Columbia Summer in Greece: Art, Environment, and Curation
"Who let these kids in here?"
Here’s what happened when they did. . .
Whether for its ancient or more-recent histories, “Greece” means something particular in the imaginations of most American students. Through a month-long exploration of the Greek present, 15 Columbia University students considered the production and erasure of myriad macroand micro-histories. Four weeks collapsed and reconfigured their understandings of Greece. The students documented this process of alteration in a collection of artists’ books, presented here in 3 137. While the question of authenticity is central to ethnographic art, the form of artists’ books—in this context reminiscent of the travelogue—acknowledges the students’ collective status as outsider and the attendant gaps in understanding. Curated by these same students, Who let these kids in here? showcases their changed conceptions of “Greece” and “Athens” along intersecting axes of politics, economics, culture, cartography, urban topography, and memory. The variety of media—painting, video, music, fabric, and other mixtures—reflects different approaches to capturing a polyphonous and at times inconsistent present.
