Embodied Democracies is an ongoing research project on embodied practices that foster the rise of democratic encounters, spaces, and interrelationships, through the lenses of Ecosomatics and ­Somatic Architecture (fields that focus on bodily and spatial awareness for psychological, social, and political growth of the individual and the collective).

 

A 6-month-residency, Fresh A.I.R.,  by URBAN NATION foundation in Berlin, and funded by Stiftung Berliner Leben, I have been working on the development of practices that grow a sense of democracy within the human body from the perspective of ECO-Somatic Architecture (=the process of designing or acknowledging immersive multisensory experiences between bodies and physical or imagined/virtual environments/spaces).

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The occasion for the development of this project was the intense and violent police interventions in public spaces during the COVID lockdowns in Greece in 2021. The violation of the human right to breathe was exceeding the typical safety measures, revealing a shifting point of abusive power in the paradigm of Greek governance, which is self-called DEMOCRACY.

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The idea of this project was born as an impulsive response to "How can someone resist the absurdity of fake democracies"?

 

How can we re-claim what is good for our own bodies in times of absurd measures and governments that can't logically judge when someone is a criminal or just searching for a space to literally breathe?

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My research focused on practices of shifting our perspective (whether physical or mental) in order to embody the position of Otherness in this world and be able to form a fair and multi-informed judgment. This approach was not only focused on the experience of humans but was extended to the non-human as well as the experience from the perspective of the environments/spaces we inhabit. 

How do plants see human actions?
How do buildings experience our movement inside their 'body'?
How do mountains feel when we extract masses from their volume?
How does another body feel when we steal her/his/their right to breathe and move freely? 

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These questions guided my movement research in a variety of spaces, from my home where I observed and documented my co-living with plants, to the public spaces where I invited participants to approach life in new ways, to engage with architectural elements and urban nature with their full bodily potential (touch, smell, sight), and to reflect on the ways we can expand these experiences to feel connected and part of the whole diverse ecosystem.