Anterior – τώρα – Futures

Lesvos, Greece.

Through its history and its current situation, Lesvos exemplifies the destructive character of centuries of colonization and contemporary European border policies. The situation on the island has been urgent since 2015. The border crisis continues. The border regime strengthens. More military, more FRONTEX, more control.

The Age Of Technology. The once utopic promise of the democratic internet has spiralled to be controlled by monolithic algorithms and monopolies of affective spurts of reactionary ideology. Colonial and anti-migration discourses dictate contemporary politics, media and public opinion.

We can challenge the reactionary reality of today by breaking the mundane character of the everyday overload of information and ideology. We need to go backwards and forwards at the same time. Back to print and forward to collaborative participatory creation processes, self-representation and experimental artistic expressions.

Anterior – τώρα – Futures is a collective initiative that facilitates cultural exchange, post-colonial storytelling and critical art and media production. We aim to build futures related to migration and upgration and to facilitate sustainable ally-building between descendants of the Greek refugees that arrived in 1922 and currently displaced people on Lesvos, focusing on the existence of shared experiences of marginalization and resilience in the past, present and future. We work with futures as raw material for the creative process and resist against harmful reactionary ‘othering’ through imagining and building radical futures that build on resilience, solidarity and creativity.

The initiative came to life after a group of people from diverse fields related to arts and activism came together on Lesvos and realized their shared passion for artistic expression as resistance. With a focus on the past, the present and the future we will work on a collective portfolio of post-colonial artistic expressions that challenge colonial discourses as well as anti-migration narratives and policies.