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date: 2008-01-22
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The aim of the research is to investigate the meaning of space produced in the island of Santorini. A thorough and comprehensive investigation of the facts that have contributed to the very recent transformation of Santorini island is thus needed. The characteristics of this transformation are complicated and difficult to locate: A general account of this transformation could be described as that of a rural place to a built-up tourist center. This general and probably insufficient description introduces however a number of social, environmental and economical related issues. For example: What is the social order that the island is facing up to and how this social order shapes its space and vice versa? What are the environmental changes and how they make themselves apparent in space? In what ways is the island's economy depended and interrelated to the global economy and again how this relation reveals itself in space?
Therefore my investigation is focusing on how these transformations become visible in the island's space and what this appearance communicates.
What sets the case of Santorini a worth examining one is its current condition:
a state of mobility that can be characterised as more or less a permanent one. This mobility has occurred by the infusion of the global into the local and it is their interaction which primarily forms Santorini's space today. This constant state of mobility does not only alter continually the spatial order but also our comprehension of it.
To understand at first place how these changes came about, I suggest an initial exploration into the landscape of Santorini itself. This landscape is probably the key point to a preliminary understanding of its space. Most part of Santorini island is volcanic; it was formed by the consequent explosions of a volcano which has been active since nowadays. The landscape that was created is significant not because of its particularities alone but because it has shaped the living conditions and the social relations of the inhabitants and has played a crucial role in the development of the island as a whole. It is also important as it enables a comparison of the landscape's role in the past and today: differences between use and consumption -or in other words, differences between spaces made (produced) to be lived and spaces made to be read.
(H. Lebfevre,The production of space, 1996:142-143).
I believe that by a close study of the theories around space and by looking into the factors that determine the condition of Santorini island today one comes to identify three major issues requiring a deeper analysis:

1. the global/local interactions that set the island in a constant state of flux.
2. the particular and complex role of nature today.
3. the practice of illegal procedures which has established a state of anomy

in the island. I therefore think that an investigation of those three major issues can illuminate how space is produced and consumed in Santorini and can lead us to a further understanding of the meaning of its space. Finally, this process is challenging as it could possibly inform main current concerns in today's society.

http://www.zoi-photography.com/santorini.html

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