ART AND SOLIDARITY: EXAMPLES FROM SKOPJE AND ATHENS

The multifaceted concept of solidarity manifests through diverse practices in different contexts. One such manifestation lies in the aftermath of the 1963 earthquake in Skopje. Amidst the Cold War, Skopje became a symbol of Yugoslav and world solidarity. I got acquainted with this concept of solidarity in the summer of 2018 at the municipal events commemorating the earthquake. Coming from Athens, I was familiar with a somewhat different one: there, in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, the impact of which would be experienced two years later, pre-existing (ant)agonistic practices of solidarity were embraced by a broader segment of society vis-a-vis severe austerity measures. Initiatives such as anti-middleman and exchange markets, as well as migrants' and artists' squats, proved crucial in the face of unprecedented precarity. Solidarity concurrently fostered new forms of sociality. Discussions with contemporary art practitioners in Skopje, aspiring to an idea of Europe different from the one imposed by the Skopje 2014 urban regeneration project, revealed similar, yet distinct, notions of solidarity. Self-organized and self-sustained art initiatives emerged while others sought support from private funds, all operating outside state institutions. This paper aims to comparatively examine variations of the notion of solidarity in contemporary art and in dialogue with activism in response to heterogeneous "crises" in Skopje and Athens.