ABSTRACT
The hypnotic repetition of passages between white containers in the refugee camp in Eleonas, in Athens, heightens the temporality experienced by the refugees in the camp – a sense of life in temporary suspension or perpetual deferment. Passage Variations uses seven images taken from a film that documents the passageways in the camp and their variation owed to human inhabitation. The stills are accompanied by a textual collage of immigrants’ testimonies, literary excerpts on the subject of migration and some instances in the history of the area as a notional edge of the city. The linear, arduous and open-ended migrant journey is contrasted to the monotonous and closed spatial experience of the camp. The essay that follows reflects on these accounts and negotiates the temporal and geographical distance between them – a newly found space of tolerance amid reconciled fragments of histories, experience and collective memory.
