Community (Working Title)

This work-in-progress is about the Geography of Communities shaping identities, giving space for belonging and creating meaning in life.

(Community means belonging. Community means respecting. Community means sharing. Community means strength. Community means self-determination. Community means identity. Community means place)

This project is about the Greek mountainside and how its places shape different communities.

What connects the members of each community is the cognitive, emotional or existential attachment to the mountains. But there are more qualities, as the way of being together, providing safety, accepting otherness, distinct efforts to find ways of equal communication between the members, respect and dignity, by listening to each other and accepting every person’s ability and thoughts.

Collective memories, trauma, destruction by war or natural disasters are subject of identities. Mourning and celebrating take place in the embracement of collectivity. These are places where we spent childhood, where our dead ones are buried, or where we found a place with meaning to live, where the relationship with oneself and the community makes sense.

Whatever is the emotional, spiritual or cognitive relationship with the landscape, we all feel the importance and meaningfulness of these places.

That we need to care for and protect those places from destruction, exploitation and extinction, which takes place due to the way of thinking in terms of progress, profit and hubris by western societies. But it isn’t only about the land and the air and the water. It’s an re-membering of our early cultural instincts to acknowledge that we belong to each other.