Tactics against antiquity: the contemporary ancient Messene

Abstract

This essay outlines an empirical endeavour pivoting on the contemporaneity of the ruins of ancient Messene (Greece) by means of an eclectic method and in a situated artistic context. Drawing inspiration from the “peripatetic” tradition, the project concerns a technologically mediated soundwalk through the ruins which foregrounds Messene (a) as a place that is practised sociopolitically in the present as a way to generate cultural and historical content, and (b) as a vibrant habitat that hosts a wide range of entwined beings, things, energies and phenomena. A mixed method focused on technologies for mediation and the researcher’s body as the centre of the project’s inquiry is proposed, so as to produce an experience that is evocative of an emergent multitemporality specific to this place while also making accessible to the senses the plurality of objects and geophysical phenomena that manifest at the site. The project is contextualised with respect to experimental, creative, performative and “punk” archaeology, as well as to object-oriented and new materialist trends. It presents the resulting narrative, discusses how it relates to various sociopolitical/historical contexts and details the method and its constituent elements. The provided illustrations document the composed soundwalk and the creative tactics at play.