In November 1978, the German artist Wido Buller, from Cologne, circulated a leaflet in various German cities, issuing a rather unexpected public invitation: “We are looking for about a hundred people who are crazy enough to live on an island and attempt to develop their own idea of the social.” By founding the company ‘Sarakiniko Alternatives Leben GmbH’, he hoped to gather individuals whose combined contributions would amount to ten thousand Deutsche Marks, a sum that would allow for the purchase of sufficient land on the island of Ithaca. In the summer of 1979, approximately two hundred men, women, and children from Germany arrived at the “place-to-be-inhabited”: the peninsula of Sarakiniko, in southeastern Ithaca. There, on an area of four hundred and eighty acres (roughly 48 hectares), an ecological settlement was established, structured around communal social forms and small-scale economic practices, with emphasis on organic cultivation, animal husbandry, handicrafts, and alternative forms of energy and technology. It was one of the largest and most dynamic communal living experiments in Europe during the 1970s. The Sarakiniko community functioned exemplary during its early years. However, differing ideological orientations, internal rivalries, the difficulty of cultivating the barren land using strictly ecological methods, and persistent financial pressures gradually led the project into decline. The community began to lose its communal character, and by 1986 a large portion of its residents had permanently abandoned the endeavor. Today, only a few inhabitants remain in Sarakiniko, some dividing their lives between Germany and Greece, while others return only for what have now become, more or less, conventional summer holidays.
Edited by Eva Giannakopoulou and Panos Sklavenitis
Design by Studio Lialios Vazoura
