowd and municipal funding, and finally commoning: the various ways in which physical, knowledge, and cultural resources might be made a source of common wealth and common responsibility. Through cooperation, collective investment, and commoning we might enact a new future for the arts as a public good, while also constituting the conditions of possibility for new and strengthened publics."

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