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UrbanDig

Dance Music Theatre Visual Arts

Europe, Greece, Athens

UrbanDig is an artistic, participatory site-based research project developed by theatre maker and engineer Giorgos Sachinis and the Ohi Pezoumi, an arts collective from Athens. Every UrbanDig project begins at a specific spot in the city and involves the different people who live and work there. Together, artists and neighbourhood participants explore the synergy, the communication, the stories and the different agents in their area. The method they use is called DEMOS (Greek for ‘city’ and an acronym for ‘Decision Management Open System’). Demos is an arts-based game that generates dialogues in and about a neighbourhood. On a large game board, on which a neighbourhood map is depicted, teams carry out assignments that literally force them to move through the streets. The game also contains a detective element in which the game facilitators perform a fictional role. Whatever the players encounter in their journeys they then analyse and discuss with attention to possible alternatives for the challenges they encounter along the way. At the end of the game, they present their findings in an artistic presentation (theatre, dance, music, visual arts) to fellow residents.