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Inhabiting Distances at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale

Two poems from my second book The Architecture of Chance, as well as an excerpt from my as yet unpublished long poem 'Capital', are featured in Anachoresis: Upon Inhabiting Distances, an anthology accompanying the Cyprus entry at the 17th Architecture Biennale in Venice.

The Cyprus Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia "addresses the spatial experiences that occur when inhabiting distances becomes a paradigm for the development of new socialities. The notion of anachoresis, as explicated by Roland Barthes in How to Live Together, denotes an abrupt departure into spaces of atypical and idiorrhythmic manifestations of cohabitation."

I was pleased and honoured to be informed that The Architecture of Chance - and in particular the poems 'Territorial' and 'public-private' (composed in collaboration with James Wilkes) as well as the title poem - formed a key reference text during the curators' discussions towards conceiving their project.

Published by Archive Books and edited by The Cyprus Pavilion 2021 curatorial team of Evagoras Vanezis, Marina Christodoulidou, and Urban Radicals (Era Savvides and Nasios Varnavas), Anachoresis: Upon Inhabiting Distances "gathers a collection of texts and visual material from a multidisciplinary group of Cypriot and international practitioners, including architects and designers, curators and writers, sound and movement artists. The publication offers a combination of established and emerging voices, reflecting on the spatial experiences that occur when 'inhabiting distances' is proposed as a thematic for the development of new forms of sociality and living together. Now more than ever, there is an urgency to recognise experiences of the newly inhabited distances that are shaping our collective experience and reflect on architecture’s transformative social and political power on a local and global scale."

With contributions from Urban Radicals, Marina Christodoulidou, Evagoras Vanezis, Aristide Antonas, Jan van Duppen, Christodoulos Makris, Yiannis Christofides, Kestrel Leah, Georgia Tegou, Andreas Panayides, Anny Stephanou, Savvia Palate, Charis Baskozos, Francesca Savvides. Anachoresis is available to buy here.

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