TMLAB at Plasmata 3: African Voices Festival Discussions

This June, the African Voices Festival joins Plásmata 3 at Pedion tou Areos for a series of powerful sonic roundtables that center African diasporic narratives, embodied knowledges, and community-led discourse, with the support of TMLAB project. From the grassroots to the public square, the festival transforms the exhibition into a dynamic site of listening, storytelling, and cultural encounter—where voices are not only heard but amplified.

Organized by the Kelenya collective, the community of Côte d’Ivoire, the Guinean nationals’ community, and Community Rights in Greece, and presented in collaboration with Onassis Stegi, this year’s edition brings forth conversations shaped by experience, memory, and movement.

On Friday, June 6, four roundtable discussions will take place under the trees of Pedion tou Areos—bridging music, citizenship, belonging, and dance with the lived realities of African diasporic communities in Athens.

• 18:30 – 19:10
  Dance and Femininities: From Physicality to Social Identity – Exploring dance as a form of resistance, empowerment, and embodied knowledge for femininities in intercultural spaces.
  Participants: Aïssata Kouyaté, Hawa Kouyaté, Maria Irini Sackey, Vasiliki Mavridi
• 19:15 – 19:55
  African Diasporic Communities: Belonging and the Athenian Experience – A conversation on diasporic identities and the lived contradictions of belonging in the urban Greek context.
  Participants: Moussa Sangare, Ibrahim Diallo, Linda Nyogo, Andreas Notaras
• 20:00 – 20:40
  The Issue of Citizenship – Personal and collective perspectives on citizenship, rights, and the everyday politics of inclusion.
  Participants: United African Women Organization, Katerina Rozakou
• 20:45 – 21:25
  Music, Places, Identities – A dialogue on the role of music in shaping diasporic identities, connecting origins and urban realities.
  Participants: Toumany Diawara, Thomas Gueï, Dielani Diop, Leonidas Oikonomou

These sonic roundtables, as part of the TMLAB project,  reimagine public space as a space of agency—of self-definition, of cultural resistance, of collective memory. At a time when questions of visibility, voice, and representation are more urgent than ever, the African Voices Festival makes room for narratives spoken from the community—not for it.

Learn more about the exhibition: Plásmata 3 | We’ve met before, haven’t we? — Exhibition, Art in Public Space | Onassis Foundation

Learn more about the African Voices Festival in Plasmata 3: The African Voices Festival at Plásmata 3 | The voices of the African diaspora at Pedion tou Areos park and the Onassis Stegi — Music, Dance, Workshop | Onassis Foundation