Islands of Exile: Hemmed in by the Sea by Sanem Su Avcı, Tonia Tzirita Zacharatou, and David Bergé (Eds.)

Description

Surrounded by unyielding waters, islands have long served as ideal sites of banishment: places where those deemed unfit to exist within the political order, are cast away. Today, at the edges of democracy, and as obedience increasingly becomes an imperative for public presence, the specter of exile islands resurfaces. The entry point for this book is a research trip to Gyaros, an island scarred by memories of displacement and persecution — memories today at risk of erasure and privatization. Islands of Exile weaves together stories of exiled mothers, dogs, dissidents, and psychiatric patients in the Aegean Sea, narrating how humans can carve out spaces of hope and persistence.

kyklàda.press is a series of compact books initiated by artist David Bergé and grounded in the Aegean archipelago, the island group marked by Izmir, Athens, and Crete. A publishing experiment in embodied, critical, and material forms of writing, each kyklàda book emerges from an expansion within and beyond one central theme. Five to six contributors from different practices craft each book together, relaying knowledge derived from lived experiences on islands: archaeologies of moods, expressions of desire and grief, affection and pain, constructed landscapes, human geographies, and historical (dis)continuities.