I received this from a friend today - please read, support, circulate, as appropriate:

Dear Friends and Collegues,

Today 11 of November 2011 Mavili Collective occupied the historical disused theatre building of Embros in Athens, deserted and left empty for years by the Greek Ministry of Culture. We aim to re-activate and re-occupy this space temporarily with our own means and propose an alternative model of collective management and (new) post-contemporary forms of creative work. For the next 11 days Mavilli will reconstitute Embros as a public space for exchange, research, debate, meeting and re-thinking.

We act in response to the total lack of a basic cultural policy on the level of education, production and support of artistic work as a national product. We act in response to the general stagnation of thinking and action in our society through collective meeting, thinking and direct action by reactivating a disused historical building in the centre of Athens.

From the 11/11/2011 until 22/11/2011 an open, intense daily program will run throughout the space with an emphasis on access and action. Emerging dance and theatre makers will share tactics and methodologies for development, panels will be organised by scholars as public debates on urgent issues, we will archive live the currently undocumented and unknown "Greek new work" inviting artists themselves to present “live” parts of their archival material. Artists, theoreticians, practitioners and the public will “meet” and try out models beyond the limits of their practice and the markets’ structural demands of “the artistic product”.

This re-activation is not a proposition of a “better” model of production and management but is a proposition of re-thinking, responding and re-making. This model emerges from the current lacks and shortfalls of our system and attempts to interrogate the global changing landscape at this moment in time. We challenge our own limits and understanding and we propose and operate this space as a constantly re-evaluated model by both ourselves and the public - an open system that might offer the potential to re-think relations between people and possible roles for art in society.

In the sight of the current situation we refuse to wait for “better days”, we refuse to accept the current crisis as terminal and we refuse to sit back. We actively propose new structures, which we hope, can become sites of negotiation, debate, re-formulation.

The Mavili Collective

Mavili Collective was formed during summer 2010 as an autonomous collective structure for emergent practitioners and came together in order to re-think and re-imagine the current Greek cultural landscape and propose structures, platforms collaborations, projects that produce new alternatives.

Mavili Collective is committed to producing nomadic, autonomous collective cultural zones that appear and disappear beyond the logics of the market.

For information:www.mavilicollective.wordpress.com

Mavili Collective: Gigi Argyropoulou, Anestis Azas, Argyro Chioti, Giorgos Kolios, Kostas Koutsolelos, Georgia Mavragani, Vassilis Noulas

::::Please feel free to circulate to your friends and networks  - we need your support::::