Babylonia-fest in Athens

July 2009 | | Send to a friend

In Athens, 4th Balkan festival of anarchist book was part of the larger B-fest, dedicated to the anniversary of the newspaper "Babylonia," and was named as "Antiavtoritaren Festival." The event was very extensive - the main part was the discussion and presentations by the majority of guests were from the staff of Z magazine (American and antiglobalization antiavtoritarno magazine) that cooperate with the team of "Babylon." Among them were such famous names as the author of the idea of ​​"participatory economics" Michael Albert, the veteran Italian autonomist Bifo, Serbian anarchist historian and activist Andrei Grubachich, English anarchist and antifascist Martin Lux. There was a video link with Noam Chomsky and the presentation of the movie Deer Shatalen "Get Nestor - a peasant from the Ukraine," translated into Greek by our friend from Thessaloniki. Evenings were filled with concerts and parties, which played more or less known Greek bands in different directions as a natural protest music was an essential component. Great rock scene was the size of a real music festival (Festival is held at the Faculty of Arts, located in one suburb of Athens before becoming a school, was a factory). Along its walking and fair of anarchist books and magazines - were pretty much Greek literature, and the Bulgarian enjoyed great interest despite the language barrier - a Greek publisher even took a large quantity of publications FAB with the promise that you will find a translator from Bulgarian. Hundreds of people - young and old - attended the festival for three days and nights, which is recognized as a major success by organizers of the team of the newspaper "Babylonia" and comrades Antiavtoritarno movement.
Photos and video of "Babylonia Fest" in Athens can be found at
babyloniafest.blogspot.com
About the festival talking with one of its organizers - Spiros Tsobaris Antiavtoritarno of movement - Athens.
How did you do such a great event and what were the main objectives of "Babylonia fest"?
This is a festival organized by "Babylon" which was founded by Antiavtoritarno movement - Greece, the main reason for creating the newspaper was to propose a radical theory and practice. In this line of thought we decided that one antiavtoritaren festival with this orientation will be very important in Greek society to socialize all bezvlastnicheski, autonomous and anarchist ideas and promote them further. The second reason why we decided to do it was that one year we sort of association with Z magazine, which is radical American magazine, and this is a good opportunity to have good relationships and communication with bezvlastnicheskoto movement in the United States.
It is probably worth much effort?
This was an effort that began several months ago. Many people were involved, we were lucky that the festival was well received by the Greek youth, and not just young people - in fact many different people come and actually tried to make the event fun, but at the same time interesting, and political .
How did you get so many famous players such as Michael Albert, Grubachich, Bifo, Martin Lux and others?
I think we can prove that the international movement antiavtoritarno really cohesive - and our American guests definitely enjoyed coming here. Organize everything in a very short time, but still managed to secure tickets cheap - of course, our guests are part of the Islamist movement, so do not need any special luxury during their stay in Greece. We took some economic risk, but it turned out that the interest of the people and the solidarity which all felt cover all economic, as well as mental effort. All this required a huge organization - most of us worked day and night during the last ten days before and during the event, but all worth it!