Thursday, November 2 | 18:00pm | UoA Historic Achive, 45 Skoufa St.

The Symposium explores the multifaceted uses of music in situations of detention across different periods and geographical areas. Despite the tendency to focus on music’s benign and positive role, we are confronted today with clear disclosures of its implication in torture and human rights violations. The Symposium examines the ways in which music has been utilized as a means of torture, punishment, and humiliation. It also explores its use in therapeutic processes that aim to heal traumatized individuals in situations of detention; such programmes are increasingly encountered in prisons and other current forms of detention internationally. 

Katarzyna Naliwajek-Mazurek will talk about the use of music in Naziextermination camps in Poland during World War II. Anna Papaeti will examine dark uses of music in situations of detention in cold-war Greece, focusing on the shifting notions of so-called “brainwashing”. MJ Grant will explore the difficulties entailed in proving music torture in court, focusing on impunity and legal redress. Ending on a more positive note, Mitsi Akoyunoglou-Christou will talk about her work as music therapist with unaccompanied refugee children in transit camps at the island of Chios. The Symposium is organized by Anna Papaeti in the context of the 2017 postdoctoral scheme of the Research Centre for the Humanities.

Venue: Historical Archive, 45 Skoufa Street, Athens

PROGRAMME
18:00 Introduction
Anna Papaeti (Research Centre for the Humanities, Athens)

PANEL I: Music, Violence, Testimony
Chair & Respondent: Dimitra Lampropoulou (University of Athens)

18:10 Torture, Survival, and Music in Nazi Extermination Camps in Occupied Poland (1939–1945)
Katarzyna Naliwajek-Mazurek (University of Warsaw)

18:30 Music in Detention in Cold-War Greece
Anna Papaeti (Research Centre for the Humanities, Athens)

18:50 Discussion

19:30 Coffee Break

Panel II: Music, Torture, Therapy: The Quest for Human Rights
Chair & Respondent: Kostis Papaioannou, Former Secretary General for Transparency and Human Rights 

19:40 Proving Music Torture
Morag Josephine Grant (University of Edinburgh, Scotland)

20:00 ‘Music on the Other Side’: Group Music Therapy as Psycho-Social Support for Refugee Children in Transit Camps
Mitsi Akoyunoglou-Christou (Ionian University, Corfu)

20:20 Discussion