Living with others

https://www.neme.org/projects/a-sea-change/living-with-others

Coastal cities in the Mediterranean are predicted to face significant threats from climate change, sea level rises, pollution, over-fishing, desalination, deep sea fracking, political, social, and communications volatilities. Blue resources management is under a centralised planning and control by the governments, with little to no involvement of local communities in the planning and implementation stages. The one-sided power dynamics allows the enforcement of national and international policies and agreements, but disregard local communities as effective contributors to the decision-making process.

This project focuses on the need to deconstruct and critically balance our cultural and natural ecologies, in relation to the sea, within a community based dialogue. Living with others is a project documenting two respective fishing areas of Famagusta district, Cyprus: Liopetri and Famagusta city.

The main focus guiding this long term, investigative project, lasting from February to September 2023, has been on the impacts of tourist- development affecting local citizens. This includes examining practices being developed in coastal areas that were impacted severely by polluted and warming Mediterranean waters. Living with others views the Mediterranean surrounding Cyprus as fluid and transformable rather than another physical barrier between people, places and culture. it is a site of reflection exploring narratives that address how socio-economic and political environments can be improved by proposing parallel perspectives. We hope this project will inspire further important conversations among residents around sustainable practices including tourism, pollution, recycling and marine conservation as we believe that it is within the realm of civil society that most of the sustainable changes take place.

The Living with others project included within its structure, residencies of various durations for five people, Dr Marc Garrett, Ruth Catlow(Furtherfield) who disseminated the project and Eastern Mediterranean University in Famagusta, artists Nurtane Karagil, Iliada Charalambous, and Dr Aycan Garip who produced a collaborative experimental documentary. In addition, 3 research texts were authored by Dr Marc Garrett, Dr Aysu Arsoy, and Dr Ellada Evangelou, a seminar held on 16 September 2023 at the NeMe Arts Centre, and one video-documentary directed by Helene Black.

For the seminar Dr Ellada Evangelou, Dr Aysu Arsoy, and artists, Nurtane Karagil and Iliada Charalambous, presented the outcomes of their personal led research resulting from their own localised association with people, collecting stories and history, and personal observations on the topics of blue economy challenges, sea, and coastal ecology.

A Village At A Crossroads: Narratives Of Development And Trauma

Dr Ellada Evangelou

The area of Liopetri and its environs, the build-up area, orchards and the Potamos (tr. river), has entered (well behind other communities in the area), the phase of what is widely called development. The paper proposes a socio- cultural and historic approach in our effort to understand the ways with which this process is taking place. The analysis focuses on collective memory as that has been formulated from the late 1950s onwards, how memory and trauma have been preserved, their manifestations in public and private spaces, as well as ways with which these narratives are acutely gendered. The research draws from the locations in and around the village as those relate to past trauma, archival footage related to the predominant narratives which dominates the identity of the village, interviews carried out in the spring of 2023 with Liopetri inhabitants across generations, and area maps.

Ethnographic Research

Dr Aysu Arsoy

This research takes Varosha as an example of the new tourist developments in Cyprus. It investigates how this development imposed changes upon the resident’s lifestyle as well as rapid manipulation of the immediate natural and built environments of Famagusta. For this purpose, interviews conducted with former and current residents of Famagusta, including fishermen, and marine biologists. In addition, the new observations and physical developments are juxtaposed to memories of Famagusta documented on social media channels, and news (from media text related especially with natural disasters) illustrating the environmental, cultural changes.

The one sea we see

Iliada Charalambous & Nurtane Karagil

The video The One Sea We See is a collaboration between artists Nurtane Karagil and Iliada Charalambous with the support of cinematographer, Aycan Garip. The video is situated in the district of Famagusta, Cyprus, and unfolds in the areas of Laguna, and Liopetri river. It explores the environmental degradation of the waters and marine life in the Famagusta district caused by so-called development projects by the tourist and fishing industries. The shifting habitat of the sea is seen through the perspective of the fishermen and scientists working in the area, whose research and livelihoods are deeply affected by such transformations. Through personal accounts and observations, The One Sea We See attempts to map the struggles faced by the fishermen in the two areas and looks for potential reparative narratives that establish a sea, divided amongst various regimes and interest groups, as a commons.

This project has been funded with the support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.