Inscriptions: Stagiates Free Waters
2022
Action, digital prints on paper, cards, posters
Stagiates’ public square
Stagiates, Greece
“Inscriptions” is an action taking place in the public square of Stagiates. A marble slab bearing a Turkish inscription in Arabic script, dating to 1780, dedicates the fountain to Hadji Ahmet Aga, an official of the past. Handing out a few cards bearing Aga’s original inscription alongside the line “Αφιερώνω την κρήνη...” (“I dedicate the fountain to…”), I asked participants: “Where would you dedicate the village’s fountain?”
A few of the dedications read:
To all the children of the world, the plants of the village, and the passing animals.
To 1.5-year-old Eva, for her first contact with the waters of Stagiates. To make water a seed of resistance and rebellion.
To the residents of the village and our friends who fight to keep the fountain’s water flowing freely and abundantly, always.
Every victory in the end is written in defeat. We do not stop. Road to utopia.
Our fountain, to water, to cool, to connect, to remind us. In your shade may our children’s children sit.
To those who fight for land and freedom.
The seed is the messenger between the past and the future.
The action took place in May 2022, on the day of the Traditional Seed and Ecological Garden Festival, an annual event initiated by the self-organised group “Apodrasis” in Stagiates and “Aegilops”, a network for biodiversity and ecology based in the neighbouring village of Ano Lechonia. My thanks go to all the individuals and collectives who were present and participated in the action, including the Assembly for Networking the Struggle for the Defence of the Commons and the Maison des Semences Paysannes des Hautes-Alpes. The dedications are transcribed into a series of posters, which are returned to the community.
Stagiates’ public square
Stagiates, Greece