Lesvos: drawn in the field
A visual essay on the explosive situation on Lesvos island, Greece, February 2020 has been published in Entanglements journal, showcasing experiments in multimodal ethnography.
When setting foot on Lesvos there was no way of escaping the complexity of the situation. The precarious living conditions of over 21.000 people in camps had put the entire island under growing pressure and has led to tense dynamics between different groups of locals, humanitarian aid workers, volunteers, refugees and migrants, (local) government, police and army. At the beginning of February, protests by women and children to address their struggles to survive in the Moria camp were met with police violence and teargas. Not much later, the requisition of properties and the arrival of materials for the construction of a new reception center in Karavas led to a series of increasingly violent protests and strikes in which local groups first clashed with riot police and army forces, and later with NGO workers and refugees. As the situation rapidly escalated, I struggled to position myself. And with what suddenly felt like a frontline all around me, I found myself reporting as if I were a journalist, making sketches as an artist while wondering: how should an anthropologist make sense of all this?
Also published on Standplaatswereld
Entanglements: Drawn in the field, 2020, page 9